India welcomes US-Iran ceasefire: ‘Expect global flow of commerce would prevail through the Strait of Hormuz’

India on Wednesday welcomed the two-week ceasefire agreed by the United States and Iran in the West Asia war, which began six weeks ago.

Ministry of External Affairs said that it expects unimpeded freedom of navigation and the global flow of commerce to prevail through the Strait of Hormuz.

“We welcome the ceasefire reached and hope that it will lead to a lasting peace in West Asia. As we have continuously advocated earlier, de-escalation, dialogue and diplomacy are essential to bring an early end to the ongoing conflict,” the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.

Earlier, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said it has accepted a two-week ceasefire in the war announced by US President Donald Trump earlier on Wednesday morning. The statement said it would begin negotiations with the United States in Islamabad on Friday.

“The conflict has already caused immense suffering to people and disrupted global energy supply and trade networks. We expect that unimpeded freedom of navigation and global flow of commerce would prevail through the Strait of Hormuz,” the statement read.

The United States and Iran reached a ceasefire deal less than two hours before President Donald Trump's deadline for Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face the wiping out of “a whole civilisation”.

The announcement by Trump late on Tuesday (US time) represented an abrupt turnaround from his earlier extraordinary warning and came after mediation efforts by Pakistan's military chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, and its Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif. 

It has been six weeks since the West Asia war began with joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran. Tensions escalated following the killing of 86-year-old Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the military strikes on 28 February.

In retaliation, Iran targeted Israeli and US assets across several Gulf countries, causing further disruptions to the waterway and impacting international energy markets as well as global economic stability, disrupting trade routes through the Strait of Hormuz.

The fighting has left thousands dead, most of them in Iran and Lebanon, and brought vessel traffic through Hormuz — through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas exports normally flow — to a near standstill.