Jaishankar likely to be in US for meeting of Quad on July 1

Jaishankar will also be able to brief the American leadership on India’s position on the Israel-Iran issue, as was articulated by PM Narendra Modi after his conversation with Iranian President Masoud Pezekshkian in which he called for “dialogue and diplomacy”.

Sources said if all goes to plan, the meeting of the Quad Foreign Ministers will be hosted by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Although the four Quad Foreign Ministers had met in Washington DC at the first multilateral meeting that Rubio held on January 21 — after the inauguration a day earlier of US President Donald Trump — the grouping hasn’t been able to focus on the Indo-Pacific agenda over the last five months.

The US administration has been focused on the two ongoing wars — in Ukraine and in West Asia — and Trump has put much of his bandwidth on these issues, apart from the trade wars he started following the imposition of tariffs.

So, this will be an opportunity for the Quad partners to refocus on strategic threats in the Indo-Pacific, where China’s assertive behaviour is a cause for concern.

For India, this will be the first opportunity for the External Affairs Minister to engage with the Quad partners — with whom the country has close strategic partnership — after the India-Pakistan military confrontation over four days in May this year.

This will also be Jaishankar’s first meeting with Rubio and top officials in the US administration, after Modi spoke to Trump over the phone on June 18, weeks after the US President claimed credit for brokering a “ceasefire” between India and Pakistan and linked it to a trade deal with India. Modi told Trump that at no point was there any discussion, at any level, on an India-US trade deal, or any proposal for mediation by the US between India and Pakistan.

The meeting of Foreign Ministers is also crucial before the Quad leaders’ Summit to be held later this year in India, sometime in September-October — for which Trump, Australian PM Anthony Albanese and Japan PM Shigeru Ishiba will be travelling to India.

This visit by Jaishankar will also take place just over a week before the July 9 tariff deadline. It is expected that the US and India will have concluded a bilateral trade agreement before the deadline for suspension of reciprocal tariffs expires.

In an interview to French daily Le Figaro earlier this month, Jaishankar said, “The threat of reciprocal tariffs was raised on April 2, but we had already begun bilateral negotiations for a trade agreement. Prime Minister Modi was hosted by Donald Trump in February, and they agreed to expand access to each other’s markets. We are hopeful of reaching an agreement before the tariff suspension ends on July 9.”

Officials said that while travel plans and work on the agenda for the meeting of the Quad Foreign Ministers is being done, it will all depend on the course of the conflict in West Asia.