Morning Digest: West Asia troubles to delay India’s FTA talks with GCC countries and Israel; Netanyahu claims Iran no longer has uranium enrichment capacity, and more

The Hindu Morning Digest gives a select list of stories to start the day. Read the top news today on March 20, 2026

The ongoing conflict in West Asia is going to create delays in India’s negotiations on free trade agreements (FTA) with both the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, as well as with Israel, a senior official in the Ministry of Commerce said. The FTA with the U.K., however, could be implemented by May 1 and the trade agreement with the European Union could be ratified by the European Parliament by the end of November this year, they added. Negotiations for a free trade agreement between India and the GCC countries— Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)— were formally launched on February 24 with the signing of a joint statement by the two sides. 

Iran no longer has the capacity to enrich uranium or ​make ballistic missiles after 20 days of U.S.-Israeli air ‌attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ​a news conference. “We are ⁠winning, and Iran is being decimated,” Mr. Netanyahu said, noting that Iran’s missile and drone arsenal is being massively ‌degraded and will be destroyed.

Any attacks on Qatar’s energy facilities or anything which affects energy supplies from the Middle East would impact India, but the country has diversified its sources to deal with the paradigm, Sujata Sharma, Joint-Secretary at the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) told reporters addressing concerns about the impact on India’s natural gas supplies going forward as Iran attacked Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City.  

Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Sultan Haitham bin Tariq of Oman and his Malaysian counterpart Anwar Ibrahim, and discussed with them the West Asia situation, favouring de-escalation of the conflict in the region and subsequent restoration of peace and stability. In his separate telephonic conversations with the two leaders, Mr. Modi also stressed the need for safe and free navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

The government launched the ₹497 crore Resilience & Logistics Intervention for Export Facilitation (RELIEF) scheme to provide credit insurance cover for exporters whose goods are stranded due to the West Asia crisis, or who are planning to export to the Gulf over the next few months. The insurance premia under this scheme would be at pre-conflict rates and the focus would be MSME beneficiaries. While announcing the scheme, the officials of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry acknowledged the hardship being faced by Indian exporters due to the constraints created by the war in West Asia, and said that the RELIEF scheme was aimed at alleviating this and providing them with surety about their exports. 

A number of people who post content critical of the government on their X accounts were greeted late evening with an email from the social media platform, telling them that their accounts were now withheld in India. The reason: a takedown order issued by the Union government under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000. The accounts, many of which are run pseudonymously, posted memes and other content criticising the government in the weeks and months leading up to their handles being censored. The accounts and posts remain visible to X users outside India.