"Unpredictable, Unreliable": Shashi Tharoor's Donald Trump Report Card

Donald Trump is 'unpredictable' and 'unreliable' and there has 'never been a world leader like him, particularly at the helm of such a powerful country', a mystified Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said Thursday at the NDTV Keralam Power Play summit.

Tharoor also looked askance at the American President's habit of tweeting domestic and foreign policy messaging, as he has been doing since US-Israel forces attacked Iran February 28, and taking crass jibes at other world leaders.

And on the war itself Tharoor was clear – the US had broken international law and violated Iran's sovereignty, and India needs to play a firm and public role in resolving the Middle East conflict.

Referring to Trump's oft-confusing statements about the on Iran, Tharoor said: "One day he says 'it will be over quickly', then he says 'in four to eight weeks'… then he says 'there are no targets left to hit' and that it might finish soon. The honest truth is he is unpredictable… there has never been a world leader like him particularly at helm of such a powerful country."

"He conducts diplomacy through tweets… with all caps in the middle," a baffled-looking Tharoor said, "… we've never seen anything like it. We don't know how much to take what he says at face value because what he says today he might not do tomorrow or the day after, so we have to be on our ties with him which is a very unusual place for any world leader."

The Indian government, he said had chosen to 'act with self-respect for the country we are' unlike others had chosen to become subordinate, "an act, frankly, of craven submission".

"We see Pakistan literally paying court (to Trump) in various forums. We can't do that and I am glad we don't," Tharoor stressed. The diplomat in him, however, also added a caveat – that Delhi has nothing to gain from criticising the POTUS and that such was not the country's job.

"Our job is not that of a running commentator on world affairs, least of all a moralistic one. Our job is to look after India's interests (which in the context of the Iran war would mean oil and gas security). If we calculate that is served by a certain stand, we will take that stand," he explained.

'Grandstanding' against Washington, i.e., deliberately taking a critical position with respect to the war is quite unnecessary, Tharoor said, particularly when we have "so many larger interests at stake" and "our friends in the Gulf will expect us to show sympathy for them over the attacks".

That, however, should not rule out the decent act of expressing sympathy for the death of a designed head of state, i.e., Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.