US President Donald Trump’s fresh invite to PM Modi after hosting Pakistan Army chief irked India

New Delhi: With Washington, D.C., prodding India to raise its energy imports from the United States, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has received another invitation for a visit to White House, almost a year after he turned down one from US President Donald Trump, who was then also hosting Field Marshal Asim Munir of Pakistan.

Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, met with Modi in New Delhi on Saturday, discussed the situation in West Asia and conveyed the US president's invitation to the prime minister.

Rubio emphasised during his meeting with Modi that the US would not let Iran hold the global energy market hostage and affirmed that US energy products had the potential to diversify India’s energy supply, according to a readout issued in Washington, D.C, after the meeting.

Rubio arrived in New Delhi after a stopover in Kolkata, where he, along with his wife, visited the Missionaries of Charity founded by Saint Teresa early on Saturday. He is the third senior official of the Trump Administration to visit India, after Tulsi Gabbard, who just resigned as the US Director of National Intelligence, in March 2025, and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick just three months back.

The military offensive launched by Israel and the US on Iran, and the Persian Gulf nation’s retaliatory strikes on the US allies in its neighbourhood, triggered concerns in New Delhi over the energy security of India.

The escalating tension in West Asia, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz, led to supply disruptions, higher shipping charges and volatility in global fuel prices, adding pressure on the energy import bill of India.

Trump’s administration granted India a waiver from its sanctions on Russia to buy oil already shipped from the former Soviet Union nation. Washington, D.C., also wants India to buy more oil from Venezuela, now controlled by the US.

The US is also keen to raise its oil and gas exports to India. India has significantly expanded its energy trade with the United States in recent years. The US share in India’s crude oil imports rose from 4.6% in 2024-25 to 8.1 per cent during April-November of 2025-26. Imports of American crude also increased by over 90 per cent year-on-year in the first eight months of 2025-26. India’s LNG and LPG purchases from the US have also grown steadily.

“News! Secretary Marco Rubio extended an invite on behalf of President Donald Trump for Prime Minister Modi to visit the White House in the near future,” Sergio Gor, the envoy of Washington, D.C., to New Delhi, posted on X.

Modi requested Rubio to convey his “warm greetings” to Trump and said that he looked forward to “continued exchanges” with the US president, according to a press release issued by the office of the prime minister.

“We discussed sustained progress in the India-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership and issues related to regional and global peace and security. India and the United States will continue to work closely for the global good,” Modi posted on X.

The prime minister reaffirmed India’s consistent support for peace efforts and reiterated the call for a peaceful resolution of the conflicts through dialogue and diplomacy.

Neither New Delhi nor Washington, D.C., indicated when the prime minister would visit the White House for a meeting with the US president.

Modi is likely to visit Évian-les-Bains, Haute-Savoie, France, to attend the G7 summit between June 15 and 17. Trump will also attend the G7 summit. The prime minister may fly to Washington, D.C., before or after his visit to France and meet the US president, if the schedules of both leaders allow such an opportunity. The two sides may discuss other probable dates for the Modi-Trump meeting at the White House, too.

Modi had met Trump at the White House a few weeks after he returned as the 47^th US president on January 21, 2025.

Trump’s tariff war against India, his move to force India to stop buying oil from Russia, his repeated claims – despite denials from New Delhi – about mediating a truce between India and Pakistan to end the cross-border military flare-up between the two South Asian neighbours, and his bonhomie with the civil-military leaders of Pakistan stressed New Delhi’s ties with Washington, D.C., over the past one year.

Trump had invited Modi to have a brief stopover in Washington, D.C., while flying from Alberta, Canada, where both had attended the G7 summit in June 2025, to Zagreb in Croatia. But with Trump then hosting Pakistan Army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, whom New Delhi had accused of provoking the April 22, 2025, terrorist attack in Jammu and Kashmir with an incendiary speech, the prime minister had turned down the invitation from the US president.  

Munir emerged as a key interlocutor between Tehran and Washington, D.C., after Pakistan stepped in to broker a truce to end the latest conflict between Iran and the US. He, in fact, held talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi in Tehran on Saturday.