NEW DELHI — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet on Wednesday cleared a long-stalled $370 million infrastructure package for Iran’s Chabahar port and authorized state-owned refiners to negotiate fresh crude offtake agreements with Tehran, the clearest signal yet that New Delhi intends to use the post-ceasefire window to deepen a commercial relationship that has chafed for years against U.S. sanctions policy.

The decisions, announced after a Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs meeting that ran nearly four hours, came as Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar prepared to leave for Tehran on Friday for what officials described as the highest-level Indian visit to Iran since 2023. Government statements said Jaishankar would meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and was also expected to call on President Masoud Pezeshkian, with energy, connectivity and reconstruction the formal agenda items.

“India’s posture on Iran has always been independent, and it will remain independent,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters at a briefing in the South Block on Wednesday evening. “The ceasefire creates conditions in which long-pending projects of mutual interest can move forward. The visit on Friday is a recognition of that opportunity.”

The Chabahar tranche covers a second phase of berth construction at the Shahid Beheshti terminal and a 220-kilometer rail spur connecting the port to the Iranian town of Zahedan, a project India has discussed with Iranian counterparts for more than a decade but repeatedly deferred under the weight of secondary sanctions risk. Indian Ports, Shipping and Waterways Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said in a separate statement that the rail link would be tendered “on an accelerated timeline” with completion targeted by late 2028.

The cabinet also gave the green light to Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals to open commercial talks with the National Iranian Oil Company on light and medium crude grades. Officials briefed on the decision said the initial offtake envisioned would amount to roughly 180,000 barrels per day across the three refiners, well short of the more than 450,000 barrels per day India routinely lifted from Iran before the 2019 sanctions snapback, but a meaningful re-entry that the industry has been quietly preparing for since the Islamabad talks began.

The move places India among the most prominent Asian buyers signaling a return to Iranian crude, after Beijing’s reported uptake of discounted barrels last week. Unlike China, which has continued to buy Iranian oil at varying volumes throughout the sanctions era, India had largely halted direct purchases after 2019, relying instead on Russian Urals and West African grades.

The renewed engagement carries diplomatic risk. The Trump administration has not publicly opposed Indian discussions with Iran but has signaled it expects allies to coordinate any sanctions relief through the framework being negotiated in Doha and Brussels. A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe ongoing consultations, said Washington had “registered” New Delhi’s intentions and was seeking clarity on the precise legal vehicles India intended to use, particularly for crude payments.

Indian officials, for their part, argue that the Chabahar project enjoys a specific U.S. waiver renewed under the Biden administration and not yet revoked, and that the new crude purchases — if structured through rupee-denominated trade and a planned Indian-Iranian payments mechanism — would not require fresh American clearances. “The position has been internally cleared at the highest level,” one finance ministry official said on condition of anonymity. “The risk has been priced in.”

Strategic analysts in New Delhi framed the move as part of a broader Indian effort to reposition itself in a Gulf landscape reshaped by six weeks of war.

“India has watched Beijing, Ankara and Islamabad move quickly into the post-war space and is determined not to be left out,” said C. Raja Mohan, a foreign policy commentator and former government adviser. “Chabahar is the obvious lever. It gives Delhi a non-Pakistani route into Afghanistan and Central Asia, which matters more, not less, after this war. And the crude purchases are partly economic, partly political — a statement that India can buy from whom it chooses.”

The cabinet decisions arrived against the backdrop of a sharp domestic debate in New Delhi over India’s diplomatic absence from the headline phases of the Iran war diplomacy. While Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt played central mediating roles in the Islamabad framework, India was conspicuously not at the table, a fact opposition leaders in the Lok Sabha have raised in successive question hours. Congress Party general secretary Jairam Ramesh accused the government Monday of “diplomatic invisibility at the moment that mattered most” and called for a parliamentary debate on India’s Gulf strategy.

Government officials pushed back, saying India had maintained quiet contact with both Tehran and Washington throughout the war and had prioritized the evacuation of more than 18,000 Indian nationals from the region in March, an operation that involved 22 chartered flights from Tehran, Najaf and Doha. They added that India contributed $40 million to the U.N. humanitarian appeal for Iraq and Yemen in early April.

The Modi government also faces commercial pressure. Indian refiners, which import roughly 87 percent of the country’s crude needs, have welcomed the recent decline in Brent toward $93 a barrel but warned that uncertainty over post-war flows remains the single largest cost variable in their planning. R.S. Sharma, a former chairman of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, said in a televised interview that securing diversified term contracts in the next six months was “essential” if New Delhi wanted to avoid being squeezed in a future supply disruption.

The Iranian response was warm. A statement from the Iranian Foreign Ministry called the Chabahar approval “a step that reflects the historical depth of Iran-India relations” and welcomed Jaishankar’s coming visit. Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji, in remarks to the Tasnim news agency, said Tehran was prepared to offer Indian refiners “competitive terms” and to expand co-investment opportunities in upstream blocks near the Iraqi border.

In Islamabad, the reaction was guarded. Pakistani officials, who view Chabahar as a competitor to the China-financed port at Gwadar, declined to comment publicly, though one foreign ministry source said Pakistan would seek clarification from Tehran on whether the rail spur would eventually be extended toward Afghanistan in ways that bypassed Pakistani territory altogether.

Officials in New Delhi said the Cabinet Committee on Security would meet next week to review broader Gulf basing and overflight arrangements, and that further announcements on Indian participation in the Iran-Iraq reconstruction conference planned for Marseille in June would follow Jaishankar’s return from Tehran.