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09-03-2026
JAKARTA: When the United States-Israeli attack on Iran was launched last weekend, an unexpected peace broker stepped forward in the form of Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, leader of the world’s largest Muslim country.
The Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on social media: “Indonesia calls on all parties to exercise restraint and to prioritize dialogue and diplomacy.
“If agreed by both parties, the President of Indonesia is prepared to travel to Tehran to carry out mediation,” it said but President Prabowo’s offer to help mediate between the sides has provoked debate across Indonesia, coming at a time of increased criticism of his approach to foreign policy and warm ties with the Trump administration.
“I’m puzzled as to why this idea wasn’t vetted before being made public,” Dino Patti Djalal, Indonesia’s former deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to the US, said in a statement on Instagram.
“It is highly unrealistic,” Djalal said.
Others agreed, adding that the offer could further alienate Indonesians already wary of the president’s perceived cordial relationship with US President Donald Trump.
“It is clear that any negotiations between Iran and the US have completely ended, so to propose this seems to be not reading the room,” Ian Wilson, a lecturer in politics and security studies at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, told media.
“Domestically, people are likely to interpret this as a further alignment with Trump and therefore Netanyahu,” Wilson said.
In recent months, Prabowo has faced domestic scrutiny after volunteering to deploy 8,000 Indonesian troops to Gaza as part of an International Stabilization Force under the umbrella of Trump’s Board of Peace (BOP), a so-called “international peacekeeping” organization of which Israel is also a member.
Indonesia does not have any formal diplomatic relations with Israel, and has long supported an independent Palestine.
Joining Trump’s board and offering to participate in the US president’s plan for Gaza has not gone down well domestically.
“Indonesia is being used to legitimize the BOP’s dystopian plan to divide Gaza into quadrants and bypass the role of the United Nations,” Wilson said.
“For Indonesia to be involved fundamentally betrays its longstanding tradition of being a principled voice for the Global South, and its approach to foreign policy, which historically has been deeply respected,” he said.
‘Bebas-aktif’, ‘independent and active’
Indonesia was one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War, which saw the country adhere to a “bebas-aktif” or “independent and active” approach to foreign policy for decades, avoiding the major power blocs while actively working for peace and the national interest.
Over the years, this has included Indonesia’s attempts to broker peace in a number of global conflicts, including the Russia-Ukraine war but Indonesia’s membership of Trump’s Board of Peace amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and now the joint US-Israeli attack on Iran, could present an unprecedented test for Prabowo’s approach to foreign policy, experts said.
“The Foreign Ministry’s statement on the attack was regrettably naive,” said Sarbini Abdul Murad, director of the humanitarian group, Indonesia for Peace and Humanity.
While the president had offered to mediate, little was said about the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Sarbini said, pointing out that neighboring Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim had condemned the assassination of Khamenei by US and Israeli forces.
“The death of Ali Khamenei went unanswered,” he said. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
