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 Al Jazeera.
“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” organisation 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 legitimise 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.