At the margins of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit in Bishkek, two visions of the world's relationship with Iran came into quiet collision. Prime Minister Modi met with Iranian President Pezeshkian and spoke of deepening trade and friendship, while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, within hours, appeared on American television to warn that any nation helping Iran evade sanctions would face consequences of its own. The moment distills a recurring tension of our era: the reach of American economic power pressing against the sovereign foreign policy calculations of a rising India, wi