US incoming envoy Gor has a direct line with President Trump and his trust

While Sergio Gor is in touch with India through diplomatic channels, Washington insiders call him one of the most powerful men in the Trump administration.

Updated on: Aug 23, 2025, 14:15:18 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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The appointment of Tashkent-born Sergio Gor as US Ambassador to India and India-anchored Special Envoy to South and Central Asia Affairs is a significant development as the incoming envoy is in the trust zone of President Donald Trump and has a direct line to White House. He is 38 years old and die-hard supporter of President Trump.

Donald Trump with recently appointed US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor

US based interlocutors portray this India anchored engagement with South and Central Asia positively and a strong gesture to India’s relevance in the region. While many a Pakistan infatuated commentators equate the appointment of Sergio Gor to that of once upon a time Washington based US envoy to Afghanistan-Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, fact is that the incoming envoy will be New Delhi based with the broad objective to understand Indian sub-continent and Central Asia.

Simply put, Sergio Gor is what Dr P K Mishra is to Prime Minister Narendra Modi when it comes to government appointments but with strong MAGA ideological moorings. He is currently also involved in political appointments cleared by White House as Director Personnel and has direct access to US President Trump. He will remain in the role of Director Personnel until his confirmation as the next envoy to India.

While Gor is in touch with India through diplomatic channels, Washington insiders call him one of the most powerful men in the Trump administration, who has already appointed 1000 Trump administration staffers with another 3000 to go. Washington insiders call Gor the Rahm Emanuel of Obama administration as he is one of the key players of the Trump inner circle. Rahm was the Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama, Mayor of Chicago and US ambassador to Japan during the previous Biden administration.

Even though India-US relations are going through a difficult patch right now due to Trump tariffs on India and stalled negotiations on the trade deal, the appointment of Gor as next US envoy to India has been taken as a positive sign by Indian diplomats. It also indicates the importance of India in President Trump’s foreign policy and at the same time it shows that the US President will have real time unvarnished feedback of India.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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