World's Largest Muslim Country Indonesia Faces Public Rage Over US-Iran War

JAKARTA, March 7, 2026 — Outside the Iranian ambassador's residence in Jakarta, the message boards stretch down the pavement — handwritten condolences, prayers, flags, and anger. Hundreds of Indonesians came to pay their respects to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, killed in the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury on February 28. [web:109]

They didn't just come to mourn. They came to send a message to their own president.

Indonesia — 270 million people, 87% Muslim, the world's largest Islamic democracy — is caught in a political storm that started the moment the first American missiles hit Tehran. President Prabowo Subianto built his foreign policy around a close relationship with Donald Trump. That relationship is now costing him at home in ways he didn't fully anticipate. [web:107]

Prabowo's Trump Problem

The trouble didn't start with Iran. It started with Gaza.

Months before Operation Epic Fury, Prabowo agreed to contribute 8,000 Indonesian soldiers to Trump's "Board of Peace" — a U.S.-led stabilization force designed to oversee post-war Gaza. The Board includes Israel. Indonesia has no formal diplomatic relations with Israel. It never has. The country has been one of the most consistent voices for Palestinian statehood for decades. [web:107]

Critics at home called it a betrayal. Islamic organizations that represent tens of millions of Indonesians said it contradicted everything the country stands for in the Muslim world. The Indonesian Ulema Council — one of the most influential religious authorities in the country — warned that participation in the Board of Peace effectively legitimized both Israeli conduct in Gaza and American policy in the region. [web:113]

Then Iran happened. And suddenly "under pressure" became something much more urgent.

"Indonesia's involvement contradicts its longstanding commitment to being a principled advocate for the Global South," said Ian Wilson, a political security analyst at Murdoch University. "Domestically, any further alignment with Trump is being interpreted as alignment with Netanyahu." [web:107]

The Protests That Surprised Everyone

When the Gaza war protests erupted in Indonesia in 2023 and 2024, they drew hundreds of thousands into the streets. The Iran response has been smaller — but it is building. [web:107]

Protesters in Jakarta this week rallied in front of the Iranian embassy and outside the Presidential Palace, carrying banners condemning the U.S.-Israeli strikes and demanding that Prabowo withdraw from Trump's Board of Peace entirely. [web:104] They said Iranian children were dying in U.S. airstrikes. They said the school bombing that killed over 148 people in southern Iran on Day 3 of the conflict was evidence of a war targeting civilians. [web:109]

One man at the Indonesian ambassador's condolence boards put it simply: "But they bombed a school with innocent children." [web:109]

The anger isn't uniform. Indonesia is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, and Iran's government is Shia — there is a historical religious distance between the two. But Yohanes Sulaiman, a political lecturer at Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani, notes that ideology is being overridden by something simpler: "Many Indonesians have voiced their anger towards the US for what they perceive as an unprovoked assault on Iran. It is rooted in anti-American and anti-Israel sentiment — not necessarily pro-Iran sentiment." [web:107]

A Jakarta barista named Ramadhan captured the mood precisely: "Iran has the right to defend itself. The conflict was instigated by the US and Israel. My stance is rooted in humanity, not religion." [web:107]

The Mediation Offer That Backfired

As the bombs fell on Tehran on February 28, Prabowo tried to turn the crisis into a diplomatic opportunity. The Indonesian Foreign Ministry posted a statement on social media calling for restraint — and then went further, announcing that if both parties agreed, "the President of Indonesia is prepared to travel to Tehran to conduct mediation." [web:108]

It was a bold move. It was also, according to most observers, a miscalculation.

"Highly unrealistic," was how Dino Patti Djalal, a former Indonesian deputy foreign minister and ex-ambassador to Washington, described it. [web:107] The U.S. is demanding unconditional surrender. Iran is vowing never to surrender. The Omani back-channel that had been facilitating nuclear negotiations between Washington and Tehran was blown up — literally and figuratively — when U.S. strikes killed Khamenei during those very talks. [web:112]

The Iranian ambassador to Jakarta appreciated the offer but was direct about its limitations: "While I welcome the mediation offer, I regret that no tangible steps have been taken toward actual negotiations." [web:107]

Washington and Tehran both ignored the proposal entirely. [web:112]

Domestically, the mediation offer created a new problem. Rather than positioning Prabowo as a peacemaker above the fray, critics read it as a sign that he was trying to serve as a Trump intermediary — using Indonesia's Islamic credibility to give the American campaign a veneer of Muslim-world legitimacy it doesn't have. [web:107]

The Board of Peace: Held, Not Dropped

Under extraordinary domestic pressure, Prabowo blinked — but only halfway.

On March 4, Indonesia's Foreign Ministry announced that discussions with the Board of Peace are "on hold" due to the Iran war. [web:113] The 8,000 troops promised for Gaza aren't being deployed immediately. The commitment isn't being formally cancelled — but it isn't moving forward either.

The Indonesian Ulema Council responded by calling for a full withdrawal. "Trump's aggression towards Iran has rendered the initiative futile," the Council said in a statement. [web:113]

Nahdlatul Ulama — the largest Muslim organization in the world, with an estimated 90 million members, headquartered in Indonesia — took a more strategic line. Rather than demanding withdrawal, it urged Jakarta to use its Board of Peace membership as leverage: push from inside to force the U.S. and Israel to stop the strikes. [web:113]

That gap between the two most powerful Islamic bodies in Indonesia tells you something about how complicated this moment is. There is no clean answer that satisfies everyone.

500,000 Indonesians Stranded in the Middle East

While the political debate rages in Jakarta, there is a human dimension that is less visible but equally pressing.

Approximately half a million Indonesian nationals are currently living and working in the Middle East — in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and other countries now being struck by Iranian drones and missiles. [web:115] The Indonesian Foreign Ministry is monitoring the situation but has not ordered evacuations.

Every new strike on Dubai, every siren in Bahrain, every explosion near a Qatar refinery is a potential threat to someone's husband, wife, or child who left Indonesia to send money home. The remittances these workers send back are not trivial — they are lifelines for hundreds of thousands of families. [web:115]

The Wider Southeast Asian Split

Indonesia is not alone in its discomfort, but it is the most visible pressure point in Southeast Asia.

Malaysia's Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim condemned the killing of Khamenei immediately and forcefully — something Prabowo conspicuously did not do. [web:107] The contrast between Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta has not gone unnoticed by either Muslim civil society or regional analysts.

Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines have stayed largely quiet, prioritizing economic relationships with the U.S. over any moral positioning on the Iran war. [web:106] That pragmatism is available to them because they don't have Indonesia's domestic demographics — 240 million Muslims watching their president sit in an American-led coalition while Iran burns.

"Any negotiations between Iran and the US appear to have completely ceased," Wilson noted. "Prabowo's mediation proposal seems out of touch with reality — and at home, it looks like deeper alignment with Trump." [web:107]

What Prabowo Does Next

Following a lengthy meeting with former presidents and senior political leaders this week, Prabowo signaled he is willing to "reassess Indonesia's role in the Board of Peace" in light of the Iran developments. [web:107] That phrase — reassess, not withdraw — is the language of a leader trying to preserve room to maneuver without making an irreversible commitment in either direction.

The challenge is that the ground keeps moving. Every new day of strikes, every new casualty figure from Iran, every image of a bombed school or a burning mosque makes the political cost of staying in the American coalition slightly higher.

Indonesia has always practiced a foreign policy it calls "bebas aktif" — free and active, non-aligned, principled. [web:111] It has sat outside Cold War blocs, outside regional military alliances, outside the kind of great-power entanglements that have defined smaller nations' fates.

Right now, those principles are being tested by a president who made a bet on Trump — and a public that is watching that bet go wrong in real time.