IMEC jinx: There’s no relief in sight from war clouds over this trade route
Prospects have dimmed for the proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) to the EU via sea to West Asia and then overland to Israel. As the US glares hard at Iran, attacked last week by Israel, India is in the same boat as China on this trade promoting project.
The education of some Indian students studying medicine in Iran, safety of ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz and moderation in oil prices have all been collateral damage as war clouds worsen over West Asia.
A big if silent casualty has been the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) that was announced at the New Delhi summit of the G20 in 2023. Ships would leave India’s west coast, land at one of the UAE’s three ports, offload their cargo onto rail tracks to be laid through Saudi Arabia and Jordan to Israel, where the Haifa port (under Adani Group control) would serve as the final node for sea despatches to Piraeus in Greece, Trieste in Italy or Marseilles in France to serve the EU market.
Also Read: IMEC: Only peace can pave India’s trade pathway to the West via Israel
The project hinged on Saudi Arabia and Israel inking an ‘Abraham Accord’ to normalize ties, like the deals US President Donald Trump had brokered in 2020 between Tel Aviv and the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco. Riyadh signing up had been Trump’s aim. But that prospect has all but been blown apart by Israel’s relentless Gaza War, which has taken on dark shades of genocide, and its ongoing offensive against Iran.
The Arab participants in IMEC are monarchies, not democracies. So, on paper, their governments could bridge relations with Israel over the heads of their people. But the fear of an electorate is one thing and that of an ‘angry street’ something else, as the region’s regimes realized during the Arab Spring of 2010-12, which toppled some autocrats and shook others.
While US-aligned Gulf states have looked on—with token protests—as Israel retaliated against the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack that took over 1,000 Israelis lives by bombing Gaza to rubble and killing some 55,000 Palestinians since then, the popular Arab reaction has been far less serene. The Israeli bombing of Tehran and other targets, coupled with Trump’s threat to ‘take out’ Iran’s Supreme Leader, is likely to be interpreted across the region as a naked show of the West’s imperialist might.
Although Iran’s people show signs of discontent with its regime and its Gulf rival Saudi Arabia would probably be pleased to see its nuclear capacity crushed, unelected leaders can hardly patch up with Tel Aviv in such fraught times. Also, the status of Jerusalem, where the Al-Aqsa complex is located, has pan-Islamic salience as an issue.
Also Read: Israel-Iran conflict: Echoes of history haunt West Asia
It is widely suspected that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has deployed aggression as a tool for political longevity, given that his endgame seems to converge on the US moving in to impose its Pax-Americana (in Tel Aviv’s favour). An end to hostilities will spell elections that might oust him from office. Having defanged Hezbollah, paved the path to Assad’s removal in Syria and battered Gaza, Iran is now Israel’s final frontier.
Over in the US, Trump has shown his strongest will yet to play along, as evident in his Tuesday call for Tehran to surrender. To some of the ‘Make America Great Again’ crowd, this might look like greatness for America and its proxy, Israel. To much of the rest of the world, however, it looks like the return of imperialism. The IMEC will have to wait for tempers to cool in the Arab world.
It is not just India, however, that’s disappointed with this ghastly turn of events. China also needs the IMEC to link its Gwadar port at the end of its China Pakistan Economic Corridor to the West via Haifa. Embattled trade is bad news all around.
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