India’s Middle East policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is often seen as both successful and perplexing. The governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to which Modi belongs, has a nationalist Hindu-right bent, and yet India’s outreach toward the Persian Gulf region under the current government, particularly to the Arab world, has been a defining success over the past decade.
India’s Middle East policy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is often seen as both successful and perplexing. The governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to which Modi belongs, has a nationalist Hindu-right bent, and yet India’s outreach toward the Persian Gulf region under the current government, particularly to the Arab world, has been a defining success over the past decade.
The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, sparked by the latter’s audacious strike on Oct. 7, has brought under the spotlight New Delhi’s diplomatic balance between a “new” Middle East and its traditional support for the “old.” The new is defined by New Delhi’s increasingly close proximity to the security ecosystem of the United States, while the old is highlighted by a visible shift away from the idea of nonalignment. India’s participation in new tools of economic diplomacy—such as the I2U2 minilateral between India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the United States, as well as the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEEC) announced on sidelines of the G-20 summit in September—are evidence of these not-so-subtle changes in posture, led by a burgeoning consensus between New Delhi and Washington to push back against an increasingly aggressive China.
India has been a steadfast supporter of the Palestinian cause since its independence, viewing the crisis through moral support for Palestinian sovereignty and as an anti-colonial struggle. In 1975, India became the first non-Arab state to grant full diplomatic status to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Its then-chief, Yasser Arafat, regularly visited New Delhi. That relationship has become more complicated.
Last month, Modi condemned Hamas terrorism just weeks before the youth wing of Jamaat-e-Islami in the southern state of Kerala, which has close ties with the Gulf, hosted a virtual talk by former Hamas leader Khaled Mashal—showcasing the wide range of views that have long existed within India.
After decades of leaning toward the Arab world, in 1992, then-Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao established full diplomatic ties with Israel. This was done at a time of great change in the across the subcontinent, marked by the country’s economic liberalization following years of crisis. However, Israel was quietly building a strong foundation for this eventuality over the previous decades, supplying India with military aid in two crucial wars that it fought against Pakistan in 1971, before normalization, and then again in 1999, after full diplomatic ties were established.
This normalization forced India to perform a balancing act between three poles of power in the region: the Arab world, Israel, and Iran. All three remain important to Indian interests. The larger Arab world hosts more than 7 million Indian workers, who send back billions of dollars into the Indian economy as remittances; Israel remains a critical technology and defense partner; and Iran’s strategic location helps promote Indian interests in both Central Asia and a now much more volatile Afghanistan under a Taliban regime.
Fast-forward to 2023, and Indian foreign policy toward the region increasingly looks more pragmatic in design, balancing opportunities and challenges in an increasingly fractured global order, or what scholars Michael Kimmage and Hannah Notte have aptly termed “the age of great-power distraction.” As India’s economy rapidly grows, setting its sights on becoming the third largest in the world by 2030, so does its desire for influence. And the Middle East, from a foreign-policy perspective, is where a lot of this influence is being tested.
A recent spat between India and Qatar offers an interesting example for managing inflection points. In October, Doha announced a verdict of death sentences for eight former Indian Navy officials who were working for a private contractor involved with Qatar’s defense modernization. They were charged, according to reports, of spying on behalf of Israel. Since then, New Delhi has responded legally, appealing the Qatari court’s verdict while both countries continue to keep the judicial verdict confidential.
This is not the first time New Delhi has become embroiled in the regional fissures of the Middle East. In 2012 and 2021, Israeli diplomats were targeted in bombings in the capital, and in both cases, India hinted at Iranian involvement and having to delicately manage the situation behind closed doors—effectively telling Iran and Israel not to let their conflict spread to Indian soil.
Today, India is becoming more of an economic stakeholder in the Middle East, and by association, its security postures. This is not just the result of New Delhi’s reoriented foreign policy designs, but also depends on the personal involvement of Modi himself.
In 2017, Modi became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Israel. Considering his brand of politics, he also visited Ramallah in the West Bank in 2018 to maintain India’s diplomatic consistency. He hosted Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2019 at the height of the Jamal Khashoggi murder scandal, when the Saudis were not welcome in most capitals. And finally, Modi has visited the United Arab Emirates (UAE) five times since taking charge in 2015, and is often found referring to UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan as “brother.”
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Modi has talked to six regional leaders to put India’s position across, from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi. The Modi government has attempted to walk a fine line between Israel’s counterterrorism aims against Hamas and the Palestinian humanitarian crisis. Countering terrorism has been an important tool for Modi’s international diplomacy, coming from India’s efforts to isolate Pakistan internationally for its state-sponsored terrorism.
But Indian diplomacy in the Gulf also has another objective: strengthening India’s position on Kashmir, which defines the India-Pakistan conflict, and weakening Islamabad’s case within organizations such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). In February 2019, India’s then-Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj became the first Indian minister to be invited to speak at the organization since 1969, an event hailed as a major victory of Indian diplomacy; Pakistan was represented by an empty chair during Swaraj’s speech.
New Delhi’s other expanding relationship has been with the United States. In Asia, the institutionalization of mechanisms such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue has brought Washington and New Delhi closer than ever before as both look to work together to counter an increasingly erratic China. India’s buy-in with the United States has not been just about the Asian theater, but the Middle East as well, with measures such as the I2U2 and IMEEC taking shape.
However, India’s own domestic politics have often also presented a challenge. In 2022, comments made by a BJP spokesperson against the Prophet Mohammed invoked widespread condemnation by Islamic nations, including those building close partnerships with India. Previously, in private, Anti-Muslim narratives in Indian domestic politics have been an area of discussion between Arab states and New Delhi. During this period, India has also pushed back against reports by the U.S. State Department on what the department described as the country’s deteriorating religious freedoms, criticizing them as “biased.” Despite these differences, strategic cooperation has remained steadfast.
The establishment of I2U2 was a direct result of the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2021. Both Israel and the UAE have been quick to establish a strong economic bilateral relationship since then. The accords have also helped countries such as India to increase economic and political cooperation with greater ease.
It is important to note here that while the I2U2 is seen as an economic cooperation platform, all member states, have taken part in expansive military maneuvers in the region in some shape or form. And this includes India, where all three services of its armed forces, the Army, Navy, and the Air Force, have increased their outreach and participation.
Beyond the I2U2, the announcement of the IMEEC is New Delhi’s latest sign of alignment with U.S. geoeconomic objectives. Already positioned by some as a counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the idea is to connect the Middle East with Europe and India through a trade corridor that can rival the centrality of the Suez Canal.
But countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, central to IMEEC, are also members of the Belt and Road Initiative and have interest in developing close partnerships with Beijing. Propaganda outlets of the Chinese Communist Party have already labeled IMEEC as a mere “castle in the air” The European Union, the United States, and India alike have marketed the corridor as the next intracontinental highway for digital and economic connectivity. However, IMEEC is in nascent stages of development, and no blueprint is currently on offer on how it is going to function.
These new economic highways, minilaterals, and reoriented geopolitics are transforming Indian foreign policy from one that has always been risk-averse to one that is willing to be a little more adventurous. Today, India is much closer to the United States than it has been at any point in its independent history.
Between its increasingly West-centric defense and technology shopping list—a historical break away from having a predominantly Soviet-era military ecosystem that continues to rely on Russian know-how even today—and the India-U.S. 2+2 dialogues regularly setting new precedents, it is not that surprising to see India partner with the United States in theaters such as the Middle East, where the Abraham Accords have leveled the playing field in a limited fashion between Israel, the United States, and a part of the Arab world.
Simultaneously, a counterargument against deeper U.S. collaboration from India also comes from the time that India helped the United States with the Iran nuclear deal prior to its unceremonious end in 2018. New Delhi had let go of significant diplomatic access to align with U.S. requirements by ending nearly all oil imports from Iran, which has vast reserves, offers good deals, and is geographically conveniently located. This fed into the then-U.S. policy of strong sanctions against Tehran to push it to negotiate with the U.N. Security Council’s group of permanent members. Experiences such as the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the deal continue to fuel a strong undercurrent of distrust toward Washington in Indian political circles.
India’s own position of upholding its strategic autonomy and self-styled leadership of the global south may find it often at odds with its strategic role in the Middle East as a partner of the United States. One of India’s longest-serving successes in this region has been its embrace of nonalignment. The fact that the I2U2 was almost immediately identified by some observers as the Middle East Quad gave it a texture of being an extension of a core U.S. interest—that of containing China. While India has never officially used such terminology, these portrayals in the media were detrimental to the kind of neutrality that New Delhi still hopes to preserve.
Finally, India’s outlook toward the Middle East is looking beyond the traditional centrality of energy and migration. Today, from the beginning, it wants to be a partner in the region’s post-oil growth designs. Indian diplomats in the region, earlier almost exclusively bogged down with migrant matters, are now tasked to secure foreign direct investments from the large Arab sovereign wealth funds. Modi’s majority government, in power since 2015, has been palatable to Arab monarchs who do not have to navigate a labyrinth of India’s coalition politics looking for fast decision-making, which they are accustomed to.
Whether its own leaders like it or not, India has bought into aspects of future security architectures with its membership of the I2U2 and IMEEC in one of the world’s most flammable regions. This is a bold and commendable posture for an economy that will require significant global input for its challenging future economic goals. It is also palatable for the Middle East to have India as a major energy market to diversify its exports and offset Chinese influence over critical commodities such as oil and gas.
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