The “revival” of the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) has been curiously underreported, despite its geopolitical claims and grand rhetoric.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) visit to Washington on November 18-22 has once again placed the project on the diplomatic agenda. As Afaq Hussain (a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council) notes, “the MBS visit to the White House could revive IMEC,” framing it as part of a broader rapprochement between Riyadh and Washington and a renewed push for “regional connectivity”.

Announced with some fanfare at the G-20 Summit in New Delhi back in 2023, IMEC has been pitched as a transformative trade route linking Indian ports to Europe via the Gulf and Israel. It would connect western India to the UAE by sea, cross Saudi Arabia and Jordan via rail, and exit through the Israeli port of Haifa to Greece, Italy and France. It was hailed by Trump earlier this year as “one of the greatest trade routes in history.”

Afaq Hussain summarized the logic behind this: the Corridor has been marketed as an alternative to the Red Sea and Suez routes, which have become vulnerable chokepoints amid instability, and as a pillar of Saudi Arabia’s ambition to reinvent itself as a global logistics hub. Shortly after its announcement, however, the Gaza war froze political engagement between Israel and Arab states, leaving IMEC suspended in diplomatic limbo. Now it is supposedly back.

The West presents IMEC as a commercial infrastructure plan. But no project of this........

© Blitz