With Hormuz under strain, a trade corridor built for resilience faces a real-world test |
With Hormuz under strain, a trade corridor built for resilience faces a real-world test
The India–Middle East–Europe Corridor, known as IMEC, is no longer just a concept on paper. It is being tested in real time.
As policymakers place increasing pressure on securing critical routes such as the Strait of Hormuz, IMEC is emerging as a resilience framework. It sits at the intersection of infrastructure, geopolitics, and global markets.
Often described as an economic corridor, IMEC is better understood as a multimodal system. It links ports, rail, energy, and digital infrastructure across India, the Gulf, and Europe. It moves goods, data, and energy across regions that do not always align politically. It connects India to Europe through the Gulf and onward to the Eastern Mediterranean.
This did not emerge in isolation.
Within the U.S. government, there was a sense that something new was emerging. The Abraham Accords demonstrated that long-frozen regional relationships could shift, opening channels for cooperation. I2U2 built on that momentum by aligning partners across key sectors. IMEC was conceived within this trajectory, extending that cooperation into physical and digital infrastructure linking regions. At the time, there was real optimism that these frameworks could reshape connectivity, investment, and regional integration.
The momentum of IMEC stalled with the war in Gaza shortly after it was announced at the G20 meetings in India in 2023, underscoring the challenges of implementing transnational projects amid conflict and uncertainty.
By mid-2025, regional discussions resumed with a focus on feasibility. Now, escalating tensions over Iran are stress-testing whether such a system can function under pressure.
In his recent book, West Asia, Mohammed Soliman, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute argues that what has long been described as the “Middle East” is better understood as “West Asia,” a renaming that reflects a broader system shaped by trade, energy, and technology flows. He reframes the region not as a collection of conflicts, but as a connected........