West Asia Crisis Offers India Chance to Regain Global Influence

The West Asia crisis is dragging itself out longer than expected. But it has given India an opportunity to claw itself back into the mainframe, as simultaneous conversations on stitching a post-deal scenario gather pace. This discussion centres on derisking the future from the Strait of Hormuz, both globally and within West Asia.

As a result, focus has returned to three areas key to India's interests: Indo-Pacific, India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), and Quad as both a platform that can work out ways to derisk as well as a security guarantor for alternate supply chains.

But, first, the small, yet politically important, short-term positive is on the Pakistan front. It seems the longer negotiations have extended, the focal point of interlocution has shifted to the more seasoned player, Qatar. Iranian speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and foreign minister Abbas Araghchi have been in Doha negotiating through Qatari interlocutors.

Yes, the working draft is still called 'Islamabad declaration', and Pakistan remains an important player, but increasingly as a cover for Qatar, which can't be seen diluting GCC solidarity, having been worst hit by Iran, both militarily and economically, along with the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait.

But unlike the UAE, which is working on viable options to bypass Hormuz, Qatar is still dependent on the strait for movement of goods, gas and oil. Which is why it has brought more urgency to the negotiations. At the Shangri-La dialogue over the weekend, its deputy PM Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said that while Doha is against permanent tolling of the strait, it's flexible on the idea of a 'temporary fee' to remove mines if that helps clear up the strait for commerce soon.

For India, the shift away from Pakistan to Qatar is a plus. A key part of the US-Iran deal is about the road ahead with biggest consumers like India, new rules of political engagement and safeguards against future disruptions.

The war has caused deep distrust between Iran and Gulf countries, particularly the UAE. Tehran has dented Dubai's economic identity, besides causing disruption in oil trade. The UAE has also taken strong exception to the fact that in this, Pakistan sided with Iran, gave security cover to Saudi Arabia (disbalancing the UAE), and sought to raise its battered profile, overlooking its own dependency on the emirates.

India has walked into this opening with greater trust and better economic prospects. It's important to understand the way UAE, with Saudi Arabia, is leading the effort to derisk Gulf commerce from Hormuz. The purpose is to identify ports outside the Hormuz Strait and find ways, through land or rail, to transport oil and gas to non-Hormuz ports. Riyadh is building a 1,200 km east-west pipeline that can pump 7 mn barrels a day from its eastern oil fields to its Red Sea port of Yanbu. Also, it's investing in a 8,000 km land bridge railway project.

The UAE is betting on Khor Fakkan and Fujairah ports that lie on the other side of strait, with an opening into the Persian Gulf. So, it's working with Saudi Arabia to connect Dammam and Sharjah through overland corridors with these two ports, resulting in a land bypass of Hormuz.

The other set of ports are with Oman - Sohar, Salalah and Duqm - which sit on the Arabian Sea, well outside the strait. The UAE is working on the Hafeet rail link to Sohar, while Sharjah has launched a logistics corridor plan to link itself up with these three Omani ports. The big picture in this hectic redrawing of logistics and supply chain lifelines of West Asia are two outlets on both sides - Europe to the north, and India to the east.

This puts IMEC back in play, propelled by infrastructure initiatives from within the Gulf, making it a financially more credible and sustainable effort, anchored by a sound security logic. India must make tweaks and work the IMEC deal out with Europe and West Asia, without knotting it up with the politics around resurrecting the Abraham Accords.

For India, the strategic imagination around IMEC has been that of a bridge between West and East Asia. The other beneficiaries will be the non-Gulf oil-gas producers - Russia, US, Venezuela and Canada, where distance has been an issue. Add to that derisking Hormuz, and an entirely different possibility surfaces: the Pacific route.

At a time when the Gulf is turning to ports on different coasts, why can't North and South America, as well as Russia, invest in the Pacific possibility? This typically puts Russia's east coast ports and the US' west coast ports in business, pushing more fuel and gas through Indo-Pacific.

So, if GCC countries are into regional derisking of the Hormuz, Indo-Pacific is the big global derisk option. And that's where Quad is also getting its fresh impetus from. What's on the table is a new architecture that will require a set of guarantors and rule-makers committed to uphold free navigation and open straits. India also has potential for immediate post-deal play with Iran - as an alternate buyer to China, if it's able to free up its oil from US sanctions.

So, while the economic hit on India is hard, by all accounts, enough work is underway across countries on how to throttle engines the day after the deal. And it is here that India finds advantage, even though it may still seem a little over the horizon right now.

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