India, a New Key Player in the Middle East

Much has been written in recent years about China's rise to power in the Middle East. Energy imports, investments in port infrastructure (in Haifa, Abu Dhabi, Duqm), diplomatic initiatives (between Saudi Arabia and Iran, more recently between the various Palestinian factions): China has made itself unavoidable, turning the Middle East into a new theater of rivalry between Beijing and Washington. This Sino-American competition almost overshadows the fact that another Asian power is emerging as an essential new player in the Middle East: India.

Already a privileged partner of French policy in the Indo-Pacific, Delhi can also become one on a range of common interests in the Middle East. To this aim, we need to grasp the specificities of this new Indian policy in the region.

Indian priorities in the Middle East

India's interests in the Middle East focus first and foremost on the economic front, starting with its energy needs. The country relies on imports for 87.9% of its oil consumption. By 2023, Iraq (20%) and Saudi Arabia (15%) will be the main sources of India's 4.6 million barrels per day, behind Russia (at 40%, the Russian share has risen sharply since the war in Ukraine, due to Moscow's discount on its barrels).

India's Middle East policy is further influenced by the presence of about 8.5 million Indian workers in the region, particularly in the Gulf. In the UAE, no fewer than 3 million such workers are working, three times the population of the country. Locally, the Indian diaspora likes to say that Dubai is India's fifth-largest city. These expatriates’ income accounts for almost 28.6% of remittances to the Indian economy, i.e. some 23.4 billion euros from the UAE by 2022. This population therefore both constitutes a significant source of growth and an electoral issue: each of Narendra Modi's visits to the Arabian Peninsula includes a meeting with the Indian community, which is now resembling a mega-concert. In April 2024, the Indian Prime Minister held his rally in front of 60,000 people at the Abu Dhabi stadium in the UAE.

While energy and Indian manpower have long been the two pillars of India's policy with the Gulf monarchies, the latest has accompanied this with increased investment in Indian infrastructure since the late 2010s. This is particularly true of the UAE, whose major industrial groups and sovereign wealth funds are keen to support Narendra Modi's policy of large-scale construction projects. To this end, Abu Dhabi has pledged to invest nearly $75 billion in the sector.

Maritime security is also part of Indias’ strategy as part of its naval presence strengthening in the Indian Ocean. Delhi intends to maintain ties with Gulf navies, to guard against crises in the region, whether in the Red Sea or the Strait of Hormuz. Exchanges with Saudi and UAE navies have increased, and India's contribution to the region is appreciated by the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. Last but not least, a significant component of India's regional policy involves arms imports, particularly from Israel, which has become Delhi's fourth-largest partner in this area (behind Russia, France and the USA).

Privileged relations with the Gulf monarchies and Israel

This overview of Indian interests in the Middle East reveals a clear-cut map of Delhi's preferred partnerships: the Gulf monarchies and Israel. The rapprochement between the Hebrew state and India began at the end of the Cold War. The overhaul of India's foreign policy following the collapse of its Soviet partner, and the establishment of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the 1990s created the conditions for cooperation that included arms sales, but also more recently,investments in high technology and port infrastructure.

The arrival in power of Narendra Modi in 2014 took the bilateral relationship to an unprecedented level, the latter not hesitating to publicly showcase his friendship with Benjamin Netanyahu (notably with photos of the two leaders, all smiles, with their feet in the water on an Israeli beach). The war in Gaza has done little to weaken this Indo-Israeli relationship: on the contrary, the Indian government has publicly voiced its support for the Israeli operation on several occasions, and Indian social networks have abundantly passed on the language of Netanyahu’s government. Some Palestinian NGOs even claim that India has supplied certain components of the missiles used by Israel in Gaza.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia are India's other two key partners in the region. There too, bilateral relations are highly personalized at the highest level. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman does not hesitate to refer to Modi as his "elder brother". Similarly, the rapprochement between Abu Dhabi and Delhi is largely linked to the relationship between the Indian Prime Minister and the Emirati President, Mohammed bin Zayed.

In the Arabian Peninsula, this is also reflected in a noticeable distancing between the Emiratis, the Saudis and Pakistan, despite the Gulf monarchies' long-standing partnership. In 2015, at a time when the Saudis and Emiratis were drawing closer to Modi's India, Islamabad refused to join the coalition assembled by Mohammed bin Salman to wage war against the Houthis in Yemen. This decision was seen as an affront by the Gulf monarchies and convinced them to turn to India. From then on, this realignment between the Gulf and South Asia saw Riyadh and Abu Dhabi lend their diplomatic support to Delhi when Modi launched a retaliatory operation against Pakistan after the Uri attacks in 2016. This is also reflected in the relative indifference of Arab leaders to the treatment of India's Muslim minority, and their support for Modi's reform of the status of Kashmir in 2019.

These privileged ties between India, Israel, the UAE and Saudi Arabia could lead one to believe that Delhi is modeling its partnerships in the Middle East on a model fairly close to that of Washington. However, we should not forget another bilateral relationship that remains important: the one between India and Iran.

Despite India's desire for rapprochement with Israel on the one hand, and with the Arab monarchies on the other, the Modi government has not put an end to its ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Bilateral trade with Teheran focuses mainly on the energy sector and Indian investment in the Iranian port of Chabahar. But Indo-Iranian relations also include military exchanges. As luck would have it, on the day Teheran launched nearly 180 ballistic missiles against Israel, three Indian military vessels arrived at the Iranian base of Bandar Abbas for joint exercises... Delhi has no intention of halting its relations with Iran, despite the strengthening of its ties with Israel and the Gulf states. On the diplomatic front, whether on the Iranian nuclear issue or the tensions between Iran and its Arab neighbors, India's ambivalence can be understood as the legacy of its tradition of non-alignment - or, more accurately, "multi-alignment", as Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar regularly calls it in his speeches and writings. So far, this policy has not weakened Delhi's position vis-à-vis either side. What's more, over the long term, the volume of trade between India and Iran tends to diminish, and India's strategic priorities inevitably distance the country from Tehran. This is all the more obvious when one looks at the Modi government's multilateral activity in the region.

India in the Middle East regional concert

The strengthening of India's partnerships in the Middle East has also been accompanied by an unprecedented multilateral dynamic. This has seen Delhi participate in several new initiatives in the Middle East. The most emblematic of these "minilaterals" is I2U2, an acronym for the dialogue between India, Israel, the UAE and the USA. This four-way consultation framework was launched in the autumn of 2021, in line with two concomitant diplomatic strategies On the one hand, I2U2 is the extension of the Abraham Accords, which formalized the normalization of relations between Israel and the UAE in 2020. Building on the parallel strengthening of ties between Tel Aviv, Abu Dhabi and Delhi, the establishment of this forum is a logical follow-up, as seen from Washington. On the other hand, the Biden administration sees I2U2 as an extension of its Indo-Pacific policy. As soon as this "quadrilateral" was announced, American and Indian observers were quick to refer to it as the "QUAD" of the Middle East, in reference to the US-Japan-India-Australia dialogue reactivated in 2017. The analogy suggests that I2U2, like the Asian QUAD, is strengthening American partnerships in the area to better contain Chinese expansion. However, this reading of I2U2 is not to the liking of the UAE, which maintains important economic ties with Beijing and presents I2U2 as a tool primarily dedicated to trade. Given the sharp deterioration in relations between India and China, the Modi government is quite comfortable with this analogy.

IMEC intends to mobilize governments and the private sector to invest in port and rail infrastructure linking the Indian subcontinent to the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East. Israel is also expected to contribute to this vast project via the port of Haifa. Like I2U2, IMEC responds to the American desire both to strengthen exchanges between the Hebrew state and Washington's partners in Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Delhi, and to provide an alternative to Beijing's policy in the area. In many respects, IMEC is first and foremost a White House counter-narrative to Xi Jinping's New Silk Roads. Here again, the inclusion of India in the project demonstrates Washington's desire to make it a key partner in its Middle East policy.

But once again, this minilateral dynamic does not mean that Delhi is mechanically aligned with Washington's positions in the Middle East. Here, as elsewhere, India continues to cultivate its difference. The implementation of a trilateral agreement between India, the UAE and France, announced in September 2022, is a good illustration. Contrary to the initiatives pushed by Washington, the trilateral between Delhi, Abu Dhabi and Paris is not conceived as an initiative against China's presence. For Delhi, it represents an additional diplomatic tool in the service of its partnerships in the region. It demonstrates the convergences between the three countries in terms of diplomatic exchanges, defense cooperation and economic projects. For the time being, this trilateral arrangement is still in the making, but it testifies to India's determination, once again, not to subordinate its Middle East diplomacy to that of Washington.

Latest indicator of this Indian posture: Delhi is not participating in the US Prosperity Guardian operation launched in December 2023 to protect commercial vessels in the Red Sea from Houthi attacks. This is not a question of Indian disinterest in the crisis, which has a direct impact on the Indian economy: the blockage of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait affects 50% of its imports and 60% of its exports, a volume of around $113 billion. In fact, the Modi government has launched its own national operation, deploying five destroyers in the area and coordinating with the US Navy and European fleets. Nevertheless, as with NATO and EU counter-piracy operations in the Horn of Africa, Indian officials are keeping their distance from Prosperity Guardian. The Indian navy is keen to preserve its operational autonomy, and the government considers it preferable not to join a coalition seen by many countries in the area as an extension of American support for the Israeli war. The principle of non-alignment, or more accurately multi-alignment, thus remains a perennial feature of India's regional policy.

Avenues for Franco-Indian dialogue on the Middle East

The development of India's increasingly ambitious Middle East policy over the last ten years is set to continue. Ultimately, it should reshape diplomatic dynamics in the region, just as relations with the region can no longer be thought of without taking China's presence into account.

Given the close ties between France and India, the Middle East deserves to be on the agenda of the bilateral dialogue. The trilateral agreement between Paris, Delhi and Abu Dhabi already reflects this logic. Like France, India is cultivating a Middle East policy that is close to the United States, without mechanically aligning itself with Washington's positions. Strengthening partnerships with India in the region would be all the more beneficial given that our regional partners, whether it is the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel or Egypt, all intend to distance themselves from Sino-American competition.

In the strategic sphere, both countries have an interest in sharing their experiences and strengthening their coordination in the field of maritime security, in the light of the confrontations with the Houthis in the Red Sea. Exchanges could also take place in the field of counter-terrorism, with a particular focus on the evolving threat posed by groups such as the Islamic State, which is resurfacing in the Arabian Peninsula and Central Asia. Finally, in the economic area, Paris and Delhi could strengthen their coordination, particularly in terms of connectivity: France has expressed its wish to participate actively in IMEC, and to this end, the Élysée has appointed a special envoy, Gérard Mestrallet, in February 2023. At the same time, India and the UAE announced the launch of a first IMEC project. Paris has everything to gain by putting the Middle East on the agenda of the Franco-Indian dialogue.

Copyright image : Ludovic MARIN / POOL / AFP
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Delhi on September 9, 2023.