India’s Route to Europe Runs Through Israel

Could a rail line, a port and a network of cables do what years of diplomacy have failed to accomplish—bind India, the Gulf, Israel, and Europe into a common strategic interest?

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, or IMEC, was conceived as an infrastructure project. It may ultimately prove to be something more consequential: a test of whether economic interdependence can redraw the strategic map of the Middle East.

When the corridor was announced at the G20 summit in New Delhi in September 2023, its ambition was straightforward. India would be connected to Europe through the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel, with Haifa serving as a crucial Mediterranean gateway. The proposed network would combine ports, railways, energy infrastructure, digital cables, and logistics facilities.

Then came Oct. 7.

The Hamas attacks and the wars that followed transformed the political environment in which IMEC was supposed to operate. Saudi-Israeli normalization stalled. Regional security deteriorated. Commercial shipping through the Red Sea came under sustained attack. Iran’s threats to maritime traffic highlighted the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz. A project designed to provide greater resilience to global commerce suddenly appeared hostage to precisely the geopolitical instability it was intended to mitigate.

Yet that is also why IMEC may have become more important, not less.

The central strategic proposition has survived the upheaval. Global commerce is increasingly vulnerable to a small number of maritime chokepoints, while governments are becoming less willing to treat supply chains as merely commercial matters. The pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Red Sea crisis, and tensions involving Iran have all reinforced the same lesson: efficiency matters, but resilience matters more.

For India and Europe, that creates a powerful incentive to develop alternatives.

Estimates suggest that a functioning IMEC could substantially reduce the time and cost of transporting goods between India and Europe. But the corridor’s significance cannot be measured only in freight charges. Infrastructure of this scale tends to generate economic activity around itself. Ports encourage logistics centers; railways attract industrial investment; data cables create digital hubs; reliable energy connections alter the calculations of manufacturers and investors.

That is where Israel’s role becomes strategically significant.

Israel would not simply be a stop along a trade route. Its value lies in the possibility of combining physical connectivity with technological capabilities in areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, energy, desalination, and advanced manufacturing. A corridor linking Indian industry, Gulf capital, Israeli technology, and European consumers could create an economic network that is considerably more valuable than the sum of its individual components.

For Israel, the prize would therefore be larger than additional activity at Haifa. The country could become a junction between two major economic regions rather than an isolated endpoint on the Mediterranean.

That distinction matters.

States that occupy indispensable positions in trade networks acquire influence because other governments and businesses acquire an interest in keeping those networks functioning. If Israel became an essential component of a system connecting India, the Gulf, and Europe, its strategic importance would increasingly be reflected in commercial infrastructure, investment decisions, and private-sector interests.

The implications for Saudi-Israeli relations would be equally significant.

A normalization agreement backed by ceremonies and diplomatic declarations can be reversed by political events. A network of railways, ports, energy projects, telecommunications links, customs arrangements, and private investments is harder to dismantle. Once businesses have invested capital and governments have built infrastructure around shared commercial interests, estrangement becomes more expensive.

In that sense, IMEC could provide the economic architecture that Middle Eastern diplomacy has often lacked.

The obstacle, however, is that the same regional conflict that makes the corridor attractive also makes it difficult to construct.

The Houthi attacks on shipping have demonstrated the vulnerability of the Bab el-Mandeb, the maritime gateway between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Iran’s confrontation with the United States and its threats involving the Strait of Hormuz have exposed another critical vulnerability. The Suez Canal remains indispensable but cannot, by itself, eliminate the risks associated with concentrating global trade on a limited number of maritime routes.

Alternative land routes are hardly straightforward. Iraq and Syria present serious security and political complications. Lebanon is an unlikely candidate for major regional infrastructure. Turkey offers geographical advantages but introduces its own strategic considerations.

Israel therefore occupies an unusual position. It is simultaneously constrained by regional politics and potentially empowered by geography.

That advantage, however, is not permanent.

Infrastructure has a tendency to create its own geography. Once investors commit billions of dollars to ports, railways, industrial zones, energy systems, and digital networks, those investments shape commercial behavior for decades. A route that excludes Israel today could become the established route tomorrow.

This creates a strategic problem for Jerusalem. The question is not simply whether IMEC can be built with Israel. It is whether the corridor can be designed in a way that makes Israel indispensable to it.

That distinction should inform Israeli policy.

For years, Israel’s strategic outlook has understandably centered on military threats. But the country’s long-term position in the region will also depend on the economic structures that emerge once the wars subside. A government that treats infrastructure, trade, technology, and regional economic integration as secondary concerns risks allowing other states to determine the architecture of the postwar Middle East.

The danger is not hypothetical. If political conditions eventually permit an alternative route through Syria or elsewhere, governments and corporations may conclude that excluding Israel is commercially preferable to waiting for the political environment to stabilize.

Once that happens, geography alone will not restore Israel’s leverage.

The broader stakes extend well beyond Israel. For India, IMEC offers another pathway into European markets at a time when New Delhi is seeking greater influence in global manufacturing and supply chains. For Europe, it offers an opportunity to diversify commercial and energy relationships while reducing exposure to geopolitical shocks. For the Gulf states, it could transform their role from energy exporters into central nodes in a broader Eurasian economy.

For the United States, the corridor offers a different kind of strategic opportunity. Rather than creating another American-led security institution, Washington could encourage an economic architecture in which regional states have concrete interests in stability, connectivity, and normalization. Economic interdependence would not eliminate political conflict, but it could change the incentives surrounding it.

That is ultimately what makes IMEC more than an infrastructure project.

Its success would depend on political agreements that are currently difficult to imagine: sustained regional security, Saudi-Israeli normalization, improved relations between Israel and Europe, and an end to the wars that have disrupted the region since 2023. Yet the corridor itself could help create incentives for precisely those developments.

There is a paradox at the heart of IMEC. The instability that has delayed it has also strengthened the strategic case for it.

Every disruption to shipping reinforces the value of alternative routes. Every supply-chain shock increases the premium on resilience. Every demonstration of the vulnerability of a maritime chokepoint makes overland connectivity more attractive.

The challenge is converting that logic into political action.

For Israel, that means recognizing that the contest over IMEC is not primarily about containers arriving at Haifa. It is about whether the country becomes a permanent economic bridge between Asia and Europe—or remains strategically dependent on a narrower set of alliances and trade relationships.

For India, the corridor represents an opportunity to connect its economic rise more directly to Europe while deepening partnerships with the Gulf and Israel.

For Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, it offers a way to turn geography into economic power.

And for Europe, it presents the possibility of a more diversified commercial system at a moment when the costs of strategic dependence have become increasingly apparent.

The ultimate question is therefore not whether IMEC can survive the Middle East’s current crises. It is whether the states behind it can use those crises to recognize why the project was necessary in the first place.

The corridor’s most important cargo may not be containers. It may be strategic interdependence.

If that interdependence can be constructed, India, the Gulf, Israel, and Europe would acquire something the Middle East has historically lacked: a shared economic infrastructure substantial enough to influence political choices.

If they fail, the region’s next economic map will be drawn without Israel—and perhaps without the corridor at all.