BACKGROUND PAPER NO. 9
BY JEFF M. SMITH
Jeff M. Smith is a Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation in Washington DC
Over the past decade, India has quietly transformed its engagement with the Middle East, witnessing diplomatic breakthroughs with Israel and several Gulf Arab states. At the same time, the Abraham Accords of late 2020—in which Israel normalized relations with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, and later Morocco, and Sudan—opened a new chapter of diplomacy between Israel and the Arab Gulf states. These developments have expanded opportunities for multilateral engagement involving India, Israel, the UAE, and the United States, including the first meeting of a new “West Asian Quad” – sometimes referred to as I2U2 – among the four countries’ foreign ministers on October 18, 2021.
For India, this marks a break from past precedent. As a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, India was for most of the late 20th century a consistent, if somewhat formulaic, advocate of the Palestinian cause while keeping Israel at diplomatic arms-length. With a large Indian diaspora in the Gulf, New Delhi sought cordial working relations with the Gulf Arab states but remained suspicious of their close ties with rival Pakistan and links to Islamist extremism. Further complicating matters was India’s working relationship with Iran, a rival of Israel and the Gulf Arabs. While not a particularly warm embrace, India was a major purchaser of Iranian oil and collaborated with Tehran in support of the anti-Taliban northern alliance in Afghanistan.
This tilt toward Iran and the Palestinians at the expense of Israel and the Gulf Arabs also mirrored India’s Cold War relations with the superpowers. The latter were close allies of the United States. India, by contrast, had by the early 1970s found itself more aligned with the Soviet camp, in part due to the United States’ embrace of Pakistan. Just as the collapse of the Soviet Union rebalanced India’s engagement with Russia and the United States, India began reorienting away from Palestinian advocacy and toward greater engagement with Israel, and away from a pronounced tilt toward Iran and toward greater engagement with the Gulf Arab monarchies. At the same time, relations between Pakistan and the Gulf Arabs have soured, including over Pakistan’s refusal to join the Saudi-led campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen.
India’s realignments – and the new geopolitical landscape of the Middle East – support U.S. foreign policy goals in the region. They enhance counterterrorism cooperation among likeminded partners and contribute to regional peace and stability at a time the U.S. government is seeking to rebalance attention and resources away from the Middle East and toward its priority theater, the Indo-Pacific. For U.S. policymakers, understanding the transformative changes that have taken place in India’s relations with Israel and the Gulf Arab states will be crucial for developing deeper cooperation in a range of economic, security, and technical areas in the years ahead.
India and Israel Draw Closer
In July 2017, Narendra Modi made history by becoming the first sitting Indian prime minister to visit Israel. This “coming out” party was a long time in the making, coming on the heels of decades of quiet defense cooperation. India voted against UN membership for Israel in 1949 and, although it recognized Israel in 1950, refused to exchange ambassadors or normalize diplomatic relations. While Israel supplied India with munitions during the 1965 India-Pakistan war, the two remained diplomatically estranged for most of the Cold War due to a variety of factors, including, Indian domestic politics, support for the Palestinian cause, and Israel’s proximity to the United States.
Encouraged in part by pro-Israel lawmakers and interest groups in the United States, the Indian government pursued some efforts to mend ties with Israel in the mid-1980s. In 1985, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi met Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in New York during the United Nations General Assembly and that year India voted to abstain from an Arab-sponsored resolution designed to expel Israel from the UN.
In January 1992, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, India normalized diplomatic relations with Israel and exchanged ambassadors. Scholar Nicolas Blarel traces the major thaw in India-Israel relations and India’s “consensual pro-Israel tilt” to the India-Pakistan conflict at Kargil in 1999. That short war, he argues, “served a critical juncture in the bilateral relationship as India decisively turned towards Israel’s defense industry after finding itself short of crucial surveillance and military equipment to cope with Pakistani infiltrations.”
In 2003, India-Israel ties took a major step forward when Ariel Sharon became the first Israeli prime minister to visit India. Under the United Progressive Alliance government that ruled India from 2004-2014, there were few high-profile visits or breakthroughs but India assumed a relatively neutral position during the 2012 Israel-Gaza crisis. Behind the scenes, there was “an intensification of direct exchanges between the defense establishments.”
The pace of engagement quickened after Modi was elected prime minister in May 2014. As Chief Minister of Gujarat, he had visited Tel Aviv in 2006, promising to return one day as prime minister. Modi’s first external affairs minister, Sushma Swaraj, had served as chairwoman of the Indo-Israel parliamentary friendship group from 2006-2009. In September 2014, Modi met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. One month later, India announced it was acquiring over 250 Barak-I missiles from Israel for the Indian Navy and in November Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh visited Israel.
In 2015, Moshe Ya’alon became the first Israeli Defense Minister to visit India and Pranab Mukherjee became the first Indian president to visit Israel. The following year, India hosted Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Israel hosted Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. Modi then made a historic visit to Israel in July 2017 that cemented the paradigm shift in New Delhi. In January 2018, Netanyahu reciprocated with a visit to New Delhi. There the two sides signed an agreement on cyber security and later inked a pact to promote space cooperation.
During this period, India-Israel defense ties thrived. Between 2011-2020, India made roughly $2.7 billion in purchases of Israeli defense equipment, including UAVs, surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles, guided bombs, ammunition, anti-tank guided missiles, sensors, targeting pods, and fire control radar. Over that period Israel became the fourth-largest supplier of military hardware to India, after Russia, the US, and France. From 2016-2020, India was the top importer of Israeli defense equipment, accounting for 43% of sales. In 2018 the Modi government also removed from a blacklist two Israeli defense companies that had been placed in restricted procurement categories in 2006 following allegations of corruption. Most recently, in January 2022, India’s Commerce Ministry confirmed Israel and India had begun talks on a Free Trade Agreement as the two sides celebrated 30 years of diplomatic relations.
India’s Broadening Relations with the UAE and Gulf
The UAE arguably constitutes India’s oldest and strongest partnership in the Gulf, one invigorated by Modi’s 2015 visit to the UAE, the first by an Indian prime minister in 34 years. Gradually, the relationship has evolved from a partnership narrowly defined by energy ties and the large Indian diaspora, to one characterized by cooperation across the realms of security, education, and investment. In a 2019 Brookings Institution survey of India’s strategic community, Israel and UAE ranked as India’s two most trusted partners in West Asia.
Once a point of friction, fighting terrorism has become a common cause, as the UAE and its neighbors increasingly came to see radical Islamist extremism as a threat. The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi responded to Modi’s initial outreach with a state visit to India in February 2016 and again as Chief Guest for India’s Republic Day celebrations in January 2017. Modi returned to the UAE in February 2018 and August 2019. A scheduled visit to the UAE by Modi in January 2022 was postponed by COVID-19.
In 2020, the Indian Air Force participated in the Desert Flag air force exercises in the UAE and Indian Army chief General MM Naravane visited the UAE. The following August, the Indian Air Force Chief visited the UAE and India’s navy conducted drills with the UAE navy off the coast of Abu Dhabi. The large Indian diaspora in the Gulf has also increased the importance of the region for India. India’s Ministry of External Affairs estimates that there are roughly 3.5 million Indians living the UAE and 2.5 million living in Saudi Arabia. There are an additional 1 million in Kuwait, roughly 750,000 in both Oman and Qatar, and 300,000 in Bahrain.
New Openings and Initiatives
Just as India was breaking new ground with those two countries, Israel and the UAE witnessed their own historic diplomatic breakthrough via the Abraham Accords of 2020. The product of behind-the-scenes negotiating by senior Trump administration officials, a UAE-Israel diplomatic normalization agreement was reached in August 2020. It marked the third Arab state to normalize ties with Israel following Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. The UAE agreement was followed by an Israel-Bahrain normalization agreement in September. In October, Sudan followed suit. In December, Morocco agreed to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel while the US agreed to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory of the Western Sahara.
The pacts generally allowed for the exchange of ambassadors and embassies, an increase in diplomatic interactions, the expansion of trade and people-to-people ties, and direct flights. Bilateral trade agreements followed, with India and Israel reaching a trade agreement in February 2022. An even bigger free trade agreement between Israel and the UAE was inked in April 2022.
The Biden administration has argued it would like to continue the “normalization” process between Israel and additional regional capitals. “We will encourage more countries to follow the lead of the Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco. We want to widen the circle of diplomacy,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained in September 2021.
One year after the Abraham Accords were signed, the foreign ministers of India, Israel, the UAE, and US held a quadrilateral dialogue. What began as a trilateral discussion between Israel, the UAE, and the US evolved into what some have dubbed the “West Asian Quad” when Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar was invited to join the virtual talks while on a diplomatic visit to the UAE. Blinken subsequently referred to it as I2U2, a reference to India, Israel, the UAE, and the United States.
The U.S. State Department said the four participants discussed “expanding economic and political cooperation in the Middle East and Asia, including through trade, combating climate change, energy cooperation, and increasing maritime security.” Other items on the agenda included people-to-people ties in science and technology, and Covid-19 relief efforts, and vaccine outreach. Israel’s foreign minister added that this new synergy “will help us work together on infrastructure, digital infrastructure, transport, ports, trains, maritime security, clean energy...four countries represented have a unique set of capabilities, knowledge, and experience."
This new minilateral dialogue among four disparate partners, unthinkable just a few years ago, is expected to endure. “The newly formed West Asian Quad between the UAE, India, Israel and the US is an offspring of the Abraham Accord,” explained the UAE Ambassador to India in February 2022.
The Saudi Question
The transformation of India’s ties with Saudi Arabia in recent years has arguably been no less revolutionary than the breakthrough in Indo-Israeli ties. The early seeds of an opening were planted in 2006, when Saudi King Abdullah visited India and signed the Delhi Declaration. In it, the two sides agreed “terrorism is a scourge for all mankind.” Ties were upgraded to a “strategic partnership” in 2010 when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Saudi Arabia. Two years later, Saudi Arabia apprehended and turned over to India a key terrorist involved in coordinating the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks from Pakistan, marking a new chapter in India-Saudi counterterrorism cooperation.
India-Saudi ties have reached new heights since the political ascent of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). Now the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, MBS made a high-profile visit to India in February 2019 and Modi reciprocated with a visit to Saudi Arabia that October. Between meetings, the Saudi ambassador to India announced Riyadh was “looking at making investments in India potentially worth $100 billion in the areas of energy, refining, petrochemicals, infrastructure, agriculture, minerals and mining."
Saudi Arabia, he noted, was a key pillar of India's energy security, supplying 17% or more of India’s crude oil needs and 32% of its liquefied petroleum gas requirements. A consortium of Indian state owned energy firms is reportedly collaborating with Saudi Aramco and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co to build an over $40 billion coastal refinery and petrochemical project in Maharashtra due to be commissioned in 2025.
In 2019 Saudi Arabia also raised India’s quota for the Haj (the number of Indian Muslims permitted to make a religious pilgrimage to Mecca) to 200,000 and India introduced e-visas for Saudi citizens. Riyadh also released 850 Indian citizens detained in Saudi prisons and agreed to establish a Strategic Partnership Council with India to enhance cooperation.
In 2020, Gen. Naravane became the first Indian service chief to visit Saudi Arabia. The following year, India and Saudi Arabia conducted their first-ever naval exercise, “Al-Mohed Al-Hind.” In February 2022, the Royal Saudi Land Forces commander made his first-ever trip to India. There, the two sides agreed to expand defense ties “through military exchanges and training courses, exploring defense industrial collaboration and procurements.”
The transformation of India-Saudi ties in recent years has paralleled the relative souring of Pakistan-Saudi ties. Saudi Arabia has long been viewed as a key patron of Pakistan but in recent years the two countries have found themselves increasingly at odds. The rift arguably began in April 2015, when Pakistan’s parliament voted down a request from Riyadh to join a Saudi-led military coalition engaged in a military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. That year, Saudi Arabia began deporting Pakistanis from the Kingdom in large numbers. Pakistan’s foreign minister later reported that between 2015 and 2019, Saudi Arabia deported 286,000 Pakistanis from the Kingdom for various reasons.
The relationship was further strained in 2019, when Saudi Arabia and the UAE largely refused Pakistani requests to condemn India for revoking the autonomous status of Kashmir. Instead, shortly after the Kashmir announcement the UAE granted Prime Minister Modi its highest civilian award. Saudi energy firm Aramco then announced it was eyeing a $75 billion investment in Indian energy firm Reliance. In February 2020, Saudi Arabia rejected a Pakistani request to convene a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to criticize India over Kashmir. Pakistan’s foreign minister then threatened to convene a separate meeting of Islamic countries “ready to stand with us on the issue of Kashmir.” Saudi Arabia responded by calling on Pakistan to repay $1 billion of a $3 billion loan and reportedly ended an oil supply contract with Islamabad.
Looking Ahead
The winds of change sweeping the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent are producing new relationships, strategic outlooks, and multilateral groupings. Much of the change is being driven by an Indian government less wedded to Non-Aligned advocacy for the Palestinian cause and more open to ties with Israel; less invested in an exclusive relationship with Iran and more open to engagement the Gulf Arabs; and more open to cooperating with the United States across the region. India has not abandoned its relationships with Iran, Russia, or the Palestinians but it is no longer foreclosing engagement with others as a result.
The diplomatic realignments underway are also motivated by a changing economic landscape. In aggregate, the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council would represent India’s largest trading partner. India-Saudi bilateral trade is approaching $30 billion while Pakistan-Saudi bilateral trade has barely eclipsed $3 billion. Indian energy firms have become increasingly active in the UAE, with ONGC Videsh acquiring a 10% stake in a UAE offshore oilfield for $600 million in 2018. Two other Indian energy companies were awarded offshore exploration rights in 2019. Hundreds of Indian business and dozens of Indian banks now operate out of Dubai.
While these developments evolved organically, they complement U.S. foreign policy objectives in the region, strengthening bonds among likeminded partners. They present new opportunities for mini-lateral coalitions, like the West Asian Quad, and new arenas to operationalize cooperation. The joint statement issued by the West Asian Quad prioritized cooperation on water, agriculture, and education. India, Israel, and the U.S. are now discussing ways to collaborate in the development of 5G technologies. India is evaluating a U.S. offer for trilateral venture with Israel to develop futuristic combat vehicles. And, some in Israel are calling for enhanced India-Israel-UAE cooperation in space.
It is important not to overstate the implications of these realignments. There are still notable differences among the parties on thorny issues like Iran, Russia, and China. A West Asian Quad would do little to help manage the Ukraine crisis or combat China’s intimidation of its neighbors. Nevertheless, India, Israel, and the United States have long shared common interests in the fight against terrorism and Islamist extremism. More recent changes in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the thickening bonds among all parties, create new opportunities for cooperation and aid U.S. counterterrorism goals in the region. Finally, as the United States continues the painstaking process of pivoting assets and attention away from the Middle East and toward its priority theater, the Indo-Pacific, growing peace and cooperation among all four parties—India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—contributes to stability while India’s growing influence in the region helps to counterbalance China’s expanding footprint there.