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Mar 22, 2023

As New Power Equations Emerge in West Asia, India Can Only Stand and Watch

diplomacy
While India sleep-walked into a US-inspired grouping, China’s counter move to draw away Saudi Arabia has altered the game.
Iran's top security official, Ali Shamkhani, China's top diplomat Wang Yi, and Saudi Arabian national security adviser Musaed bin Mohammed Al-Aiban. In the background is a map if the I2U2 countries. Photo: Twitter.

The China-Iran-Saudi Arabia trilateral leading to the Saudi-Iranian detente and resumed diplomatic relations between them has foxed the world. A former foreign secretary has suggested that India must now seriously re-engage Iran. But such advice misses the crucial context of the Abraham Accords shepherded by the US to embed Israel in Gulf politics. 

I have maintained from the beginning that the trilateral accord undermines the Abraham Accords. Saudis were critical to Israel becoming a partner in the new security order in the Gulf and West Asia. The objective was to isolate Iran and have an alliance of Gulf Cooperation Council nations plus India and Israel standing in for the US, which had pivoted to the Indo-Pacific – and since February 2022 – also to Ukraine.

India had joined with alacrity the I2U2, a grouping of India, Israel, UAE and US, calculating that the US will ensure that Saudis eventually joined it. Minus the Saudis the group was bereft of cohesion and heft. 

The UAE, under the new president Mohammed bin Zayed (or ‘MBZee,’ as Americans call him) has been punching above its weight in the region. Western analysts had taken to calling it the Gulf’s ‘Sparta’. But huge sovereign funds, state-of-the-art weapons and fighter jets do not make a nation a military power, just as Qatar also realised that distributing funds to sundry radical factions in nations afflicted by post-Arab Spring civil wars does not buy friends or stability. The I2U2 creation followed the Emirati assessment that they needed technology and manpower for transitioning to a post-oil economy. Theoretically their joining India and Israel, with US blessings, created a framework for such a transition. 

But reality can often negate geopolitical wishful thinking.

At the core of the new grouping was an expectation that Israel will graduate to being a more responsible nation at peace with Palestinians. The reemergence of Benjamin Netanyahu at the head of a far-right coalition has upended those calculations. Saudi Arabian backtracking leaves UAE’s flanks exposed as Bahrain and Morocco, the other two signatories to the Abraham Accords, can hardly balance the Arab street’s wrath. 

Also read: Always Advocated Diplomacy for Resolving Differences: India’s Cautious Response to Iran-Saudi Pact

India has paid little attention to the evolving realignment in the Gulf under Chinese tutelage. After a week’s silence, the spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs has simply welcomed the development. Turning necessity into a virtue, he added that India has always desired dialogue amongst rival powers in the Gulf.

The government has not shown any discomfort with Netanyahu’s new far-right coalition. Thus the developments of the last few days would hardly have compelled serious rethink in the South Block. 

But the churn in the Gulf has begun. First, on March 12, the Saudis quietly forced the Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen to cancel a trip to Saudi Arabia for a United Nations conference. They achieved this by refusing to discuss the security protocol for the dignitary, a first such visit to Saudi Arabia by an Israeli minister. This caught PM Netanyahu off guard as hours earlier, on a visit to Italy, he had told the media that he expected relations with Saudi Arabia to normalise soon.

Such a breakthrough is a major objective he had set for Israeli diplomacy. Israel lobbied with both the United Nations and the US to force the Saudis to relent, but to no avail. The Saudi foreign minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, on a visit to Davos, said that no normalisation with Israel was possible unless they accepted Palestinian statehood. This appeared to be a hardening of their position, aligning it more with the Iranian stance. 

The latest news is that the Iranian national security adviser Ali Shamkhani was in the UAE to meet his counterpart. Although lines of communication have been open between Iran and the UAE, the present level of engagement means Iran senses fear of isolation in Abu Dhabi. Where does that leave India after unnecessarily offending Iran during the Raisina Dialogue when a short video, about widespread protests over women’s clothing, was made part of the promotional material? The Iranian foreign minister called off his India visit in protest.

Clearly there is muddled thinking in the South Block on dealing with the fragmented Islamic world. India has always managed to bridge those divides without getting drawn into big power rivalry. That is a trap that India has now fallen into by joining the I2U2 and voicing its merits publicly. 

While India sleep-walked into a US-inspired grouping, China’s counter move to draw away Saudi Arabia has altered the game.

Also read: Behind China’s Efforts to Broker the Iran-Saudi Arabia Peace Agreement

Having got endorsement for his third term from the Chinese Communist Party, President Xi Jinping has gone a step further. He has rewritten Deng Xiaoping’s 24-character axiom for China. Deng advised that China must “never claim leadership” and “hide our capacities and bide our time”. Xi ordains that China “be calm, keep determined; seek progress and stability; be proactive and achieve things; unite (under the banner of the party) and date to fight”.

The Chinese mediation to get Iran and Saudi Arabia to bury their differences is in keeping with Xi’s desire for a proactive approach. 

The question that arises is whether the UAE is simply covering its flanks or starting a process to get an arms length away from Israel. It is unimaginable in the current context where Iran is facing a military threat from Israel that genuine detente is possible in the Gulf.

The next piece which can tilt the balance further towards Iran-Saudi Arabia-China is Iraq. Since the deposing of Saddam Hussein as the US lost control over Iraqi security and politics, Iran stepped up to fill the vacuum. This is resented by many political factions in Iraq. But Iraq is where Saudis and Iranians, the predominant Sunni and Shia powers respectively, contest for influence, if not domination.

Thus many dominos may tumble going forward as nations adjust to new power equations. India at the moment can only stand and watch. It dealt itself out of the game by picking up cards dealt by an outside power. To emphasize the alien character of the US security proposals the Iranian government spokesman called their own trilateral as “made in Asia”. 

K.C. Singh is a former Indian ambassador to the UAE and Iran and retired as Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs.

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