During the recent G20 summit in New Delhi, a memorandum was inked between the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and the European Union to establish a transportation and economic corridor from South Asia to Europe known as the India-Middle East Corridor or IMEC.

The White House announced that the corridor would have two branches: one connecting India to the Persian Gulf, and another linking the Persian Gulf to Europe. The corridor’s highlight is to be a railway network that could offer an alternative to existing sea and road routes, promoting smoother transit of goods and services among the involved nations.

The project promises cost and time efficiencies, job creation, and increased transit route capacities. It is to include cable and pipeline infrastructure as well as green hydrogen transfers from South Asia to Europe and vice versa. Some aspects of the project are already in progress. For instance, a recently unveiled Israeli fiber-optic cable project aims to link India to Europe and to run across Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The U.S. organizers of the project portray IMEC as a competitor to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).  The initiative follows up on G7 leaders’ pledge to mobilize $600 billion to counter BRI. It was not a coincidence that IMEC was announced before the third BRI conference scheduled in China later this year.

However, Arab countries have a different perspective. For Saudi Arabia and the UAE, IMEC is less an anti-China move than another strategy to achieve economic and infrastructure advancement.  Saudi Arabia sees the project as furthering its goal of economic diversification by 2030 and beyond. The UAE views IMEC as a chance to elevate its global standing and attract more investment.

The Arab countries of the Persian Gulf are positioning themselves for an emerging multipolar world. Their recent push to become members of BRICS highlights this vision of a new world order where middle powers have far more room for maneuver and are constantly courted by great powers. Thus, Saudi Arabia and the UAE reject Western efforts to portray IMEC as a counter to BRI.  What they want is diversification of foreign policy ties. For them neither excessive reliance on the U.S. nor China makes sense.

India shares similar sentiments. While countering China’s initiatives in its neighborhood is indeed a critical motivator, New Delhi is more driven by increasing reliance on Persian Gulf oil and substantial bilateral trade growth. Moreover, embracing IMEC does not preclude participation in other mega-projects. Persian Gulf nations and India are actively cooperating with Russia on the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC). The booming trade between these nations and Russia despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a good indicator that Persian Gulf countries are not going to ditch their nascent multi-vectorial foreign policies but instead further diversify them.

Another impetus behind the project is India’s search for better routes to the EU market. India-EU trade has surged, and discussions of free trade agreements are ongoing. The EU’s involvement in the Persian Gulf region has also been growing, adding a further motivation for an additional corridor.

There is also an anti-Iran factor. The Islamic Republic has restored ties with Saudi Arabia and other Arab neighbors in an effort to dilute the potential of growing Israeli-Arab cooperation, particularly efforts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. IMEC would link Saudi Arabia to Israel in a trade route and could strengthen the momentum behind U.S.-led diplomacy to achieve rapprochement between the two countries.

Yet, hurdles remain, such as gauging the actual demand for this corridor and navigating regulatory complexities. Among the challenges are underdeveloped railways in Greece and Jordan, not to mention the difficulty of constructing rail lines across Saudi Arabia’s vast deserts. 

Moreover, IMEC would be a classic multimodal route, consisting of both land and sea lines. Multimodal corridors – like the proposed Middle Corridor from Turkey to Central Asia – are always risky and often require coordination between actors with different geopolitical outlooks.

While the projected corridor recalls old trade routes that connected South Asia and the Mediterranean during antiquity and the Middle Ages, no major route has ever crossed the Arabian Peninsula from east to west. Instead, for millennia, trade routes via Mesopotamia and the Red Sea were more attractive, whether during the Roman/Byzantine era or the Mongol empire, which covered much of the Eurasian continent. It is no wonder that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan opposed the IMEC corridor and instead proposed his own version with Turkey playing a major role in a route from the Persian Gulf via Iraq. Erdogan’s initiative is more in tune with the classic silk roads. Other actors that are likely to try to block or delay IMEC include China, Russia, and Iran. The project could also depend on the success or failure of U.S. efforts to broker a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The US wants to reaffirm its influence in the Middle East by pushing back against China and restoring trust with the Persian Gulf monarchies. Saudi Arabia and the UAE want to keep the U.S. as a security guarantor without sacrificing growing economic ties with China. IMEC reflects the growing clout of middle powers which have learned to play the great powers against each other.

Emil Avdaliani is a professor at European University and the Director of Middle East Studies at the Georgian think-tank, Geocase.