For decades, India’s West Asia policy rested on three simple principles: equi-distance, non-prescriptive, and non-interference. These reflected New Delhi’s belief that its stakes in the region were too high to risk taking sides. The stakes speak for themselves—over nine million Indian workers live and work in the Gulf, sending home billions of dollars in remittances every year. New Delhi is also deeply engaged with the Gulf through energy, trade, investment flows, particularly from the petrodollar-rich monarchies. Therefore, a stable Gulf has always been central to India’s overall interest, including security and prosperity.

This balance, however, began to shift after the Modi government came to power in 2014. New Delhi no longer held as tightly to its old principles. Instead, it started looking at the region through a different lens, mostly shaped by material gains and geostrategic hedging. Another important element the Modi government added was to stop treating the Gulf in isolation. It connected the region with India’s larger foreign policy canvass. Third, it divided the region into three circles, each marked with different policy objectives and treatment. The first circle deals with Saudi-led groupings, tied to the Gulf monarchies;  second, Israel-led with strong US backing, and the third Iran-led, built around Tehran and its proxies. 

As of now, India feels that Israel and Saudi circles are in close cooperation on many issues such Palestine, economic diversification, IMEC (Indian Middle East Europe Economic Corridor), common US security umbrella, it does not have any problem in converging the two circles, whereas Iran-led circle appears faltering. Thus, it does not count much weight in India’s transformed Middle East policy. It is true that the Iranian........

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