In a February White House meeting between US President Donald Trump and India Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Trump doubled down on the trade route proposed by his predecessor, the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC), calling it the “‘greatest trade routes in all of history.”
It’s a route that has mostly floundered since Biden led a group announcing it at the 2023 G20 meeting.
Nevertheless, looking beyond the US support for the eschatological ambitions of Israel, IMEC highlights the US geopolitical goals in its and Israel’s current rampage in West Asia. Those are US and client state control over logistics corridors — or at least preventing the creation of ones connecting “unfriendly” states — and cementing Israel’s central role as a bridge between Europe, the Gulf, and India. As Guy Larson, a senior lecturer at the international relations department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, writes at The Hill:
[Trump] understands that, in the 21st century, power hinges on controlling trade corridors.
For decades, international relations scholars dismissed geography as obsolete, assuming globalization had flattened the world. Yet mountains, deserts and seas create chokepoints where states and non-state actors can disrupt trade and affect the global economy.
I would argue it’s not just Trump, but his focus is representative of the consensus in the US blob-think tank-oligarchy nexus. Regardless, the US is pushing forward with IMEC despite the considerable obstacles. According to the the White House, leaders of involved countries will convene in the coming months to announce new initiatives on the project.
So let’s take a dive into IMEC, its goals, significant hurdles, as well as the corridors the US is simultaneously trying to prevent.
What Is IMEC?
The IMEC is a network of railroads, ship-to-rail, road transport routes, energy pipelines and high-speed data cables connecting South Asia, the Gulf and Europe. The east corridor connects India to the Gulf, and the northern corridor connects the Gulf to Europe. Countries involved are India, Saudi Arabia, the EU, the United Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Italy, and the US
In Trump speak: “we agreed to work together to help build one of the greatest trade routes in all of history. It will run from India to Israel to Italy and onward to the United States, connecting our partners by ports, railways, and undersea cables — many, many undersea cables. It’s a big development. It’s a lot of money going to be spent, and we’ve already spent some, but we’re going to be spending a lot more in order to stay advanced and stay the leader.” [1]
There are arguments that Hamas’ October 7 attack was part of an attempt by the Axis of Resistance to throw a wrench in the IMEEC plans. But then one must also consider the explanation that the attack was at least allowed to happen over the most heavily guarded border in the world in order to allow the US-Israel to “remake” the region. IMEC is a key component of that vision.
Why?
There is already the Suez Canal route between India and Europe. The key about IMEC is that it is a geopolitical project more than a geoeconomic one. Indeed, as we’ll see later, the economics of the route hardly make sense. So what do its backers envision?
- Normalization of ties between Israel and the Gulf states, but October 7 and the Israeli genocidal response threw the entire project into question.
- Make India the low-wage manufacturer for the West, replacing China and China-friendly supply chains.
- Establish a new East-West trade route that does not include China, Iran or Russia while simultaneously pulling India away from the China-Russia economic bloc toward the West.
- At the same time, strangle competing logistics networks. We see this at work constantly with efforts to sabotage China’s BRI and the International North-South Transport Corridor, which only had new life breathed into it because US efforts to isolate Russia and the genocide in Gaza causing countries to look for alternatives to Red Sea transit.
- Others, such as one that was to run from Iran through Iraq to Syria’s Latakia Port (where Russia has a presence), are all but dead due to the American-Zionist-Al Qaeda destruction of Syria.
Trump’s “maximum pressure” on Iran is working to derail the others. Consider Iran’s Chabahar Port, which the Trump administration sanctioned in February. What does that mean? From The Diplomat:
[The sanctions] primarily affect the geoeconomic interests of India, which has been modernizing Chabahar for many years and has spent tens of thousands of dollars on the project. The port plays a critical role in New Delhi’s transport strategy, providing access to the markets of Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia while bypassing its main opponent in the region, Pakistan. At the same time, Chabahar is a key link in the supply chain between India and Russia, organized under the International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC).
…The port of Chabahar has direct access to the Indian Ocean, making it a valuable asset for many countries in continental Asia. The facility is involved in the operation of international trade routes connecting Central Asia with the Middle East. The earliest of these was launched in 2016 on the basis of the Ashgabat Agreement. The Central Asia-Persian Gulf transport and transit corridor consists of two parts: one running on the Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway, and the other via sea from the Iranian ports of Bandar Abbas or Chabahar to the Oman coast of the Persian Gulf.
Uzbekistan, a landlocked country, has shown particular interest in the transit potential of Chabahar. Tashkent was granted the right to jointly use the Iranian port in the open ocean. The construction of a logistics center on the Shahid Beheshti terminal is planned, which is expected to boost Uzbekistan’s foreign trade, including with such an economic giant as India. In 2024, trade between Uzbekistan and India reached almost $1 billion. For greater efficiency the parties intend to create a new multimodal corridor, Uzbekistan-Turkmenistan-Iran-India, using the Chabahar port. Other Central Asian countries, such as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, which depend on Uzbek transit for access to sea routes, may join this project in the future.
While the targeting of Chabahar hurts India as well as Iran, the US and Israel have other offers for New Delhi, which is eager for the opportunity.
‘Operation Beepers’ – “We Want it Here.”
In February, an Israeli business delegation to New Delhi included over 100 Israeli companies, in the areas of cybersecurity, digital health, AI, and big data. During the visit India’s Commerce & Industry Ministry, Piyush Goyal said the following:
“Israel’s capabilities in innovation and security are extraordinary, and the technology demonstrated in ‘Operation Beepers‘ [a reference to Israel’s clandestine operation on the Hezbollah terror group in September] is truly inspiring and unique — we want it here too. There are immense opportunities for collaboration between Israel and India, which will lead to significant geopolitical and economic achievements in the region.”
IMEC is better viewed as an effort to forge geopolitical ties between participants and strengthen Israel’s position in the region often through the sharing of Israeli killing- and population-control technology. The Indians aren’t the only ones taking a keen interest in this type of Israeli tech. Dovi Frances, an Israeli-American founding partner of the Los Angeles-based venture capital firm Group 11, is a major Trump backer. He’s also helping set up an AI National Directorate in Israel under Netanyahu with involvement from Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever who after leaving the ChatGPT developer founded SST, a new AI company based in San Francisco and Tel Aviv. Here’s Frances writing in The Jerusalem Post about the Trump-Israel pitch:
Gulf investors have quietly begun to join Israeli-related tech companies’ cap tables, injecting capital into Israeli firms, often without public announcement. These activities—both sales and investments—highlight the growing economic ties between Israel and the Gulf and the immense interest from both sides in fostering deeper technological collaboration.
Under the Trump administration, with the expansion of agreements to include Saudi Arabia, Israeli AI companies could serve as platforms for entire industries in the Gulf, including education, banking, healthcare, and cybersecurity.
…The political instability in the Middle East, the AI revolution, and the US political landscape are not isolated from each other—they are intertwined.
Are they ever? Again, here’s Guy Larson at The Hill:
[Trump] does not seek disengagement from the Middle East. Rather, he wants to reassert American hegemony. He believes that to maintain global leadership, Washington must control the trade corridors of Eurasia. His approach focuses on neutralizing Iran through economic pressure and diplomatic negotiations, stabilizing Gaza by implementing the hostage deal and pressuring Saudi Arabia with outlandish statements to push it into a peace deal with Israel.
Should Riyadh move toward normalization with Israel without demanding a diplomatic process for Palestinian statehood, Trump would abandon his Gaza displacement plan as swiftly as he dropped his 25 percent tariff threat against Canada and Mexico. For him, rhetoric is leverage — his real goal is restoring American dominance over global trade routes.
So what we see with the IMEC vision is the the next level of fusion between tech, finance and government — and their sales pitch is a technological superiority invitation written in the blood of genocide.
In the Gulf, it’s also known as the normalization of ties with Israel. As we’ve seen over the past few years, these states make gestures in opposition to the Palestinian genocide but in reality do not care about it aside from how it complicates their rule of the local population. IMEC is about finalizing this process.
Problems
There are many. One can start with the simple economics of it all. IMEC, it is frequently said could cut transport times by up to 40 per cent, but it involves moving cargo via ships from India to the UAE, putting them onto trains going through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, and then back onto ships to go from Israel to Europe. Here’s a helpful visualization:
Uneconomical and seemingly pretty inefficient. And enters Europe via a Chinese operated port. https://t.co/befYuMQ9ox
— Evan A. Feigenbaum (@EvanFeigenbaum) September 11, 2023
Beijing is not keen on seeing India rise as a manufacturing powerhouse. Let’s consider what China is doing. Kyle Chan has a lot at High Capacity on the incredible amount of work China is doing to secure access to markets:
Chinese companies are racing to build factories around the world and forge new global supply chains, driven by a desire to circumvent tariffs and secure access to markets. Chinese companies have been building manufacturing plants directly in large target markets, such as the EU and Brazil. And they’ve been building plants in “connector countries” like Mexico and Vietnam that provide access to developed markets through trade agreements. Morocco, for example, has emerged as a surprisingly popular destination for Chinese investment tied to EV and battery manufacturing due to its trade agreements with both the US and the EU.
Just take a look at the map:
Notably China’s efforts are purposefully avoiding India:
[A]cross a number of industries, Beijing seems to be discouraging Chinese firms making future plans to invest in India while also limiting the flow of workers and equipment…
Beijing appears to be limiting Apple’s manufacturing partner Foxconn from bringing Chinese equipment and Chinese workers to India. Some of Foxconn’s Chinese workers in India were even told to return to China. This informal Chinese ban extends to other electronics firms working in India…Beijing has told Chinese automakers specifically not to invest in India…China has been reportedly blocking the export of Chinese solar equipment to India…[Tunnel boring machines] made in China by Germany’s Herrenknecht for export to India have been reportedly held up by Chinese customs.
Beijing is doing the same for countries like the Philippines, which is currently cooperating with the US in its bid to contain China.
And countries like Iran and Turkey, which is notably excluded from IMEC and is wholly opposed to it in its current form, have the capability to derail delicate logistics corridors the same way the US and its friends do. The sheer amount of heavy lifting the US needs to perform to get IMEC on track presents another series of issues. According to War on the Rocks:
The most instrumental way in which the Trump administration can support the corridor, along with other potential East-West corridors, is by addressing Middle Eastern instability. That means stewarding the distinct ceasefire agreements brokered by the Biden administration between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas and gradually turning them into more lasting political arrangements.
It may sound far-fetched today, nevertheless there are scenarios where elements of the corridor’s development are used to support Gaza’s rehabilitation.
We know what they have in mind for that “rehabilitation”:
Trump calls it “making Gaza beautiful again.” Israel calls it “Gaza 2035,” which involves rebuilding Gaza from nothing into a soulless tech “production center” that is a hub of IMEC. As ArtReview points out:
Before 8 October 2023, Gaza was already a modern, bustling city. It had a similar average density to London, a 97 percent literacy rate, 36 hospitals, 12 universities, parks, highrises, recreational beaches. If the goal is to ‘rebuild from nothing’, then it will be because Israel has razed the territory’s cities, towns and villages. The question is, who will it be rebuilt for?
…throughout the three ‘phases’ explained in the document, it becomes clear that the Palestinians permitted to live among the ruins of their homeland would provide cheap labour in this new ‘regional trade and energy hub’ intended for Israeli business interests.
It’s a project the Palestinians will not go along with. Nonetheless, War on the Rocks continues with what Trump must do:
A revitalized Gaza port under international supervision, for example, would be a boon for Palestinians. The port could also serve as a supporting spur to Haifa Port — purchased by Indian-owned Adani Group in 2023 — where many of the corridor’s plans currently hinge. In short, by drawing inspiration from the corridor, the Trump administration could incentivize the parties to reach a durable resolution to the war that would create a window of opportunity to revisit normalization efforts between Israel and Saudi Arabia and attract additional foreign investment to the region.
A similar logic could be applied when dealing with new governments in Lebanon and Syria. If leveraged in the right way, participation in East-West corridors could be a major incentive for new political actors to respect U.S. interests, maintain their commitment to keeping the peace, and further reduce Iranian, Russia, and Chinese influence.
In addition to these steps, the United States should devise a more effective mechanism for constraining Houthi aggression. The corridor is not a replacement for the Suez Canal, and therefore the secure passage of maritime traffic around the Horn of Africa and Red Sea should remain a top priority for America and its allies.
Last but not least, the Trump administration will need to identify the correct formula for containing Iran and severing supply chains between Tehran and its proxies. Without some kind of arrangement between the United States and Iran, it is safe to suspect that the Islamic regime will try to undermine efforts to develop an East-West corridor that leaves it out in the cold.
And so we see the Trump administration trying to make progress on this to-do list and finding limited success. And there’s little chance of IMEC finding the considerable financing it needs or Haifa port being the lynchpin to a global trade route while Yemeni bombs are hitting it.
We should also consider the possibility that the US, which isn’t so much in the business of building or backing mega projects like IMEC, is perfectly fine with setting the region ablaze as it prevents real Eurasian integration efforts.
Notes
[1] It was Interesting that Trump said Italy. Greece’s largest port in Piraeus has often been mentioned as the European entry point, but China’s COSCO Shipping owns a majority stake there and operates the port, making it a key component of the Belt and Road Initiative, which IMEC is supposed to counter. France and Italy are both vying for the IMEC’s European entry point with the latter preparing Trieste while France preps Marseille.
