Indian policy towards the Middle East represents the new pragmatism. The Middle East poses a challenge for Indian foreign policy as it has to maintain ties with two conflicting poles Arab world which is Islamic on one hand and Israel which is non-Islamic on the other. Apart from this countries like Iraq which are declared a terrorist state are also a dimension in the Indo-Middle east relations. Taking into consideration only the interest of the country India is trying to play on both sides as evident in its policy towards Israel and Iraq.

The Middle East

India and Arab World: Strong Economic Links

For India, its relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are equally important. In fact, the stakes are high in the Gulf, where more than six million Indians work. The GCC countries are India’s largest trade partner with trade in 2021–22 about $154.73 billion, far outstripping the financial volumes of such ties with any other region of the world. The share of GCC members in India's total imports (in 2021-22) is about 18%. GCC nations account for nearly 65% of India's annual remittances of more than 80 billion in the last three years.

On the Arab side, India’s economic links, always important, have grown in the past year and are likely to continue doing so. In the next decade, India is expected to be the source of the second-largest increase in energy demand in the world, after China. Most of its oil comes from Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., and Kuwait. Nearly 60% of India's imports from GCC countries are crude and natural gas. 

India recognizes that its energy needs will require expanded and diversified foreign sources of supply. India’s government-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is expanding its involvement in overseas exploration and production. It has been negotiating for partnerships in Yemen, Tunisia, Iran, and Iraq, but its highest profile and most advanced operations are outside Middle East-Central Asia, Vietnam, Sakhalin Island, and Malaysia.

India has also been developing sources of natural gas supply, through LNG contracts with Qatar and others. It hopes that Bangladeshi policy will change to permit gas imports from that country. There has been much speculation about gas from Central Asia, but this would require either a pipeline through Iran or one through Afghanistan and Pakistan (see below). However, even if the diversification efforts are successful, oil will be critical to the Indian economy, and the Persian Gulf will remain India’s significant supplier of oil for a good many years to come. With a view to expand already existing good relations with Gulf region countries several high-level visits have taken place. In the recent past, several Indian Ministers i.e. EAM, MOS (EA), MOS for Small Scale Industries, MOS (Home), and MOS (Commerce) visited Gulf countries for further strengthening bilateral relations. A number of business delegations relating to trade and investment have been exchanged between India and the Gulf countries. A number of high-level visits are proposed to be exchanged later this year and in the early part of the next year.

India’s political ties to the Arab countries are not as strong as one might expect, given this level of economic interdependence. India has made some efforts to maintain its links to the Muslim world. Its voting record on Middle East questions in the United Nations is still consistently pro-Arab. But in 2021, in UNGA and UNSC, India shifted its stance slightly pro-Israel. India condemned Hamas' rocket firing into Israel and said that Israel's action was retaliatory, in self-defense.

India's Gulf Policy

• India didn’t do the annual engagement at the UN with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council, whose members are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates
• It’s a pity since the confrontation between the Gulf Arabs and Iran is one of the top international security issues on the table at the UN this year
• It is also the most important emerging regional security challenge for India

Developments at UN

• There is opposition in the Arab countries of the Gulf to President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran and key sections of the region have welcomed Trump’s decision to discard the deal.
• The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and ministers from eight Arab nations met at the UN to discuss the future of the deal.
• The Arab side included the six countries of the GCC as well as those of Egypt and Jordan.
• The ministers had “productive discussions” on setting up what is to be known as the Middle East Strategic Alliance to promote security and stability in the region.
• The putative alliance is being termed the “Arab NATO”.

Questioning India’s gulf policy

• A question being raised is: Why does Delhi tilt towards Tehran when so many of India’s interests — including trade, energy, expatriate remittances, and counter-terror cooperation — are so heavily tied to the Gulf Arabs?
• Delhi, which denounces Pakistan’s destabilization of the Subcontinent at every opportunity, never utters a word about Iran’s effort to undermine the regional political order in the Arab world.
• Delhi must deal with the rapidly changing situation in the Gulf region, whose economic and political salience for India is not matched by any other sub-region in the world.
• Delhi is practical enough to find ways to avoid the effect of America’s Iran sanctions on the Indian economy.
• But India’s approach appears bereft of realism when it comes to dealing with the conflict between Gulf Arabs and Iran.
• As storm clouds gather in the Gulf, Delhi can’t afford to ignore the deepening Arab fears about Iran and their expectations for a measure of political understanding from India.

• In December 2010, a man in Tunisia burned himself to death in protest at his treatment by police. It triggered a series of pro-democracy rebellions that erupted across the Middle East and North Africa. The series of ongoing events highlighted the concept of democracy and collective activism.
• The protests have shared some techniques of civil resistance in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches, and rallies, as well as the effective use of social media to organize, communicate and raise awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and Internet censorship.

The Spread

• By December 2013, rulers had been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt (twice), Libya, and Yemen;
• Civil uprisings had erupted in Bahrain and Syria;
• Major protests had broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Israel, and Sudan; minor protests had occurred in Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Western Sahara, and Palestine.
• Weapons and Tuareg fighters returning from the Libyan Civil War stoked a simmering conflict in Mali which has been described as the "fallout" from the Arab Spring in North Africa.
• The sectarian clashes in Lebanon were described as a spillover of violence from the Syrian uprising and hence the regional Arab Spring.

Underlying Causes

• The causes of the Arab Spring, or as some call it the Arab Awakening, were many and long-gathering. For decades, Arab populations had faced repression of free speech, human rights abuses, economic mismanagement, corruption, and the stifling of political dissent. Justice and human dignity were not priorities in most states.
• At the same time, this region of 300 million people was producing an unprecedented youth bulge, with around two-thirds of the population below 29 years of age. This youthful army is plagued by 25 percent unemployment, frustrated by diminished dreams, driven by aspirations for greater personal freedoms, and equipped with the revolutionary tools of social media: Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

Governance and Political Factors

• Dissatisfaction with the rule of local governments
• Dictatorship or absolute monarchy enhanced by Police State. A police state can be described as a state in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls with the help of secret police forces and agencies over the social, economic, and political life of the nation
• Autocratic Rulers: An autocracy lacks political competition, transparency, freedom of expression, the right to have a different opinion, human rights framework, and accountability of state institutions
• Non-participation in governance and non-inclusion of political dissent
• human rights violations in form of political and religious oppression
• Kleptocracy (political corruption) which consolidates the tyrannical powers by practicing the transfer of money and power from the many to the few. The kleptocratic ruling class consists of the moneyed elite that usurps justice, liberty, equality, sovereignty, and other democratic rights from the people.
• Foreign interference. From meddling into the affairs of the state by regional players to direct/indirect interference by the US and other western powers, this region has seen more than its share of foreign interference.

Socio-Economic Factors

• economic decline and rising inflation
• unemployment and underemployment
• extreme poverty
• demographic structural factors
• Regional Disparities
• Lack of Development
• refusal of the youth to accept the status quo
• Social Imbalances: The majority of the population in the Middle East lives on less than $2 a day and relies on government-run health, education, transportation, energy, and food sectors due to affordable rates and universal accessibility. However, as governments adopted neo-liberal economic policies in the last few decades, decided to scale down public spending, and privatized their institutions, the services no more remained affordable and accessible by the large segment of society as the new owners concentrated more on profits and growth rather than affordability and quality.

Social media and the Arab Spring

Restrictions on communication and censorship

• Many governments in the Middle East region, instead of addressing the frustrations of the youth and solving their problems, tend to ignore them or tackle with half-hearted measures. And when such measures backfire, the first step a government takes is silencing of the voices of dissent and discontent by any means possible. The blanket ban covers not only TV, radio, newspapers, or books but encroaches on the Internet namely Facebook and other social media networks where young people converge and interact, often venting out their frustration.
• Increasing role was played by social media and digital technologies in allowing citizens within areas affected by 'the Arab Uprisings' as a means for collective activism to circumvent state-operated media channels.
• Digital technologies and other forms of communication–videos, cellular phones, blogs, photos and text messages– have brought about the concept of a 'digital democracy' in parts of North Africa affected by the uprisings.
• Collective intelligence, dynamics of the crowd in participatory systems such as social media, has the immense power to support a collective action – such as foment a political change.
• Influx of social media usage indicates y Young people fueled the revolts of the various Arab countries by using the new generation's abilities of social networking and played a crucial role in the movement

Political change

• There has been a remarkable transformation in the region’s political dynamics, with states losing much of their invincibility and people gaining new leverage and power.
• During the Arab Spring, protests flared up in the rest of the region, some becoming violent, some facing strong suppression efforts, and some resulting in small to moderate political changes.
• Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia in 14 January 2011
• In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak resigned in February 2011 ending his 30-year presidency.
• The Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in August 2011, after the National Transitional Council (NTC) took control
• Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh signed the GCC power-transfer deal in which a presidential election was held, resulting in his successor Abd al-Rab Mansur al-Hadi formally replacing him as the president of Yemen in February 2012
• Protests in Jordan have also caused the sacking of four successive governments
• The popular unrest in Kuwait has also resulted in the resignation of Prime Minister Nasser Mohammed Al-Ahmed  Al-Sabah cabinet.

Consequences and Challenges created by Arab Spring

• The young activists in each country have been sharing ideas, tactics, and moral support, but they are confronting different opponents and operating within different contexts. While Tunisia and Egypt grapple in their own ways with building political institutions -- constitutions, political parties, and electoral systems -- Libya will need to begin by constructing the rudiments of a civil society. While Egypt struggles with the long shadow of military rule, Tunisia and Libya will need to redefine the relationship between their privileged capital cities and their sullen hinterlands.
• These events have unleashed waves of sectarian, religious and ethnic strife across the region. Christians have been murdered in Egypt and Iraq. Sunni-Shiite tensions have spiked across the region. And separatist tendencies based on tribal or ethnic affiliations, have appeared in Iraq, Yemen and Libya.
• Democratic reforms in Egypt and elsewhere have not yet been consolidated in new, popularly supported political institutions. Creating those institutions, as well as the democratic habits and mindset that should underpin them, will take years.
• In many states, including Egypt, Tunisia and Iraq, Islamist parties have gained new prominence and powers through elections and are challenging the secular forces. But at the same time these Islamic regimes can prove their mettle by delivering services and demonstrating that they can create a more just political and economic order.
• The sudden rise of ISIS in areas of Syria and Iraq has posed challenges to the political order and may result in redrawing of political boundaries in Middle East.
• The Arab journey begun more than a year ago is far from over, with an obstacle-strewn road lying ahead. If economic prospects do not brighten, if Arab youth continue to face high unemployment, or if ethnic, sectarian or religious violence soars, dictatorship may return as people tire of being hungry, jobless or insecure in their own home. Overcoming these challenges and creating new, democratic cultures and institutions are the tasks that now demand attention and endurance.

Recent Developments

• Abraham Accords: These are normalization agreements (peace agreements) of Israel with UAE and Bahrain. These accords were mediated by the US. Later on, Morocco and Sudan also joined the Abraham Accords. This has removed India's hesitation to deepen its ties with Israel. Earlier, India's dependence on the Arab world for its energy needs and the Indian diaspora in the Gulf Countries were two important factors because of which India was apprehensive to go closer to Israel.
• West QUAD: West QUAD is a group of countries comprising India, Israel, UAE, and the US. It is known as I2U2 and International Forum for Economic Cooperation also. Its obvious purpose is to improve economic and political relations between the Middle East and Asia. The group will work to improve cooperation in areas of infrastructure, technology, and maritime security.