DOHA — The future of a new “Golden Road” — a U.S.-backed modernization of the ancient land and sea trade route across Saudi Arabia that would link a booming India to Europe — is at risk as U.S. President Trump’s tariffs and Israel’s war on Gaza have taken a toll on the cross-border cooperation needed to keep the project moving.
Mr. Trump’s 50% tariff on Indian goods — among the highest U.S. rates on any trading partner — threatens to derail the connectivity project known as the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, or IMEC, that has been billed as Washington’s answer to China’s Belt and Road.
The tariffs stem from disputes over India’s continued purchases of Russian oil and trade imbalances. A Sept. 17 call between Mr. Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened diplomatic space, underscoring IMEC’s central paradox.
“The idea of IMEC remains transformative,” said Harsh Pant, vice president at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. “If the connectivity puzzle can be solved, the impact on the broader geopolitics of the Middle East will be profound. But the more politicized the project becomes, the less attractive it is for the commercial players expected to make it real.”
Think tanks tout IMEC’s potential. Corridor backers say integrated transport, energy and digital links could move 3 million containers a year and save Asia-Europe trade more than $5 billion annually. For India, the gain could reach $22 billion in export value. Analysts say it will take sustained U.S. engagement — exactly what Mr. Trump’s reciprocity doctrine complicates.
Gaza epitomizes IMEC’s trajectory from promise to peril. Corridor architects envisioned Israeli ports as the Mediterranean gateway for Asian goods, transforming regional trade while cementing the Abraham Accords’ economic foundation.
Instead, a January 2025 cease-fire collapsed in March when Israel launched airstrikes, and things got worse this month after Israel’s strike on Doha, just 200 miles away from the project’s main backers in Abu Dhabi.
“Israel’s hyper-nationalist policy approach is today the single most important impediment to IMEC,” Mr. Pant said. “Without some resolution of Gaza, it will be hard to put the nuts and bolts of this project together.”
Iran celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault as a victory against Israel. China’s supportive stance reflected strategic calculation more than ideological solidarity — Beijing welcomed disruption to a potential Belt and Road rival, analysts at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies suggest.
The coordination runs deeper. Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” — Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis and Iraqi militias — launched coordinated attacks within weeks of Oct. 7. Iran’s 25-year strategic partnership with China includes intelligence sharing and weapons development, with Israeli forces later discovering Chinese military equipment in Hamas warehouses. Hezbollah-aligned outlets framed it as “multipolar delay,” keeping U.S.-led projects vulnerable.
Saudi Arabia’s shift from enthusiastic IMEC investor to reluctant stakeholder shows how quickly geopolitical calculations change. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman once called the project transformative.
But the Saudis’ early enthusiasm for IMEC has cooled, with Riyadh absent from the first in-person partners’ meeting in New Delhi on Aug. 5. Officials familiar with the talks said the Saudis balked at moving forward without a credible pathway to Palestinian statehood, underscoring how the Gaza war has complicated their role in the project.
Even so, Riyadh remains pivotal. The longest stretch of the corridor crosses Saudi territory, and the crown prince has tasked ACWA Power, the kingdom’s flagship renewables company, with representing the private sector. ACWA has signed feasibility studies with European energy firms on a Saudi-Europe power link, positioning the kingdom as a hub for green hydrogen and electricity exports if political conditions align.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government never fully absorbed what Riyadh needed to be on board — a credible pathway to Palestinian statehood.
When Mr. Trump suggested the Saudis were not demanding Palestinian statehood, Riyadh issued a firm statement calling its position “unwavering” and “nonnegotiable.”
Mr. Pant noted the contradictions. “The UAE and Saudi commitments are a mix of genuine intent and hedging,” he said. “They have a stake in China’s Belt and Road, but also recognize the global center of gravity is shifting toward Asia.”
The UAE has emerged as IMEC’s most committed financial backer — while building alternative routes that bypass Israeli ports entirely.
In September 2024, the UAE committed $2.3 billion through Etihad Rail to build Jordan’s first major railway network, a 224-mile system connecting Aqaba port to mining regions. The project represents the most concrete progress IMEC has seen since its 2023 launch.
The Jordanian railway creates strategic flexibility for the UAE. Originally conceived as part of a route through Israeli ports, the infrastructure routes goods north from Jordan to Syrian ports, maintaining Asia-Europe connectivity while avoiding the political toxicity that Mr. Netanyahu’s policies created.
The railway will transport 16 million tons of phosphate and potash annually. Construction begins in 2026, with operations starting in 2030.
The UAE is making IMEC’s promise tangible through steel and concrete. Beyond the $2.3 billion railway investment in Jordan, trucks are already moving from UAE ports through Saudi Arabia and Jordan into Israel, shaving days off transit times.
“You can argue IMEC is already happening — trucks are moving from the UAE to Israel and on to Europe,” said Dane Johnston, a deputy assistant secretary with the U.S. State Department.
“Back-to-back trucking across multiple borders is not elegant,” Johnston said. “But it’s proof of concept that the corridor can work.”
The Israel question
India and the UAE show how bilateral deals defy turmoil. Trade jumped 34% in the first half of 2025 to nearly $38 billion.
“With the UAE alone, our trade has quadrupled in hardly five years, and we are approaching $100 billion in bilateral trade,” said Sreeram Chaulia, dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs.
India-Israel ties show similar resilience. In September, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich signed a bilateral investment agreement in New Delhi — the first such pact India has inked with an OECD member economy. Bilateral trade reached $5 billion in 2024, making India Israel’s second-largest Asian trading partner after China.
Yet Mr. Smotrich himself exemplifies Israel’s growing political problems.
The Religious Zionist minister has called for annexing the West Bank and supports unlimited settlement expansion — positions that make Gulf normalization politically impossible for Arab leaders facing domestic pressure over Gaza.
Construction tenders began this year for Bharat Mart, a 2.7 million-square-foot wholesale hub in Dubai’s Jebel Ali Free Zone, due to open in 2027.
IMEC’s weakness is not only political but structural.
Unlike China’s Belt and Road, which offers centralized planning and funding, IMEC expects each country to finance and coordinate its own projects. The UAE’s $2.3 billion commitment to Jordan’s railway shows how Gulf capital is filling financing gaps where U.S. and European public funds fall short.
India has not created a dedicated implementation agency or committed major resources, according to European analysts who met in July.
“India’s habit is to announce grand projects and then leave them to line ministries,” said a European trade diplomat. “That’s a structural weakness when compared to China’s approach.”
Qatar joined Turkey, Iraq and the UAE in backing the $17 billion Iraq Development Road, an alternative that bypasses Israel entirely. Its Grand Faw Port is expected to outstrip Dubai’s Jebel Ali as the region’s largest terminal by 2025.
“South Asia, the Middle East, and the Eastern Mediterranean have always been pulled toward one another,” said Mohammed Soliman of McLarty Associates. “The routes that bind them change over time, and the India–Middle East–Europe corridor may be central, but it will never be the only one.”
“The way the corridor is configured, Turkey sees it as competition,” said Sinan Ciddi, a Turkey analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Ankara isn’t waiting around for IMEC — it’s charting its own course with partners like Qatar, Syria and Libya.”
Turkey’s absence “reinforces a parallel architecture, pushing Ankara to double down on alternative routes through Iraq or the Caucasus,” noted Mr. Soliman.
“Nothing happens in a vacuum,” Mr. Soliman added. “Gaza directly affects the reliability of the Israel segment and the broader normalization track that underwrites insurance, risk, and cross-border permissions.”
The UAE’s $2.3 billion investment is addressing Jordan’s railway gap while creating routing flexibility that makes Israeli participation optional. Previously, Jordan had no national railway, leaving Gulf cargo unable to connect seamlessly to Mediterranean ports.
The UAE-funded railway project will be completed within five years, with operations beginning in 2030.
Unlike the original IMEC vision that relied on Israeli ports, the UAE’s investment creates multiple routing possibilities. Goods flow north from Jordan to Syrian ports, maintaining the economic benefits of Asia-Europe connectivity without requiring Israeli cooperation.
This strategic flexibility explains why the UAE continues investing heavily in regional connectivity even as Israel alienates potential partners.
U.S. officials say the project is on track, but analysts question the coherence of Mr. Trump’s approach.
“I don’t see what their serious strategy is,” Mr. Ciddi said. “Congress understands IMEC’s value as a counter to China, but the White House is impulsive and lacks a long-term vision. That alone could derail the project.”
Countering China, undercutting Russia
Congress is weighing the bipartisan Eastern Mediterranean Gateway Act, introduced in May, which would anchor IMEC’s western flank through energy, trade and defense cooperation with Greece, Israel, Cyprus and Egypt.
The Gateway Act flags critical infrastructure like the Great Sea Interconnector and new LNG terminals as central to America’s energy strategy. Europe needs alternatives to Russian gas, and U.S. involvement gives American companies favorable contracts and strategic leverage.
Though H.R. 3307 has no disclosed funding amount, Congress would get annual reports estimating the price of expanding energy and defense cooperation — meaning taxpayers know what they pay, and what ROI the U.S. expects in jobs, trade routes and allies.
U.S. logistics occupations are projected to grow 17% through 2034, with median wages near $81,000. If IMEC channels investment into ports, rail, and warehousing, American firms could see tens of thousands of new jobs.
“If the U.S. wants to counter China without going to war, it needs India,” Mr. Ciddi added. “IMEC is a linchpin. We should be all in.”
“When Prime Minister Modi visited the White House, President Trump reaffirmed America’s endorsement of IMEC,” Mr. Johnston said. “On the U.S. side we truly see this as a private-sector-driven initiative.”
“The essence of IMEC is how can we do more with less,” Mr. Soliman said. “We’re pivoting from nation-building to order-building.”
Emirati political scientist Abdulkhaleq Abdulla argued that the Gulf’s logistics ambitions make IMEC essential but warned that Israeli politics are undermining momentum. “Netanyahu is bad news for everybody, including Israel itself,” he said. “Because of Gaza, the West Bank, and the arrogance we’ve seen from him lately, Israel is becoming an imperial power destabilizing the region. It is taking the place of Iran in that sense. Because of him, IMEC is probably on hold for the time being.”
Yet Mr. Abdulla insisted economics remain irresistible. “World trade is expanding at least 5 to 10% a year, and it needs new corridors,” he said. “IMEC adds to that.”