Courtesy: KNN
The UAE’s recent exit from OPEC, and the U.S. push to sell more oil to India are markers of a new order in the oil world with demand security at a premium. As a major oil importer, India must respond to it smartly. It must develop deeper partnerships with both the UAE and U.S., and a new financial ecosystem and benchmarks for the new order.
Courtesy: AFR
The Persian Gulf conflict has already impacted India’s oil imports and financial security. However, India has not created meaningful options to protect itself from oil shocks over the last decade – and such shocks will continue. Now is the time for India to make equity investments in oil and gas companies in stable economies like the U.S., Canada and Australia, to protect itself from future energy crises.
Courtesy: MSN
The war in the Persian Gulf has already caused significant disruption in India’s South Asian neighbours. A prolonged conflict is likely to push the region back into economic and political crises from which it had been hopeful of emerging this year.
Courtesy: Gateway House
Early indicators of the ongoing war in West Asia point to a conflict trajectory from the rapid decision to the controlled escalation to distributed strike capacity, advanced military integration and mounting regional exposure. Much like Johann Goethe’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice, conflicts initiated based on assumptions of control can acquire a momentum of their own.
Courtesy: Gateway House
Iran has often stood at the crossroads of social and political metamorphosis and regional geopolitical recalibration, from the Islamic Revolution of 1979 to the attrition of the Iran-Iraq War. The current landscape reflects the convergence, once again, of internal pressures and sharper deterrence postures, that the social compact—from a Lockean and Rousseauian perspective—needs a new edition, and that timely diplomacy to prevent escalation is required.
Courtesy: Gateway House
The proposed IMEC corridor connecting India to Europe through the Gulf can be transformative, helping to reduce risks to the global movement of goods and data. It’s early days yet, and there are gaps to be filled in terms of missing infrastructure and overcoming a diplomatic rift.
Courtesy: Gateway House
A visit to Israel in the last week of January coincided with the six-week ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and the 80th anniversary of the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were killed during the Second World War. It revealed a country at war and in mourning, yet one whose natural resilience looked to the future with optimism.
Courtesy:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has secured his political survival since October 7 by managing his key constituencies – domestic and in the U.S. – and doubling down on his war strategy. Now he is making another calculated risk – to ensure a non-nuclear Iran, and thereby his continued political positioning.
Courtesy: CivisDaily
The Oslo Accords’ two-state solution for Palestine-Israel, visualised Gaza and the West Bank as self-governing entities under the Palestinian Authority. That political hope existed in an expanding global economy led by the U.S. and secured by American armies, with the promise of capital flows and investments to develop Palestine on its way to statehood. All this changed in the 2000s, as both Israelis and Palestinians became significant regional actors.
Courtesy: The Jerusalem Post
The October 7 intrusion of Hamas into Israel has exposed a respectable military institution and one of the most influential intelligence agencies, impacting their image in a contest where prestige is crucial. It weakens the Palestinian Authority internally and abroad, diminishes any peace processes, buries hope of a two-state solution, and marks the beginning of an unprecedented phase of war with repercussions far beyond the region.