West Asia is at the crossroads of the continents and makes it vital for global connectivity and trade. It is the birthplace of Abrahamic religions and is considered by them the holy-land. The contemporary salience of West Asia is rooted in international geo-energy politics. Combining those factors has always placed West Asia as a prized area and a part of the great powers’ politics. In fact, the present West Asian cartography is reminiscent of European imperialism. Regionally, West Asia is multipolar in character. At first, the regional poles were makeup by Egypt, Israel, Iran, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Then there was a decline of Egypt and Pan-Arabism in the 1970s. The power in the Arab world shifted towards the Gulf region. The region got further divided after the Iranian Islamic revolution (1979). The contestation for regional and Islamic world leadership between Iran and the KSA progressed along sectarian and ideological lines. Iran opposed the external power’s role in determining the Gulf region’s regional security architecture and stood by Palestinians against the Israel-US alliance. Consequently, the US joined by the KSA, United Arabia Emirate, Egypt, and Israel and formed the anti-Iran bloc.
The undertaken study’s primary focus is to examine how India arrived at multi-alignment in West Asia and bilateralism in the 1980s and more visibly in the post-Cold War period. This process’s outcome was New Delhi shifted from Arab-Centric (Pan-Arab nationalist states) policy to a more broad regional policy. The evident change was witnessed in India’s ties with Israel, Iran, and the KSA. Within a span of six years, India upgraded bilateral engagements with Israel (2000), Iran (2003), and the KSA (2006) to the strategic level cooperation. The language of strategic bilateral cooperation was used to strengthen existing ties with Israel, Iran, and the KSA.
Besides, India took a more balanced stand on the Israel-Palestine conflict and Iran-America contestation. However, as China’s rise becomes more evident in geopolitical terms, India began to respond. Consequently, it has become apparent in India’s West Asia policy that balancing is not always tenable. India found it a foreign policy challenge to balance interests and long achieved moral position in the region. The challenge became more evident with Israel’s emergence as India’s second-largest arms supplier and growing strategic proximity with the US to deal with China’s rise, which resulted in India showed lack of interest in the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, oil import from Tehran, and reluctance to bypass unilateral American sanctions on Iran.