This article was originally published in Al-Ahram Weekly on 9 October 2026

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) has brought regional connectivity back to the centre of Middle Eastern debate.

Since its announcement in 2023, discussion has focused largely on routes, ports, investment, trade flows, and geopolitical competition. More recently, the debate has become broader, with greater attention to the possibility of connecting the IMEC to other transport and logistics initiatives rather than treating each corridor as a separate strategic project.

This is an important development, but it still leaves one question insufficiently explored: what will make regional cooperation durable if the political atmosphere becomes difficult?

The Middle East is not short of infrastructure plans. What it lacks is a sufficiently developed institutional layer surrounding them. Building a railway, expanding a port, or establishing a new maritime route creates connectivity. But integration is different. It depends on whether the countries and institutions involved develop working arrangements that become ordinary enough to survive changes in political relations.

The IMEC is particularly important in this respect because it crosses several political, economic, and legal environments. Once operational, it will generate constant questions over regulation, customs, access, financing, standards, and commercial disputes. The success of the project will depend not only on whether these problems can be solved, but on whether they can be handled routinely without repeatedly returning to the highest political level.

This is also why the growing discussion of alternative routes matters. The present disruptions in the Red Sea have shown how quickly a major trade route can become vulnerable. A wider network connecting the Gulf, the eastern Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, Egyptian ports, and other regional routes would give governments and businesses more options when one part of the system is disrupted. But additional routes alone do not guarantee resilience. Their usefulness depends on whether the legal, commercial, and administrative arrangements required to use them already exist.

Egypt’s recent approach is interesting in this regard. Egyptian officials have described planned trade corridors linking Europe and the Gulf as complementary to the IMEC, China’s Belt and Road Initiative, and the Iraq-Turkey Development Road. Egypt and Turkey have also expanded discussions over logistics and international transport routes. These moves suggest a regional architecture that may become less rigid than the geopolitical language surrounding many corridor projects implies. Different routes can compete commercially while still forming part of a wider network.

The same flexibility is needed politically. Regional integration in the Middle East should not depend on every state agreeing on the same regional order. Such agreement is unlikely. Governments continue to differ sharply over Iran, Israel, security, alliances, and the role of outside powers. Making political convergence a condition for economic and institutional cooperation would therefore leave most integration projects waiting for a political consensus that may never arrive.

A more practical approach would allow different groups of countries to cooperate in different areas. Participation in a transport project does not have to match participation in an electricity network, a digital initiative, or an academic programme. Some states may join one part of a regional architecture while remaining outside another. This kind of flexible cooperation is particularly suitable for a region in which interests overlap unevenly and political alignments change frequently.

The institutional dimension also needs to extend beyond governments. Regional cooperation becomes more substantial when professionals and institutions begin working together around concrete tasks. Customs officials solving transit problems, engineers working on compatible systems, researchers studying climate adaptation, universities building joint programmes, and business organisations dealing with regulatory barriers create relationships that acquire value through repeated use.

These connections do not replace diplomacy, but they can make regional cooperation less dependent on diplomatic momentum.

MENA2050, a civil-society organisation focused on the long-term development of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, has already moved in this direction by emphasising that regional transformation should involve people and institutions as well as governments. Its Leadership Academy for Regional Development reflects the same principle. The broader lesson is that human and professional networks should be treated as part of regional infrastructure rather than as a secondary benefit of economic integration.

There are limits to what such cooperation can accomplish, however. Economic connectivity can make an important contribution even where political questions remain unresolved, but it cannot answer those political questions by itself. This is especially relevant in the Palestinian case. Regional integration could support reconstruction, investment, mobility, and wider economic opportunity, but its impact would be stronger if it develops alongside progress on governance, security, movement, and political representation.

Gaza makes the point clearly: rebuilding physical infrastructure is essential, but the durability of that reconstruction will depend on the wider political and security framework.

The opposite conclusion would also be mistaken: regional cooperation cannot wait until every political conflict is settled. Transport, energy, academic, and professional cooperation can proceed in areas where interests overlap, even while deeper disputes continue. The challenge is to distinguish between questions that can be managed through institutions and those that remain fundamentally political.

This distinction should also change how the IMEC is judged. Investment figures, railway construction, port capacity, and trade volumes will show whether the corridor is expanding. They will not tell us whether a durable regional system has emerged. A more revealing test will come when political relations deteriorate. If technical agencies continue working, commercial disputes remain manageable, and alternative routes can operate without requiring a new diplomatic agreement, then cooperation will have acquired institutional depth.

The Middle East has produced many ambitious plans for regional cooperation. Their weakness has often appeared after the political moment that created them passed. The IMEC offers an opportunity to approach integration differently. Its most important contribution may ultimately be less visible than the ports, railways and trade flows associated with it. If it helps create working relationships and institutional habits that continue when politics becomes difficult, it will have added something that the region has often lacked: cooperation that does not have to start again from zero every time the political climate changes.

Dr. Ahmed Abdrabou is an associate professor of international politics at the Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs and the associate director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 8 October, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

Original publication: https://english.ahram.org.eg/UI/Front/Inner.aspx?NewsContentID=578309