The war that the United States and Israel launched against Iran in February has brought Iranian missiles and drones down on the Gulf and choked shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. It would be easy to conclude that the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, the ambitious plan to link India to Europe through the Gulf and the eastern Mediterranean, must wait for calmer times.

Eli Bar-On – co-founder and chief executive officer of MENA2050, a non-profit based in London and Brussels that promotes cooperation across the Middle East and North Africa – thinks the opposite. Asked whether Europe should invest in the corridor, he answers: “The Old Continent should do that not in spite of the region’s instability but because of it.”

The corridor, known as IMEC, was launched at the G20 summit in New Delhi in September 2023 by India, the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the European Union and three of its member states: France, Germany and Italy. Under the plan, goods would travel from India by sea to the Gulf, by rail across Saudi Arabia and Jordan to Israel’s Mediterranean coast, and by sea again to Europe. Less than a month after the launch came the Hamas attack of 7 October. Without it, MENA2050’s CEO argues, IMEC would be much further along.

Bar-On, a former senior legal official in the Israeli government, speaks to L’Europeista on a sunny late-September day in Rome, at the Euro-Gulf Information Centre, on the sidelines of a closed-door seminar at which he is the keynote speaker.

Eli Bar-On interviewed by Piercamillo Falasca at the Euro-Gulf Information Centre

His case rests on interdependence. A corridor that binds economies together, he argues, gives every government along the route a reason to keep the peace. “IMEC could be a very pragmatic tool for stabilising the region,” he says. Europe, Bar’On notes, has its own reasons to care. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 it had to replace Russian energy; now Gulf supplies are at risk too, from energy to aluminium. The Middle East accounts for about a fifth of Europe’s primary aluminium imports. A more prosperous Middle East, he adds, would also mean less irregular migration.

The European Union, he argues, understands this but struggles to act on it. The war in Ukraine absorbs much of Brussels’s attention, and after the wars in the Middle East officials wanted to stabilise the region first and think about connectivity later. “I personally believe that they should do both at the same time.” He would also change the way Europe makes its case. Brussels speaks the language of values, which he shares, but with countries that “might have other values, other ideologies,” he says, “you should speak to them in the language of interests.“

Italy, in his view, has invested more in the project than any other government. Rome appointed a special envoy for the corridor, Ambassador Francesco Maria Talò, whom Bar-On calls “one of the finest diplomats this country has,” and set up a small IMEC team at the Foreign Ministry. He praises a March gathering at the port of Trieste that brought together diplomats, business and civil society. Above all, he continues, Italy is on good terms with every IMEC partner, from Israel and the Gulf monarchies to India and the United States.

The main obstacle, according to Bar-On, lies in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia is hesitant while a war involving Israel continues, and it wants to see Israel move on the Palestinian question. Yet the kingdom needs the corridor to diversify its economy and deliver its Vision 2030 reforms. “The interests for the Saudis to be part of that are still there.”

He acknowledges that, “between the lines,” IMEC was conceived as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. He sees them as complementary: one is run from Beijing, the other starts in India. “If we learn something, it’s that we always need more redundancy, more optionality,” he says. There will be enough trade for both, he argues, putting its growth at five to 10 per cent a year. The World Trade Organization is far less optimistic: its March forecast for merchandise trade this year was 1.9 per cent.

On security, Bar-On believes a regional alliance already exists, though undeclared, linking Israel, the UAE, India, Greece and Cyprus. He cites reports that Israel sent an air-defence battery and soldiers to protect the Emirates from Iranian attacks. By contrast, the pact signed in Mecca in August by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan looks to him “more performative than something really operational,” because, he argues, Pakistan and Turkey offered no real help when Saudi Arabia came under attack.

The CEO of MENA2050 also rejects a narrative he often hears: that Iran is winning the war. “The fact that they can still launch missiles or resist does not mean they’re winning,” he says, pointing to a struggling economy, a divided political system and allies, from Hezbollah to Hamas, far weaker than three years ago. The Israeli manager goes further: “Eventually my belief is that Iran will also be integrated into the region.” How and when is too early to tell, he concedes, “but there’s no doubt in my mind it’s happening.“

In the long run, Bar-On sees a place on the corridor for Iraq and Iran as well. “I always say it’s like the human body,” he says. “We have arteries, we have veins, we have capillaries. Every organ in our body needs blood.“