Interview: India’s main strategy for West Asia in ‘past tense’, US will remain key player

It may be premature to talk about what happens to the Gulf after the US-Israel war on Iran. But that doesn’t mean officials and analysts connected to the Gulf haven’t begun thinking about what comes next.

“There’s the belief in the Gulf that, after the war, it’s impossible to come back to the status quo that prevailed before,” says Jean-Loup Samaan, senior research fellow at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore and a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the Institut Montaigne. “In the short-term, it seems clear that the six Gulf states are not going to revise their arrangements with the US… They are faced with a difficult reality: There is no external partner that can replace the Americans, and they don’t have sufficient indigenous capabilities to tell the Americans, ‘we don’t need you anymore. We’re going to handle our security.’”

Embedded within that scenario planning is the question of which actors – including South Asian ones – are going to be important players in calculations on either side of the Gulf over the next decade.

“One interesting and unanticipated development is this revived role of Pakistan [though] it has its limitations,” says Samaan. “I would see the mediation of Pakistan in this conflict in a negative light actually. What it represents is a lack of critical actors when it comes to this conflict. Because China was reluctant to play a major role. We saw that they barely invested in mediation. They came up with a very general five-point plan. Russia cannot play that role. The Europeans cannot, because they are considered too weak or too close to the US. So, the only actors left were regional actors.”

As for New Delhi: “One of the reasons that the Gulf states have difficulties seeing India as a credible strategic player is that India maintains confusion regarding its priorities in the Middle East… there is no Indian narrative for its regional policy.”

Much of Samaan’s research speaks directly to the current moment. He is a former research advisor at the NATO Defense College and associate professor in strategic studies with the United Arab Emirates National Defense College. He is the author of New Military Strategies in the Gulf: The Mirage of Autonomy in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. He has a forthcoming volume on the history of Israel’s military strategy.

And, as recently as December 2025, Samaan wrote a piece for the Atlantic Council titled, “Is India losing clout in the Gulf?” – presaging some of the debates now consuming India about what Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s heavy investment in the Gulf has brought the country, alongside the surprising role being played by Pakistan, which New Delhi has long sought to isolate internationally (note External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s recent comment about India not being a “dalal nation” unlike its next-door neighbour).

I spoke to Samaan the day after news of the ceasefire broke to talk about his analysis of what comes after this war, no matter how the negotiations go, why the UAE-Saudi rift and Iran’s desire to isolate Abu Dhabi will play a big role in regional calculations, and why he thinks IMEC (and therefore India’s main strategic idea for the region) is in the “past tense”.

It feels like all of your research really brings us to this moment – the strategic planning of Gulf states and the “mirage of autonomy”, the involvement of Asian and especially South Asian powers, how Israel plays into it. I wanted to start off with the big picture. Any initial thoughts about the ceasefire?

There are a lot of unknowns. It’s unclear if it can hold with regards to Lebanon. What is clear to me is that this US administration is desperate to find an honourable exit. Apart from that, right now, the Iranian regime feels emboldened, confident that it has the upper hand. And that means probably very strong demands from them.

The ceasefire is a positive development, especially for civilian populations. But diplomatically, militarily, there’s a lot – if not everything – that is unanswerable right now.

Are there misconceptions, things that everyone – especially the media – is getting wrong about this conflict, about this moment?

There are some problems with any media coverage of a conflict. The first one is that the news cycle is always hungry for the latest developments. If a conflict lasts more than two weeks these days, it’s called a “quagmire” That’s a major analytical mistake, because, apart from limited wars with one technical goal, there are no conflicts in history that last only a few days.

The second – and this is not just the media, I include everyone on this – we tend to listen to Trump instead of focusing on what is actually happening on the battlefield. If you look at the last two-three weeks, everything in terms of the news cycle was chasing Trump’s statements. The crazier the statement, the more central it was to news coverage.

As a result, it felt like there was nothing going on in terms of airstrikes, military activities. We almost forgot about the deployment of ground forces, about the speculation of occupation of islands.

There’s a phenomenon around the communication of Trump that makes everyone almost forget that those words are not the main thing. The main thing is actually the military action, which was in many ways unprecedented in terms of the intensity of the firepower that the Americans deployed against Iran.

You are one of the few folks who is not only commenting on the Gulf, but you spent time there – teaching at the UAE National Defense College from 2016-2021 – you’ve studied it closely. Has coverage of the Gulf been too simplistic?

Yes. Especially in the first few weeks, there was all this interest in the Western media, that was connected to all the misconceptions that you usually hear, about Dubai in particular. A lot of the media coverage of Iranian missile and drone attacks on the Gulf almost read like a cautionary tale, a way for the Western commentators to say, “look, we always knew that Dubai was unsustainable, now we have the ultimate evidence”.

I didn’t feel there was a strong understanding, apart from those who were from or based in the region, of the social and psychological impact the war has had on Gulf citizens and residents. And that’s something that will last beyond the war.

That takes us to the after. You’ve thought about this and written about it at length. You’ve pointed out that the “Gulf” encompasses multiple players with independent approaches. In light of the ceasefire –which didn’t really seem to mention the interest of the Gulf – what does the after look like from various Gulf capitals?

In the short-term, it seems clear that the six Gulf states are not going to revise their arrangements with the US. I say in the short-term because the security situation is such that they have no credible options. Even though they didn’t want this war, even though they don’t really trust the US administrations, in general, and particularly this one, they are faced with a difficult reality: There is no external partner that can replace the Americans, and they don’t have sufficient indigenous capabilities to tell the Americans, “we don’t need you anymore. We’re going to handle our security.”

So, in the short-term, I think they will keep it this way. Some of them, in particular the UAE, will even deepen security arrangements with the US, thinking that that’s the most viable strategy.

Then – and this I have no proof of, this is purely speculation – some of these countries might be interested in reducing the public display of US presence. The countries with the biggest American military presence – like Kuwait, like Qatar, and not in the next six months but in the next two to five years – they might reduce the permanent presence will maintaining military cooperation like training and procurement.

I live in Singapore, so this is an example I have in mind. Singapore is a close partner of the US and has lots of military initiatives with the US, but there is no US military base in Singapore. Some Gulf states might be tempted to follow that model among others.

As you said, one thing for sure is, I don’t believe we’ll see closer coordination among the six member states of the GCC. After the initial expression of solitary among them, very quickly we saw explicitly different ways of conducting foreign policy. If you look at Oman, the UAE, these are very different foreign policies, and this will remain the case even after the ceasefire.

After the Israeli airstrike on Qatar in 2025, there was a sense that the fear in the region was what happens in a period where the US withdraws and the region has, to some extent, Israeli hegemony. Has that been complicated now by how resilient Iran has been in this war, and how it has emerged, especially with its control over Hormuz? From a more scholarly point of view, now, what is the security architecture of the region?

To be blunt, there is no security architecture. It’s an intellectual construct. We don’t have any robust mechanism to manage the conflicts of the Gulf, and I can even extend that to the Middle East. The only credible actor at a regional level – the GCC – has never been able to solve internal disputes among its members. The case in point being the blockade of Qatar from 2017 to 2020. As a result, you don’t have a security architecture. Each of the states has its own foreign policy arrangements, with the US, with China, with India. There’s no coordination of these types of relations. And it’s the same at the regional level – with Iran, with Israel. It’s six different foreign policies.

You have the UAE, which is an exception on this, which has very open, very dense relations with Israel. But that’s it. Even Bahrain, which recognised Israel [in the Abraham Accords], has lesser, more discrete relations with Israel. The rest of the Gulf states have been very reluctant, to this day, to recognise Israel.

So, for many reasons and unfortunately, we can’t talk of a security architecture.

I was going back to a piece from 2014 that you wrote, called “The Ties that Do Not Bind”, which talks about the limits of South Asia-Gulf rapprochement, primarily Pakistan and India’s involvement with the Gulf. Last year, you wrote about India “losing clout” in the Gulf. I have been a bit surprised at how central of a role Pakistan is playing in this, and I’m curious how you see that.

I also share your surprise. Ten years ago, the impression in the Gulf was very different. In 2016, remember, Pakistan had decided not to join the Saudi coalition in Yemen, and as a result, relations were quite difficult between the Saudis, the Emiratis and Pakistan. Everything then was about India. Modi was just starting to be this “strong man” that the Gulf leaders loved. So if you take that forward, it looks very surprising.

But there are three elements to note. The first is the pact between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan last year, showing Pakistan was still able to maintain close ties with Riyadh. This is the specificity of the Pakistani political system. I suspect relations were difficult with the civilians, but not the Pakistani military. And the pact that was signed reflected that.

The second is the Trump effect. I don’t know if it is a well-designed strategy or a strategy by accident, but Trump found a way to create tensions with India, because of its ties to Russia, but while doing that he also restored the international image of Pakistan. When the chief of the Pakistani Army [Field Marshall Asim Munir] visited Washington, DC he had a meeting with Trump. There aren’t a lot of army chiefs that have had that honour. That has created fresh momentum for Pakistan.

The last, which complicates things for India is that there is pressure for Gulf states to distance themselves from Pakistan. There’s the belief that India is not at the moment a major power at the level of China or the US – maybe it will be in the future – but it is not at the moment, and so the Gulf states do not have to navigate its sensitivities. I think the Saudi-Pakistani pact was the first time that India went public and said something about Riyadh needing to be mindful of its sensitivities. But prior to that, the Gulf states honestly didn’t care how India would perceive their interactions with Pakistan or even China.

To go back to your point: One interesting and unanticipated development is this revived role of Pakistan. It has its limitations. I don’t think Pakistan can suddenly become a major actor, because it is still vulnerable, it still heavily depends on financial support from countries such as Saudi Arabia.

Is Pakistani involvement coming from a place of anxiety and necessity, that it will be dragged into this, given it already has a hot front with Afghanistan, and India on the other side? Remember, Pakistan and Iran were lobbing missiles at each other two years ago. Or is it coming out of a space of strength? Did the pact generate leverage that pushed Pakistan to be more involved?

Honestly, I don’t think the pact matters so much at the operational, military level. I don’t think the Saudis or Pakistanis would seriously consider a scenario where, even now with the conflict with Iran, you would have a situation where Pakistan sends troops to support Saudi Arabia. The pact had more meaning in signalling Saudi Arabia’s frustration with the US, the idea that Saudi Arabia has different options, and at the same time, that Pakistan is an actor that matters. I would almost disconnect the pact from mediation efforts.

I would see the mediation of Pakistan in this conflict in a negative light actually. What it represents is a lack of critical actors when it comes to this conflict. Because China was reluctant to play a major role. We saw that they barely invested in mediation. They came up with a very general five-point plan. Russia cannot play that role. The Europeans cannot, because they are considered too weak or too close to the US.

So, the only actors left were regional actors, which are in one way or another maintaining ties with different parts of this conflict: Turkey, Pakistan. But I don’t think this meant that Pakistan is getting stronger. It’s a situation where it’s difficult to find credible mediators, and we’ll have to see if the ceasefire holds. That’s also one of the reasons I’m sceptical about the current framework.

You’ve written – in December 2025, before this war – about how, in your “discussions with Gulf officials and intellectuals, India is rarely mentioned in their strategic equation”. I wanted to ask about Modi going to Israel right before the attacks began, and what has happened sense.

Is there a sense, from those you’re talking to, that India has picked a camp in the Gulf? And two, even more so now since the war, is there a sense that India is not relevant strategically, especially with Pakistan playing an important role?

The response would be very different from one Gulf state to another. Honestly, right now, the only Gulf state that considers India as a serious, credible strategy partner is the UAE. If you look at other countries – Saudi Arabia or Qatar – that they go beyond the idea that India is a trade partner that matters. Only the UAE, right now, has ambitions at the strategic level with India.

For the first part of the question, which was more about the perception of India in the region. One of the reasons that the Gulf states have difficulties seeing India as a credible strategic player is that India maintains confusion regarding its priorities in the Middle East. I can understand the bilateral relations of India with each of these countries – energy, trade, defence cooperation, it makes sense.

But there is no Indian narrative for its regional policy. And whether we like it or not, there is a China narrative for the Middle East – which is that, “we are not here to get into local disputes. We are here to make business, to sign trade deals, and that’s it. Mutual prosperity.” It has its limitations, but it is, I think a compelling narrative, especially after three years of war in the region.

The US has a narrative. It might not be popular these days, but it has one. I don’t see that for India. The only narrative I can find is this idea of multi-alignment. But multi-alignment doesn’t say much in terms of how you see the priorities for your foreign policy in the region. As a result, that undermines the perception of India as a strategic player that matters in the region.

That’s one of the reasons why countries like Saudi Arabia, don’t dismiss India, but they will politely ignore India in their strategic assessment.

To prod you on that, what do you make of IMEC – the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor? The idea that India can be pivotal with the Europeans, the Americans and the Israelis in bringing prosperity through logistical centrality. You don’t see that as the role of Indian strategy to the region?

It was. But I would use the past-tense. Because IMEC and I2U@ were initiatives mostly launched by the previous US administration, Biden’s presidency, with the idea that India was to become the new regional power that would help the US in building the security architecture that we were discussing.

Over the last year of the Trump presidency, there hasn’t been much on IMEC, apart from what the Europeans or the Indians or the Emiratis have said, there hasn’t been much. I honestly have the impression that this is no longer a topic in Washington. And with the latest conflict, even if we assume the war is over with Iran, I don’t think this will be the top priority.

A lot of this has nothing to do in a way with India, it has a lot to do with American politics and local politics. Keep in mind that IMEC was supposed to rely on both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Both of them have been distancing themselves from each other over the last two-three years. Even after this war, I doubt that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi will have warmer relations just because of IMEC.

That also complicates the initiatives where India was supposed to be a major player.

We noted, in fact, last year, when Trump visited the Gulf, he made no mention of IMEC. You mentioned the Saudi-UAE rift. You mentioned the UAE getting closer to the US. Pakistan in its messaging has not taken into account the UAE. How do you see, from a strategic standpoint, the right playing out – especially if Iran continues to control Hormuz?

The dispute between the UAE and Saudi Arabia is not a recent crisis. It is deeply rooted in the bilateral relations. There has always been suspicion between the ruling families in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. If you look at the history of relations between the two countries, they were more often difficult than easy. There was a honeymoon for almost 10 years between the moment Mohammad bin Salman became the crown prince in Riyadh and the last two years. This was mostly a marriage of convenience for several reasons that had to do with a common desire to put pressure on Qatar, Turkey… but that was it.

There were always lingering issues, border disputes, business competition, especially with Saudi desire to raise its profile as a place that attracts foreign investors. That’s not going to disappear.

One thing we can expect in the short term, is that they will try as much as possible to maintain that under the radar. There’s no appetite in either country to publicise and inflate this, to create a crisis. There might have been before the war, but for the moment, I think they will keep it under the radar. I’m not expecting there will be great relations, but at least they will try to manage those tensions away from the public eye.

Having said that, you mentioned Iran. One thing that is quite significant for the future of Gulf politics is that fact that Iran, during the war, tried as much as possible to isolate the UAE. For a while it was one of the biggest targets of Iranian attacks, and the narrative I heard many times in the region was that Iran targets the UAE, not just because it has US military presence, but because it has close ties with Israel.

This will also shape the evolution of Gulf politics. Because I can imagine the Iranian regime continuing with that strategy, even without military means. By propaganda, diplomatic rhetoric, other means, to push the idea that the UAE is destabilising the region, because it has those relations with Israel and the US. And this might feed the tensions among Gulf states.

With Iran flexing its muscles, its ability to under the very basis of these economies, and the understanding that Trump will eventually look away, or eventually there won’t be a Trump… what happens next? Are these states going to become little Spartas? Can they? Are they going to find a detente with Iran? In five years time, will we see a fundamental reshaping of the Gulf, or do you imagine it’ll go back to what it was, with a few arrangements on the margins?

It’s hard to say. In the short-term, I don’t expect major changes. But right now, there’s the belief in the Gulf that, after the war, it’s impossible to come back to the status quo that prevailed before. That has implications for relations with Iran and with the US. One thing we have to keep in mind, is that the US may leave, but Iran is still going to remain in the Gulf. That will constrain the strategic calculus.

Some of those Gulf states, particularly Oman and Qatar will try as much as possible to build ties with Iran, partly out of necessity. But at the end of the day, even when there was a deescalation process between Gulf states and Iran in the last five years, there was never any illusion that they could have good relations. If you look at the Saudi-Iranian deal of 2023, this was basically a non-aggression pact. Both states agreed to reopen their embassies but there was not much behind that.

What I see in coming years is the US will stay a significant player. But, in the case of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, there will probably be a great interest in strategic autonomy, meaning modernising their armed forces. But, if we exclude Saudi Arabia which is, in terms of size, the only strong, credible regional actor here, the rest are a collection of small states. Meaning, they have no strategic depth, limited demography, and as a result, it’s very difficult for them to consider their security without external partners.

Even in the case of the UAE, arrangements with foreign partners will remain key. They may diversify more and more. This means that this will be more volatile, more complex, but at the end of the day, I don’t see that in five years time, the US will be gone and these countries will rely on their own armed forces. I don’t think that’s their objective.

This article was first published on India Inside Out.