How will I2U2 (India, Israel, UAE and USA) grouping transform India’s position in global politics?

I2U2 — India, Israel, the UAE and the USA — emerged from a foreign ministers' meeting in October 2021 and held its first leaders' summit in July 2022. Dubbed the West Asian Quad, it concentrates on six areas: water, energy, transportation, space, health and food security.

How it can transform India's global position

• Minilateralism as method: India moves beyond bloc politics into agile, issue-based coalitions, consolidating strategic autonomy in practice.
• De-hyphenation matured: after the Abraham Accords (2020), India engages Israel and the Gulf simultaneously and openly — diplomatically impossible a decade earlier.
• Concrete economic stakes: the UAE committed 2 billion dollars for integrated food parks in India, and a 300 MW hybrid wind-solar project in Gujarat was announced, embedding India in regional food and energy security value chains.
• Connectivity springboard: the I2U2 logic fed into the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor announced at the 2023 G20 Summit in Delhi.
• A rare four-way complementarity: American capital and technology, Israeli innovation, Emirati finance, and Indian scale, market and skilled manpower — with India as the demographic and manufacturing pivot.
• It deepens ties with a region hosting over eight million Indians and supplying a large share of India's energy and remittances.

Caveats

• The Gaza conflict since October 2023 has slowed the grouping's momentum and tested its resilience.
• India must simultaneously balance ties with Iran (Chabahar) and its traditional support for the Palestinian cause, and guard against a delivery deficit.

I2U2 signals India's arrival as a shaping power in West Asia's geoeconomics. Whether the promise outlives the region's turbulence depends on visible delivery of its flagship projects.