Can India, as part of G20, help calm things down in West Asia?

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The world woke up on Friday to news of an Israeli missile attack in Iran’s Isfahan region, where some of its nuclear facilities are located. There are competing claims about the scale of attack and extent of the damage. This comes weeks after soaring tensions between the two countries.

The situation in West Asia has witnessed a step-by-step escalation since Oct 7, 2023. The Hamas attack blind-sided the vaunted Israeli intelligence and defence establishments and led to nearly 1,200 Israelis being killed and more than 200 taken hostage. Assessed by Israel as the largest single day loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, it was a major escalation compared to periodic Israel-Hamas skirmishes since 2008. Israel’s response, to “restore deterrence”, has involved another cycle of escalation with now six months of military action resulting in more than 30,000 killed and more than a million Palestinians displaced in Gaza.

Despite the US locating two aircraft carrier battle groups in the Eastern Mediterranean, there has been regional escalation with Houthis attacking and disrupting shipping through the Red Sea, and Hezbollah firing rockets and drones leading to displacement of nearly 70,000 Israelis from the northern part of the country. Israel’s actions against Hezbollah have progressed deeper from southern Lebanon bordering areas. The US and UK have mobilised “Operation Prosperity Guardian”, with several other partner countries, and carried out attacks against Houthi infrastructure.
Assessing Iranian enabling support to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, Israel took another step of lethally attacking several Iran’s Revolutionary Guard commanders at  Iranian consulate premises in Damascus. This was seen by Iran as an attack on its “sovereign territory”, a notch higher than the earlier Israeli attacks on its personnel and supplies to Hezbollah through Syria and in Lebanon. Iran’s response, through 300 drones, 30 cruise missiles and more than 100 ballistic missiles, was the first direct state level attack on Israel since the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when it had been attacked by Egypt and Syria. Israel’s decisive military victories against different coalitions of Arab States in 1948, 1967 and 1973, had led to peace agreements with Egypt in 1979, and Jordan in 1994. The Abraham Accords in 2020 had led to diplomatic relations between Israel and UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Morocco. Israel now retaliated with a “limited strike”, targeting Isfahan, signalling capacity to penetrate Iranian air defence.

Whether or not there is any further escalation, the potential will remain so long as the current Israel-Hamas conflict is not on the path of de-escalation. There does not appear to be any imminent prospect of that. Negotiations for a six-week ceasefire have stalled for weeks, despite intense mediation by the US, Egypt and Qatar. Israel has set for itself the objective of eliminating Hamas presence in Gaza. Despite six months of effort, several thousand Hamas fighters are still assessed to be active, with their presence concentrated in Rafah in southern Gaza, so far beyond Israel’s reach. This has led to intense international scrutiny and concern over potential large-scale civilian deaths.

US experience in Afghanistan with the Taliban, and Israel’s own experience of occupation with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon from 1982-2000 should caution any expectation of rooting out Hamas. Israel’s opposition to a revitalised non-Hamas Palestinian Authority governing Gaza and declared international opposition to reoccupation of Gaza by Israel are complicating the prospects of post-conflict arrangements. Buy in by Arab countries, for post conflict large-scale reconstruction in Gaza, may require a sense of movement towards a two-state solution. However, the current ruling coalition in Israel is opposed to any such solution, and Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently, since the mid-1990s, worked to undermine any such prospect. Politics in Israel has shifted gradually to the right, with their own perception that sections of Palestinians are not reconciled to the existence of Israel and have opposed compromises in the past. The large-scale Hamas attack in October, and the preparation it revealed, will also strengthen the arguments of those concerned about security threats to Israel from a fully sovereign Palestinian entity.

Despite perceptions about its relative decline in global context, and intense debates about its extended international engagements, the US is the only major power active in seeking some way forward from the crisis. It is engaged with Israel, Arab countries, and through intermediaries, with Iran and Hamas. However, its influence has been revealed to be limited, with Netanyahu not heeding suggestions, Iran not dissuaded from attacking Israel directly, and Hamas not accepting several proposals for hostage release.

The crisis has potentially wider ramifications on energy prices, shipping in the Gulf and Red Sea, and security of migrant workers, including 8 million Indians, in the Gulf. A case in point is the seizure of an Israel-linked container ship with 17 Indian crew members by Iran near the Strait of Hormuz last week.  The time has perhaps come for a wider effort. As China, Russia and the US have so far worked to thwart each other’s initiatives at the UN, the G20 troika of Brazil, India and South Africa should explore if they can move the needle, along with a group of non-P5 G20 members from Europe and Arab countries. This could be a good test of whether the G20 is indeed the premier global organisation today that it often claims to be.

Arun K Singh is former Indian Ambassador to US, France and Israel

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