By Inderjit Badhwar
There are moments in geopolitics when a single crisis exposes the architecture beneath the global system. Operation Epic Fury appears to be one of those moments. What began as a violent escalation between Israel, the United States, and Iran has quickly evolved into something much larger: a test of the economic and strategic structures that underpin the modern world.
For decades, West Asia has been understood primarily through the lens of energy security. Oil flows from the Gulf powered industrial economies from Europe to Asia, and the Strait of Hormuz became the narrow hinge on which that system turned. Yet, the events of the past weeks suggest that the region’s significance is changing. The contest is no longer simply about oil supply. It is increasingly about the infrastructure that moves goods, capital, and influence across continents.
That shift forms the core of our cover story this week.
India’s position in the current crisis illustrates the delicate balance emerging powers must maintain in a fragmented world. New Delhi has long pursued a policy of strategic autonomy—carefully avoiding rigid alliances while cultivating relationships across rival blocs. The approach has served India well, allowing it to maintain close defence ties with Israel, economic engagement with Iran, and expanding partnerships with the Gulf states and the West. But the war has revealed the limits of sitting on the sidelines.
India’s economic exposure to the conflict is immediate and tangible. Roughly two-thirds of its oil imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz. When that route becomes unstable, inflationary pressure and energy insecurity follow quickly. Meanwhile, New Delhi’s carefully cultivated strategic investment at Chabahar port in Iran—a project designed to open a trade corridor into Central Asia and beyond—now faces uncertainty as sanctions waivers approach expiration.
Yet, crises rarely produce only losses. They also create openings.
One of the most striking developments since the conflict began is the renewed urgency around the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), first announced during India’s G20 presidency in 2023. For years, the project was treated as a promising, but distant vision. Today, it looks increasingly like a strategic necessity. By bypassing chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Suez Canal, the corridor offers an alternative pathway connecting Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
At the same time, India remains deeply invested in another major connectivity framework: the International North-South Transport Corridor linking India with Russia, Iran, and Central Asia. If the geopolitical environment eventually stabilises, Iran sits at the geographic centre of both networks.
This dual position places India in a unique strategic category. Few countries possess both the geographic logic and the diplomatic reach to anchor multiple Eurasian corridors simultaneously. Whether India chooses to actively shape these routes—or merely adapt to them—will influence its role in the global economy for decades.
The crisis also reveals vulnerabilities elsewhere. China’s decade-long effort to build influence in West Asia through infrastructure investment and energy partnerships has depended heavily on a stable relationship with Iran. Discounted Iranian oil has fed Chinese refineries, while Tehran served as a key node in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
But Beijing’s strategy contains a structural contradiction. China’s economic ties with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are significantly larger than its trade with Iran. That reality limits how far Beijing can go in defending Tehran without jeopardising relationships that underpin its own economic ambitions in the Gulf.
In other words, economic entanglement alone cannot replace geopolitical leverage.
This is the deeper lesson of the current conflict. Power in the twenty-first century is increasingly expressed not only through military alliances or resource control, but through infrastructure. Ports, railways, logistics corridors, digital networks—these are the arteries of global commerce, and whoever shapes them shapes the flow of the world economy.
What we are witnessing in West Asia is therefore not simply a war. It is the beginning of a competition over the architecture of global connectivity.
The coming decade may well be defined by the race between rival corridor systems: China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, and the International North-South Transport Corridor. Each represents a different vision of how trade will move across Eurasia. Each carries political as well as economic implications.
For India, the stakes are particularly high. The country stands at the intersection of these emerging routes, with growing manufacturing capacity, expanding trade relationships with Europe, and a diaspora network deeply embedded across the Gulf. The ingredients for a larger strategic role are already present.
The question, as our cover story asks, is whether India’s foreign policy machinery can move quickly enough to seize the moment.
Geopolitical opportunities rarely last long. They appear in the narrow windows created by crisis and transition. Operation Epic Fury may be one of those moments—when the balance of power, trade, and infrastructure across Eurasia begins to shift.
If that is the case, the world may soon discover that the most consequential battles of this conflict are not only being fought in the skies over West Asia, but also along the corridors that will carry the next generation of global commerce.
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