Nasrallah’s death is an extraordinary blow to Iran’s regional apparatus of influence. Given his unprecedented prominence in the pantheon of Iranian resistance leaders, Nasrallah’s assassination is more than a major loss for Iran. General Qassem Soleimani of the Revolutionary Guard in 2020, and Ismail Haniyeh, the political head of Hamas, earlier this year.

Iran’s rapid depletion of strategic human resources in the ‘Axis of Resistance’ is bound to set in motion a regional realignment, as Tehran has been the only significant opponent of pro-Israel escalation in Middle East politics in recent years. So what do these developments mean for India’s own Middle East policy?

Over the past decade, India’s bet in the Middle East has been to capitalize on a near-revolution in the foreign policies of the Gulf Arab states that reflect their efforts to diversify economically away from their overdependence on oil. does The economic and strategic opportunities that have opened up for India in view of the restoration of the Gulf with Israel in the Abraham Accords culminated in the India-Middle East Economic Corridor in September last year when Riyadh was also teasing normalization with Israel.

Even as the Saudis are now publicly shying away from such possibilities, the broader economic justification for underwriting their new vision for the region continues. Israel’s war in Gaza, despite killing more than 40,000 people, has not changed. As a result, India has sought out willing partners in states like the United Arab Emirates – with whom it now cooperates on nuclear energy and on which it can push forward the first maritime leg of IMEEC. , and even new bilateral military exercises with Saudi Arabia.

The result of this reset has been a closer relationship with Israel, particularly through new regional structures such as I2U2. Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations, even as news of Nasrallah’s death emerged, showed how much Israel itself recognizes and rewards him – Bibi held up a map that labeled IMEEC as a “curse”. ” rendered as “blessing” as opposed to (Iran, Iraq, Syria). For Israel, the silence of the Gulf Arab states betrays their uneasiness with their plans for October 7. Israel is patient as it flattens Gaza, allowing the U.S. to dangle more carrots than sticks to curb regional tensions — one of which is a key Washington-Riyadh defense deal that at least one A decade ago, the prospect was unbearable for Israel.

Naturally, the Iranian card in the Middle East is detrimental to India. Even as Tehran and New Delhi continue to focus on the development of Chabahar, Iran’s value in India’s strategic calculus has declined, leaving India under historic pressure from Western sanctions on anything Iran does and the international North-South. The struggle for transport corridors has increased in pace. Few things are more emblematic of this than New Delhi’s rebuke of Khamenei’s criticism of India earlier this September, which was markedly more public and aggressive than his silence on the Iranian ambassador in the past.

Lebanon’s new theater, however, is more novel. Gulf Arab states have historically been influential and directly involved in Lebanon-Israel politics – Hezbollah’s initial rise was made possible by the Riyadh-brokered Taif Accords of 1989, which left all groups, But disarmed Hezbollah. Even as the GCC and the Arab League designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization as of 2016, these capitals have been sensitive to developments in Lebanon (as in Yemen). Their interest in a multi-ethnic Lebanese state had to be balanced between Israel’s historic military threat (with the memory of two invasions) and expanding Iranian influence through Hezbollah. Now, with the first acting against the other, it only catalyzes an Arab reset. A post-Gaza cease-fire in the Middle East, without a powerful Hezbollah, would give these states a better bargaining position in negotiating a sustainable regional peace with Iran – shaped by the Riyadh-Tehran pact in 2023. is evident from the correlation of

For India at the moment, a weaker Iranian axis of resistance means fewer sources of disruption to its plans for greater regional connectivity. without requiring a change in his traditional principled support for the two-state solution. India believes that the Palestinian issue can be resolved through Arab-Israeli dialogue, without any third party interfering. The joker in the pack, however, is the ability of organized resistance groups such as Hezbollah to continue attacks against Israel through more guerilla tactics, with the potential for a seasonal conflict. Despite constant firefights with Israel since October 8, 2023, Hezbollah under Nasrallah has maintained increasing control, eschewing promises of ground war – one of Nasrallah’s speeches on November 3. Permanent feature. The normal engagement that the two sides had settled into has now broken down, and the resistance cadres are now left to operate more erratically. As a column in this newspaper previously wrote, “Israel’s actions are not self-defense, they are almost motivated by apocalypticism, as if chaos and destruction will create its own security.”

Bashir Ali Abbas is a Research Associate at the Council for Strategic and Defense Research, New Delhi. The views expressed are personal.