Jaishankar, on a two-day visit to Bahrain from Saturday, touched upon various issues, including how to prevent conflicts from spreading further, the importance of key connectivity projects and the need to improve the security situation in the region.
“In recent times, for all of us, the relationship or absence of it between Israel and Iran has been particularly a source of concern, so some of our diplomatic efforts have focused on that particular aspect,” he said.
There have been mounting global concerns over escalating tensions between Iran and Israel in the last few months.
In October, Iran fired around 200 missiles into Israel in response to Israel’s killing of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and other commanders of the Lebanese militant outfit. Israel subsequently retaliated against the Iranian strikes.
Talking about the importance of West Asia for New Delhi, the external affairs minister also highlighted India’s sustained economic growth. “India is today almost a USD 4 trillion economy, (and) we expect to comfortably double that this decade. Our trade is today around USD 800 billion, that too should at least double this decade,” he said. “So I again cannot overstate the stakes that we have because this region is the immediate for us the world beyond our borders that immediately awaits us,” he said.
In his remarks, Jaishankar also referred to the situation in the Red Sea and said the security domain is a key area for strategic regional cooperation.
“And we have had very significant security challenges in this area with a very deep and disastrous impact for trade in Asia,” he said.
“So when we look at the diversion of maritime routes and the insurance costs, and the shipping costs and the container costs and the delay that it has imposed, obviously, you know, India, but not just India, we have an interest in trying to mitigate that situation,” he added.
In view of the volatile situation in the Red Sea, shipments were diverted to other routes that had increased the cost of transportation significantly.
The external affairs minister also briefly spoke about India’s naval presence in the region.
“We have actually had a naval presence in this region in the Gulf of Aden, Somalia, Northern Arabian Sea. Over the year it’s been roughly about 30 ships, the peak was about 12 ships at one point of time which were deployed there,” he said.
“And in the last year, we have actually responded to 24 actual incidents, escorted 250 ships, rescued 120 crew members. So we are making our contributions, we (are) working in tandem with Operation Prosperity Guardian. We have our own nationally named operation,” he said.
‘Operation Prosperity Guardian’ is a US-led military mission that was launched late last year to jointly address security challenges in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Jaishankar said India intends to increase its bilateral exercise both in the Gulf with its partners as well as in the Mediterranean.
“So in the Gulf, I think the Gulf countries have been our fairly regular partners by now and in almost every case we have seen an uptick in our shared activities,” he said.
“In the Mediterranean, particularly, apart from Israel, with Greece, with Egypt, we have had significant exercises this year,” he added.
