The US is doubling down on efforts to increase interconnectivity between the Middle East and global markets through energy infrastructure.
"More interconnection creates more interdependency that then leads to more security," the Biden administration's special presidential co-ordinator for energy security, Amos Hochstein, told the IISS Manama Dialogue in Bahrain on 19 November. "When you build infrastructure, physical connectivity between countries, it's not only that it supports in peacetime by creating efficiencies, but it also creates additional cost of conflict the countries have to worry about."
Hochstein was responding to a question on whether the conflict between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas had derailed US plans for further economic integration between the Arab world and Israel. Prior to Hamas' 7 October attack on Israel, the US was leading negotiations to normalise relations between between Saudi Arabia and Israel. These efforts received a major boost in September when the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) project was announced at the G20 summit in New Delhi. The subsequent attacks by Hamas "aimed to disrupt a potential normalisation of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia sought by Riyadh", President Biden said last month.
Physical interconnectivity creates an additional cost of conflict, according to Hochstein. Countries "suddenly need [to account] for the cost of conflict. Not just the human cost... there's going to be a price cost too," he said. "When you have a pipeline and you cut it off, then it is a relationship that will cost you the replacement costs, which will always be higher."
In the context of the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel, Hochstein said he believes adding more connectivity and infrastructure could form part of some sort of "mutual assured destruction" solution in the future. "There has been a [gas] field that was discovered offshore Gaza that the Palestinians should be able to develop as well," he said. "Part of the lessons here is that we have to put more attention to accelerate when this war is over to bring a platform there."
Regarding his latest trip to Lebanon, Hochstein said the visit was not about offshore gas fields. "It was about right now we cannot afford an escalation of this conflict into another front. And my conversations in Lebanon mirrored the conversations we're having in Israel as well."
Concerns that the conflict in Gaza could spill over onto the wider region bolstered oil prices last month, as tensions mount between Israel and Lebanon's Iran-aligned Hezbollah group across the border. But prices have since eased.
"Yes we have violence now. It is relatively measured and contained. We have to keep it that way," Hochstein said. "That is what we have said. We [the US] are not going to be dragged into war anywhere."
