CDS (I) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 106 of 120

Correct — B, Israel, UAE and USA. The grouping is the I2U2 — two I's for India and Israel, two U's for the United Arab Emirates and the United States — and it is nicknamed the Middle Eastern Quad or the West Asian Quad after the older Indo-Pacific Quad of India, the United States, Japan and Australia. It was formed in October 2021, when the four foreign ministers met following the Abraham Accords that had normalised relations between Israel and the UAE, and it was pitched as an economic rather than a security grouping, with joint investment in water, energy, transport, space, health and food security. Its first leaders' summit, held virtually, came on 14 July 2022 — three months after this paper was set, which is why the item was framed as a recently formed grouping rather than around any summit outcome.

• (a)Egypt, Saudi Arabia and USA — Egypt and Saudi Arabia are not in it. Both matter enormously in West Asian diplomacy, and Egypt does appear in the later India-Israel-UAE-Egypt trade conversation, but the grouping known as the Middle East Quad is fixed at India, Israel, the UAE and the United States.
• (c)Egypt, UAE and UK — Gets the UAE right and everything else wrong. Neither Egypt nor the United Kingdom is a member, and any grouping of this kind formed after the Abraham Accords necessarily has Israel in it.
• (d)Israel, Saudi Arabia and UK — Israel belongs, but Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom do not. Saudi Arabia had not normalised relations with Israel, which is precisely why it was not part of a grouping built on the Abraham Accords.

Minilateral groupings — small, purpose-built and outside any treaty organisation — have become the main vehicle of Indian diplomacy in the last decade. The Quad in the Indo-Pacific is the best known. The I2U2 applies the same idea to West Asia, pairing India's market and manufacturing base with Israeli technology, Emirati capital and American convening power. It followed the Abraham Accords of 2020 and belongs to a wider pattern of India deepening ties with the Gulf, alongside the India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement signed in February 2022 and later the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor announced at the 2023 G20 summit in New Delhi.

The question is answered by unpacking the nickname. If a grouping is called a Quad it has four members, and if India is named separately then three remain; if it is a Middle East Quad and it was formed after the Abraham Accords, Israel and the UAE are almost forced, and the fourth is the power that brokered those accords. That reasoning lands on option (b) without needing to have read the October 2021 press release. The distractors are built from countries that sound plausible in West Asian diplomacy — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom — and the discriminating fact is normalisation with Israel: Saudi Arabia had not normalised, and Egypt, though it had done so decades earlier, was never part of this particular four. Since the exam the group has been referred to by its formal name I2U2 rather than by the nickname, and it is worth being able to answer to either.

• The I2U2 Group consists of India, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
• It is also called the Middle Eastern Quad or the West Asian Quad, by analogy with the Indo-Pacific Quad.
• It was formed in October 2021 at a meeting of the four foreign ministers, after the Abraham Accords normalised Israel-UAE relations.
• The first leaders' summit was held virtually on 14 July 2022.
• Its declared focus is economic — water, energy, transport, space, health and food security — rather than defence.

• Putting Saudi Arabia in the group. It had not normalised relations with Israel and is not a member.
• Confusing the I2U2 with the Indo-Pacific Quad, whose other three members are the United States, Japan and Australia.
• Treating the I2U2 as a defence pact. Its declared agenda is investment and economic cooperation.

As a name-the-members item, as a what-does-this-acronym-stand-for question, or as a statements question on the grouping's focus areas.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The I2U2 grouping consists of India and which one of the following sets of countries?

  • (a)Iran, the United Kingdom and the United States
  • (b)Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United States
  • (c)Indonesia, the United Kingdom and Uzbekistan
  • (d)Israel, the United Kingdom and Ukraine

  Answer(b) Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United States — two I's and two U's, formed in October 2021.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Abraham Accords of 2020 normalised relations between Israel and

  • (a)Saudi Arabia and Qatar
  • (b)the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain
  • (c)Egypt and Jordan
  • (d)Turkey and Iran

  Answer(b) the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — Egypt and Jordan had normalised relations decades earlier, in 1979 and 1994.