Railways for Regional Peace
What Is Being Built
In 2018, Israel proposed a high-speed rail network called ‘Railways for Regional Peace’, connecting the Gulf states through Jordan to Israel’s Mediterranean ports1.
A May 2025 paper from the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University confirms that this Israeli rail project became the template for a much larger initiative: the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, or IMEC2.
IMEC runs by sea from Indian ports to the Gulf, then by rail across Saudi Arabia, through Jordan, and into the Israeli port of Haifa. From Haifa, cargo crosses the Mediterranean to Greece or Italy and onward into Europe. Alongside the rail lines run electricity cables, hydrogen pipelines, and high-speed fibre optic cables.
Every flow passes through Israel. There is no bypass in the corridor’s design.
In September 2024, Prime Minister Netanyahu stood at the UN General Assembly podium holding two maps.
The first he called ‘a blessing’: Israel and its Arab partners forming a land bridge connecting Asia and Europe, with rail lines, energy pipelines, and fibre optic cables. The second he called ‘a curse’: an arc of Iranian-backed resistance stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, shutting down international waterways and cutting off trade.
He described the governance structure as ‘an even broader Abrahamic Alliance’ — membership conditional on choosing peace.
For the territories along the corridor, he specified the template. Gaza would be ‘demilitarised and deradicalised’, governed by a local civilian administration committed to peaceful coexistence. Iran would face pre-emptive force. Lebanon would comply with existing UN resolutions.
The corridor, the war, the governance of destroyed territories, and the compliance framework — all stated in a single speech, five months before the strikes on Iran began.
What IMEC actually is
Most trade corridors are shipping routes. IMEC’s own design documents, presented by India’s Directorate General of Shipping at India Maritime Week in October 2025, describe three pillars: transportation, energy, and digital3.
The first two are straightforward — stuff that physically moves, and stuff that makes things move. The third is different. The fibre optic cables and cross-border digital infrastructure carry identity verification, transaction monitoring, and programmable conditions.
The first two pillars are the system. The third is the feedback loop that governs it.
The same presentation names the geopolitical disruptions that make IMEC necessary: the Suez Canal blockage, the Russia-Ukraine war, and US tariff wars. The officials promoting the corridor are presenting the conflicts as its commercial justification.
To see what the design means in practice, think about how a payment processor works. When you pay with a card, the payment does not go directly from you to the shop. It goes through a company in the middle — Visa, Mastercard — which checks whether the transaction meets the rules. If it does, the payment clears. If it does not, the payment is blocked. The company in the middle does not need to own the shop or your bank account. It just needs to sit between the two and control the terms.
That’s the role of the clearinghouse.
IMEC puts Israel in that position for the physical economy. Everything moving between the developing world and the developed world passes through the same node. Whoever controls the node can see every shipment, set conditions on what passes through, and stop anything that does not meet the standard4.
The existing global financial system already has clearing nodes. The Bank for International Settlements in Basel clears between central banks. SWIFT in Belgium routes international payments. These systems run East-West, between developed economies already inside the framework.
IMEC would build the North-South interface — the settlement layer between the developing world and the developed world, physically located in Israel, for the half of the global economy that is not yet fully wired into the existing architecture.
The competing routes
Settlement is contested.
mBridge5 is a cross-border digital currency platform built by the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. It has processed over $55 billion in transactions6, with the Chinese digital yuan accounting for 95 per cent of settlement volume. It does the same thing as SWIFT — routes international payments — but faster, cheaper, and outside Western control.
In October 2024, the BIS abruptly withdrew from mBridge, the same week Russia proposed ‘BRICS Bridge’ at the Kazan summit as an alternative international payment system7. BIS general manager Agustín Carstens distanced the institution: ‘mBridge is not the BRICS bridge. We cannot work with sanctioned countries’. The BIS then pivoted to Project Agorá8, a competing platform with seven Western central banks including the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the Bank of Japan. Phase one is due for completion in the first half of 2026.
Two clearing systems are now being built for the future of international payments. mBridge routes through Chinese infrastructure, Agorá routes through Western central banks, and both use programmable digital currencies with real-time cross-border settlement. The technology is identical. The routing determines who controls the clearing function.
Every major country along the IMEC corridor is hedging between the two. India is a core IMEC partner9 — Adani owns Haifa port, Modi spoke before the Knesset — but India also chairs BRICS+ in 2026 and has proposed adding BRICS Bridge to the agenda10. At India Maritime Week, the Director General of Maritime Administration promoted IMEC11 and, in the same speech, described Chabahar Port in Iran as India’s direct sea access to Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Russia, and a key segment of the International North-South Transport Corridor connecting Mumbai to Moscow12. India is officially building both corridors simultaneously.
The UAE completed the first government CBDC transaction on mBridge with China in November 202513 — the same UAE that signed the Abraham Accords and is a corridor state for IMEC14. Saudi Arabia joined mBridge in 2024 — the same Saudi Arabia whose rail network forms IMEC’s land bridge15.
Iran has its own CBDC in development16. Russia has the digital rouble17. China’s e-CNY is the most advanced CBDC pilot on earth, having processed $2.4 trillion in transactions18. All three enforced COVID lockdowns in step with the rest of the world192021, all three formally support the UN Sustainable Development Goals222324, all three are building digital identity infrastructure252627, and all three are building digital currency infrastructure compatible with the same standards, though only two are members of the BIS28.
Iain Davis, across his Multipolar World Order series29, has documented that this convergence is too consistent to be accidental, and that the apparent East-West division may obscure a shared trajectory toward technocratic governance regardless of which bloc prevails.
The multipolar world is not about the nations. It is about the standards that tie them together.
Catherine Austin Fitts has described what both sides are converging on: a financial transaction control system dressed as a currency system. Her ‘Going Direct Reset’ analysis identified August 2019 — when central bankers met at Jackson Hole — as the moment the transition began, months before COVID provided the political conditions to accelerate it.
BIS general manager Agustín Carstens confirmed the principle in public: ‘Central banks will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that determine the use of that expression of central bank liability. And also, we will have the technology to enforce that’30.
Above both clearing systems sit the standards that both check against — the ISO frameworks, the Basel capital rules, the SDG indicators, the BIS settlement architecture. The BIS itself built mBridge and then withdrew when the platform started serving the wrong routing. The standards layer is shared, and both sides run on it. Whoever sets the standards does not need to win the war, because both outcomes enforce the same rules.
Iran did not refuse digital infrastructure. It refused to connect through the Western-controlled node. The war resolves the physical competition — IMEC’s path is cleared, the alternatives are destroyed. But the financial competition is still open. IMEC currently settles through SWIFT31. The only operational alternative is mBridge — built by the central banks of China, the UAE, Thailand, and Hong Kong. The corridor states are already on it.
The question is not which node sits between East and West. It is which settlement layer runs through the IMEC node that has already been chosen.
The corridors Israel bypasses
Iraq’s Development Road — the $17 billion project connecting Basra to Turkey, with Chinese engineering involvement — would have given the Eastern clearing system a land route bypassing both Hormuz and Israel32. The International North-South Transport Corridor, running from Mumbai to Moscow via Iran and Azerbaijan, is a second competing route33 — one that India’s own Director General of Maritime Administration describes as offering 30 per cent cost savings and 40 per cent faster transit34.
Both corridors bypass Israel. Both depend on Iranian territory or Iranian stability.
The war degrades both simultaneously. It sets the Development Road back by years and renders the INSTC unviable for as long as Iran’s infrastructure is under attack. Iran is the most important BRICS+ member in the Gulf region, and its military capacity was the one thing that made IMEC’s eastern sea lane unviable. Destroying that capacity clears the physical path, weakens both competing corridors, and forces the Gulf states to commit to the Western-backed system rather than continuing to hedge.
One military operation produces three strategic outcomes: IMEC’s eastern sea lane is secured, the Development Road is set back, and the INSTC is rendered unviable. In March 2026, a RAND economist told CNBC that ‘if Israel and the US win, IMEC will likely be Israel’s preference over the revival of Chabahar’35. Chatham House confirmed the Chabahar-Zahedan railway — a key INSTC component — faces ‘indefinite delays’.
India’s $120 million Chabahar investment is at risk because its US sanctions waiver expires in April 2026. The war is resolving India’s hedge.
The seven countries
In 2007, General Wesley Clark described being told at the Pentagon shortly after 11 September 2001 that the United States planned to ‘take out seven countries in five years — starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off with Iran’36.
The plan drew on a 1996 strategy paper called ‘A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm’, prepared for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a group including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith37 — both of whom later held senior positions in the George W Bush administration.
The paper proposed weakening and rolling back Syria, removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, and transforming Israel from aid recipient to regional economic hub. It also specified a ‘Joint Compliance Monitoring Committee’ to study whether the Palestinian Authority met ‘minimum standards of compliance, authority and responsibility’ — conditional governance through monitored standards, described in those terms, in 1996.
The five-year timeline was wrong. The list was right. Perle moved to the Defence Policy Board and Feith to the Pentagon after 200138. The Iraq invasion operationalised the paper’s first recommendation. Six of the seven countries have since been destroyed or destabilised. Sudan is in the process. Iran, the last on the list, is being struck now.
Clark noted at the time that the plan ignored the actual sources of the terrorism that prompted it. Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia — where most of the 9/11 hijackers came from — were left untouched. All three are now either signatory or corridor states for IMEC.
Look at a map and the pattern is visible. Every country on Clark’s list sits along or adjacent to the IMEC corridor route. And in every one of them, the same reconstruction template is being installed.
Syria is the furthest along. Fourteen years of civil war destroyed its infrastructure. Assad fell in December 202439. DP World, the Dubai-based ports operator, has signed a 30-year, $800 million concession for the port of Tartus40. CMA CGM has signed a 30-year concession for Latakia41. Both ports sit directly on the corridor’s path. The new government has asked Turkey to produce chip-based national identity documents built to international standards42.
Lebanon was destroyed in three stages — economic collapse in 201943, the Beirut port explosion in 2020 (removing a potential alternative to Haifa on the corridor route)44, and Israeli bombardment in 2023–202445. The World Bank has approved $250 million under a scalable $1 billion framework46, with each payment conditional on the government meeting reform targets. A $150 million Digital Acceleration Project covers government data systems, cybersecurity, and a national digital ID47.
Somalia and Sudan lie adjacent to the corridor rather than directly on it, but both follow the same reconstruction pattern. Somalia has a World Bank-funded biometric ID programme targeting 15 million people by 202948, with three digital ID platforms launched in 2025 and a national instant payment system already running49. Sudan is still in the destruction phase.
Iraq remains contested. Its Development Road was inaugurated in December 202550 but has been delayed by years by the Iran war — the one route that would have bypassed the chokepoints IMEC depends on.
Iran is the last country on the list, and its destruction is underway.
The pattern in every case: destruction, then reconstruction with conditions attached — digital identity, conditional financing, regulatory alignment with international standards.
The same World Bank appears in every theatre. The same biometric ID systems are rolled out. The same financing model, where money is released only when reform milestones are met, applies everywhere.
Who was positioned before the war
On 2 March 2026, Venture Global and Trafigura signed a binding LNG supply agreement and filed it with the SEC51. Seventeen days later, Iranian missiles struck Qatar’s Ras Laffan complex, taking 17 per cent of the country’s natural gas export capacity offline for three to five years52. Cheniere Energy — which had authorised a $10 billion stock buyback on 26 February, two days before the strikes began — hit an all-time high53. North American LNG export capacity was already on track to more than double by 202954. The buildout did not start in response to the conflict. The conflict made it commercially decisive.
Patrick Wood mapped IMEC’s physical components55. Adani Ports owns Haifa and is developing the deep-water port on India’s western coast — the same company at both ends of the sea lane56. Google’s Blue-Raman submarine cable already runs from India to Italy via Israel, carrying 218 terabits per second and bypassing Egypt entirely57.
Gaza sits on the Mediterranean coast directly south of Haifa, and its reconstruction plans include a new deepwater port, data centres, and special economic zones, positioning it as the corridor’s western gateway. At the other end, Oman’s ports outside the Strait of Hormuz had already begun attracting investment before the war, suggesting the architects had planned for Hormuz disruption in advance.
The private sector is executing a state-designed infrastructure strategy whose components were being contracted before the war began.
Three theatres, one corridor
Ukraine does not sit on the IMEC corridor geographically, but it serves three functions that make it structurally essential.
First, it broke European energy dependence on Russia. Before 2022, Russian gas supplied roughly 40 per cent of European consumption. The war severed that relationship, and the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022 made the break physically irreversible58. Europe’s REPowerEU plan now targets 10 million tonnes of imported green hydrogen per year by 203059, and IMEC’s energy pillar — hydrogen pipelines and electricity cables running from the Gulf through Israel to Europe — is designed to fill exactly that vacuum.
Ukraine did not merely precede the Iran war. It created the demand that IMEC’s energy corridor is built to supply.
Second, it wires the European receiving end into the same conditional architecture. Ukraine’s EU accession process — 35 chapters of regulatory alignment covering financial systems, digital infrastructure, environmental standards, and procurement rules — is installing the same digital systems, procurement frameworks, and compliance architecture that is being installed in Gaza and will be installed in Iran. Ukraine is being formatted for the European end of the corridor the same way Gaza is being formatted for the Mediterranean terminus.
Third, it keeps Russia occupied and degraded. Russia is the military guarantor of the Eastern competing architecture — BRI, mBridge, the Development Road. A Russia bogged down in Ukraine cannot project power into the Gulf or the Eastern Mediterranean in defence of competing routes. The ‘situational pause’ in Ukraine peace talks since the Iran war began means both theatres are serving the same function simultaneously — Ukraine pins Russia while Iran is cleared.
Iran clears the eastern chokepoint. Gaza builds the Mediterranean terminus. Ukraine breaks the competing energy supply, wires the European receiving end, and pins the Eastern competitor. Each theatre makes the other two viable.
Who is negotiating the terms
Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff — neither a career diplomat, both from New York real estate — have been simultaneously negotiating the terms for ending all three conflicts. In each case, a resolution that was within reach was bypassed and replaced with conditions that create permanent dependency on outside infrastructure.
In Iran, Oman’s Foreign Minister announced on 27 February 2026 that a breakthrough had been reached — Iran had agreed to downgrade its uranium stockpile and accept full international verification60. Talks were expected to resume on 2 March. The strikes were launched on 28 February. Two days earlier, Modi had addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem, promoted IMEC, and called Israel a ‘trusted partner’61 — the diplomatic framework for the corridor confirmed forty-eight hours before the military operation that cleared its path.
In Gaza, the January 2025 ceasefire included agreed terms for Phase 2 negotiations62. Those talks never took place. What replaced them was the Board of Peace63 — a body whose charter does not mention Gaza, where permanent seats cost one billion dollars64, and where Trump is named chairman for life. The Board proposed a dollar-linked stablecoin for Gaza65 that tracks what people buy and where they are when they buy it, geofenced to designated ‘terror-free zones’.
In Ukraine, the settlement has been perpetually deferred66 while the conditions attached to reconstruction lending — digital systems, procurement rules, regulatory standards — have already been permanently installed.
By March 2026, Iran had formally refused to continue negotiating with the two men67.
What is left
Three wars. Seven countries on a list drawn up in 2001. One corridor proposed in 2018, formalised in 2023, and now being cleared by force. Two competing clearing systems, with every country along the route hedging between them until the war forces a commitment. Destruction, followed by reconstruction with conditions attached. The officials building the corridor cite the wars as the reason it is needed. The financial positions were taken before the strikes.
The United States provides the military power. Europe provides the regulatory framework. The Gulf states provide the capital. And where does it all converge? Not Washington, not London, not Brussels. Israel.
The 1996 ‘Clean Break’ paper proposed exactly this: Israel becoming economically self-reliant, no longer dependent on American aid, positioned as a powerful strategic hub. IMEC is the infrastructure that makes that vision materially real, thirty years later. The EU-India free trade agreement was signed in January 2026 — one month before the strikes that cleared the corridor’s eastern path. At a summit in Trieste in March 2026, the Italian government positioned its port as IMEC’s European terminal and described the corridor as a ‘peace and trade route’68.
The US fights the war. Europe writes the regulations. The Gulf funds the reconstruction. The clearing function lands in the one country that sits between all of them.
American voters did not choose IMEC. European voters did not design the Board of Peace. The populations along the corridor did not write the reconstruction terms. The Gulf states that fund the system do not set its conditions. But the Israeli public, whose country provides the central node, did not vote for this, nor compile the standards that the clearinghouse enforces.
IMEC’s financial settlement currently runs through Western payment systems — SWIFT and dollar-denominated correspondent banking. But once the bombing of Iran is complete and the physical alternatives to IMEC have been destroyed, the corridor’s financial layer becomes swappable. Replacing SWIFT with mBridge on the same corridor is not a geopolitical act. It is a technical upgrade — faster settlement, lower cost, programmable compliance. The corridor states that are already on both systems would not need to be persuaded. It would simply be a ‘market-based solution’ for peace.
The United States will have spent its military, its fiscal position, and its diplomatic capital building a physical corridor whose financial clearing can migrate to a Chinese settlement layer the moment it makes commercial sense — leaving the dollar as the one asset the architecture no longer requires.
Both platforms — mBridge and Agorá — were designed by the BIS, both run on the same technology, and both check against the same standards. The competition is over routing, not architecture. But one organisation set the standard behind both platforms.
What the corridor enforces (what conditions are attached to every flow, who designed those conditions, and how the architecture was assembled) is the subject of the next essay.
So much blood on these useless breakers of things.
What a superb dissection of the clear driving impetus behind all the destruction.