Israel’s Economic Diplomacy Strategy in the Persian Gulf

Economic diplomacy, as an interactive action, has found a special role in the foreign policy of countries, the most important of which should be to help resolve political and security issues. Economic peace is one of the most important strategies that the Israeli government has focused on in order to improve political relations and ultimately alleviate security tensions. Accordingly, the present article examines the dimensions and principles of Israel's economic diplomacy strategy by asking what it is based on and what its goals are. The hypothesis of the article is that Israeli economic diplomacy, using the existing security and trade infrastructure, first seeks to improve trade relations and ultimately seeks to achieve political peace. Applying the conceptual model of economic diplomacy with the help of descriptive-analytical method, while confirming this hypothesis, showed that Israel has established institutions for managing its economic relations in the region over the past years. These institutions have laid the groundwork for peace and the normalization of political relations by networking and portraying Israel as a desirable and peaceful actor. The findings show that the Persian Gulf region is one of the most important cases in Israeli economic diplomacy that has so far helped to normalize relations with the UAE and Bahrain. This could be considered as a source of threat to the Islamic Republic of Iran in the future and affect Tehran's economic relations with the Gulf States.