British Middle East interest derived entirely from its India paramountcy

Evidence

Moreover, there are other heirs to Britain’s Middle Eastern policy. Britain’s direct interest in the Middle East dates from the late eighteenth century and was a consequence of the establishment of British paramountcy in India. It was after the end of that paramountcy that British interest in the Middle East began to dwindle, and it was not long before both the successor governments to the British raj in India began to pick up the pieces of its foreign policy on the North-West Frontier, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and the Red Sea—on the land and sea approaches to India, that is—and to fashion new Middle Eastern policies of their own. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1180

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The India-to-Middle-East policy inheritance parallels the Grafting & Growth piece’s theme of infrastructure—here geopolitical approaches rather than trees—being transplanted across domains.
• QUESTION: An interesting later claim to verify: did Britain’s Middle East interest actually rest solely on Indian paramountcy, or did antebellum and other motives predate and exceed it?