When Narendra Modi stepped off his aircraft at Ben Gurion International Airport on February 25, 2026, he was not just making a state visit. He was sending a signal — to Tehran, to Islamabad, to Beijing, and to the watching world — that India-Israel bonhomie has moved from diplomatic warmth to full-blown strategic embrace. Netanyahu draped Modi in traditional Indian clothing at a Jerusalem dinner. The Israeli parliament gave the Indian prime minister a standing ovation. And when Modi declared from the Knesset podium — the first Indian leader ever to address it — “India stands with Israel firmly, with full conviction, in this moment and beyond,” the carefully calibrated ambiguity that had defined New Delhi’s West Asia policy for decades appeared, at least momentarily, to evaporate.
This was more than ceremony. It was, as Al Jazeera reported, a two-day visit culminating in the elevation of bilateral ties to a “Special Strategic Partnership for Peace, Innovation & Prosperity” — the highest diplomatic designation India has conferred on Israel. For South Asia security analysts, the question is no longer whether India and Israel are close. It is how consequential that closeness will prove to be across a region already buckling under the weight of nuclear-armed rivalries, post-conflict trauma, and shifting great-power alignments.
Modi’s Israel Visit: A Balancing Act Amid Global Tensions
The timing of Modi’s February 2026 visit to Israel was striking for its deliberate contradictions. Just one week before touching down in Tel Aviv, India had joined over 100 nations in signing a UN statement condemning Israel’s de facto expansion in the occupied West Bank — signing on February 18, notably a day after most signatories, in what observers read as deliberate hedging. Days later, Modi was sharing a lavish dinner with Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
This is the essence of India’s Modi Kyiv visit analysis framework applied to West Asia: maximum engagement, minimum condemnation. When Modi visited Kyiv in August 2024 — the first visit by an Indian prime minister to Ukraine since the Russian invasion — he signed agreements on agriculture, medicine, and humanitarian assistance, carefully positioning India as a peacemaker rather than a partisan. The message was consistent: New Delhi would engage every capital, align with none exclusively, and extract tangible benefits from all. The Kyiv visit produced India’s image as a neutral good-faith actor; the Jerusalem visit in February 2026 complicates that image considerably.
Modi’s silence on Gaza — where, according to Al Jazeera, the Israeli military has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians since October 2023 — was deafening. Anwar Alam of New Delhi’s Policy Perspective Foundation called the visit’s timing “too poor,” arguing it “grossly compromised India’s historical pro-Palestine stand.” Yet for the Modi government, the calculus was unmistakably strategic: a $6.5 billion bilateral trade relationship, defense deals potentially worth $8–10 billion, and a Critical and Emerging Technologies Partnership spanning AI, quantum computing, and critical minerals. Sentiment is a luxury; supply chains are not.
Netanyahu, for his part, used the visit to unveil an ambitious geopolitical vision. He proposed a “hexagon of alliances” linking Israel, India, Greece, and Cyprus with unnamed Arab, African, and Asian states — a bloc framed as a counterweight to “radical” Sunni and Shia nations. None of the prospective members officially endorsed the framework, including India. But the concept itself, floated with Modi sitting feet away in the Knesset gallery, signals how Israel envisions India’s role in reordering the Middle East’s strategic landscape.
The Deepening India-Israel Defense Ties
No section of the India Israel relations impact South Asia debate is more consequential — or more opaque — than the military dimension. The numbers alone are staggering.
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), India accounted for 34 percent of Israel’s total defense exports between 2020 and 2024, with total arms sales reaching approximately $20.5 billion over that period. Israel, in return, was India’s third-largest defense supplier during 2023–2024, contributing roughly 13 percent of all Indian defense imports. As the Jerusalem Post reported ahead of Modi’s visit, Israeli defense exports to India hit $1.1 billion in 2024 alone, with 2025 figures expected to break “another glass ceiling.”
The systems at play are not merely transactional — they are transformative:
- Hermes 900 / Drishti-10 Starliner Drones: Produced at the Adani-Elbit Advanced Systems India facility in Hyderabad — the only Hermes 900 production site outside Israel — these Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) UAVs provide 36-hour persistent surveillance over India’s borders. During the May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict (Operation Sindoor), Israeli-origin UAVs including the IAI Harop loitering munition were operationally deployed, marking a doctrinal shift toward stand-off precision strikes.
- Barak-8 Missile System: Jointly developed by India’s DRDO and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), this medium-range surface-to-air missile system — with an initial deal valued at over $2 billion — is now inducted across India’s Army, Navy, and Air Force.
- Iron Dome and Iron Beam: The May 2025 conflict exposed serious vulnerabilities in India’s layered air defense. As the Jerusalem Post noted, potential deals worth up to $8–10 billion are under negotiation for Israel’s multi-tiered missile defense architecture, with Iron Dome and the directed-energy Iron Beam attracting particular attention.
- Critical and Emerging Technologies Partnership: Announced during the February 2026 visit, this new framework covers AI, quantum technologies, and critical minerals — areas where both nations seek to reduce dependence on Chinese supply chains.
During the February 2026 visit, Modi and Netanyahu also signed agreements on agricultural innovation (including the India-Israel Innovation Centre for Agriculture), geophysical exploration, underwater archaeology, cultural exchange, and healthcare AI. The relationship, in other words, has evolved well beyond guns and drones — though guns and drones remain its gravitational core.
A particularly sensitive layer involves reverse flows: India-manufactured Hermes 900 components have reportedly been exported back to Israel, including during the Gaza conflict. Al Jazeera’s investigation reported that Indian weapons firms sold Israel rockets and explosives in 2024, rendering India not merely a buyer of Israeli technology but an active participant in Israel’s defense industrial ecosystem.
Implications for South Asia Security
The India foreign policy Ukraine Israel nexus looks very different from Islamabad than it does from New Delhi. The May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict — four days of hostilities described by analysts as the worst bilateral confrontation in decades — has recalibrated every threat perception in the region. Against that backdrop, India’s deepening embrace of Israel’s military technology is not a peripheral foreign-policy choice; it is a direct input into South Asia’s security equation.
How India-Israel Ties Affect Pakistan Relations
For Pakistan, the strategic picture is bleak on multiple vectors, as Al Jazeera’s detailed analysis made clear:
The military gap widens. Israeli technology deployed in the May 2025 conflict gave India stand-off precision strike capabilities Pakistan had not fully anticipated. Potential Indian acquisition of Iron Dome, Iron Beam, and long-range Rampage air-to-ground missiles would further tilt the conventional balance. Pakistan’s response — a deepening China-Pakistan defense axis and a September 2025 Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement with Saudi Arabia — signals Islamabad is recalibrating its own alliance architecture.
The Gulf flank shifts. Pakistan has for decades relied on Gulf states for financial lifelines and remittances. Yet the UAE signed a strategic agreement with India in January 2026, while India’s trade and security ties with Saudi Arabia and Qatar continue to deepen. Pakistan’s traditional Gulf patronage network is fraying.
The Israel wildcard. Pakistan and Israel have no diplomatic relations. As India becomes Israel’s largest arms buyer and strategic partner, Islamabad fears that Israeli intelligence assessments and surveillance technologies deployed in the West Bank — which some Indian Hindu nationalist commentators have explicitly cited as a model for Kashmir — could inform Indian policy in disputed territories.
Domestic political fallout. Modi’s Knesset speech, delivered without any mention of Palestinian suffering, has inflamed Pakistani public opinion and handed Islamabad a propaganda tool for framing India as aligned with what much of the Muslim world condemns as a genocidal campaign. Pakistan’s foreign ministry promptly condemned the visit.
The China Dimension
China’s reaction is strategically nuanced. Beijing-Islamabad ties run deep — the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and sustained defense cooperation constitute a formidable axis. Yet China is also Israel’s second-largest trading partner in Asia. Beijing has its own channels to Tel Aviv and is unlikely to sever them over India’s expanded footprint. What concerns Chinese strategists more is the Netanyahu hexagon concept: a potential alignment of India, Israel, Greece, and Cyprus that, combined with India’s Quad membership (US, Japan, Australia), would represent a significant encirclement of China’s maritime ambitions from the Indian Ocean to the Eastern Mediterranean via the IMEEC corridor.
Israel’s role in the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEEC) — which envisions rail and port connectivity linking India through the Gulf states and Israel to Europe — is now being accelerated. The corridor, announced at the G20 in 2023 and whose progress was disrupted by the Gaza war, received renewed attention during Modi’s February 2026 visit. For China, IMEEC represents an explicit alternative to its Belt and Road Initiative, and India-Israel cooperation on it constitutes a meaningful strategic challenge.
India-Israel vs. India-Russia: A Comparative Snapshot
| Dimension | India-Israel Ties | India-Russia Ties |
|---|---|---|
| Bilateral Trade (2024) | $6.5 billion | ~$65–70 billion (energy-heavy) |
| Defense Relationship | India = 34% of Israeli arms exports (2020–24); $20.5B total | Russia = historically India’s largest supplier; ~36% of imports, declining |
| Key Platforms | Hermes 900 drones, Barak-8, Harop, Spice-2000, Iron Dome (pending) | S-400 air defense, Su-30MKI, T-90 tanks, INS Vikramaditya |
| Energy | Negligible direct energy trade | Russia supplies ~35–40% of India’s crude oil (peaked 2022–2025; declining under US pressure) |
| Geopolitical Alignment | Convergence on tech, counterterrorism, nationalism; divergence on Palestine, UNSC reform | Deep legacy ties; India neutral on Ukraine; Moscow-Beijing axis complicates dynamics |
| Technology Transfer | High; “Make in India” joint ventures; reverse exports | High historically; strained by sanctions and Ukraine conflict |
| Trajectory (2026) | Sharply ascending — “Special Strategic Partnership” | Recalibrating downward under US pressure; India-Russia oil imports fell to 1.16M bpd (Jan 2026) from 2.09M bpd peak |
The contrast encapsulates India’s predicament. Russia built India’s defense architecture over six decades; Israel is rebuilding it for the 21st century. Moscow supplies cheap energy; Tel Aviv supplies battle-tested precision. And Washington — India’s “comprehensive global strategic partner” — is nudging New Delhi to choose, applying 50 percent tariffs on Indian goods through 2025 explicitly to punish Russian oil imports, before easing them to 18 percent following the February 2, 2026 India-US trade deal.
India, characteristically, is choosing all three — and paying a rising price for that ambition.
Strategic Autonomy in a Multipolar World
The concept of India strategic autonomy Russia Ukraine Israel — managing contradictory partnerships without permanent subordination to any single power — is under more pressure in early 2026 than at any point since the Cold War. Foreign Policy’s analysis from late 2025 put it bluntly: “India’s equidistant foreign policy is often perceived as distant or aloof.” The events of the past 12 months — a terrorist attack in Kashmir, a four-day war with Pakistan, US tariff escalation, a second visit to Israel, and the first India-US free trade deal — suggest that “strategic autonomy” is slowly but unmistakably yielding to “strategic alignment,” even if New Delhi refuses to use that word.
The case for India’s approach is real and should not be dismissed:
- Technology without strings: Israeli defense exports come without the End-Use Monitoring restrictions that complicate American arms sales, giving India genuine operational flexibility.
- Economic rationality: Russia’s discounted crude lowered India’s import bill by an estimated $9–11 billion annually at peak volumes. Walking away overnight — as Trump briefly claimed Modi had pledged — would be economically reckless for a government managing energy inflation for 1.4 billion people.
- The multipolar hedge: By maintaining simultaneous partnerships with Russia, Israel, the US, and Arab states, India preserves negotiating leverage no single-alignment strategy could provide.
The case against is equally compelling:
- The Global South credibility gap: India’s silence on Gaza — contrasted with its vocal support for Palestinian rights at the UN for seven decades — is generating real reputational costs across Africa, the Arab world, and Southeast Asia. The same Global South coalitions India needs to champion its bid for a permanent UN Security Council seat are watching Modi’s Knesset speech and drawing conclusions.
- The arms race accelerant: Israel’s technology, sold to India, is almost certainly being studied and eventually replicated by India’s adversaries. Pakistan is accelerating its own drone and precision missile programs; China is watching the Harop’s performance in Operation Sindoor and adjusting its own doctrine. The very weapons intended to stabilize India’s deterrence posture may be triggering a regional arms competition.
- The Kashmir optics problem: The parallel Israeli-Hindu nationalist discourse around “the Israel model for Kashmir” — long dismissed as fringe — gains mainstream amplification every time Modi embraces Netanyahu. Whether or not New Delhi endorses it, the perception in Pakistan, Turkey, Malaysia, and across the Islamic world is that India is studying Israeli counterinsurgency as a template.
- The Russia risk: If Moscow perceives India’s drift toward Washington and Tel Aviv as a strategic pivot rather than tactical hedging, the historical precedent is troubling: Russia has expanded its outreach to Pakistan, including military assistance, precisely during prior periods when India moved closer to the West.
Conclusion: Stabilizer or Accelerant?
Modi Netanyahu partnership dangers are real — but so are its benefits, and the honest analyst must hold both simultaneously. The February 2026 Israel visit deepens a partnership that has genuine strategic logic: two technologically ambitious democracies (if increasingly illiberal ones, as World Politics Review observed), facing asymmetric security threats, with complementary industrial capabilities and ideologically aligned leaderships. The defense cooperation alone — from the Barak-8 to the Iron Beam pipeline — materially strengthens India’s deterrence posture in a neighborhood that has never been more volatile.
But here is the discomforting truth that no amount of joint statements about “peace, innovation, and prosperity” can dissolve: India-Israel bonhomie is not occurring in a vacuum. It is occurring alongside a simultaneous US-India trade deal, a deepening China-Pakistan axis, a post-conflict arms acceleration in South Asia, Netanyahu’s hexagon blueprint, the Gaza genocide, and India’s own contested democracy. Each bilateral warmth multiplies the signal received in capitals from Islamabad to Beijing to Riyadh.
The question for South Asia is ultimately not whether India has the right to deepen ties with Israel — it manifestly does. The question is whether New Delhi has the strategic foresight to manage the compounding second- and third-order consequences of doing so this visibly, this rapidly, and with so little apparent effort to reassure the neighbors, partners, and Global South allies whose goodwill India needs for the larger project of becoming a genuine world power.
Modi’s Knesset ovation was undeniably historic. Whether it proves to be strategically wise is a question that South Asia — and the world — will be answering for years to come.
