India-Israel-UAE: An Alliance of Many Anxieties
By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – May 27, 2026
The I2U2 — that much-heralded “West Asian Quad” of India, Israel, the UAE, and the United States — is gathering dust. Launched with fanfare in July 2022 and billed as a transformative framework for regional integration, it has produced little of consequence since its inaugural summit.
Progress stalled through 2024, and its April 2025 revival dialogue in New Delhi was notably described as the first convening of the group in almost two years. Without sustained American engagement, the scaffolding has simply collapsed. What remains, however, is something more durable and more troubling: an informal troika of Israel, the UAE, and India, joined not by shared ambition but by a shared phobia.
Three States, One Obsession
Strip away the diplomatic pleasantries, and the organic glue binding Jerusalem, Abu Dhabi, and New Delhi is strikingly similar: each government perceives political Islam — in its domestic and regional expressions — as a foundational threat to its survival. For the UAE, the enemy has a name: the Muslim Brotherhood. Abu Dhabi under Mohammed bin Zayed has treated Brotherhood-affiliated movements as an existential menace to dynastic stability. The Emirati government’s sweeping crackdown on al-Islah, the Brotherhood’s local affiliate, was driven by the calculation that political Islam of any kind is fundamentally threatening to government security. The UAE formally designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation in 2014, backed the military coup in Egypt, led the 2017 blockade of Qatar, and as recently as January 2025, blacklisted eleven individuals and eight UK-based organisations linked to Brotherhood networks. This is not counterterrorism policy in any conventional sense; it is a preemptive war on political pluralism dressed in security language.
India’s version of the same anxiety plays out along the Hindu-Muslim fault line. Anti-Muslim sentiment has intensified systematically since 2014. India’s 200 million Muslims — the world’s third-largest Muslim population — have faced demolitions of homes, discriminatory citizenship legislation, and a political atmosphere. The BJP government has systematically reframed domestic Muslim political life as a security threat, deploying counterterrorism law against peaceful dissent. If the UAE fears a Brotherhood-style capture of the state, India fears the democratic agency of its own largest minority.
Israel’s specter is Palestine. More precisely, it is the impossibility of indefinitely suppressing Palestinian political self-determination without a cost to legitimacy. For all three governments, the language of “counterterrorism” functions as a tranquilizer: it sedates domestic dissent, silences international criticism, and transforms political opponents into security threats. This shared grammar of repression is the true foundation of the troika.
While tackling these internal and regional threats remains a key imperative, the most recent push to revive the alliance, even without Washington being a formal member, is Iran and the still ongoing Iran war.
From Phobia to Alliance: Iran as the Accelerant
If political Islam is the ideological glue, Iran is what has now hardened this informal troika into something resembling a war coalition. Following the US-Israeli strikes on Iran that began on February 28, 2026, the theoretical alignments of the Abraham Accords era became operational reality. Iran retaliated by targeting Gulf infrastructure, firing some 550 ballistic and cruise missiles and more than 2,200 drones at the UAE, making it the most targeted country in the region, including Israel. In response, Israel did something unprecedented: it deployed an Iron Dome battery, Israeli troops to operate it, and reportedly also its cutting-edge Iron Beam laser defence system and Spectro surveillance technology to Emirati soil. The Financial Times reported that Israeli military personnel on the ground in Gulf states were “a not insignificant number”. Emirati officials, reflecting on who came to their defence, reportedly said: “It was a real eye-opening moment. To see who our real friends are.”
The Abraham Accords, signed in 2020, were partly motivated by a shared perception of the Iranian threat. What the 2026 conflict has done is strip away all residual ambiguity about what that means in practice. The UAE allowed its territory and airspace to be used by Israeli and American forces for strikes on Iran, according to Iranian officials. The Israeli Air Force carried out strikes in southern Iran during the war to neutralize short-range missiles threatening Gulf states. Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem are no longer strategic partners in aspiration; they are military partners in fact. The dream project of dismantling Iran as a regional power, long whispered in the corridors of both capitals, is now an open agenda.
It is in this context that Prime Minister Modi’s May 15, 2026 visit to Abu Dhabi — his eighth trip to the UAE in twelve years — must be read. The visit produced a raft of agreements: $5 billion in Emirati investment pledges, a long-term LPG supply deal, ADNOC access to India’s strategic petroleum reserves, and — most significantly — a formal Framework for the Strategic Defence Partnership covering defence industrial collaboration, cybersecurity, intelligence sharing, maritime security, and joint military exercises. Modi also chose to publicly condemn the Iranian attacks on the UAE and pledged India’s support in maintaining regional peace — a significant departure from the studied neutrality New Delhi had maintained for years. The visit came one day after India had hosted Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who had openly accused the UAE of being “directly involved” in the US-Israeli war on Iran. The juxtaposition was not accidental; it was a signal about the direction of India’s foreign policy.
Silence Is No Longer a Strategy
For years, India’s position in this triangular relationship was one of studied ambiguity. New Delhi deepened ties with Israel and the UAE while maintaining functional relations with Iran and nominally adhering to the principle of strategic autonomy. That posture is now collapsing under the weight of events.
The contradiction at its heart is Chabahar. In May 2024, India signed a ten-year agreement to operate the Shahid Beheshti terminal, committing $120 million with a further $250 million credit line. This was to be New Delhi’s only viable overland and maritime gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia that bypasses Pakistan. Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi has called it a “golden gate” for India’s connectivity ambitions. Yet the US ended its special sanctions waiver for Chabahar in September 2025, and India has been reduced to exploring a temporary transfer of its stake back to Iran to avoid American penalties. Strategic autonomy, it turns out, survives only on American sufferance. Meanwhile, any Indian military technology that reaches the UAE now enters a security ecosystem that includes Israel — meaning India’s new defence partnership with Abu Dhabi is, in practice, an indirect alignment with Tel Aviv.
India now faces a reckoning that its political class has been deferring for years. As the region moves from cold confrontation to hot war, the space for equidistance evaporates. Every arms deal, every investment pact, every public statement condemning Iranian strikes while maintaining silence on Gaza and the West Bank narrows the gap between partnership and complicity. The troika that fear built has a peculiar logic: states drawn together by what they dread at home — Muslim political power in its various forms — will inevitably be pulled toward a shared agenda abroad. For India, the path ahead is less a clear choice than a delicate negotiation — with its own pluralistic traditions, with its new partners in the Gulf and Israel, and with a neighbourhood that offers no easy answers. What happens next will depend not on grand declarations, but on the quiet, unglamorous work of balancing interests without losing sight of the human cost at home.
Salman Rafi Sheikh is a research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs.
Over 50 countries continued to arm Israel during genocide of Palestinians in Gaza: Report
The Cradle | May 23, 2026
An Al-Jazeera investigation published on 23 May revealed that military-grade products from at least 51 countries and self-governing territories kept entering Israel even after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a provisional ruling over the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
In January 2024, the UN’s top court ordered Israel to take all measures to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza. By then, Israel’s brutal bombing of Gaza had killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
However, countries across the globe continued to provide weapons and military assistance to the Israeli military, the Al-Jazeera report found.
Using Israeli Tax Authority (ITA) import data, customs records, and freedom of information requests, the Al-Jazeera investigation found the military-related goods were shipped to Israel from countries across Europe, Asia, North America, and South America, including from many that have signed the genocide convention.
In some cases, the military supplies originated from countries that had publicly imposed arms embargoes on Israel or had at least partially suspended arms supplies to the country.
According to the ITA data, Israeli arms imports increased after the ICJ ruling, in particular munitions imports.
The five biggest military suppliers to Israel—namely the US, India, Romania, Taiwan, and the Czech Republic—all boosted their shipments of military equipment to Tel Aviv following the ruling.
ITA data showed that 2,603 consignments of military-related goods valued at $885 million were sent to Israel between October 2023 and October 2025. Of those, $805 million worth came after the January 2024 ruling.
The consignments included ammunition, explosive munitions, weapons parts, and armored vehicle components.
According to Stephen Humphreys, professor of international law at the London School of Economics, there was “ample evidence that countries arming Israel may be complicit in international crimes, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
“The most recent ‘ceasefire’ did not change this,” stated Gerhard Kemp, a professor of criminal law at the University of the West of England.
Since the ceasefire reached in October 2025, Israel has continued killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza and creating conditions of life that could destroy the group in whole or in part, Kemp said.
This indicates that states still have an obligation to stop supporting Israel’s war on Palestinians in Gaza, which has now killed at least 72,000 people. Tens of thousands more remain buried under the rubble of buildings Israel has bombed.
“Some states have a very narrow understanding of the duty to prevent genocide and are waiting for a judicial determination that there is a genocide in Gaza,” Kemp said. “But the ICJ will likely take several years to make such a determination. The better view is to look at domestic legal obligations … and international legal obligations and legal tools triggered by available evidence.”
Though the ICJ has not issued its final ruling, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory published a report in September 2025 concluding that Israel “committed a genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.”
The UN report asserts that “states are obliged to take steps to ensure the prevention of conduct that may amount to an act of genocide … including the transfer of weapons that are used or likely to be used by Israel to commit genocidal acts.”
IRGC Navy coordinates safe passage of another 35 ships through Strait of Hormuz
Press TV – May 22, 2026
The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has announced that it coordinated the transit of another 35 ships through the Strait of Hormuz in the past 24 hours.
“Over the past 24 hours, 35 ships, including oil tankers, container ships, and other commercial vessels, passed through the Strait of Hormuz, after obtaining permission, [and] with the coordination and security protection of the IRGC Navy,” the Public Relations Office of the IRGC’s Navy said in a statement on Friday.
The passage came on top of 31 vessels—including oil tankers, container ships, and other commercial ships—that passed through the strait in the previous 24 hours, the IRGC Navy announced on Thursday.
The Iranian authority controlling the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf has defined the supervisory management zone of the waterway, announcing on Wednesday that movement through the strategic corridor requires coordination and a permit.
The zone is “the line connecting Mount Mubarak in Iran and southern Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates, on the eastern side of the strait, extending to the line connecting the end of Qeshm Island in Iran and Umm Al Quwain in the United Arab Emirates, on the western side of the strait.”
Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz to its enemies and their allies following the latest US-Israeli aggression against the country.
According to a new Reuters report, the IRGC plays a central role in a new multi-layered transit system that gives preference to ships linked to allies such as China and Russia, while other vessels may require government-to-government arrangements or payments to pass.
The IRGC reviews an affiliation document supplied by a ship owner or operator and during the process they may want to physically inspect the ship, the news agency said.
“The affiliation check is to identify if the vessel has any connection to the US or Israel,” a European shipping source told Reuters.
The IRGC requires ship owners to disclose details including the value of the ship’s cargo, the flag, its origin and destination, the registered owner and manager, and nationalities of the crew, according to documents sent to shipping industry sources by Iran’s Persian Gulf Strait Authority.
The vetting is carried out by Iranian state institutions including the Ports and Maritime Organization, the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade, the national shipping organization, and the security overseer of the Supreme National Security Council, according to the report.
Ship owners’ willingness to deal directly with Iran shows the degree to which the strait is under the Islamic Republic’s control, Danny Citrinowicz, a former Israeli intelligence officer who specializes in Iran research and analysis, told Reuters.
“The straits will be blocked or opened up only by the approval of the Iranian government,” said Citrinowicz. “Some will get through because of political alliances, others will have to pay, others will be turned back. This is the new norm.”
Bilateral arrangements for passage include an additional step: Countries contact Iran’s foreign minister to request permission. The minister forwards these to the Supreme National Security Council.
A decision is then made and communicated to the relevant bodies, including the IRGC which then provides the coordinates and instructions needed for safe passage.
Other countries have worked out different arrangements. Among them is India, which imports about 90% of its oil needs and about 50% of its gas, much of which passes through Hormuz.
New Delhi uses its embassy in Tehran to liaise with Iranian authorities, including the IRGC and the Iranian navy, which vets ships India wants to sail out of the Persian Gulf, according to an Indian shipping ministry official cited by Reuters.
“The Indian navy also told us that if the Iranians ask you to stop, then you should stop. If they ask you to move, you should move,” the report said, “And we’ve been following those instructions.”
Italian port authorities halt Israel-bound shipments of ‘military-grade steel’ from India
The Cradle | May 19, 2026
Italian authorities are holding three shipments suspected of carrying military-grade steel from India to Israel after activists from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and No Harbour for Genocide (NHB) exposed their contents, Middle East Eye (MEE) reported on 18 May.
According to the activists, the shipments amount to roughly 806 tonnes of military-grade steel and could be used to manufacture up to 17,458 artillery shells for the Israeli army.
They said the cargo originated from R L Steels & Energy Limited in Aurangabad and was destined for IMI Systems, now known as Elbit Systems Land, in Ramat Hasharon.
Three consignments transported by the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) are being held in Gioia Tauro and Cagliari, while another three were reportedly rerouted toward Sri Lanka after activists began tracking the vessels.
“We are seeing now a flood of military supplies from India to Israel,” Ilham Yaseen, military embargo coordinator with BDS, told MEE.
She called for pressure “to stop these supplies from reaching Israel and to hold the far-right Indian government and any complicit Indian company accountable for their complicity in Israel’s atrocity crimes.”
A spokesperson for NHB said the steel was heading to “the Ramat Hasharon ammunition plant, which has no civilian output. It’s all military production. We know this 100 percent.”
Activists say the deliveries underline India’s growing role in supplying Israel during its wars in Gaza and Lebanon, particularly as demand for 155mm artillery shells has surged.
The activists also accused shipping firms of obscuring routes and destinations to avoid scrutiny, after Spain reportedly blocked one vessel from docking, Greek dockworkers refused to unload cargo, and Italian authorities later detained three shipments for possible inspection.
On 6 February, dockworkers from more than 20 ports across Italy, Greece, the Basque Country, Morocco, and Turkiye carried out coordinated action under the banner “Dockworkers Don’t Work for War,” aiming to disrupt arms shipments and oppose the use of civilian ports for war logistics.
Italy’s Unione Sindacale di Base said the action sought to “ensure that European and Mediterranean ports are places of peace, free from any involvement in war.”
Francesco Staccioli of USB warned, “If we don’t take this step, all our other demands will be crushed under war.”
Across Europe, since the genocide in Gaza was launched in October 2023, court rulings, national bans, dockworker actions, and rail blockades have worked to obstruct Israeli military shipments.
Despite this, many European states continue to facilitate arms transfers to Israel, with Germany approving $7.8 million in arms exports during the first weeks of the US-Israeli war on Iran, despite lawyers pursuing German officials for aiding Israel’s genocide in Gaza through weapons deliveries.
Most recently, Israeli media reported that dozens of cargo planes transported ammunition through US military bases in Germany, as Washington and Tel Aviv intensified preparations for possible renewed attacks on Iran.
How Israel moved Hermes 900 drone production to Serbia to hide from Iranian missiles
By Ivan Kesic – Press TV – April 25, 2026
The Israeli regime has quietly embarked on an effort to relocate production of its most important long-range strike drone – the Hermes 900- outside the occupied territories.
In Serbia, it has found its latest and most controversial partner. The strategy is simple: protect Tel Aviv’s supply chain from Iranian ballistic missiles.
On March 7, 2026, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić made a cryptic announcement. Serbia, he said, would soon open a factory for “the most serious drones in the world” with a foreign partner from the Israeli regime.
By early April, reports had uncovered the full scope of the deal. Elbit Systems – the largest military company in the occupied territories and a firm repeatedly named by UN experts as profiting from the ongoing genocide in Gaza – had agreed to establish a joint drone production facility in Šimanovci, just thirty kilometers west of Belgrade.
The factory, which could begin operations as early as late April 2026, is designed to produce two types of unmanned aerial vehicles, including a long-range model capable of flying at altitudes exceeding six kilometers.
While most media attention has focused on the emerging arms race between Serbia and Croatia, a far more consequential story has gone largely unreported.
What makes this deal particularly significant is not merely the technology transfer or the financial terms, but the strategic logic driving it.
The Israeli regime, having suffered devastating losses of its Hermes 900 fleet during the recent US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran, is desperately seeking to diversify its production base – outside the reach of Iranian retaliation.
Serbian factory: Details of the 2026 agreement
The joint venture agreement between Elbit Systems and Serbia’s state-owned Yugoimport SDPR gives the notorious Israeli arms company a controlling 51 percent stake, while the Serbian partner holds the remaining 49 percent.
According to documents obtained by some journalists and confirmed by two independent sources close to the military industry, the factory will produce two distinct drone types.
The first is a short-range model with a high payload and rotary wings, designed for tactical reconnaissance and strike missions in confined operational environments.
The second is far more advanced: a long-range model, faster and capable of operating at altitudes exceeding six kilometers, making it suitable for deep-penetration surveillance missions well beyond Serbian borders.
A source familiar with the deal described the long-range drone as “more advanced” than the Pegasus, a combat reconnaissance drone that Serbia already produces domestically.
“It has a higher flight altitude and greater operational autonomy,” the source explained. “The essence of the whole story is the transfer of technology, because our engineers will also work on it. This drone is actually the crowning glory of the entire project.”
Experts from Utva, an aircraft factory owned by the SDPR, will also be involved in the production process, a clear indication of significant investment in local technical expertise.
The planned site of the factory has itself become a source of controversy: a facility owned by Pink Media Group, the media empire of Željko Mitrović, a businessman with close ties to Vučić’s ruling party.
Following the publication of investigative reports, Pink Media Group issued a denial, claiming that neither Mitrović nor any entity associated with him had participated in negotiations or leased any facility for the project.
However, the denial did not address the documentary evidence or the two independent sources that confirmed the arrangement. The question of the factory’s precise location remains unresolved.
Serbian-Israeli cooperation: Weapons, spyware, and political connections
The drone factory agreement is merely the latest chapter in a rapidly deepening relationship between Belgrade and Tel Aviv that encompasses weapons trade, intelligence technology, political consulting, and diplomatic alignment.
The value of ammunition and weapons exports from Serbia to the Israeli regime has increased by an astonishing 42 times since 2023, reaching 114 million euros by the end of 2025, according to available evidence.
The vast majority of these exports were conducted through Yugoimport SDPR, the same state-owned company now partnering with Elbit on the drone factory.
Beyond conventional weapons, the partnership extends into the shadowy realm of surveillance and espionage technology.
Serbian authorities have used forensic products purchased from the Israeli company Cellebrite to unlock and extract data from mobile devices belonging to journalists and social media activists.
A new spyware tool designated “NoviSpy” has been deployed to infect these devices, enabling the Serbian internal security service to monitor and suppress critical voices.
The methods employed bear the unmistakable signature of Israeli technology and training. The personal connections between the two regimes run deep.
Asaf Eisin, an Israeli consultant, has been described as the main architect of Vučić’s victorious election campaigns.
His role extends beyond mere political consulting; he is widely considered Vučić’s secretive strategist, providing the Serbian president with the kind of sophisticated campaign management techniques developed in the occupied territories.
The Serbian opposition has characterized Eisin as an “agency for winning elections,” and his track record across multiple political campaigns in the Balkans supports this assessment.
In September 2024, while the Israeli regime faced increasing international isolation over its genocidal actions in Gaza, the regime’s president, Isaac Herzog, paid an official visit to Belgrade, meeting with top Serbian officials.
The timing was significant: the Israeli regime was under diplomatic pressure worldwide, yet Vučić welcomed Herzog as a gesture of solidarity.
Foreign policy analysts noted that Serbia saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate its alignment with Washington’s closest West Asian ally, a calculated move to curry favor with the incoming Trump administration.
This alignment was formalized in September 2020 through the Washington Agreement, in which Serbia committed to opening a chamber of commerce office and a state office in Jerusalem al-Quds.
The move was hailed in Tel Aviv as “an important and courageous step,” while critics noted that it placed Serbia firmly on the side of the occupation and against Palestinian sovereignty.
The United Arab Emirates, which normalized relations with the Israeli regime in 2020, has emerged as a significant investor in Serbia, while also serving as a conduit for technology transfer and military cooperation.
The connection to the UAE, brokered through the same Washington Agreement, has created an axis that runs from Abu Dhabi through Tel Aviv to Belgrade.
This triangular relationship has allowed Serbia to access advanced defense technologies while providing the Israeli regime with a European production and logistics hub.
Elbit Systems: A company surrounded by global controversy
Elbit Systems, the Israeli military firm at the center of the Serbian drone factory deal, has accumulated a staggering record of international controversies spanning human rights violations, financial divestment campaigns, grassroots activism, and legal challenges.
The company generates approximately 90 percent of its revenue from military activities and is deeply integrated into the Israeli regime’s military apparatus, making it a focal point of criticism amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza or the occupied West Bank.
One of the longest-running controversies concerns Elbit’s involvement in infrastructure tied to the Israeli occupation, particularly the surveillance systems installed along the separation wall in the occupied West Bank.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion in 2004 declaring the wall contrary to international law, yet Elbit continued to supply technology for its operation.
This triggered early international backlash. In 2009, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund divested from Elbit, with the finance minister stating at the time: “We do not want to finance companies that contribute so directly to violations of international humanitarian law.”
Similar decisions followed from Danish and Swedish financial institutions.
The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has made Elbit a primary target, noting that the company’s technology contributes directly to horrendous human rights violations against Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied territories.
These campaigns have achieved tangible results. HSBC withdrew its investment from Elbit in 2018 after the company acquired IMI Systems, which manufactures cluster munitions.
In 2026, a major Canadian investment arm divested from Elbit following sustained protests over its role in supplying equipment used in the Gaza genocide.
A UN Special Rapporteur report published in June 2025 listed Elbit among companies profiting from the genocide in Gaza. The report specifically mentioned drones developed and supplied by Elbit, describing how they operate alongside warplanes during bombing campaigns, used to monitor Palestinians and gather intelligence on targets.
The report concluded that “drones, hexacopters and quadcopters have become ubiquitous killing machines in the skies over Gaza.”
Direct action activism has targeted Elbit facilities worldwide. In the United Kingdom, groups such as Palestine Action have broken into and occupied Elbit-linked sites. The 2024 Filton facility break-in caused significant damage and led to arrests and high-profile court cases.
In 2025, Elbit closed a UK facility after sustained protests, a symbolic victory for activists demonstrating that reputational and military costs can affect even large arms firms.
In Spain, a steel shipment linked to Elbit’s subsidiary IMI Systems was canceled following protests. In France, the government barred Israeli military firms, including Elbit, from displaying offensive weapons at the Paris Air Show in 2025, citing the genocide in Gaza.
In 2025, a NATO-affiliated procurement agency barred Elbit from contracts due to a corruption investigation, suggesting that the company’s liabilities extend beyond activist campaigns into formal military-sector governance.
Meanwhile, in North Macedonia, Elbit’s involvement in “Safe City” surveillance systems has raised concerns about mass surveillance, transparency, and potential misuse, extending the ethical debate beyond armed conflict into civil liberties and digital rights.
Hermes 900: Capabilities and role in the aggression against Iran
The Hermes 900 unmanned aerial vehicle, produced by Elbit Systems, has proven to be the most important drone in the Israeli regime’s inventory for long-range strikes, and its performance during the recent US-Israeli aggression against Iran demonstrated both its strategic value and its acute vulnerabilities.
As a medium-altitude, long-endurance platform, the Hermes 900 can remain airborne for over 30 to 40 hours, operating at high altitudes that allow it to monitor vast areas without requiring frequent refueling.
This endurance is enhanced by satellite communications, enabling beyond-line-of-sight control and real-time data transmission across distances that would be impossible for ground-controlled systems.
The drone’s long-range capability made it particularly suitable for surveillance missions far from Israeli-occupied territories, including monitoring Iranian military infrastructure and tracking the movements of the Axis of Resistance forces throughout the region.
The Hermes 900 is equipped with sophisticated intelligence-gathering systems, including electro-optical and infrared sensors, synthetic aperture radar, and signals intelligence tools.
These allow it to detect troop movements, missile systems, and communication signals, even at night or in poor weather conditions.
Crucially, the Hermes 900 can designate targets using laser systems and relay precise coordinates, enabling fighter jets or other platforms—including long-range cruise missiles—to conduct strikes based on the intelligence it gathers.
This targeting capability made the drone a critical component of the regime’s aggression against Iranian infrastructure during the war that began on February 28, 2026.
The cost to the Israeli regime was still catastrophic. The largest number of Israeli drones shot down during the recent aggression were of the Hermes 900 type—approximately 20 units, with several more downed in 2025.
No official figure exists for how many Hermes 900 units the Israeli regime originally possessed, but estimates place the number in the dozens, somewhere between 25 and 50.
Some military analysts estimate that the attrition rate for the Hermes 900 fleet may have exceeded 80 percent during the unprovoked war of aggression.
The blow was so severe that the Israeli Air Force reportedly avoided deploying its remaining units over Iran for extended periods, effectively ceding the skies to Iranian air defenses and forcing Tel Aviv to rely on less capable platforms.
This degradation of Israel’s most important long-range surveillance and targeting asset represented a strategic victory for Iran’s air defense network, which had demonstrated the ability to detect, track, and destroy even the most advanced unmanned platforms.
Strategic logic: Foreign production as a hedge against Iranian retaliation
The timing of Serbia’s drone factory agreement with Elbit Systems is not coincidental.
The contract was signed in August 2025, a month and a half after the first US-Israeli aggression against Iran, when it became clear to Tel Aviv that Iranian ballistic missiles could threaten domestic production facilities.
The Israeli regime has since been insisting on peripheral supply chains, offering its clients relatively outdated surveillance technologies while using the arrangement to secure aircraft platforms for new aggressions throughout the region.
This strategy is not new. According to military analysts, the Israeli regime agreed to cooperate with India on Hermes 900 production as early as 2018 through a joint venture between Adani Defence & Aerospace and Elbit Systems, with a dedicated UAV facility in Hyderabad becoming operational in December 2018 for producing components.
By approximately 2020, this facility had expanded to assembling and exporting Hermes 900 units, making India the first production site outside the occupied territories.
Military analysts estimate that India produced approximately 20 of the estimated 50 Hermes 900 drones in the Israeli fleet, meaning that nearly 40 percent of Tel Aviv’s long-range unmanned surveillance capability was manufactured outside the occupied territories, a significant hedge against the vulnerability of domestic production facilities to Iranian retaliation.
In 2024, India formally fielded its own version, the Drishti-10 Starliner, with the first indigenously assembled unit delivered to the Indian Navy in January 2024.
The Swiss experience with Hermes 900 production has been far less successful, offering a cautionary tale for Serbia. Switzerland acquired the drones in 2015 but required extensive modifications through the Swiss partner RUAG to enable safe operation in civilian airspace.
The integration of a detect-and-avoid system proved extremely difficult, leading to repeated delays that pushed full operational capability to around 2029.
Some delivered drones could not meet expected performance standards, and one notable incident involved structural issues that caused a drone to break apart during testing.
The Swiss government was forced to scale back its requirements, abandoning certain advanced features while costs continued to rise.
Parliamentary committees raised doubts about whether RUAG and Elbit could fix ongoing problems, with some officials discussing potential cancellation.
For a neutral country like Switzerland, the deal also sparked debate about whether such partnerships compromise neutrality or align the country too closely with foreign military-industrial interests.
Brazil’s experience offers a different set of challenges. While the Hermes 900 is assembled locally through AEL Sistemas, a Brazilian subsidiary of Elbit, the program has been plagued by technical reliability issues.
Multiple crashes have occurred, including one during the 2024 floods in Rio Grande do Sul when a drone used in rescue operations crashed due to a technical problem.
In March 2026, another Hermes 900 crashed during a military exercise in Mato Grosso do Sul, reportedly leaving the Brazilian Air Force with only one operational unit at the time.
These incidents have raised concerns about fleet fragility and whether Brazil is over-reliant on a complex foreign system that it does not fully control.
Even with local assembly, critical components, software, and maintenance expertise remain tied to Israeli suppliers, creating a structural dependency that critics argue limits Brazil’s technological sovereignty.
Serbian gamble: Risks and domestic opposition
Within Serbia, the drone factory agreement has generated significant controversy.
Military observers point out that Elbit will retain complete control over intellectual property, meaning that while Serbian workers may assemble drones, the country will not gain the ability to independently produce or replicate the systems.
Petar Vojinović, an aviation analyst, explained that the most likely arrangement gives Elbit control over sales and intellectual property, with Yugoimport merely participating in production and collecting revenue percentages from sales.
“It is expected that Elbit will retain complete control over the intellectual property,” he noted.
“Thus, Elbit’s intellectual property will be protected, and Serbia will most likely not be able to produce or replicate the drones that will be manufactured.”
Other analysts emphasized that the key issue is knowledge transfer, arguing that If part of the development and production occurs in Serbia, it means training personnel, access to technology, and the possibility of further development without complete dependence on partners.
The political dimension of the deal has also drawn sharp criticism. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, during a visit to Serbia in March 2026, described Serbia as “one of Israel’s strongest and most determined allies, without any shame.”
Serbian civil society organizations have raised concerns that by hosting an Elbit production facility, Serbia could become a legitimate military target in any future conflict involving the Israeli regime.
Unlike Croatia, which has secured its position through NATO and EU membership, Serbia remains outside both alliances, lacking the protective umbrella that would deter potential retaliation.
The Serbian people are widely critical of their authorities, with many claiming that officials are reaping lucrative commissions from such controversial agreements.
The fact that the factory may be located on property associated with a media mogul closely tied to the ruling party has only intensified suspicions about corruption and self-dealing.
While Vučić has portrayed the deal as a triumph of Serbian diplomacy and technological advancement, critics see it as a risky alignment with a pariah regime that could expose Serbia to diplomatic isolation or worse.
Sri Lanka secures supplies of Russia oil – minister
RT | April 7, 2026
Sri Lanka will purchase crude oil from Russia after reaching an agreement with Moscow amid the energy crisis spurred by the Middle East conflict, the island nation’s transport minister, Bimal Rathnayake, has said.
Rathnayake told TASS on Monday that “energy is our priority today,” adding that the US-Israeli war on Iran has triggered a disruption in supplies to Sri Lanka.
“Russia’s deputy energy minister [Andrey Rudenko] visited Sri Lanka a few days ago. The deputy foreign minister has also visited Sri Lanka. They reached an agreement on oil supplies to the country,” Rathnayake told the news agency.
He added that the first crude supplies from Russia are expected in mid-April.
“Technical work is currently underway at the company level, and financial issues are being discussed, how to conduct transactions. But at the political level, almost everything has been done,” the minister said.
Rathnayake added that although Sri Lanka exports tea to Russia, a good “logistic system” is essential for crude imports.
Mayura Neththikumarage, a top Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (Ceypetco) official, said last week that the island nation has only two places where fuel can be unloaded. Ceypetco is the only refiner in Sri Lanka.
Neththikumarage has also indicated that fuel shipments for April and May have been secured and that prices might come down marginally in June.
The South Asian nation gets most of its crude from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), though refined petroleum products are imported from India and Singapore, Bloomberg reported.
In March, Sri Lanka received 38,000 tons of fuel from India.
Colombo has hiked fuel prices and imposed rationing to address the supply disruption.
After the Middle East conflict erupted, Russia expressed willingness to be a key energy partner for South Asian nations, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.
Bilateral trade between Russia and Sri Lanka stood at $700 million in 2024.
Nations across Asia strike direct deals with Iran for Hormuz passage
Al Mayadeen | April 7, 2026
As US President Donald Trump threatens to “obliterate” Iran’s energy infrastructure unless it reopens the Strait of Hormuz, a growing number of countries are now negotiating directly with Tehran to secure safe passage for their ships.
Several nations in Asia, arguably the region most affected by the ongoing fuel crisis, have been able to get their vessels through the chokepoint, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally transits. Tehran effectively closed the Strait after the country was attacked by the US and “Israel” on February 28.
It is a state of affairs that reflects a new geopolitical reality: access to the world’s most critical energy chokepoint is no longer governed by international maritime law, but by direct diplomacy with Iran.
A ‘de facto toll booth regime’
According to maritime tracking platform Kpler, commodity traffic through the strait fell by 95 percent when the war began. Before the US-Israeli aggression, around 100 ships transited daily. On some days this past week, that number was in the single digits.
But Iran has not closed the Strait entirely. Instead, it has created what maritime intelligence firm Lloyd’s List has described as a “de facto toll booth regime,” a permissions-based system operated by the IRGC, in which vessels from friendly countries are escorted through a narrow northern corridor near Larak Island.
As of this week, a second southern corridor near the Omani coastline has become operational, with Windward Maritime Intelligence tracking 11 transits on Sunday split across the two routes.
Iran names friendly nations
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has publicly named the countries considered friendly enough for passage: China, Russia, India, Iraq, and Pakistan. Several others have since joined the list.
India was among the first countries to secure safe transit, reportedly without paying any fees. The Iranian embassy in New Delhi posted on social media that “our Indian friends are in safe hands.”
Pakistan was allocated 20 vessel slots by Tehran. “This is a welcome and constructive gesture by Iran,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said.
Thailand struck a deal after weeks of disruptions that included a Thai bulk carrier being struck by Iranian projectiles in March, leaving three crew members unaccounted for. A Thai tanker subsequently crossed without paying a fee.
Malaysia secures passage
Malaysia secured assurances of safe passage through what its Transport Minister described as a “good diplomatic relationship with the Iranian government.” The Iranian embassy in Kuala Lumpur said on Monday that the first Malaysian ship had passed through the strait since the war began. “Iran does not forget its friends,” it said.
A Malaysian Foreign Ministry statement confirmed that one of seven Malaysian-owned commercial vessels stranded in the strait has been granted safe passage and is now heading to its destination, following “high-level diplomatic engagements” and “constructive” talks with Iranian officials led by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
Other nations join the list
The Philippines, despite its close ties with the US, became the latest Asian country to secure an agreement after what its foreign secretary described as “a very productive phone conversation” with Tehran. Iran assured “safe, unhindered and expeditious passage” for Philippines-flagged ships.
China, Iran’s largest oil buyer, confirmed that some of its ships had sailed through. Windward’s data show Chinese-linked vessels account for around 10 percent of the limited traffic still moving through the strait.
Indonesia secured passage for two of its vessels following diplomatic engagement with Tehran. Iraq has also been granted an exemption, with Windward identifying 21 Iraqi-linked tankers already operating under the arrangement.
Japan joined the list this week after a vessel operated by Mitsui OSK Lines carrying liquefied natural gas passed through the strait.
A system based on political alignment
The system is selectively allocated based on political alignment rather than open maritime norms. Of the roughly 280 global transit requests tracked by one intelligence firm, only 17 were approved. Some 670 commodity vessels were still stranded west of the strait as of last week.
Iran’s parliament is pursuing legislation to formally codify the toll system, likely making permanent a wartime measure and turning one of the world’s most important shipping routes into a fee-paying corridor controlled by its military.
A strategy that works
While Washington threatens military action and demands European naval support, Iran has quietly built a parallel system: nations that engage with Tehran diplomatically get their ships through. Those who follow Washington’s lead find the strait closed.
As the US-Israeli war on Iran enters its sixth week, the message is clear. Iran controls the Strait. Iran decides who passes. And Iran is proving that diplomacy, not threats, is the only path through. The countries that need their ships to move are making their own deals, and they are getting results.
‘Safe’ corridor opening up through Strait of Hormuz: What we know so far
RT | March 20, 2026
Iran has signaled that it is ready to allow passage through the Strait of Hormuz to vessels from certain countries. Media reports and tracker data also suggest that a handful of pre-vetted tankers have already sailed smoothly through the “safe” corridor, with at least one shipping company allegedly paying Iran $2 million.
The development comes as more than 15 tankers have been hit by drones and projectiles in the strait since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran in late February.
As the Middle East escalation has roiled energy markets, the impact of a few tankers passing through has so far remained limited. Brent is still trading well above $100.
Here is what to know about the latest developments in the Strait of Hormuz.
Who is allowed to pass?
In short, not everyone and not everywhere.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that the strait is open to all except the US and Israel, while adding that some ships from “different countries” had already been allowed through. In practice, however, Western-linked vessels face significant hurdles in securing safe passage.
According to Lloyd’s List, India, Pakistan, China, Iraq, and Malaysia are discussing transit plans directly with Tehran, with officials in the first three countries as well as Türkiye confirming clearance.
The Financial Times reported, citing maritime data, that at least eight ships – including oil tankers and bulk carriers tied to India, Pakistan and Greece, as well as Iran’s own fleet – have sailed through the strait but used an unusual route around the island of Larak, which is close to the Iranian coast and where waters are much shallower than in the middle of the strait.
The actual number of ships – some of which may have turned off automatic tracking systems – could be higher, the report said.
According to the FT, at least nine Chinese oil and fuel tankers are also amassing in the Gulf, apparently preparing to traverse the Hormuz Strait.
Clearance is being granted on a case-by-case basis, Lloyd’s List reported, adding that the Iranian authorities are working on a “more formalized vessel approval process” expected in the coming days.
Is it free of charge?
On paper, international transit is not supposed to work like a toll road, but the current situation appears to be evolving under wartime conditions.
Lloyd’s List reported that at least one tanker operator paid about $2 million to transit, while saying it could not establish whether payments were made in other cases. It also remains unclear how such payments could be processed, given the sanctions on Iran.
In addition, several media reports indicated that Iran’s parliament was considering a bill aimed at taxing ships that cross the strait. The Wall Street Journal noted, however, that such a policy would “require a regional buy” from Iran’s Gulf neighbors.
What did Hormuz look like before the war?
Hormuz was one of the world’s busiest and consequential chokepoints, with an average of 20 million barrels a day of crude oil and oil products moved through in 2025, equal to around 25% of global seaborne oil trade. About 80% of the flows went to Asian countries, including China, India, Japan, and South Korea, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
About 93% of Qatar’s LNG exports and 96% of the UAE’s LNG exports also passed through Hormuz, representing roughly 19% of global LNG trade.
Before the war, around 138 vessels transited the strait daily; that figure has now dropped to roughly 3–5 ships per day, according to estimates.
The strait is just 29 nautical miles (54km) wide, with two-mile-wide inbound and outbound shipping lanes separated by a two-mile buffer. Ships using the Larak route must contend with shallower waters than in the central channel, though depths are still generally sufficient for most vessel types.
What impact is this having on energy prices?
The trickle of oil tankers is seemingly having a limited effect on the oil market, with Brent trading at $107 per barrel, down from a peak of almost $120. WTI crude slid from the $100 benchmark to $94.
European natural gas futures (TTF) slightly fell to €60 per MWh after spiking by more than 30% after Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field, triggering a retaliation on energy infrastructure in Qatar.
What does Europe have to say on Hormuz safety?
European leaders have demanded “the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz,” as well as “de-escalation and maximum restraint” from the belligerents. European NATO members, however, have been reluctant to send their navies to the strait. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that his country could help in keeping the shipping lanes clear only when the guns go silent.
What impact on the US?
As oil prices skyrocketed, gasoline prices in the US also soared, reaching $3.90 per gallon on average. US President Donald Trump has sought to downplay the market panic, saying he thought that oil prices would be “much worse,” adding that they were certain to come down once the hostilities end.
In addition, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signaled that Washington could waive sanctions on the Iranian oil stranded on tankers in a bid to dampen prices. Earlier this week, he also said that the US had been allowing Iranian tankers to transit the strait “to supply the rest of the world.”
Israel’s War on Iran’s Grid: How the South Pars Strike Turned Energy into a Weapon
By Freddie Ponton – 21st Century Wire – March 19, 2026
In the early hours of March 18, Israeli drones tore into four gas‑treatment plants in Assaluyeh on Iran’s southern coast, where sour gas from phases 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the South Pars field is cleaned, separated and turned into the fuel that keeps the country’s lights on, homes heated and factories supplied. Iranian officials ordered the plants offline to contain the fires, and industry analysts immediately warned that production from the offshore platforms feeding those trains would have to be cut back. Within an hour of the strike being reported, European gas prices and Brent crude jumped, because traders understood what most headlines did not. This was not a symbolic hit on an abstract “gas field,” but a deliberate attack on a conversion node at the heart of Iran’s domestic energy system and a critical pillar of the wider Gulf energy order.
At the same time, Donald Trump was on social media threatening that if Iran retaliated again against Qatar’s LNG hub at Ras Laffan, he would “blow up the entirety” of South Pars – the largest gas field on the planet, and interestingly, a reservoir Iran shares with Qatar. The man who joined Israel in authorising the first strikes on Iranian production facilities is now openly dangling the prospect of destroying the shared gas reservoir that keeps tens of millions of people warm, powered and employed. That is not deterrence, only a head of state experimenting in public with the language of total economic annihilation.
Trump’s own Truth Social post about the strike reads like a rambling attempt to distance Washington from the attack while threatening to “blow up the entirety” of South Pars if Iran hits Qatar again. The post deserves closer attention later in this story.
ASSALUYEH: WHERE GAS BECOMES POWER
To see what was attacked in Assaluyeh is to understand that the language matches the target. South Pars itself is the Iranian half of a single, giant reservoir under the Gulf, known as the North Field in Qatar, which together contain around a tenth of the world’s proven gas reserves. Iranian officials say South Pars covers 24 phases and provides between 70–75% of Iran’s gas production, feeding power plants, industry, petrochemical complexes and gasoline production. The gas that makes that possible must pass through places like Assaluyeh, where onshore plants strip out condensate, liquefied petroleum gases and natural gas liquids before returning dry gas to the grid and sending liquids on to refineries and export jetties. Over two decades, the South Pars Special Economic Energy Zone has grown into a dense cluster of processing trains and downstream plants with total gas‑processing capacity on the order of a billion cubic metres per day and around twenty‑one petrochemical units producing close to forty million tonnes per year of urea, methanol, polyethene, and other basic chemicals.
Israel did not attack the offshore reservoir. It attacked the pipes, columns and separators that turn raw gas into power, plastics, fertiliser and fuel. The four targeted plants process sour gas from phases 3, 4, 5 and 6, which are mature, are heavily integrated blocks that feed directly into Iran’s domestic grid and petrochemical system. Shutting those trains, even temporarily, forces operators to throttle back production on the linked platforms and starves downstream complexes of both dry gas and feedstock. In concrete terms, that means less gas available for electricity generation on a grid already prone to summer blackouts, less feed for petrochemical plants that supply everything from fertiliser to plastics, and less condensate flowing through the storage and export facilities that sit alongside the gas plants on the Persian Gulf shore.
Iranian reports speak of powerful explosions at several Assaluyeh facilities, fires around storage tanks and gas units, and workers being evacuated as emergency crews tried to contain the damage. From a planner’s point of view, this is a high‑leverage target: a handful of processing units at the convergence of offshore production and onshore consumption whose disruption sends shockwaves up the supply chain and down into the civilian economy. From the point of view of the people whose houses, factories and hospitals depend on those flows, it looks like something else entirely – an attack on the infrastructure of daily life.
That is the first truth this strike reveals: Israel has shifted from fighting Iran’s armed forces to fighting the country’s energy system, the circulation of fuel that keeps the state conscious.
This is not a one‑off aberration. During the twelve‑day war of June 2025, an earlier Israeli strike hit the Phase 14 processing plant at Assaluyeh, forcing a shutdown and firefighting operation before Iranian engineers brought the plant back online within two weeks. The March 2026 strikes returned to the same nerve centre but widened the cut: instead of Phase 14 alone, the drones went after four plants tied to phases 3–6, which together represent a much larger share of South Pars throughput and a deeper incision into Iran’s ability to turn offshore gas into usable energy. What is being tested here is not just Iran’s repair capacity. It is how much of its gas‑conversion system can be burned down before the political cost becomes untenable.
FROM MILITARY TARGETS TO CIVILIAN PUNISHMENT
The crucial point is that gas in Iran is not a luxury export commodity, but the country’s primary fuel for power generation, industrial heat and residential heating. Well over ninety per cent of the gas Iran produces is consumed domestically, not exported. It keeps homes warm in winter, feeds cement and steel plants, drives turbines in power stations and prevents rolling blackouts on a grid that is already fragile. When you hit Assaluyeh, you are not trimming a few cargoes of condensate to Asia. You are reaching into the core of a domestic energy system that supports nearly ninety million people – the apartment blocks in Tehran that already live with scheduled outages, the small factories in Isfahan that depend on steady voltage to keep lines moving, the provincial hospitals that cannot function when the generators sputter.
Even the outlets trying to normalise the strike cannot entirely avoid that reality. They call South Pars an “energy lifeline”, stress that it powers much of Iran’s electricity system and note that the onshore plants at Assaluyeh are central to separating condensate and LPG from the gas that then runs into Iranian networks. “Energy lifeline” is the language of necessity, not of optional revenue. To choose that target is to choose to tamper with the civilian infrastructure that stands between a functioning society and a rolling crisis of blackouts, shortages and industrial breakdown. “Collective punishment” is usually invoked in the context of bombs on apartment blocks or food embargoes. Here it is delivered through valves and turbines.
It is precisely at this point, when questions of necessity and legitimacy collide, that the recent behaviour of Washington’s own security establishment strips away the alibi that this was a war forced by urgent facts. In a few sentences at a Senate hearing, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told lawmakers that only the president can decide what is an “imminent threat” from Iran, even as senior aides were warning her that there was no evidence Iran had restarted enrichment or posed an immediate nuclear danger. Two days earlier, Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned, saying in his letter that he could not “in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” that Iran posed “no imminent threat,” and that Israel had pressured the United States into the conflict. Those two moments do not need pages of commentary. Together they are enough: the official charged with guarding the integrity of U.S. intelligence rewrites “threat” as a presidential mood, and the official charged with synthesising terrorist threats walks out saying the war is manufactured.
In other words, while Israeli pilots and U.S. operators are hitting the infrastructure that keeps Iranian civilians alive, the people at the top of the American system are quietly admitting that the supposed emergency justifying those strikes does not exist in the way the public was told. The last line of defence, a reality defined by evidence rather than by political need, has been crossed, and it has been crossed at the exact moment the war shifted from military targets to the machinery of everyday survival.
Trump’s Truth Social statement makes that shift even starker. It is not a clarification, and reads more like a hostage note. South Pars is being turned into collateral for Qatar’s LNG security, and Trump denies U.S. prior knowledge of Israel’s first strike while claiming the right to decide if and when the entire shared field is destroyed. In one message, he signals that the energy backbone of Iran and Qatar is now a bargaining chip Washington is prepared to sacrifice to enforce its war.
That is the second truth of this episode: the war on Iran’s civilian infrastructure is being waged under a definition of “threat” that collapses into whatever the president needs it to be.
Once a president starts talking about “blowing up the entirety” of the field that keeps both Iran and Qatar running, the fiction that this is a contained war collapses.
Exporting the Energy Shock
By treating Iran’s South Pars complex and linked Gulf energy infrastructure as disposable targets, Israel and the United States have not just escalated a regional war; they have shifted the economic pain onto societies that never signed up for this fight, from Turkish households to European workers and Indian farmers now absorbing the fallout.
Turkey: forced into a rigged market
In Turkey, the cost of turning South Pars into a battlefield is already measurable. Analysts note that Iran supplies gas to Turkey by pipeline, and that any prolonged disruption would force buyers to look for replacement cargoes on the LNG market. That “elsewhere” is the spot market, where Asian demand has already begun pulling cargoes away from Europe as importers scramble to replace lost Gulf supply. In practice, a strike pitched as pressure on Iran becomes a higher import bill for a NATO member and another inflationary squeeze on households and industry.
Europe: dragged back toward 2022
In Europe, the impact showed up first on trading screens. After disruption to Qatari LNG output, benchmark gas prices on the Dutch TTF hub jumped by as much as 45%, reaching around €46 per megawatt-hour. Reuters then reported that Asian buyers scrambling for LNG replacement cargoes were already pulling shipments toward Asia, reinforcing the risk of another continental price shock. Europe’s dependence on LNG after cutting Russian pipeline supply means that attacks on South Pars-linked infrastructure in the Gulf do not stay regional for long.
India: paying for a war it did not choose
In India, the blowback is more than theoretical. Government sources told CNBC-TV18 that LPG supplies were already “feeling some heat” as the West Asia conflict disrupted shipping routes and pushed gas prices higher. The same report said Asian LNG prices had risen from about $6–8 per MMBtu to around $15 per MMBtu, while rerouting cargoes from alternative suppliers such as the United States or Norway would take longer. A later report said Indian LPG consumption fell 17.7% in the first half of March because of war-related supply disruption. That is what energy warfare looks like in human terms: shortages, higher costs and forced adjustment by people who had no role in launching the conflict.
China: tested, not insulated
China’s immediate exposure looks smaller on paper, but the same shock still hits Beijing’s energy calculus. Reuters reported that over 80% of Qatar’s LNG exports go to Asia, placing major buyers like China in the line of fire when Gulf supply is disrupted. Another report noted that China was among the key Asian markets exposed as the regional benchmark LNG price surged and traders sought replacement cargoes from farther afield. That leaves Beijing with more buffers than poorer importers, but not immunity from the price shock set off by attacks on Gulf gas infrastructure
WHEN A SHARED FIELD BECOMES A WAR ZONE
If the story stopped at Iran’s shoreline, it would already be devastating. But South Pars does not stop at Iran’s shoreline. The reservoir that feeds Assaluyeh stretches under the Gulf into Qatari waters, where it is known as the North Field and where it supplies Ras Laffan Industrial City, the most important LNG complex on Earth. Before the war, Ras Laffan’s trains exported around 77 million tonnes per year of liquefied natural gas, with plans underway to expand capacity towards 142 million tonnes by the end of the decade. Alongside LNG, Ras Laffan also produces Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), ethane, condensate and sulphur, and hosts gas‑to‑liquids plants, power stations and desalination units. It is a central hinge in the global energy system, and on the day Iran’s missiles arrived, workers there were told to leave the plant that underwrites their families’ incomes because someone else had decided their shared field was expendable.
Qatar understood immediately what an attack on South Pars meant. Its foreign ministry condemned the strikes as “dangerous and irresponsible,” explicitly reminding the world that the field is geologically continuous with the North Field and warning that targeting infrastructure tied to that reservoir threatens global energy security. It has now gone further, calling Iran’s strike on Ras Laffan a “brutal targeting” of its gas hub, invoking Security Council resolutions and asserting its right to respond under Article 51 of the UN Charter. The United Arab Emirates, normally cautious about public criticism of Israel, issued its own statement that attacks on energy facilities linked to Pars risk catastrophic consequences. Those are not sentimental reactions. They are the reflex of states that suddenly realised the line between “hitting Iran” and “putting our own energy spine in the crosshairs” had effectively vanished.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard then warned that key Gulf facilities had become “direct and legitimate targets” and urged workers to evacuate them before the strike. The list was specific: Ras Laffan; Mesaieed, Qatar’s original deep‑water export port and industrial hub, where gas and condensate are turned into NGLs, refined products, petrochemicals, aluminium and steel; Samref, a more‑than‑400,000‑barrels‑per‑day refinery in Yanbu on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast with around 13 million barrels of storage; Jubail, the giant refinery‑petrochemical complex in eastern Saudi Arabia running at roughly 440,000 barrels per day and anchored by a 1.5‑million‑tonne‑per‑year ethylene cracker; and Al Hosn in the UAE, a sour‑gas project that processes about a billion cubic feet per day of raw gas, produces roughly half a billion cubic feet per day of sales gas for the Emirati grid and throws off tens of thousands of barrels of condensate and thousands of tonnes of sulphur every day.
In Kuwait, drones struck individual units at the Mina al‑Ahmadi refinery and Mina Abdullah refinery, triggering “limited” fires and forcing operators to temporarily halt parts of their output. Further east, Abu Dhabi’s Habshan gas facilities, already singled out in Iranian warnings, were shut down after debris from intercepted missiles fell on the site, underscoring that Tehran was willing to hit the very installations that underpin its rivals’ domestic energy security.
In other words, Tehran not only threatened but executed multiple strikes, and in the Ras Laffan’s case, it appears the Islamic Republic have struck the same class of conversion assets on Arab shores that Israel and the U.S. had just targeted at Assaluyeh, the plants where raw hydrocarbons become electricity, heating, industrial feedstock and exportable product.
It is crucial to understand that Ras Laffan’s LNG trains, Mesaieed’s NGL and refining complex, Samref’s crude units, Jubail’s crude‑to‑chemicals expansion and Al Hosn’s gas and sulphur trains are all parts of the same nervous system.
When one side authorises attacks on conversion nodes at South Pars, the other side’s answer is not to keep politely to its own coastline. It is to declare that the Gulf’s entire energy architecture is now part of the battlefield.
That is the third truth this strike exposes: by hitting a shared field, Israel and the U.S. have made their own allies’ energy spines part of the target set.
THE ENERGY WAR NOBODY CAN HONESTLY CALL ‘DEFENSE’
Seen from this angle, the Assaluyeh strikes were not a self‑contained tactical move. They were the opening of a new kind of war, a war on conversion infrastructure, that punishes civilians first and drags allies and markets along for the ride. Israel hit the plant that turns Iran’s gas wealth into heat, light and wages; Iran responded in kind by putting the plants that turn Qatar’s, Saudi Arabia’s and the UAE’s hydrocarbons into LNG, petrol and plastics in its sights. Trump then raised the stakes by threatening to “entirely blow up” the shared reservoir that makes all of this possible, as if the energy backbone of two states and a sizeable slice of Europe and Asia’s gas supply were a pawn to be removed from the board to prove a point.
At that stage, the legal and moral mask slips. A campaign that begins as “precision strikes” against military and command targets turns, almost in slow motion, into an assault on the infrastructure that keeps tens of millions of people from freezing, blacking out or losing their jobs, and into a form of extortion against the wider Gulf. In other words, people of Iran are being asked to accept that Iran’s energy lifeline can be bombed with impunity, or watch their own refineries and LNG terminals burn.
Iranian analysts now call this openly what it is, “economic warfare” centered on energy, and warn that destroyed or degraded capacity will worsen electricity shortages and deepen domestic hardship. When the same government waging that campaign has senior officials on record saying the “imminent threat” used to sell the war does not exist as advertised, it becomes very hard to sustain the fiction that this is self‑defense in any meaningful sense.
A war waged under those conditions cannot be sold as “precision.” It can barely, if at all, be sold as self‑defense. What they are doing, in the cold light of Assaluyeh’s burning stacks and Ras Laffan’s flares, looks like a campaign of collective punishment enforced through the energy system of an entire region, and once you see it that way, it becomes very hard to unsee.
Buck Dancing for Zion: Kenya’s and Nigeria’s Growing Love Affair With Israel
Israel has found new golems to exploit on the Dark Continent
José Niño Unfiltered | February 18, 2026
In October 2025, hundreds of Kenyans marched through Nairobi’s Central Business District carrying banners reading “Israel Belongs to God”. Bishop Paul Karanja declared to the crowd, “We are here to declare that Israel is not alone. We will continue to stand with them.” The demonstration commemorated the second anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, but it represented something far more significant than a single day of solidarity. It revealed a geopolitical quirk that has left analysts scrambling for explanations.
According to a June 2025 Pew Research Center survey covering 24 countries, Kenya showed 50% favorable views toward Israel with 42% unfavorable. Nigeria registered 59% favorable and 32% unfavorable. These were the only two nations with majority positive sentiment toward Israel. In 20 of the 24 countries surveyed, majorities held negative views. Kenya and Nigeria, in addition to India, stand virtually alone in their enthusiasm for the Jewish state at precisely the moment when global opinion has turned sharply against it.
This pro-Israel shift among the populations in Kenya and Nigeria is not a sudden development born from the Gaza war. It represents years of cultivation, theological indoctrination, security partnerships, and strategic maneuvering that transformed two African nations into some of Israel’s most promising partners in the post-October 7 age.
The most fundamental explanation behind this rise in pro-Zionist sentiment lies in the explosive growth of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity across both countries.
Nigeria houses one of the world’s largest evangelical populations, with Operation World estimating the country ranks either third or fourth globally in total evangelical numbers, trailing only the United States and potentially Brazil or China depending on methodology. Pew Research Center puts Nigeria’s total Christian population at 93 million as of 2020, a 25% increase from 2010, making it the sixth-largest Christian nation in the world and the largest on the African continent.
Pentecostalism has become deeply embedded in Nigerian Christianity, though its precise share remains debated. The U.S. State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report, citing the Christian Association of Nigeria, places Pentecostals at approximately 30% of the Christian population, with an additional 10% identifying as evangelical Christians in non-Pentecostal traditions and African-instituted charismatic churches accounting for another 5 to 10%. When Pentecostal and charismatic Christians across all denominations are counted together, researchers at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary place the combined Pentecostal and charismatic share of Nigerian Christianity significantly higher, reflecting the deep penetration of charismatic practice even within mainline churches. That figure has exploded in recent decades, driven by aggressive evangelization, media expansion and the global reach of Nigerian-founded movements like the Redeemed Christian Church of God and Deeper Life Bible Church.
Kenya presents a different evangelical landscape but one equally conducive to pro-Israel theology. According to the 2019 national census, evangelicals comprise 20.4% of Kenya’s total population out of 47.6 million residents — roughly 9.6 million by the census’s strict denominational count. Broader estimates that apply a wider evangelical definition, including researcher Sebastian Fath’s figures cited by Lifeway Research, place Kenya’s evangelical population closer to 20 million. An estimated 30 to 35% of Kenya’s population identifies as Pentecostal, indicating significant overlap between evangelical and Pentecostal identities.
Together, Nigeria and Kenya account for approximately 78 million evangelicals under the broader definitional framework, representing over 42% of Africa’s estimated 185 million evangelical population. This concentration reflects broader patterns of African Christianity’s expansion and the global southward shift of Christian demographics.
The theological framework binding these believers to Israel rests on Christian Zionism, a dispensationalist interpretation that views the modern state of Israel as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Genesis 12:3 serves as the foundational text. “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse.”
The International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, a global evangelical organization, has actively cultivated ties with Nigerian churches, organizing pilgrimages and promoting pro-Israel narratives. Pastor Rex Ajenifuja of I Stand With Israel has mobilized grassroots campaigns emphasizing that “Nigeria loves Israel” and framing solidarity as a spiritual obligation. Prominent Nigerian pastors have explicitly connected pro-Israel theology to national prosperity. During visits to Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Adeboye explained, “The problems that we are seeing between the Jews and the rest of the world, is because they are the favorites of God. When you are special to God, then automatically the devil wouldn’t like you either.”
In Kenya, the theological stance intersects directly with political power. Current President William Ruto’s administration has deepened ties with evangelical leaders who have publicly endorsed Israel as part of their eschatological worldview. During prayer services, Ruto and First Lady Rachel Ruto — a devout evangelical known for her faith diplomacy program that enlists clergy in matters of state — have woven Israel into Kenya’s spiritual identity. Ruto himself prayed at Jerusalem’s Western Wall during a 2023 state visit, with the site’s rabbi noting it was the longest prayer by any world leader he had witnessed there. At a faith rally convened by Rachel Ruto, crowds waved Kenyan and Israeli flags together while praying for both nations. Influential evangelical figures have openly equated support for Israel with national blessing.
Bishop Dennis Nthumbi, Africa Director of the Israel Allies Foundation, has described Kenya’s bond with Israel as a “covenantal, long-standing relationship” that no politician can sever. Bishop Mark Kariuki, the presiding bishop of Deliverance Church Kenya and former chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, has aligned himself with the broader conservative evangelical political theology that underpins pro-Israel sentiment across the continent. The Kenyan government provided active support for the October 2025 pro-Israel march. Speaking in a televised interview on Kenya’s Elevate TV ahead of the march, Africa-Israel Initiative president Bishop Joshua Mulinge confirmed that the government had granted permits and provided police escorts throughout the route. “The Kenyan government has been very supportive,” he said. “We thank God for our head of state and for the entire government.”
The Times of Israel reported that the October 2025 march aimed to call Kenyan Christians “out of the prayer closet and into the streets” to publicly express solidarity with Israel beyond private prayer. Speakers emphasized that “Christianity originated in Jerusalem and that the Church remains spiritually rooted in Israel.” A Norwegian representative of the Africa Israel Initiative stated, “I believe that anybody who blesses Israel, as the Bible says, is blessed. I think it should be in every Christian’s heart to support Israel.”
The political dimensions of evangelicalism in both countries reveal important patterns of religious influence on governance. In Nigeria, evangelical and Pentecostal movements have shaped political discourse around moral conservatism, prosperity theology, and spiritual warfare against corruption, even as the country’s Christian-Muslim demographic balance remains contested. Pew Research places Muslims at 56.1% and Christians at 43.4% as of 2020, though Afrobarometer surveys of adults have found Christians in the majority. Kenya’s evangelical community has achieved more direct political influence, particularly through President Ruto’s administration, which explicitly appeals to evangelical constituencies and employs religious rhetoric in governance.
A 2024 study by the French Institute for Research in Africa described Ruto as the first born-again president in what it called “the making of a born-again republic,” documenting how key evangelical leaders including Bishop Mark Kariuki of Deliverance Church Kenya, Bishop David Oginde of CITAM, and evangelist Teresia Wairimu of Faith Evangelism Ministries described Ruto as God’s appointed ruler during his 2022 campaign. This theological stance embraced by Ruto has been used to justify the suppression of pro-Palestinian activism, as evidenced by Kenyan police’s arrest of Kenyans displaying Palestinian flags in 2023.
Theology alone does not explain the depth of Kenya and Nigeria’s alignment with Israel. Strategic security cooperation provides pragmatic reinforcement for religious sentiment.
Nigeria’s fight against Boko Haram and Kenya’s struggles with al-Shabaab have led to intelligence sharing agreements and military training programs facilitated by Israel. These partnerships, while pragmatic, are often justified through evangelical rhetoric that conflates Islamist extremism with broader anti-Israel sentiment. Nigerian evangelicals have long portrayed Boko Haram’s insurgency as evidence of jihadist violence targeting Christians, reinforcing theological solidarity with Israel as a fellow victim of Islamist terrorism. That narrative, however, is contested by researchers including Brookings and conflict-monitoring group ACLED, which has found that the majority of Boko Haram’s victims have been Muslim, with religion-targeted attacks against Christians accounting for only 5% of civilian-targeting events recorded in its data.
In November 2011, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga in Jerusalem and declared that “Kenya’s enemies are Israel’s enemies so we should be able to help,” pledging to build a coalition against fundamentalism that would bring together Kenya, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Tanzania. The meeting produced a memorandum of understanding on homeland security cooperation, with both Netanyahu and Israeli President Shimon Peres committing to help Kenya secure its borders against militant threats.
Similarly, Israeli ambassador Gil Haskel stated, “Israel is willing to send consultants to Kenya to help Kenya secure its cities from terrorist threats and share experience with Kenya because the operation in Somalia is very similar to Israel’s operations in the past, first in Lebanon and then in Gaza Strip.”
In February 2016, President Uhuru Kenyatta traveled to Jerusalem to strengthen counterterrorism cooperation, with discussions focused on combating al-Shabaab following the 2013 Westgate Mall attack and the 2015 Garissa University massacre. Nadav Peldman, Israeli deputy ambassador to Kenya, stated that Israel was “ready and willing to assist Kenya” in fighting terrorism, calling it “a heinous crime that should be confronted with the same force it projects.”
That defense relationship has since deepened under President William Ruto, who negotiated a $26 million Israeli government-backed loan in July 2025 to acquire the SPYDER surface-to-air missile system manufactured by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. The system, delivered in December 2025, accounted for roughly 70% of Kenya’s Ministry of Defence development budget for FY2025/26. The partnership spans counterterrorism operations, cybersecurity infrastructure, intelligence sharing, and joint military training.
Israeli-Kenyan relations have an economic dimension to them as well. In Kenya, Israeli drip irrigation technology — including low-pressure systems distributed through MASHAV — has been deployed to boost food security, alongside a 2016 Jerusalem Declaration in which Kenya and Israel committed to a 10-point water and irrigation cooperation framework. On the digital side, Kenya and Israel launched the Cyber-Dome Initiative between Israel’s National Cyber Directorate and Kenya’s Communications Authority, and have held Cyberweek Africa in Nairobi annually since 2023 to expand cybersecurity capacity-building across the continent.
The Israel-Nigeria partnership followed a parallel trajectory, with Nigeria’s Ministry of Defence reaffirming in April 2025 its commitment to “enhancing military cooperation with the State of Israel” following a meeting between Permanent Secretary Ambassador Gabriel Aduda and Israeli Ambassador Michael Freeman. The two sides discussed joint operations, knowledge exchange, defense industry development, and plans to finalize a new bilateral defence agreement, with Aduda pledging that Nigeria would “engage in strategic initiatives to replicate successful Israeli military cooperation frameworks.”
Nigeria, meanwhile, hosts over 50 Israeli companies operating across construction, infrastructure, hi-tech, communications and IT, and agriculture and water management. Cultural ties have also deepened: in 2021 the Israeli ambassador to Nigeria and the country’s vice president initiated a collaborative film co-production between Israeli and Nollywood filmmakers to mark 60 years of diplomatic relations. Israel’s MASHAV agency, established in 1958, provides agricultural training, water management, and health programs across East Africa, with Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, and Seychelles identified as its primary African partners for capacity-building.
None of the growing pro-Zionist sentiment in Kenya and Nigeria is a coincidence. Well-funded pro-Israel organizations have systematically cultivated African Christian support through parliamentary lobbying, church mobilization, and faith-based diplomacy.
The Washington, D.C.-based Israel Allies Foundation maintains a global parliamentary network of more than 1,500 pro-Israel lawmakers, coordinating faith-based caucuses in Kenya, Nigeria, and across Africa. Bishop Scott Mwanza of Zambia served as the foundation’s inaugural Africa Director, coordinating existing caucuses across the continent. He was succeeded by Rev. Dennis Nthumbi, who currently oversees 16 Israel Allies Caucuses as Africa Director and has been a leading voice in mobilizing Christian parliamentary support for Israel across the region.
In September 2024, 25 African lawmakers from 19 countries gathered in Addis Ababa for the first Pan-Africa Israel Parliamentary Summit, where they signed the “Addis Ababa Declaration of Africa-Israel Cooperation and Partnership.” The declaration, which included lawmakers from Kenya and Nigeria among others, affirmed Jerusalem as “the legitimate, undivided, and eternal capital of the Jewish State of Israel,” condemned anti-Zionism as antisemitism, and called for strengthening bilateral ties and supporting Israel’s observer status at the African Union.
Key Kenyan organizations include the Africa-Israel Initiative, launched in Zambia in April 2012 by a coalition of African church leaders including Bishop Joshua Mulinge of Kenya, who now serves as its president and leads the movement across more than 20 African nations. The Israel Allies Foundation Africa Division is led by Rev. Dennis Nthumbi. King Jesus Celebration Church Worldwide, chaired by Bishop Paul Karanja, co-convened the 2025 “March for Israel” through Nairobi’s Central Business District alongside the Africa-Israel Initiative and the Israel Allies Foundation. The Evangelical Alliance of Kenya serves as the national umbrella body for evangelical churches.
Nigerian organizations include the Lagos-based I Stand with Israel International Friendship Organization, led by Pastor Rex Ajenifuja; Christians United for Israel Nigeria Chapter, part of the global CUFI network founded by American pastor John Hagee; and the Africa for Israel Christian Coalition, founded by South African Israel lobbyist Luba Mayekiso, whose Nigerian affiliates have mobilized over 3,000 pastors across 22 states.
Prominent Nigerian evangelical leaders include Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, founder of Christ Embassy; Pastor Enoch Adeboye, General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, who has visited Israel multiple times and donated two ambulances to Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency blood services organization; and the late Prophet TB Joshua, founder of Synagogue Church of All Nations, who was named “Tourism Goodwill Ambassador for Israel” by Minister of Tourism Yariv Levin following a 2019 evangelical crusade in Nazareth.
Nigerian Christian pilgrimages to Israel have become a significant phenomenon. According to the Nigerian Christian Pilgrim Commission, approximately 18,000 Christian pilgrims from Nigeria travel to holy sites in Israel and Jordan each year on average, with the NCPC targeting around 10,000 pilgrims annually for its organized exercises. The NCPC organizes multiple pilgrimage cycles throughout the year — including Easter, Women’s, Youth, and General pilgrimages — with participants praying for Nigeria’s leaders and offering intercessory prayers at holy sites. The 84,000 figure in the original text is not supported by Israeli tourism data; Israel Central Bureau of Statistics figures show Nigerian tourist arrivals peaked at 12,700 in 2019, while a 2025 analysis of the decade from 2015 to 2025 estimated over 80,000 total Nigerian Christian pilgrimages over that entire ten-year span.
Former President Goodluck Jonathan — a practicing Pentecostal Christian who, as sociologist Ebenezer Obadare documented in Pentecostal Republic, cultivated strong ties with Nigeria’s Pentecostal constituency — played a pivotal role in what might be called “pilgrimage diplomacy.” In October 2013, he became the first sitting Nigerian president to undertake a pilgrimage to Israel, leading a delegation that included six state governors — including Governors Elechi of Ebonyi, Obi of Anambra, Akpabio of Akwa Ibom, Suswam of Benue, Jang of Plateau, and Orji of Abia — along with ministers and church leaders including CAN President Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor.
Initial pre-trip reports of 19 governors and 30,000 pilgrims proved to be overblown. Jonathan visited holy sites, met with President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Bogi Ya’alon, and signed bilateral agreements on aviation. He made a second private pilgrimage in 2014, meeting Prime Minister Netanyahu with an entourage of about 20 political and religious leaders.
Jonathan expressed security solidarity when he wrote to Prime Minister Netanyahu during the search for three Israeli teens abducted by Hamas in 2014, stating, “I assure you that we are in solidarity with you, as we believe that any act of terrorism against any nation or group is an act against our common humanity.”
These visits had diplomatic consequences. In December 2014, when the UN Security Council voted on a Jordanian-tabled resolution calling for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories and Palestinian statehood within three years, Nigeria abstained — a last-minute reversal that left the resolution one vote short of the nine needed to pass. The Guardian reported that both Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had phoned President Jonathan to ask him not to support the resolution. Nigeria’s abstention, alongside those of the UK, Lithuania, South Korea, and Rwanda, meant the US and Australia’s opposing votes were sufficient to defeat the measure without Washington needing to invoke its veto — a significant diplomatic victory for Israel given Nigeria’s historical support for the Palestinian cause.
Kenyatta played a particularly instrumental role in the diplomatic warming between Kenya and Israel. In February 2016, he visited Jerusalem for counterterrorism talks with Netanyahu. Netanyahu then reciprocated with a historic visit to Kenya in July 2016 — the first visit by an Israeli prime minister to sub-Saharan Africa in nearly 30 years. It was during that Nairobi press conference, not during Kenyatta’s Jerusalem visit, that Netanyahu declared: “Israel is coming back to Africa, and Africa is coming back to Israel.” Kenyatta in turn pledged to help Israel regain observer status at the African Union.
Following the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, President William Ruto posted on X that “Kenya joins the rest of the world in solidarity with the State of Israel and unequivocally condemns terrorism and attacks on innocent civilians in the country. The people of Kenya and their government hereby express their deepest sympathy and send condolences to the families of all victims… Kenya strongly maintains that there exists no justification whatsoever for terrorism, which constitutes a serious threat to international peace and security. All acts of terrorism and violent extremism are abhorrent, criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of the perpetrator, or their motivations.”
The statement also called for de-escalation and a ceasefire — context omitted from early reporting — and drew sharp criticism from Kenya’s Muslim leaders and some opposition figures. Ruto subsequently softened his position at a November 2023 Arab-African summit in Riyadh, where he stated that “terrorism cannot be an answer to any conflict; neither is occupation” and reaffirmed Kenya’s support for a two-state solution.
Based on post-October 7 trends, the trajectory of support for Israel augurs a distinctly melanin-enhanced future, as centuries-old European animus toward organized Jewry—now reactivated by the industrial-scale genocide in Gaza—diminishes traditional alliances on the Old Continent. Under these circumstances, Israel must pivot toward emergent partners in the Global South, where nations like Kenya and Nigeria, buoyed by decades-long philosemitic trends, can provide millions of new golems for world Jewry to tap into.
Concomitant with Israel’s burgeoning alliance with India—itself a bastion of Hindu nationalist affinity for the Jewish state—this reconfiguration signals that pro-Zionism will inexorably become brown-coded within mere decades, as the Global South’s burgeoning populations eclipse fading Euro-American sympathies.
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From the Archives
Is the Israel Lobby Only a Chimp Among Gorillas?
By DIANA JOHNSTONE | CounterPunch | September 23, 2013
Some friendly criticism of our article “The People Against the 800 Pound Gorilla” provides a welcome opportunity to clarify the discussion. Shamus Cooke, while largely agreeing with the points made by Jean Bricmont and myself, reproaches us for focusing on the pro-Israel lobby as the major factor promoting U.S. war against Syria to the detriment of much bigger factors: the U.S. capitalist class, the big banks, “empire”, oil, the military-industrial complex – in a word, capitalism.
The problem with our article, writes Shamus Cooke, “is that the authors elevate the Israeli gorilla to a weight class it doesn’t belong in; and in so doing the authors are forced to minimize the size of several other giant gorillas, whose combined weight overshadows the Israeli chimp.”
Of course, “capitalism”, however you want to define it, vastly dwarfs the Israel lobby. So do the military-industrial complex, the oil business, or U.S. imperialism, all of which have existed prior to and independently of the Israel lobby.
But is weighing the Israel lobby against “capitalism” a valid comparison? … continue
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