Israeli Press
Israeli think tank urges a counter-axis with India and the Emirates
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Israel should answer the Mecca defence pact by immediately tightening its axis with the United Arab Emirates and India, the India specialist Oshrit Birvadker argues in the pro-Netanyahu daily Israel Hayom. Birvadker is a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, a right-leaning Israeli think tank, and a consultant to security firms.
The Saudi-Turkish-Pakistani agreement is a strategic turning point that will speed the regional and global arms race, she writes. In her telling it was born of eroding American deterrence — Washington's hesitancy on Iran drove the region to diversify its security — and it pushes normalisation with Riyadh further off.
She doubts its NATO-style clause will ever be honoured, and sees no sign of a Pakistani nuclear umbrella for the Saudis.
Turkey worries her most: a threat to Israel "no less than Iran", already Pakistan's second-largest arms supplier, close to a deal for joint production of its KAAN fighter jet, and positioned to convert Saudi money into a grip on regional supply chains.
Her prescription runs on two axes. One already operates in the Mediterranean with Greece and Cyprus against Turkish influence. The other runs east: the Emirates, uneasy at Ankara's ties to political Islam, and India, which fears both Pakistan's rearmament and Turkish reach into South Asia.
Binding Israel, Abu Dhabi and New Delhi together, she closes, is the geopolitical anchor against the arms embargoes and international isolation Israel now risks.
