WhatsappWhat appears, at first glance, to be a series of disconnected moves—the UAE’s tightening embrace of India, the maturation of the Greece–Cyprus–Israel military framework, and the quiet push toward recognizing Somaliland—is in fact one coherent strategic design. Different arenas. Same map.
Israel is no longer positioning itself as a state waiting to be absorbed into a regional order. It is helping construct the order itself, corridor by corridor.
The eastern Mediterranean: securing the western gate
The security alignment linking Greece, Cyprus, and Israel has moved well beyond energy diplomacy. What began as gas coordination has hardened into a military framework: joint air exercises, naval interoperability, missile-defense coordination, and persistent intelligence sharing.
This is not posturing. It is infrastructure defense.
Undersea cables, offshore gas fields, maritime routes, and sovereign airspace in the Eastern Mediterranean have become contested assets—particularly as Turkey presses outward and NATO consensus remains elusive. The Greece–Cyprus–Israel framework solves that problem pragmatically. It anchors Israel inside NATO-adjacent systems without the paralysis that formal alliance politics often impose.
Most importantly, it establishes Israel as a net contributor to regional security westward. That matters because it allows Israel strategic flexibility elsewhere.
The Red Sea and the Horn: the southern hinge
That flexibility is now being exercised to the south.
Somaliland is not a symbolic cause or a diplomatic indulgence. It is a geographic fact. Sitting astride the approaches to the Bab el-Mandeb, Somaliland occupies one of the most sensitive maritime chokepoints on the planet—the same artery increasingly threatened by Iranian proxies, regional instability, and great-power competition.
The UAE has understood this for years, building ports, logistics nodes, and basing access across the Horn of Africa. Israel’s interest converges naturally. Recognition—formal or functional—creates strategic depth: a friendly node linking Eilat and the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, a counterweight to Iranian, Turkish, and Chinese penetration, and a redundancy corridor if Red Sea traffic is disrupted.
This is not about flags or formalities. It is about continuity of movement.
India: the eastern pillar
From there, the line extends east.
The UAE’s January 2026 pivot toward India, anchored during Mohammed bin Zayed’s visit to New Delhi, locks in the final pillar. India is uniquely suited for this role: a continental-scale economy, an expanding blue-water navy, and a strategic culture that is allergic to Islamist entanglements while increasingly aligned with Israel on technology, defense, and intelligence.
For Abu Dhabi, India offers strategic depth beyond the Gulf and insulation from Saudi leverage. For Israel, the triangle—Israel, UAE, India—creates something rarer: eastward reach without ideological baggage.
This is where the Saudi–UAE split becomes relevant. Riyadh’s defense agreement with Pakistan, India’s principal rival, signaled to Abu Dhabi that Gulf unity is no longer a given. The response was not escalation, but diversification. Israel should read that clearly.
Why this system excludes hierarchy—and why that matters
Saudi Arabia’s regional model is centralized. It depends on primacy, religious legitimacy, and American arbitration. The system now forming does not. It is modular, functional, and resilient precisely because no single actor controls it.
That is why Riyadh sits adjacent to, rather than inside, this architecture.
Israel should not interpret that as exclusion. It should see it as insulation. The emerging network does not require unanimity or grand bargains. It advances through overlapping interests: maritime security, infrastructure defense, intelligence sharing, and technological interoperability.
One map, one logic
Taken together, the picture is clear:
- Greece–Cyprus–Israel secures the western Mediterranean gateway.
- Somaliland stabilizes the southern hinge at the Red Sea–Indian Ocean junction.
- UAE–India provides eastern reach and strategic depth.
This is not bloc politics. It is corridor politics—designed to constrain Iran, limit Turkish adventurism, hedge against Chinese penetration, and reduce reliance on U.S. micromanagement without undermining the alliance.
For Israel, the significance is profound. For decades, it was treated as a regional exception—integrated reluctantly, conditionally, or not at all. Today, it sits at the intersection of routes, not the margins of maps.
That is not an accident. It is strategy.
