As US Ties Strain, Netanyahu Looks To India For New Strategic Alliance
JERUSALEM-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent remarks about developing alliances with India amid strained relations with the US reveal a structural shift and potential opportunities for deeper defense cooperation between the two countries, according to various media reports. The Jerusalem Post, Israel Hayom and the Times of Israel have all remarked on it.
Recently, Netanyahu said, “You have to build new alliances and develop new relationships. That’s what I’m doing right now with India,” during an interview on Fox News. The remarks came amid strains in relations between Israel and the US.
According to reporting on the exchange, the American President (Donald Trump) told Netanyahu bluntly that patience had run out, that everyone was tired of him, and that Israel owed its very existence to American backing. (US Vice-President) JD Vance had gone further still, publicly casting the United States as Israel’s only real ally, media has said. Netanyahu responded on Fox, by saying Israel has “other friends, like India.”
Netanyahu’s remarks about India went beyond diplomatic niceties and reflected Israel’s efforts to build strategic partnerships beyond its traditional reliance on the US.
“A Prime Minister does not reach for an empty gesture when his strategic legitimacy is being questioned by his own patron. He reaches for the thing he can actually point to. That is the fuller dimension of the statement: it is less about India as sentiment and more about India as evidence, proof that Israel has begun building an alternative that does not require American permission to exist,” one report said.
Ongoing defense discussions between India and Israel give Netanyahu’s remarks greater significance, particularly as Israel seeks to expand its weapons production capacity.
“Multiple reports over recent weeks describe Rafael Advanced Defense Systems negotiating with Indian private-sector manufacturers to establish a production line for Iron Dome’s Tamir interceptors on Indian soil… it is a proposal to manufacture the actual missile Israel depends on to survive daily rocket, drone, and cruise-missile fire,” another report said.
It said India’s manufacturing capacity and workforce could help Israel expand defense production at scale.
“It (India) has no interest in dictating Israel’s regional posture in exchange for cooperation, unlike a patron relationship. And it has demonstrated, through decades of maintaining relations simultaneously with Washington, Moscow, the Gulf states, and Tehran, that it can absorb a defence partnership with Israel without being pulled into anyone’s bloc, which means Israel gains a partner without inheriting a new set of political conditions. That combination is genuinely rare,” the report said. (IANS)
