While the world watches Israeli actions in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, Israel and India are building one of the most consequential defence partnerships among middle powers. The relationship evolved from occasional arms purchase to sustained industrial and strategic cooperation. This partnership is consistently overlooked and has, over the past years, reshaped the military balance of South Asia. During the 2025 May conflict between Pakistan and India, Israeli loitering drones were extensively used by India for targeting inside Pakistani mainland.
The scale of this relationship is staggering with India being Israel’s single largest defence purchaser between 2020 and 2024. The defence procurement accounts for roughly 34% of total Israeli arms export approximately worth $20.5 billion. These deals barely register on the strategic discourse.
The partnership is entering a new and ambitious phase following two major regional conflicts. The ongoing war in the Middle East nearly exhausted the Israeli air defences, while the May 2025 India-Pakistan conflict exposed critical vulnerabilities in New Delhi’s interception capabilities. As a result, the two sides are reportedly set to sign deals worth $8 to $10 billion. The recent visit of the Indian Prime Minister to Israel in February 2026 has become a centrepiece of what may be the largest single defense procurement between India and Israel.
Potential agreements are expected to cover all four major elements of Israel’s of Israeli defence architecture, IAI’s Arrow system, Rafael’s David Sling and Iron dome, and the currently under development, laser-based Iron Beam. An already approved package worth approximately $8.7 billion includes systems like precision-strike weapons, missiles, radars, drones, surveillance equipment including AWACS, with a key component being the purchase of a thousand SPICE-1000 precision guidance kits from Rafael Advanced Defence systems. Reportedly, Golden Horizon as well as air-launched ballistic missiles were offered to India. These weapons, like loitering drones and Precision guided weapons, are not defensive acquisitions. They are instruments of long range, standoff strike capability, these weapons are designed to operate well beyond the reach of the adversary’s air defences.
Pakistan and India maintain a deterrence relationship that has historically been stable, if precariously, by a rough parity in strike capability and mutual vulnerability. This isn’t to say that Pakistan matches bullet-to-bullet or in this case missile-to missile, but both have credible strike packages. The introduction of Israeli-built Iron Dome and David’s Sling type air defences will not only enhance defence; it will alter the logic of escalation management. A state that believes it can intercept a retaliatory strike is a state that may feel more confident initiating one.
This concern is not new. As far back as 2004, the U.S. initially urged Israel to delay the sale of Phalcon AWACS systems to India out of concern that it might intensify the conventional force asymmetry with Pakistan. The U.S eventually acquiesced. Two decades later, the arms transfer is of a much larger magnitude, and systems are far more sophisticated. If acquired, geopolitical guardrails can potentially become flimsy and eventually collapse.
The relationship is not one-sided. Israel’s actions in Gaza, which have generated an outrage over war crimes and genocide and resulted in over seventy thousand Palestinians deaths, Indian state-owned firms have been supplying Israel with rockets and explosives. In one of the bombings of a UN shelter, fragments bearing the words “Made in India” were found in the rubble, following an airstrike that killed at least 33 people. The defence partnership between India and Israel is not merely a transactional affair, it is, at some point, a relationship which thrives in war.
The silence around this is not just political, it’s also structural. India and Israel have seemingly enjoyed peculiar immunity in Western perception. On one hand India is framed as a democratic counterweight to China, an expectation that India will somehow contain China. On the other hand, Israel as a front-line state in a broader context against Iran and its backed proxies. In this framing, the relationship is net positive for the West particularly the U.S., an alignment of democracies. Questions about its destabilizing effects in South Asia or simply implications for transferring air defence missile technology to India are largely absent from the overall korero.
Pakistan’s security concerns are often disregarded as reflexive defensiveness rather than legitimate security concerns. But the potential emergence of layered Israeli air defences over India along with strike munition with standoff ranges on Indian Air Force platforms constitutes a qualitative shift in an already sensitive environment that Pakistan may have to exist in.
The India Israel arms deal is not a footnote. It is milestone with strategic consequences for the strategic stability of South Asia. The fact that it has flown largely under the radar of mainstream attention especially after Israeli genocide in Gaza, and their strikes on Lebanon and Iran, is not an accident. It is a choice. For Pakistan, and for broader regional context, the relevant question is not whether this partnership exists, but how far it has travelled from ideological convergence to a “special strategic partnership.” The transfer of precision strike capabilities, drone technology and intelligence infrastructure is not merely an argument of India conventional edge, it compresses a decision-making timeline in a nuclear neighborhood where miscalculation is not just a theoretical risk but a chronic possibility.
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