The diplomatic landscape of South Asia and the Middle East is experiencing a quiet but unmistakable tectonic shift. Over the past several months, India’s growing defense partnership with Israel has drawn sharp attention—not only for its symbolism but for its very real impact on the region’s security calculus, especially in Islamabad and Tehran. As the world watches New Delhi and Tel Aviv draw closer, the ripple effects are reverberating from the corridors of Pakistan’s military headquarters to the offices of Iran’s foreign ministry, and even further afield to Beijing and Ankara.
While headlines often focus on the personal rapport between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, analysts and regional players are increasingly aware that the heart of this partnership lies in hard strategic interests. According to AzerNEWS, Israel has become one of India’s most significant defense suppliers, providing everything from drones and missile defense systems to advanced munitions and surveillance platforms. What’s more, Israeli technology is now deeply integrated into Indian military infrastructure. The A 50 Phalcon, for example—a Russian IL 76 airframe fitted with the Israeli EL W 2090 radar—enables India to monitor Pakistani airspace without ever crossing the border. It’s a force multiplier, and Islamabad knows it.
Pakistan’s concern isn’t just about hardware. It’s about the incremental but meaningful shift in deterrence balance. As AzerNEWS notes, “Advanced Israeli systems embedded within India’s military architecture alter that balance incrementally but meaningfully.” In a region where equilibrium is fragile, even small shifts can have outsized consequences. And when India’s military modernization is coupled with deepening ties to Gulf Arab states and the European Union, Pakistan’s traditional assumptions about regional solidarity are shaken.
Recent months have seen India ink a string of major defense deals, not just with Israel but also with Germany, France, and the European Union. In December 2025, India and Germany agreed to build six submarines under Project 75I. In January 2026, India signed a maritime defense security deal with the EU alongside a Free Trade Deal, and a landmark agreement with France will see 114 Rafale fighter jets ordered, with 96 built in India itself. By late February 2026, a new India-Israel deal was announced to further strengthen India’s air and missile defense systems. According to Mint, each of these deals includes technology transfer agreements, signaling India’s determined bid for self-reliance in both air and maritime defense.
“With Israel, India is strengthening an already strong defense partnership that includes missiles, air defense systems, drones, surveillance tools, and possible cooperation on advanced technologies. These improve India’s ability to detect threats early and respond quickly,” said Abhinav Tiwari, a research analyst at Bonanza, as quoted by Mint. He added that India’s broadening security ties with the EU and France also send a political message: Europe is increasingly aligned with India on issues like cross-border terrorism.
For Pakistan, the implications are immediate and psychological. As Ross Maxwell, Global Strategy Operations Lead at VT Markets, told Mint, “Pakistan feels pressured because India is gaining better weapons and stronger diplomatic support, making risky actions more difficult.” Pakistan, constrained by debt and focused on maintaining deterrence, is likely to respond with cheaper tools—missiles, drones, and tactical nuclear forces—rather than attempting to match India’s conventional spending. Meanwhile, China, though concerned, is more likely to support Pakistan or adjust its own capabilities along the border and in the Indian Ocean than to escalate defense spending directly.
Iran, for its part, faces a more layered dilemma. While its rivalry with Israel is direct and ideological, its longstanding partnership with India has been pragmatic. Despite American pressure, India continued to purchase Iranian oil until sanctions tightened, and the two nations have invested in projects like the Chabahar port, which provides India with access to Afghanistan and Central Asia while bypassing Pakistan. However, the emergence of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC)—linking India to Europe via the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel’s Haifa port—threatens to bypass both Pakistan and Iran, potentially reducing their geopolitical relevance as transit states.
As AzerNEWS points out, “India’s expanding defense and intelligence cooperation with Israel introduces strategic ambiguity for Tehran.” While there’s no public evidence of intelligence sharing targeting Iran, the suspicion alone is enough to cause concern in a region where mistrust is a structural feature. Yet, Iran cannot afford to alienate India—a vast market and a potential counterweight to economic isolation. Instead, Tehran compartmentalizes: criticizing Israel rhetorically while maintaining working relations with India. This multi-vector foreign policy allows Iran to pursue sometimes awkward, parallel tracks.
Meanwhile, the response from Ankara and Islamabad has been vocal, if not always consistent. In the run-up to and during Modi’s high-profile visit to Israel in February 2026, Pakistani and Turkish media were filled with editorials warning of the dangers of an India-Israel axis. Some framed the partnership as an existential threat to Muslims, casting India and Israel as “two evils” joining forces. Yet, as NDTV’s opinion section notes, these anxieties often mask deeper frustrations. Pakistan, for example, recently celebrated its own defense pact with Saudi Arabia and flirted with the idea of an “Islamic NATO” alongside Turkey. Critics point out the hypocrisy: while denouncing India’s ties with Israel, Pakistan remains silent about its allies’ growing defense relations with Tel Aviv, particularly Azerbaijan’s arms purchases.
So, what’s really at stake? For Pakistan, it’s about more than just hardware or symbolism. It’s about the fear of encirclement, the erosion of traditional alliances, and the realization that India is now leveraging partnerships beyond its old Soviet-era dependencies. As Avinash Gorakshkar, a SEBI-registered analyst, told Mint, “India’s diversification away from Russian dependence also signals long-term technological depth, which reduces Pakistan’s expectation that India will face supply issues in times of crises.”
For Iran, the challenge is to maintain economic corridors and diversified partnerships in a region where isolation is always a risk. Severing ties with India would be self-defeating, especially as Western sanctions continue to bite. Instead, adaptation—not confrontation—seems to be the order of the day for both Tehran and Islamabad. As one AzerNEWS analysis puts it, “The Israel–India convergence adds another layer to an already complex security environment rather than creating a wholly new one.”
Ultimately, the India-Israel partnership is less about grand ideological designs and more about converging security interests, defense economics, and technological exchange. It’s part of a wider reconfiguration of Asian and Middle Eastern geopolitics, where middle powers pursue overlapping partnerships without exclusive loyalties. In this fluid landscape, Pakistan and Iran are recalculating their positions, not simply reacting. The new order is taking shape—not with a bang, but with a series of carefully calculated moves.