How PM Modi’s Israel visit will add muscle to India’s military might| India News
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to Israel comes at a moment when the Middle East is a tinderbox – from the grinding Gaza war to spiralling US–Iran tensions and unprecedented missile exchanges that have redrawn the region’s security map. Yet, as Hindustan Times Executive Editor Shishir Gupta underlines in a wide–ranging conversation with Senior Anchor Ayesha VermaNew Delhi is choosing to walk into the eye of the storm, not away from it.
Modi in a region on edge
The United States has mounted a massive military build–up across the Middle East, with advanced aircraft and carrier groups moving into launch positions, while Israel remains on high alert amid fears that any American strike on Iran would trigger retaliation on Israeli territory. This build-up includes America’s largest and most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford.
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In parallel, Washington and Tehran are engaged in fraught diplomacy in Geneva, with an American deadline, dictated by Trump, hanging over talks on Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes and its domestic crackdown on protesters.
In this febrile context, Modi’s decision to travel to Israel “appears to be risky” on the surface, Gupta notes, but he argues that the symbolism cuts the other way. Rather than “sitting tight” in Delhi and issuing political statements, the Prime Minister is choosing to enter the “heat of the current environment,” signalling that India wants to be present as a serious stakeholder and advocate for de-escalation.
Modi, Gupta points out, has cultivated strong personal equations across the region – with Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel and other Gulf capitals – and has physically travelled to virtually all key countries in West Asia. This, he suggests, allows Modi to project himself as a leader who is not picking sides in a sectarian or bloc contest, but as someone willing to talk to all actors even as India firmly defines its own interests.
The deepening India–Israel defence partnership
Behind the optics, the visit is expected to push India–Israel ties into a new gear, particularly in defence, technology and joint development of cutting–edge capabilities. Gupta reminds us that Israel has been a “very close and trusted ally” for decades, even when Indian governments of the past were reluctant to be seen engaging Tel Aviv too openly.
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During the 1999 Kargil war, Israel quietly supplied targeted weaponry, laser–guided munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles and other force multipliers that significantly boosted the Indian Air Force’s ability to hit Pakistani positions. More recently, during “Operation Sindoor,” Indian forces used a package of Israeli-origin systems – including loitering munitions like PALM–200/400 and Harpy/Harop, and Rampage long-range missiles, supplemented by BrahMos strikes – to take out terror infrastructure in Pakistan at places like Bahawalpur and Muridke, the strongholds of Jaish–e–Mohammed and Lashkar–e–Taiba.
India also turns to Israel for high–end anti–tank weapons, including those inducted during the Ladakh stand–off with China in 2020, and increasingly for long–range stand–off missiles to neutralise air–defence systems that Pakistan has extended with Chinese radar support. Israeli missiles and emerging systems like the Iron Beam laser weapon are seen in Delhi as “top of the line,” and Gupta says the visit is likely to unlock weapon supplies that were not cleared even in the past.
“The defence partnership becomes much more deeper,” he stresses, describing a shift from simple buyer–seller ties to an intensive, multi–layered relationship anchored in trust at the very top between Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mission Sudarshan Chakra: Shielding India from missiles
The most strategic piece of this puzzle is India’s emerging collaboration with Israel on anti–missile defence, which Gupta connects directly to Modi’s “Mission Sudarshan Chakra” announced in his Independence Day speech. The tipping point, he says, was again Operation Sindoor, when Pakistan reportedly fired nearly a thousand missiles, including ballistic missiles, at India – causing minimal damage but exposing the scale of potential saturation attacks India must be prepared for.
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India’s core concern now is Pakistan, which Gupta bluntly calls the “unscrupulous power,” as opposed to China, where he sees at least the possibility of mature dialogue between “two big powers.” Pakistan has used Chinese systems to strengthen its air defence and is working on longer–range missiles such as the Ababeel, a 2,000 km–class system with multiple independently targetable re–entry vehicles (MIRVs) that can release several warheads on different trajectories.
Once such “bomblets” separate, interception becomes extremely difficult, which is why India needs the capability to hit enemy missiles either in their boost phase or in the terminal phase before they fragment. Here, Israel’s experience is critical: during Iran’s large–scale strike last year, Israeli systems reportedly neutralised 498 of 500 incoming missiles, using a layered shield of Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow–3.
Mission Sudarshan Chakra, as Gupta explains it, is essentially about building India’s own layered missile defence grid:
- Detecting launches through radars, aircraft and satellites.
- Neutralising threats at multiple ranges – roughly 100 km, 250 km and 400 km – using different interceptor families.
- Combining this with long–range stand–off weapons that can hit enemy launchers and missile infrastructure at source.
In a world where stand–off missiles, loitering munitions, kamikaze and swarm drones are becoming standard tools of war – and where both China and Pakistan possess such capabilities – Gupta calls Sudarshan Chakra “the key to Indian security currently.” The India–Israel plan is to jointly develop critical elements of this architecture in India, both to ensure self–reliance and to scale up rapidly for a worst–case scenario.
India’s role amid US–Iran friction
Zooming out, Varma presses Gupta on how India fits into the sharper US–Iran confrontation that frames Modi’s Israel trip. On one side is an American show of strength and a president under domestic pressure to demonstrate results on Iran after judicial setbacks on his economic agenda; on the other, an Iranian leadership that sees itself as the vanguard of Shia power and is unwilling to be seen backing down.
Talks in Geneva are trying to bridge fundamental gaps: the US wants Iran to cap its enrichment and ballistic missile programmes and rein in violent crackdowns on protesters, while Tehran refuses to accept such constraints. “It is not looking good,” Gupta warns, suggesting that the expiry of Washington’s 10–day deadline could be followed by action within hours or days, depending on how each side reads the situation.
In this fraught landscape, India occupies a rare position: it can speak to all the key players. New Delhi maintains channels with Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iran – and separately enjoys a close, terrorism–focused partnership with Israel. India has also kept lines open with the Taliban and has over the past few years acted as a messenger and calming influence, from the Ukraine war to the Gaza conflict, while making its own red lines clear (such as calling 7 October 2023 a terrorist attack).
Gupta describes this as “pure strategic autonomy” – India talking to everyone, without being owned by anyone, and using its “good offices” to keep diplomacy and dialogue alive even when rivals cannot directly speak to one another.
From Palestine and “vote banks” to an economic corridor
The conversation also traces how India’s Israel policy has evolved. India recognised Israel in 1950 and Palestine later, but for decades avoided overt warmth with Tel Aviv, largely because of domestic political sensitivities and the desire to protect a particular “vote bank.” The relationship became more open after 1992, yet even then remained low–key in public rhetoric.
Gupta argues that since 2014, Modi has flipped that script by engaging “everyone” – from Israel and the UAE to Jordan and the wider Gulf – while retaining support for Palestinian statehood. He cites the almost casual “tea diplomacy” with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed, who can fly in for a few hours of high–level discussions, as an indicator of the comfort level, and points to intense counter–radicalisation dialogues with Jordan and the UAE as further evidence of a new depth.
At the economic level, Varma and Gupta discuss Netanyahu’s idea of a “hexagon alliance” involving India, Israel, Greece, Cyprus and Middle Eastern partners – which Gupta reframes less as a hard security bloc and more as an economic and connectivity vision built around the India–Middle East Economic Corridor.
In its envisaged form, Indian goods would move from Indian ports to Fujairah in the UAE, then overland through Saudi Arabia to Jordan, on to Haifa in Israel, and from there onwards to Mediterranean ports like Cyprus, Greece, Naples and Marseilles – with the possibility of Beirut if conditions allow. Gupta calls Hamas’s October 7 attack an event that “brutally ripped apart” this corridor just as it was nearing reality, but stresses that the underlying logic of integrating these economies remains compelling.
For India, he emphasises, the priority is not to sign up to a formal alliance designed by others, but to deepen economic cooperation with Gulf partners, Israel, Greece and Cyprus while keeping the regional balance intact. Modi’s Israel visit, then, is less an isolated bilateral stop and more a node in a wider strategy: hardening India’s own defences, expanding high–technology and economic linkages, and positioning New Delhi as a stabilising, autonomous power in a Middle East on the brink.