Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to Israel comes at a time when the Middle East is a tinderbox – from the crippling Gaza war to rising US-Iran tensions and unprecedented missile exchanges that have redrawn the security map of the region. Yet, as executive editor of Hindustan Times Shishir Gupta Highlighted in wide-ranging conversation with senior anchor Ayesha VermaNew Delhi is choosing to walk into the eye of the storm, not away from it.
Modi is ahead in one area
The United States has begun a massive military buildup in the Middle East, with advanced aircraft and carrier groups moving to launch positions, while Israel is on high alert amid fears that any US attack on Iran would trigger retaliatory strikes on Israeli territory. This build-up included America’s largest and most advanced aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford is involved.
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In parallel, Washington and Tehran are engaged in fractious diplomacy in Geneva, with negotiations hanging over a US deadline set by Trump, Iran’s nuclear and missile programs and a domestic crackdown on protesters.
Gupta says that in the context of this fever, Modi’s decision to visit Israel on the surface “appears risky”, but he argues that the symbolism cuts the other way. Rather than “sit quietly” and issue political statements in Delhi, the Prime Minister is choosing to enter “the heat of the current environment”, signaling that India wants to be present as a serious stakeholder and advocate for de-escalation.
Gupta points out that Modi has built strong personal equations across the region – with Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel and other Gulf capitals – and has visited almost all the major countries of West Asia. They suggest that this allows Modi to present himself as a leader who is not choosing sides in a sectarian or factional competition, but rather as someone who is willing to talk to all actors while India firmly defines its interests.
India-Israel defense partnership deepening
Behind the optics, the visit is expected to push India-Israel relations into a new gear, especially in joint development of defence, technology and cutting-edge capabilities. Gupta reminds us that Israel has been a “very close and trusted ally” for decades, even when past Indian governments were reluctant to openly engage with Tel Aviv.
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During the 1999 Kargil War, Israel quietly supplied targeted weapons, laser-guided munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles and other force multipliers, significantly enhancing the Indian Air Force’s ability to strike Pakistani targets. More recently, during “Operation Sindoor”, Indian forces used a package of Israeli origin systems – including munitions such as the PALM-200/400 and Harpy/Harop long-range Rampage missiles with munitions and BrahMos strikes – to eliminate terror infrastructure in places like Bahawalpur and Muridke, the strongholds of Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan.
India also turns to Israel for high-end anti-tank weapons, including those deployed during the Ladakh standoff with China in 2020, and for long-range stand-off missiles to neutralize air-defense systems, which Pakistan has augmented with Chinese radar support. Emerging systems such as Israeli missiles and Iron Beam laser weapons are seen as “top of the line” in Delhi and Gupta says the visit is likely to unlock supplies of weapons that were not even cleared in the past.
“The defense partnership has become much deeper,” he stressed, describing the shift between Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from a simple buyer-seller relationship to a deeper, multi-layered relationship underpinned by trust at the top level.
Mission Sudarshan Chakra: Saving India from Missiles
The most strategic piece of this puzzle is India’s emerging cooperation with Israel on anti-missile defence, which Gupta directly links to Modi’s “Mission Sudarshan Chakra”, which he announced in his Independence Day speech. He says the turning point was again Operation Sindoor, when Pakistan reportedly fired about a thousand missiles, including ballistic missiles, at India – causing minimal damage but highlighting the scale of potential saturation attacks for which India should be prepared.
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India’s main concern now is Pakistan, which Gupta apparently calls a “dishonest power”, in contrast to China, where he at least sees the possibility of mature dialogue between the “two big powers”. Pakistan has used Chinese systems to strengthen its air defense and is working on long-range missiles like Ababeel, a 2,000-km range system with multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) that can release multiple warheads on different trajectories.
Once such “bombs” are separated, interception becomes extremely difficult, which is why India needs the ability to shoot down enemy missiles in their boost stage or before they fragment into pieces in the terminal stage. Here, Israel’s experience is important: during Iran’s massive attack last year, Israeli systems reportedly neutralized 498 out of 500 incoming missiles using a layered shield of Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow-3.
Mission Sudarshan Chakra, as Gupta explains, is essentially about building India’s own layered missile defense grid:
- Launch detection through radar, aircraft and satellites.
- Neutralizing threats at multiple ranges – approximately 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 the source.
In a world where stand-off missiles, loitering weapons, kamikaze and swarm drones are becoming standard tools of warfare – and where both China and Pakistan have such capabilities – Gupta calls the Sudarshan Chakra “key to Indian security at present”. The India-Israel plan is to jointly develop critical elements of this architecture in India, to ensure self-reliance and rapidly scale up to worst-case scenarios.
India’s role amid US-Iran tension
Zooming out, Verma pressed Gupta on how India fits into the US-Iran confrontation that overshadows Modi’s visit to Israel. On one side is a show of American strength and a president under domestic pressure to demonstrate results on Iran following judicial setbacks on his economic agenda; On the other hand, there is an Iranian leadership that sees itself as the vanguard of Shia power and is unwilling to back down.
The talks in Geneva are trying to bridge fundamental gaps: The US wants Iran to curb its enrichment and ballistic missile programs and rein in its violent crackdown on protesters, while Tehran refuses to accept such constraints. “It doesn’t look good,” Gupta warned, suggesting that action could be taken within hours or days after Washington’s 10-day deadline expires, depending on how each side reads the situation.
In this difficult scenario, India holds a rare position: it can talk to all the major players. New Delhi maintains channels with Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iran – and separately enjoys a close, terrorism-focused partnership with Israel. India has also kept doors open with the Taliban and acted as an envoy and calming influence over the years from the Ukraine war to the Gaza conflict, while making its own red lines clear (such as calling a terrorist attack on October 7, 2023).
Gupta describes this as “pure strategic autonomy” – India talks to everyone without being owned by anyone, and uses its “good offices” to keep diplomacy and dialogue alive, even when rivals cannot talk to each other directly.
From Palestine and the “Vote Bank” to the Economic Corridor
The conversations also reveal how India’s Israel policy has evolved. India recognized Israel in the 1950s and later Palestine, but avoided direct warmth with Tel Aviv for decades, largely due to domestic political sensitivities and a desire to protect a particular “vote bank”. Relations became more open after 1992, but even then public rhetoric remained low.
Gupta argues that since 2014, Modi has flipped that script by including “everyone” – from Israel and the UAE to Jordan and the wider Gulf – while maintaining 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 intensive anti-radicalism dialogues with Jordan and the UAE as evidence of a new depth.
At the economic level, Verma and Gupta discuss Netanyahu’s idea of a “hexagonal alliance” involving India, Israel, Greece, Cyprus and Middle Eastern partners – which Gupta describes less as a hard security block and more as an economic and connectivity approach built around the India-Middle East Economic Corridor.
In its envisioned form, Indian cargo will move from Indian ports to Fujairah in the UAE, then through Saudi Arabia to Jordan, to Haifa in Israel, and from there to Mediterranean ports such as Cyprus, Greece, Naples and Marseille – with the possibility of Beirut if conditions permit. Gupta calls Hamas’s October 7 attack an event that “brutally broke” this corridor as close to reality as it was, but emphasizes that the underlying logic of integrating these economies remains compelling.
He stressed that the priority for India is not to sign formal alliances drawn up by others, but to deepen economic cooperation with Gulf partners, Israel, Greece and Cyprus, while maintaining regional balance. Modi’s visit to Israel, then, is less an isolated bilateral stop and more a node in a broader strategy: strengthening India’s own security, expanding high-technology and economic ties, and establishing New Delhi as a stable, autonomous power in the Middle East.
