Why Greece is betting on Israel’s Achilles Shield | Military
On Monday, Greece and Israel signed a $3.5bn defence deal to build an integrated, multilayered defence network to protect Greek territory dubbed the Achilles Shield. The package brings together the David’s Sling and Spyder interceptors, the Barak air and missile defence system and multimission radars, alongside a separate deal adding Drone Dome systems to protect strategic sites from UAVs.
It is the largest defence deal ever concluded between the two countries. It is also one of the most significant export agreements in Israel’s recent history.
What makes the agreement particularly striking is that it comes as Israel’s global standing is at one of its lowest points in decades. And Greece is no outlier, given that 65 percent of its citizens now view Israel unfavourably. Why, then, has Athens now chosen to openly deepen its ties with Israel in the most politically sensitive of areas: defence and military technology?
Firstly, the shadow of Israel’s conflict with Iran looms large. In early March, an Iranian drone struck Cyprus, Greece’s neighbour and close partner. This likely reinforced anxieties that were already visible in 2024. After Israel, with the help of the United States, downed approximately 300 Iranian drones and missiles, Greek Defence Minister Nikos Dendias called on Athens to develop its own antidrone “dome”.
The deal is therefore partly the product of pragmatic necessity as countries scramble for military solutions to growing drone threats. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, for example, are acquiring antidrone technology from Ukraine, another country able to market its products as battle-tested.
Despite its political disadvantage, Israel has a practical head start, given that it has long practised “arms diplomacy”, using its defence industry as a springboard to cultivate deeper bilateral ties with prospective buyers.
The second factor driving the Achilles Shield deal is another longstanding tenet of Israeli grand strategy: the “periphery doctrine”. This advocates that Israel develop ties with non-Arab states and peoples on the periphery of the Levant to counter the hostility between Israel and its immediate neighbours. It is a recognition that shared threats can produce strategic partnerships. And in the case of Israel and Greece, that shared threat is Turkiye.
The irony is that Turkiye – as a non-Arab state and the gateway between the Middle East and Europe – was Israel’s close partner in the early days of the periphery doctrine. In 1949, Turkiye was the first Muslim country to recognise Israel. In subsequent years, Ankara and Tel Aviv developed robust but clandestine security ties.
This worked as Israel intended in that it opened the door to increasingly public and broader bilateral relations, which continued even after the Islamist-oriented AK Party, or Justice and Development Party, came to power in Turkiye in 2002.
But both sides fell out in late 2008 after Israel launched an offensive on the Gaza Strip. Subsequent divergences over Israeli policies towards the occupied Palestinian territory have gradually unravelled their deep ties.
Bilateral trade has collapsed since Ankara imposed an embargo on Israel in 2024. There are no longer direct flights between the two countries. In June, US President Donald Trump claimed that US pressure stopped Turkiye from joining the war on Iran, on Tehran’s side. This may sound far-fetched, yet it illustrates how Israel and Turkiye not only disagree on many geopolitical issues, but increasingly see each other as rivals and even threats.
What is remarkable is how quickly Greece has filled the void. In previous years, Tel Aviv’s partnership with Ankara precluded closer ties with Athens. But no more: in late 2025, Israel, Cyprus and Greece signed a “Joint Action Plan” that mandates enhanced military cooperation.
Energy has reinforced this strategic convergence. The discovery of substantial gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean encouraged Israel, Greece and Cyprus to cooperate on pipelines and maritime security.
And, as was the case with Turkiye, more extensive bilateral ties followed security cooperation: some 744,000 Israelis visited Greece in 2025, compared with the peak of 558,000 Israeli tourists who travelled to Turkiye in 2008.
The increasing regional division into competing blocs has also driven the burgeoning Israel-Greece relationship. In February, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu floated a “hexagon alliance” of Israel, Greece, Cyprus, India and unnamed Arab and African countries.
Six months later, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement. This alliance broadly overlaps with what commentators earlier labelled the “Islamic coalition”.
This is an evolving dynamic and inter-bloc collaboration is as common as intra-bloc divergences. But it demonstrates that the crisis of confidence in the US as a security guarantor extends beyond the Gulf states and predates the recent war on Iran. It also portends headaches for Washington’s policymakers, given that these increasingly competing states are all US allies.
The Achilles Shield deal is therefore the new manifestation of an old Israeli strategy that has been accelerated by the US-Israel war on Iran. Public scepticism may complicate Greece-Israel relations, but Israeli-Turkish ties deepened for decades despite similarly unfavourable public attitudes.
In short, in the eastern Mediterranean and elsewhere, growing popular outrage at Israel’s policies will continue to coexist uneasily with deepening security cooperation at an elite level. The irony is that the same conflicts that have damaged Israel’s international standing have also increased the value of its military experience and defence technology.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
