Germany has approved almost 800 million euros ($913m) in arms export licences to Israel in the first five months of 2026, more than in the previous 20 months combined, the government in Berlin has confirmed.
According to a Federal Foreign Office reply to a parliamentary question by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, nearly all the approvals were cleared in April and May.
The approvals portend a dramatic surge in weapons exports to Israel from one of the country’s most steadfast allies in Europe despite the German government’s insistence that it is concerned about the devastation wrought by Israel’s military in Gaza.
The government said more than 60 percent of the value of the arms licences is earmarked for a single, unnamed “major maritime project”.
The most likely candidate, analysts said, is a submarine built by the German manufacturer TKMS.
The INS Drakon, a nuclear-capable Dolphin II-class submarine, underwent its maiden voyage last year at a shipyard in Kiel on the Baltic Sea. Its estimated value is 480 million euros ($548m). It was officially handed over to the Israeli Navy last week, according to German media reports.
According to several reports, it could feature a vertical launching system (VLS), enabling it to launch nuclear-tipped cruise missiles or ballistic missiles. Israel would become only the second navy after South Korea known to field a VLS on a modern, air-independent propulsion (AIP), conventionally powered submarine.
During its sea trials, the submarine’s tower was covered with tarpaulins and fibreglass plates to prevent observers from determining its weapons configuration. Strategically, submarines of this class could provide a sea-based second-strike capability – the ability of a country to fire back nuclear weapons after it has itself faced a nuclear attack.
In May, TKMS signed a memorandum of understanding on future collaboration with Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private defence contractor.
The German Foreign Office and Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy, under whose purview arms export licences fall, both declined to comment on the matter.
Max Mutschler, a senior researcher with the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies, told Al Jazeera: “Unfortunately, the fact that the federal government does not explicitly mention this is also typical of the lack of transparency surrounding arms exports.”
Last year, reports conflicted over whether the export licence for the submarine had been granted. The order dates back to 2012. While TKMS indicated approval, the German government denied it at the time.
The hesitation might have stemmed from legal concerns surrounding proceedings against Germany at the International Court of Justice in The Hague as well as shifting public opinion in Germany, which has largely turned against arms exports to Israel. According to media reports, Germany is helping finance about 30 percent of the costs for the Drakon and roughly one-third of those for the future Dakar class.
This month, TKMS was also selected by Canada as the preferred bidder to build up to 12 submarines in what would be the largest order in TKMS’s history. The value of the vessels alone is estimated at 12 billion euros ($13.7bn) to 18 billion euros ($21bn).
For years, submarine deals with Germany have been under investigation by the Israeli judiciary over bribery allegations involving close associates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Ruth Rohde from the British research organisation Shadow World Investigations told Al Jazeera: “Israel has used German ships to fire at Gaza, to blockade and starve Gaza, and is using submarines to station nuclear weapons. At a time when Israel is waging brutal wars on its neighbours and is committing a genocide in Gaza, this submarine export would give Israel another tool in its arsenal of mass destruction.”
Berlin’s arms export policy towards Israel has been marked by reversals. In early August, Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that Germany would issue no further licences for military equipment that could be used by Israel in the Gaza Strip. By that time, an Al Jazeera investigation had shown that Germany had already exported almost $12m worth of weapons consignments to Israel since October 2023 when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.
And the partial suspension proved short-lived: In November, the government lifted the restrictions and returned to reviewing export applications on a case-by-case basis. Even during the suspension, previously approved deliveries continued. In September, for instance, a $794,000 weapons consignment from Germany landed at Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv.
Mutschler told Al Jazeera that some people in government “found the export of certain weapons to Israel problematic in light of numerous and credible reports of Israeli war crimes during the military operation in Gaza”. However, it was not enough to “bring about a generally restrictive arms export policy toward Israel”.
Germany is one of the world’s largest arms exporters. In the first six months of 2026, licences were granted for arms worth 13.87 billion euros ($15.8bn), according to the Arms Export Report of the Ministry of Economics, published in mid-July. That is more than four times as much as during the same period in 2025. Ukraine remains the primary recipient of German arms exports.
Mutschler explained: “Arms exports have been and continue to be viewed by most federal governments primarily from an economic perspective and welcomed as a means of strengthening the defence industry.” He added: “The fact that these arms shipments can also be used to commit war crimes seems to play a significantly smaller role in the decision-making process.”
As a crisis in Germany’s economy – whose strength has relied primarily on exports, particularly in the car industry – has intensified, its defence industry has boomed in recent years. This development was publicly attributed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine although plans for increased defence spending had already been prepared beforehand, according to reports.
Pieter D Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, sees this as a general trend. He told Al Jazeera: “The demand for arms in Europe has increased dramatically over the past few years whereas the demand for arms in many other parts of the world does not seem to be decreasing or is likely to increase.”
The German market remains very important to the country’s arms industry as Germany is set to double its military spending from well below 2 percent of it gross domestic product to a stated goal of 3.5 percent of its GDP within a few years, Wezeman explained. “Germany is now the largest military spender in Europe [not counting Russia], and its arms industry is a core component of the European military-industrial base.”
June 30 (UPI) — The Trump administration has lifted export restrictions on artificia lintelligence company Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models, the company said Tuesday evening.
“We’ve received notice that the Department of Commerce has lifted export controls on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5,” Anthropic said in a statement, CNN reported. “We’ll begin restoring access tomorrow, and will share an update soon.”
The statement came not long after Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick posted on social media about Anthropic, saying “we have worked closely with Anthropic to analyze and approve Fable 5 to ensure alignment across the U.S. government and strengthen America’s leadership in AI.”
Anthropic disabled customer access to Fable, a consumer version of its Mythos AI model with more safeguards, and Mythos itself several weeks ago after the export ban June 12. The ban required the company to suspend all use by foreign nationals inside or outside the United States, including Anthropic employees.
In a statement then, Anthropic said its understanding was that “the government it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or ‘jailbreaking,’ Fable 5.”
“We reviewed a demonstration of this specific technique being used to identify a small number of previously known, minor vulnerabilities,” the company said. “These vulnerabilities all appear relatively simple, and we have found that other publicly available models are able to discover them as well without requiring a bypass.”
The government loosened some of the restrictions on Mythos on Friday, Politico reported.
Anthropic and the U.S. government have had a rocky relationship. Anthropic leaders’ concerns about military and intelligence usage of its products caused issues with the Department of Defense.
President Donald Trump called it a “radical left, woke company” and ordered federal agencies to stop using Anthropic products, while Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, called the company a supply chain risk to national security.
Anthropic has sued the Trump administration to reverse the blacklisting, and that lawsuit is ongoing.
China has added 10 United States-based companies to its export control list and barred government procurement from nearly 50 US companies two weeks after the Pentagon blacklisted some of China’s best-known companies for their alleged ties to the Chinese military.
China’s Ministry of Commerce announced the export order on Monday, barring Chinese companies from exporting “dual-use” items that can be used for civilian or military purposes to the US firms.
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The list of companies includes rare-earth mine operator MP Materials Corp, rare-earth magnet maker USA Rare Earths, and US defence contractors specialising in fields such as aerospace, drones, synthetic-aperture radar, and shipbuilding and repairs.
Under the order, “foreign institutions and individuals worldwide are also prohibited from transferring or providing Chinese dual-use goods to them” while ongoing export transactions must be suspended immediately.
The Commerce Ministry said the export ban had been issued to “safeguard national security and interests and fulfil international obligations such as non-proliferation”.
China’s Ministry of Finance on Monday separately barred Chinese government procurement from 46 companies, including subsidiaries of major US defence contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Atomics and General Dynamics. US-funded, locally registered companies, however, have been given an exemption by the ministry.
Experts described Beijing’s orders as a retaliation, albeit a largely symbolic one, against the US after the Pentagon in early June added about 80 Chinese companies and their subsidiaries to its list of “Entities Identified as Chinese Military Companies Operating in the United States”.
The designation means the Pentagon either believes the companies are owned or controlled by the Chinese military or they are “military-civil fusion contributors”, a term for commercial companies that contribute to China’s military development despite their civilian status.
The updated list includes Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Holdings, search engine giant Baidu and electric automaker BYD, some of China’s largest and best-known companies.
While the order does not bar US companies from doing business with them, it does impact US defence contractors and their future supply chains.
“We can interpret this as a tit-for-tat response, and that fits into China’s playbook any time we’ve seen escalation from the US side in terms of trade and investment tools,” said Nick Marro, global trade lead analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.
China-based supply chain consultant Cameron Johnson said the Commerce Ministry’s order mirrors US semiconductor export controls designed to keep the most advanced chips out of Chinese hands.
“They basically say it doesn’t matter where or who you are, you are bound by this regardless of circumstance,” said Johnson, who is also a senior partner at the Shanghai consultancy Tidal Wave Solutions. “Organisations or individuals in any country or region are prohibited from transferring dual-use materials that originated in China.”
He said Beijing’s orders in practice may be hard to enforce and many of the companies named in those orders have already moved their supply chains out of China or begun to “de-risk” their operations there.
Johnson said the wide scope of companies included in Washington’s and Beijing’s directives could be a sign of more to come and may signal a new front in the US-China trade war.
“This is probably just the beginning of the back and forth,” he said. Last year, after returning to the White House for a second term, US President Donald Trump reignited the US-China trade war, leading Washington and Beijing to impose escalating rounds of tariffs on each other.
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a trade truce in October, which was extended during a summit between the two leaders in Beijing in May.
Despite promises to “enhance economic cooperation” during the meeting, observers like Singapore-based geopolitical analyst Steve Okun predicted the goodwill may be short-lived.
“The US’s recent closure of chip export loopholes and China’s continuing addition to its export bans show the national security lane remains active in both capitals regardless of the diplomatic niceties at the recent Trump-Xi summit,” Okun told Al Jazeera.
“There is no ‘truce’ in the US-China trade war. Expect further actions from both sides as well on export controls and investment restrictions,” he said.
Dilok Klaisataporn
Japan’s trade deficit significantly decreased to JPY 378.7 billion in May 2026, down from JPY 662.5 billion a year earlier and performing better than the market’s expected JPY 564.6 billion shortfall, the contraction was driven by exports expanding faster than imports.