{"id":172407,"date":"2026-06-22T17:31:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T17:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/172407\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T17:31:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T17:31:13","slug":"somalilands-israel-visit-breaks-new-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/172407\/","title":{"rendered":"Somaliland\u2019s Israel visit breaks new ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

The visit of the Somaliland president to Israel<\/a> was a historic moment. The geopolitical map of West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean is being radically redrawn, shifting away from traditional, non-aligned posturing toward an explicit, hard-nosed security calculus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In his February 2026 visit to Israel, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi famously declared India\u2019s alignment with Israel<\/a> to be driven by \u201cfull conviction.\u201d This occurred precisely two days before the historic demise of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
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In May 2026, amid regional tensions, Modi traveled to Abu Dhabi to sign far-reaching defense, cyber, and shipping pacts. This is not reactive diplomacy. It is the deliberate, operational cornerstone of a powerful, interlocking strategic alignment: the Greece-Israel-UAE-India-Somaliland axis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

New Delhi is positioning itself as a central architect of a transactional, multi-continental corridor designed to reshape the Eurasian balance of power.<\/p>\n

The anchor of \u201cfull conviction\u201d and the UAE strategic bridge\u00a0<\/p>\n

Modi\u2019s \u201cfull conviction\u201d doctrine marked the definitive end of India\u2019s legacy foreign policy ambiguity. By formally tying New Delhi\u2019s strategic chips to Tel Aviv just 48 hours before Khamenei\u2019s death, India signaled that its technological, intelligence, and defense futures are deeply intertwined with Israel.<\/p>\n

\"FireFire and smoke rise in the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone, caused by debris after interception of a drone by air defenses, UAE, March 4, 2026; illustrative. (credit: REUTERS\/Amr Alfiky TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)<\/p>\n

The immediate fallout of that choice is playing out in the UAE. Abu Dhabi, which already hosts sophisticated Israeli air defense systems deployed to intercept missile and drone threats from the Islamic regime in Tehran, serves as the vital geographic and military bridge in this network.<\/p>\n

The May 2026 India-UAE pacts<\/a>, focusing on secure cyber communications, joint defense industrial innovation, and intelligence sharing, effectively wire India directly into this pre-existing Israel-UAE security grid. The technology and intelligence loops being built link New Delhi, Abu Dhabi, and Tel Aviv in a real-time defensive posture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Somaliland dimension: Securing Bab-el-Mandeb\u00a0<\/p>\n

From a strategic maritime perspective, the axis depends on a secure transition from the Arabian Sea into the Mediterranean via the Red Sea and the Port of Eilat. This is precisely why the security of the Gulf of Aden and the Bab-el-Mandeb strait becomes paramount. Israel is the only country that recognizes Somaliland, where the UAE is also highly active.<\/p>\n

Possessing over 800 kilometers of coastline, Somaliland\u2019s strategic oversight of Bab-el-Mandeb<\/a> is critical to securing this vital maritime route. Furthermore, the Port of Berbera serves as this axis\u2019s ultimate gateway into the African market, particularly for landlocked Ethiopia.
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As Turkey maintains a military base in Somalia, Somaliland remains deeply concerned about potential aggression from Somalia backed by Turkish forces. Consequently, military cooperation between Somaliland and Israel has steadily expanded, with Israel training Somaliland\u2019s special forces amid reports regarding the potential deployment of Israeli air defense systems around the Port of Berbera.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ultimately, an established Israeli presence in Somaliland significantly enhances strategic oversight and guarantees the security of the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait.<\/p>\n

The trans-Mediterranean extension: Enter Greece\u00a0<\/p>\n

Greece\u2019s contemporary geopolitical posture remains profoundly shaped by acute security anxieties regarding Turkey, rooted in a painful history of Ottoman rule and the ongoing military occupation of Northern Cyprus. This friction is severely amplified in the Aegean Sea, where Turkey has declared a casus belli if Greece exercises its legal right under UNCLOS to extend its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles, approximately 22.5 kilometers around its islands.<\/p>\n

This move would legally transform the Aegean into an effectively Greek sea. Consequently, to counterbalance these existential threats, Greece has strategically pivoted toward Israel, forging close-knit defense, intelligence, and energy alliances in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Greece-Israel-UAE-India-Somaliland axis functions as both a shield and an economic bypass corridor:<\/p>\n

\u25cf Military interoperability: Greece has steadily deepened its tactical military ties with Israel, conducting regular joint air force and naval drills designed to secure maritime choke points.\u00a0
\u25cf The logistics bypass: The combination of UAE ports, Israeli logistics in the Port of Haifa, and Greek entry points like the Port of Piraeus ensures that global trade can bypass vulnerable waters entirely.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u25cf The anti-belt and road blueprint: Crucially, this axis offers a transparent, rules-based alternative to China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). By presenting an integrated infrastructure corridor relying on democratic anchors like New Delhi and Athens, the network actively counters Chinese regional leverage and economic coercion.<\/p>\n

The final frontier: A free Iran completes the axis\u00a0<\/p>\n

While the current military layout positions this alignment as a defensive shield against the remnants of the old Islamic Republic\u2019s proxies, the long-term economic logic of the region points toward a grander conclusion: the axis is structurally incomplete without Iran, and it can only be completed by a free Iran.<\/p>\n

The fall of the old regime removes the singular ideological obstacle to holistic Eurasian integration. For decades, Tehran acted as a geopolitical barrier, choking trade, threatening the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, and forcing India into complex diplomatic balancing acts over energy security and the development of the Chabahar Port.
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A free Iran changes everything. By transitioning from an aggressive regional spoiler into a stable, sovereign state, Iran transforms into the ultimate bridge. A liberated Tehran would naturally align with the economic realities of the Greece-Israel-UAE-India-Somaliland axis.
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It would link the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean via Iran\u2019s Chabahar Port directly to Central Asia and Europe, creating an uninterrupted zone of trade, anti-Islamist alliances, and mutual security from Mumbai to Piraeus.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, a free Iran could serve as India\u2019s ultimate gateway to Central Asia, liberating landlocked nations from Chinese and Russian dominance. Given Israel\u2019s extensive presence in Central Asia and Kazakhstan\u2019s accession to the Abraham Accords, connecting these republics to the Indian Ocean via Chabahar would forge one of the world\u2019s most transformative trade corridors, creating an unrivaled, multi-continental commercial powerhouse.<\/p>\n

A new realism\u00a0<\/p>\n

We are witnessing the death of fence-sitting in Asian diplomacy. Driven by immediate energy vulnerabilities, the safety of millions of overseas workers, and the need for cutting-edge cyber and missile defense, India and the UAE have integrated their security architectures with Israel and Greece.<\/p>\n

Modi\u2019s perfectly timed maneuvers \u2013 arriving in Israel right before Khamenei\u2019s death, and arriving in the UAE at the peak of the regional crisis \u2013 prove that New Delhi is actively gambling on a new regional future.
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The timing of the Somaliland president\u2019s visit to Israel shows his vision and conviction. This Greece-Israel-UAE-India-Somaliland axis is no longer a loose diplomatic talking shop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today, it stands as a defensive wall; tomorrow, with the integration of a free Iran, it will become the most powerful economic and strategic highway in human history.<\/p>\n

The writer is an Iranian journalist and the former editor-in-chief of ManotoTV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The visit of the Somaliland president to Israel was a historic moment. The geopolitical map of West Asia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[488,989,307,138,34,37,53125,7585,709],"class_list":["post-172407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-asia","tag-diplomacy","tag-greece","tag-india","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-meditation","tag-somaliland","tag-uae"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116794955261883720","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}