A montage of military technology and a harbor city. Photo: The Cradle.
By Iason Athanasiadis – Apr 15, 2026
From Predator spyware to arms deals and military corridors, Athens has tied its future to Tel Aviv at the very moment the US-Israeli order is losing ground across West Asia.
The private jet taking off from Athens airport between 2020 and 2023 belonged to Israeli spyware company Intellexa. Operating from Cyprus and Greece, it funneled a surveillance product called Predator to a number of undemocratic regimes, among them Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Madagascar, Ukraine, and the UAE-backed Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The Greek government is also believed to have been among its clients. But unknown to it, Predator might have been providing Israel with a rich stream of intelligence on Greek political elites that could define the direction of the Greece–Israel alliance.
The 105 personalities targeted by the eavesdropping software make up some of Greece’s political, business, and military elites. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis consistently denied that his government was behind the software’s purchase, despite Intellexa only selling its products to governments, and some of its employees working out of a Greek intelligence facility.
No public investigation was ever conducted into whether Predator contained a backdoor that could have granted a third party access to potentially compromising material. Yet the scandal unfolded at the same time that ties between Greece and Israel were becoming deeper than ever.
On 6 April 2026, Greece signed a €650 million ( around $767 million) arms deal with Israel, purchasing 36 rocket artillery launchers, precision-guided missiles with ranges up to 300 kilometers, loitering munitions, and a 10-year support package from Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, Elbit Systems.
In March, a state-of-the-art Greek frigate recently commissioned from France was pressed into service in support of the US-Israeli campaign against Iran, after a suspected Iranian drone targeted British bases on Cyprus – London confirmed the drone was not launched from Iranian territory.
Atlanticist military corridor in the Mediterranean
Greece, Israel, and Cyprus were reported by local media in December to be forming a brigade-strength rapid reaction force that will patrol the Eastern Mediterranean in the triangle formed between the Greek island of Karpathos, Cyprus, and the Israeli coast.
While the development was officially denied, the three countries’ leaders signed a joint action plan for defense cooperation in the same month and pledged to step up joint air and naval exercises in 2026. Turkish politicians and media quickly began warning of an emerging anti-Turkiye axis in the eastern Mediterranean.
“Greece is following very risky policies, which no other European nation has followed, and can only lead to further insecurity, problems, and wars,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in a 12 April interview in reference to the alliance with Israel. “We’ve warned them.”
Athens insists the alliance is aimed at protecting shipping lanes, energy infrastructure, and undersea cables from Turkish pressure. In reality, the relationship has been formalized through the Washington-backed 3+1 Strategic Alliance and underwritten by three US laws passed between 2019 and 2026 covering defense, energy, and security cooperation in the eastern Mediterranean.
The architecture is designed to secure US-backed projects such as the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) and the Abraham Accords. Russia and Turkiye remain the implied targets.
The geography covered by the three allies includes flight routes used by military aircraft connecting Greece to West Asia. When joined to the logistical resupply route to Ukraine operated by the US from the port of Alexandroupoli in northern Greece, which bypasses the Turkish Straits, it creates a US-dominated geopolitical crossroads and an uninterrupted corridor between the two conflict zones in Ukraine and Asia’s western coastline, along the Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon front.
The US military base in Greece’s Souda Bay is strategically positioned at the center of several Mediterranean military flight routes originating in the US, UK, and Germany, which converge there for refueling before continuing eastwards.
Athanasios Platias, the president of the Greek Council for Foreign Relations and a professor of strategy at the University of Piraeus, tells The Cradle:
“Greece is just trying to maintain a balanced relationship with Israel, alongside its mutual defense pact with the UAE and the dispatch of Patriot missiles to Saudi Arabia to protect their oil fields. Greece and Cyprus are Israel’s lifelines to the west.”
The strategic depth offered by the alliance with Greece and Cyprus has witnessed Israeli aircraft being evacuated to those countries’ airports during intense Iranian bombardments, Israeli citizens and foreign tourists boarding boats to escape to Cyprus much as the Lebanese did during their 1975–1990 civil war, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s airplane being cleared to fly over their territory despite both being signatories to the International Criminal Court (ICC) which has an active arrest warrant against him.
British and American forces based out of several military bases on Cyprus and Greece have continued providing bombing, logistical, and intelligence support to Tel Aviv by sweeping the region for intercepts from a powerful radar on Mount Troodos, bombing the Ansarallah-aligned armed forces in Yemen from the Akrotiri Air Base, and supplying maintenance to US platforms in between offensive sorties. A Greek-manned Patriot battery in Saudi Arabia has been protecting oil facilities, and a state-of-the-art Greek frigate is providing additional anti-missile protection.
Greece’s long march into the Israeli camp
Despite being among the last western countries to recognize Israel in 1990, Greece and Israel have maintained ties for decades.
The Greek military junta made secret weapons purchases from Israel in the 1960s and discussed establishing joint armaments factories. The ties burgeoned in the 1990s through intelligence and military collaboration, before maturing to the point of being publicly announced in 2002.
In February 2010, the alliance was formalized through a staged chance meeting in a Moscow restaurant between former Greek prime minister George Papandreou and Netanyahu.
Initially, Netanyahu had hoped that Papandreou’s ties with former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad would help out with Israel’s relationship with Damascus. As the public climate in Turkiye turned against Israel, Israeli fighter jets began using Greek skies for practicing bombing runs on Iran.
For its part, Greece hoped that Israel could act as a counterweight to Ankara, but the ties also reflected a Greek fascination with the Israeli economic success story that was especially relevant at a time when Greece was embarking on its economic crisis.
Speaking to The Cradle, Nicolas Kosmatopoulos, an associate professor of politics and anthropology at the American University of Beirut, notes that the alliance was partially foisted upon Greece at the demand of its US ally:
“The two crucial dates when the Greek–Israeli relationship becomes tighter are 2002 and 2010, i.e., just before the Americans invaded Iraq and just as Greece was entering its economic crisis. In 2001, the Israelis had just been ejected from Lebanon, shrinking their strategic depth, and in 2010, Greece was forced into the alliance further through a financial bailout with geopolitical strings attached.”
In 2021, Greece signed an agreement with Washington expanding the number of Greek bases at its disposal. It had already become only the second country, aside from the US, to sign a Status of Forces Agreement with Israel, facilitating the basing of Israeli troops and aircraft on Greek soil.
The Greek minister of defense, who signed it controversially, noted that “should an Iranian missile strike the Aegean, it could mean the end of all the region’s countries.” Greece followed up in 2019 and again in 2021 with an expanded basing agreement for the US, deepening its Atlanticist mooring.
Supporters of the alliance in Athens believe that Tel Aviv will have Greece’s back in a potential confrontation with Turkiye.
“This wishful thinking has developed in Greece that Israel might get involved on Greece’s side in a confrontation with Turkiye,” says retired Lieutenant-General Kostantinos Loukopoulos. “This does not apply and is just an expression of a desire to have someone else fight one’s battles.”
One place where Greek and Israeli interests converge is on northern Cyprus, which has been occupied by Turkiye for nearly 50 years. Removing Turkish influence from the island would limit Ankara’s reach into the eastern Mediterranean and push back Turkish missile and air capabilities stationed there.
The Greek market has also become lucrative for Israeli defense companies. Israel Aerospace Industries’ acquisition of Greek firm Intracom Defense (IDE) in 2023 gave it access to EU defense funds reserved for European firms. Elbit built an international pilot training center in Kalamata in 2023, while Israel’s SK Group took control of the Hellenic Vehicle Industry in 2025.
Athens is now negotiating a further € 3 billion (around $3.6 billion) deal for an Israeli-built multilayer air defense system known as Achilles’ Shield.
Shana Marshall, the associate director of George Washington University’s Middle East Center, explains to The Cradle:
“There’s been a big push in Israel recently to develop their industrial base outside the country, so they do not have to worry about a possible international arms embargo. They have been observing how the Emiratis wholesale buy foreign arms industries and relocate them to free zones dedicated to military industrial production, and are now mimicking them.”
The shipping oligarchs behind the alliance
The Greek-owned merchant fleet – one of the world’s largest – is facilitating deliveries. Two Greek shipowners have been using their fleets to transport energy and military cargoes to Israeli ports, according to a report by No Harbour For Genocide (NHG), as has national air-carrier Aegean Airlines, often without securing export permits.
“Greek ports and airports are being used for resupply and the transfer of materiel and fuel,” says Dimitris Plionis, member of the Greek chapter of the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement.
“Greece’s defense industry is collaborating with Israeli companies that test out their technology on Palestinian bodies; under American guidance, Greece has connected its policy since 2010 with war crimes and an apartheid state, and called this voluntary relationship a ‘strategic alliance.’”
Despite historically hailing from a cluster of Aegean islands as local traders and becoming dominant Mediterranean carriers during Ottoman times, Greek shipowners prefer to fly under flags of convenience, run their businesses from London, Hamburg, New York, or Singapore, and separate their priorities from those of the Greek state.
Prominent Greek shipowner Panos Laskaridis made headlines in 2021 when he stated that “the Greek government does what the Union of Shipowners tells them to do.”
“They have asked for and got their own ministry, which is literally theirs and not the Greek government’s,” a former high-ranking Greek official informs The Cradle. “They have the port of Piraeus, and constitutionally-secured tax immunity since 1952 … And they used to control the Greek Classification Society, which helped them by judging their ships to be seaworthy.”
“Ship-owners are the taxi drivers of international trade,” says Platias. “They don’t take orders from any government and will work with China, Russia, or the USA: basically whoever signals the higher fare will get their ride.”
Blowback from a losing order
Greece traditionally maintained strong ties with the Arab world, and its turn toward Israel has never been especially popular domestically.
Athens has witnessed large pro-Palestinian protests since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. At the same time, growing competition between China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the US-backed IMEC corridor has turned the eastern Mediterranean into a battleground over trade, energy, and logistics.
The Greece–Israel alliance now functions as one more mechanism for defending US influence in the region.
“Through these wars, the Americans have moved the planet’s energy center-of-gravity from Eurasia to the two shores of the Atlantic,” argues Platias.
“Whether through Ukraine knocking out 40 percent of the Russian oil industry, or the mutual blows struck on both sides of the Persian Gulf, the Eurasian energy system is badly hit, and that is to the benefit of American energy dominance.”
The Abraham Accords era accelerated Greece’s alignment with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
When Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) visited Athens in July 2022, Greece became the first western state to openly rehabilitate the royal after the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The visit produced an estimated €4 billion (around 4.7 billion) in agreements covering military cooperation, data cables, and electricity interconnections.
A few months earlier, Saudi money entered the Greek media industry. MBC Group acquired a 30 percent stake in Antenna, one of Greece’s largest television networks.
When it launched in 1989, Antenna was the first private Greek channel. Founded by a shipping magnate, it set a pattern for shipping interests like the Alafouzos, Marinakis, and Vardinogiannis families owning large Greek media groups and using them to selectively apply pressure on successive governments.
Antenna soon emerged as the most pro-US channel in the Greek mediascape. Amid talk of a Greek port becoming the destination for the US-supported IMEC trade corridor, it signed a deal with the Atlantic Council think tank for an annual conference bringing Arab and European politicians, investors, and policymakers to Athens.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was hired as an advisor, and Italy’s GEDI Gruppo Editoriale controversially purchased the outlet. The move raised concerns in Italy about editorial independence, which the company sought to address by declaring its commitment to free speech. Around the same time, Antenna hired Elizabeth Pipco – an Orthodox Jewish model and online personality who supports US President Donald Trump, and a one-time spokeswoman for the Republican Party – to provide pro-Israel, MAGA-themed commentary on world events in its evening news broadcast.
The US is exploring ways of rewarding Greece for the facilitation of its war against Iran, by possibly moving more US troops there from European countries that did not permit Washington to operate offensively from their territory.
But Athens also appears to be feeling the heat of supporting an unpopular war, with Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis noting last week that Israel’s war in Lebanon is “completely counterproductive” and that “friends need to speak truth to friends.”
“We’ve now got to a stage where Greece is in danger of suffering very great repercussions from the position it has chosen to follow in the war against Iran,” contends Petros Papakostantinou, a journalist and author of 10 books on technology and geopolitics.
“Firstly, because the world economy is not going well and Greece is vulnerable to its astronomical debt; secondly, because Greek shipping is extremely dependent on the straits of Hormuz; and thirdly, because if Israel manages to destroy Iran, Greece will be the first European country against which a massive refugee wave and perhaps also terrorism will crash.”
With US and Israeli prestige having suffered during the campaign against Iran, Athens may find itself politically exposed. Not only by attracting the increased ire of regional powers like Turkiye, Iran, and Russia, but also in terms of a diplomatic downgrading in the emerging new order.
One international negotiator speaking to The Cradle on condition of anonymity due to ongoing projects in Greece observes:
“[The] Trust of Americans is blown out of the park in the wake of this disastrous war. If Turkiye is to take them seriously, the Greeks will have to come up with a more sophisticated foreign policy and bring something to the table, possibly in Syria or Lebanon, where they still have some agency.”
Intellexa’s private jet no longer flies out of Athens, but it may already have helped lock Greece into an alliance that is becoming harder to defend, more expensive to sustain, and more dangerous to escape. “Intellexa and other companies selling Israeli-developed surveillance software are controlled by the Israeli state and deal only with state entities,” says Loukopoulos. “If information was derived through Predator, that’s a crime; if it didn’t remain in Greece and might be used as blackmail material, then that’s a double crime.”
Iason Athanasiadis is a Greek writer, photographer, political analyst, and television producer specializing in the Middle East and Southeast Europe.
