Bibi recently declared during a government meeting that “we will create an entire system, essentially a ‘hexagon’ of alliances around or within the Middle East. This includes India, Arab nations, African nations, Mediterranean nations (Greece and Cyprus), and nations in Asia that I won’t detail at the moment…The intention here is to create an axis of nations that see eye-to-eye on the reality, challenges, and goals against the radical axes, both the radical Shia axis…and the emerging radical Sunni axis.”
This puts Israel’s partners in an awkward position because some of them like India, whose Prime Minister visits later this week, don’t want to make enemies out of the countries that Bibi considers to be part of the Shia and Sunni axes. This segues into exactly what those axes refer to, with the first obviously being the Iranian-led “Resistance Axis” comprised of Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and some Iraqi militias, while the second seems to be an allusion to the so-called “Islamic NATO”.
This envisaged Saudi-centric security network only includes Pakistan right now, but there’s talk of expanding it to Turkiye and Egypt, whether as part of a multilateral alliance or through separate arrangements between them and Saudi Arabia like the security deal that it just reached with Somalia. Whether or not it’s formalized and/or multilateralized, the “Islamic NATO” concept basically refers to this regional coordination platform for optimizing the pursuit of their shared goals in Sudan and Somalia.
Accordingly, this Saudi-centric security network challenges the interests of Greece and Cyprus due to their disputes with the Kingdom’s close Turkish partner, Sudan’s “Rapid Support Forces” (RSF) because of its support for the “Sudanese Armed Forces” (SAF), their suspected Emirati patron that’s now embroiled in a long-simmering regional competition with Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia due to rival Egypt’s planned military build-up in Somalia on anti-terrorist pretexts, and newly Israeli-recognized Somaliland.
Likewise, the Iranian-centric security network challenges the interests of neighboring Azerbaijan with whom relations have been marked by deep mutual distrust since independence (with a few thaws in between though), the recently defeated “Southern Transitional Council” from South Yemen which fiercely opposes the Houthis (unlike their Saudi-aligned internationally recognized government), and the RSF due to suspected Iranian arms support for the SAF.
The enumerated parties whose interests are challenged by these axes are therefore candidates for the “hexagon”, India’s inclusion being due to rival Pakistan’s alliance with the Saudis last summer and lesser rival Turkiye’s potential involvement therein, but they might not all want to openly oppose them. That could radically worsen their ties with other axis members with whom they don’t have any problems. It might also raise the risk of more intense wars, whether proxy or direct ones, by miscalculation.
For these reasons, Bibi veritably put Israel’s partners in an awkward position by describing his envisaged Israeli-centric security “hexagon” as a counter-axis to the Shia and Sunni ones. By speaking on their behalf and placing them at odds with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and their network of partners, he undermined the balancing acts that some of them like India and Ethiopia practice. The damage isn’t irreparable, however, but their close ties with Israel might now be viewed with more suspicion by those two axes.
