Bloomberg: Iran’s weapons slowly dragging Israel to Ukraine’s defence

After months of reluctance, Israel is softening its opposition to providing military aid to Ukraine, as Iran’s deepening support for Russia’s invasion evolves into a threat to Israeli security.

A turning point came late last month, when Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz took a long-requested call from his Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov. Israel committed to help Ukraine develop an early-warning system, similar to one that alerts Israelis to incoming fire from the Gaza Strip, Bloomberg reports.

Gantz also agreed to assess Ukraine’s air-defence alert needs, though Israel is declining to provide Ukraine with the means to shoot down incoming drones and missiles. “These are weapons that we have to be prepared to confront -- we are the only country in the world that knows how to do that,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, a former top Israeli military intelligence official. “Ukraine can be a testing ground for our counter-measures.”

While former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is poised to return to power after winning elections on Nov. 1, an Israeli government led by him won’t have significantly different security priorities from the current administration, Kuperwasser said.

In another new development, Israel has begun to share its intelligence, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on October 26, welcoming what he called a “positive” trend. “I am pleased with the last few days, we started working,” he told reporters, citing information shared by Israel that he said confirmed Ukrainian intelligence.

“The Iranian collaboration with Russia was a big shift for us,” Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk, said at his country’s embassy in Tel Aviv last week. “We’d hoped Israel would choose to be on the right side of the war as a democratic country. But in the end, it happened because we have the same enemy, which is Iran.”

Spokespeople for Gantz and the Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment for this story. Russia’s foreign ministry and the foreign ministry in Tehran didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Yuriy Sak, an adviser to the Ukrainian defence minister, said Ukraine needs help as soon as possible to counter Iranian weapons. He said Reznikov had requested air-defence support on the call with Gantz.