The visit of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to the United Arab Emirates in early May reflected a long trajectory of cooperation that has evolved from defence coordination between the two countries into a broader technological and economic partnership.
The timing of the visit was highly symbolic. It coincided with the war that has gripped the region since late February, while also marking 50 years of diplomatic relations between Abu Dhabi and Athens.
During the visit, the UAE and Greece signed a memorandum of understanding covering artificial intelligence and technology. It was signed on behalf of the UAE by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, and on behalf of Greece by Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis.
According to the UAE’s official news agency, WAM, Mitsotakis renewed Greece’s condemnation of the Iranian “terrorist” attacks that targeted civilians, facilities, and civilian infrastructure in the UAE and other countries in the region, describing them as violations of state sovereignty, international law, and established norms.
A Strategic Axis Linking Abu Dhabi, Athens, and Tel Aviv
The Greek prime minister’s visit draws attention to a central axis linking Israel and Greece within the region, alongside the UAE as a geopolitical actor from outside the Mediterranean sphere.
It is important to note that the UAE is not a Mediterranean country in the geographic sense. It is located on the Arabian Gulf and the Sea of Oman. Yet through investments in ports and energy, defence partnerships, involvement in the Libyan file, and the India Middle East Europe Economic Corridor, known as IMEC, Abu Dhabi has imposed itself as a functional actor in the Eastern Mediterranean equation without being a geographic party to it.
This is a development that deserves close analysis.
The axis has no official name and is not crowned by a comprehensive trilateral treaty. Yet it operates with clear effectiveness across military, economic, investment, and diplomatic arenas.
On the opposite side, a clear dividing line places Turkey and Libya’s Tripoli based government against this emerging alignment within a multidimensional struggle over maritime borders, energy corridors, and regional influence.
The axis brings together two geographically Mediterranean actors, Greece and Israel, with a third party, the UAE, from the Arabian Gulf. This geographic difference does not weaken the partnership. Rather, it gives it a character that goes beyond conventional commercial logic.
Although trade between the UAE and Greece does not exceed two billion dollars, and trade between Greece and Israel is smaller still, the partnership among the three states is described as a “comprehensive strategic” relationship. Such a description only makes sense when understood through the deeper geopolitical logic governing it, a logic that goes beyond neighbourhood and rests instead on multi node networks of influence.
Where the Three Sides Converge
The visions of Greece, Israel, and the UAE intersect in how they identify the region’s main risks.
For Abu Dhabi, Turkey’s foreign policy, particularly its support for political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood, represents an existential threat to the UAE’s regional project.
For Tel Aviv, Turkey’s regional positioning after Operation Al Aqsa Flood and Ankara’s hostile rhetoric have become among the most prominent challenges.
For Athens, the 2019 Turkish Libyan maritime delimitation memorandum, along with Turkey’s legal positions in the Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean, represent direct threats to Greek sovereignty and interests.
Beyond that, each of the three parties offers the other two something they cannot provide alone.
Greece gives its Emirati and Israeli partners a gateway into the European Union and NATO. Israel offers advanced defence technology, including air defence, drones, electronic warfare, and extensive intelligence expertise. The UAE provides major investment capital, access to Gulf markets, and diplomatic weight in the Arab world.
In 2020, Abu Dhabi and Athens signed a strategic partnership agreement that included a mutual defence clause. Greece described it as one of the most important defence agreements it had signed since the Second World War.
In December 2025, the tenth trilateral summit between the prime ministers of Israel, Greece, and Cyprus was held in Jerusalem. During the summit, the parties signed a trilateral military cooperation plan for 2026, covering joint exercises, technical expertise transfer, and the establishment of a Maritime Cybersecurity Centre of Excellence in Cyprus.
More importantly, discussions focused on forming a joint rapid response force of around 2,500 troops, including 1,000 from Israel, 1,000 from Greece, and 500 from Cyprus, to respond to crises in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Although the UAE is not a direct party to this trilateral military architecture, it has participated in Greece’s annual Iniochos military exercises since 2017. In 2025, it also concluded a defence innovation agreement with Greece and took part in exercises involving Israel and the United States.
In this context, the 2025 visit of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed to Cyprus, the first state visit of its kind to the island, came as part of these broader efforts.
UAE Support for the EastMed Pipeline as a Way to Sideline Turkey
Energy and corridors form the second backbone of this axis through two parallel projects.
The first is the EastMed pipeline, a 1,900 kilometre gas pipeline originally intended to transport gas from Israeli and Cypriot fields through Greece to Italy.
Although the United States withdrew its support for the project in 2022 due to high costs and questions over feasibility, it returned to the agenda in late 2025 after the Jerusalem trilateral summit between Israel, Cyprus, and Greece.
The UAE supports the project politically because it serves Abu Dhabi’s objective of excluding Turkey from the regional energy equation.
The second project is the India Middle East Europe Economic Corridor, known as IMEC, which was announced at the 2023 G20 summit. It links Mumbai to Marseille through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and then Greece.
This is Abu Dhabi’s most ambitious project. It places the UAE at the centre of the corridor despite the setbacks it faced after the war on Gaza. Nevertheless, Abu Dhabi, Athens, and Tel Aviv continue to push it forward through investments in ports, railways, and submarine cables.
In parallel, the UAE’s Masdar acquired Greece’s Terna Energy. The UAE is also studying investments worth two billion dollars in a giant submarine electricity cable linking Greece, Cyprus, and Israel, known as the Great Sea Interconnector.
More broadly, Emirati investments in Greece and Israel are concentrated in strategic sectors, including ports, renewable energy, artificial intelligence, infrastructure, and agricultural technology.
Israeli arms deals with Greece, including the Achilles Shield air defence system and PULS missiles, also form an important financial link between the two military economies.
What stands out is that these investments are not governed purely by financial return, but by the logic of shared infrastructure.
Diplomatic Platforms and Regional Coordination
Diplomatically, trilateral coordination appears across several platforms.
These include the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, which deliberately excludes Turkey, the Philia Forum in Athens, and the trilateral summits between Israel, Greece, and Cyprus, which the UAE sometimes joins as a partner or observer.
The positions of the three sides also intersect on specific regional files, including support for Khalifa Haftar in Libya, rejection of the Turkish Libyan maritime delimitation memorandum, defence of Cypriot exploration rights, and sanctions related to Iranian activity.
Why the Axis Clashes With Turkey and Libya
The interests of the Israel, UAE, and Greece axis collide with Turkey across several interconnected arenas.
The first is the maritime dispute and border demarcation.
At the heart of the conflict are two opposing interpretations of the law of the sea. Turkey rejects granting Greek islands, especially Crete, full rights in determining the exclusive economic zone. Ankara argues that islands close to its coast, such as Lesbos, Chios, and Samos, lie on the continental shelf of the Turkish mainland and therefore cannot cut off that extension.
Greece and Cyprus, by contrast, uphold the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which grants islands full maritime rights.
This is not merely an abstract legal dispute. It concerns vast maritime zones containing potential gas reserves and strategic corridors. The disagreement has repeatedly led to maritime crises between the two countries.
Libya is the most prominent theatre of indirect confrontation between the two camps.
The Turkish Libyan maritime delimitation memorandum signed in November 2019 between Ankara and the Government of National Accord led by Fayez Al Sarraj is considered legally invalid by Greece and Cyprus, because, according to their interpretation, it cuts across Greek and Cypriot waters.
In June 2025, the Turkish Petroleum Corporation signed a new agreement with Libya’s National Oil Corporation to conduct geological and geophysical studies in disputed areas. This triggered a new wave of Greek protests.
The Emirati position in Libya overlaps with the Greek Cypriot rejection of the Turkish Libyan memorandum. This convergence reflects a shared interest in resisting Turkish expansion.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Gaza, and the Palestinian File
Turkey’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood, despite its softer rhetoric in recent times, remains a structural line of friction with Abu Dhabi.
For the UAE, this file is existential and cannot be settled regardless of how much economic relations with Ankara develop.
This is accompanied by the Gaza file and the broader Palestinian question.
Turkey’s rhetoric against Israel escalated sharply after Operation Al Aqsa Flood and the genocide committed by Israel in Gaza. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the occupation state as “the greatest threat” to regional stability.
Although Ankara and Abu Dhabi normalised relations in 2021 and signed the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement in March 2023, raising trade exchange to around 19 billion dollars, the relationship between Turkey and the UAE remains one of competition rather than alliance.
This contrasts with Abu Dhabi’s relationship with Greece and Israel, despite the smaller trade volumes between the UAE on one side and Athens and Tel Aviv on the other.
Abu Dhabi’s Policy of Separating Tracks
The UAE practises a policy of separating tracks.
On one track, it maintains a rising economic relationship with Turkey. On another, it pursues an advanced strategic and security alliance with Turkey’s rivals.
This policy reflects Emirati pragmatism, aimed at benefiting in multiple directions.
From the UAE’s perspective, a country with advanced defence industries and an economy worth around one trillion dollars cannot be ignored. At the same time, Abu Dhabi cannot share a regional vision or build an alliance with that same country while it supports the Muslim Brotherhood and positions itself in Libya, Syria, and the Horn of Africa in ways that undermine Emirati regional ambitions.
Libya as a Core Battleground
Libya reflects one of the clearest points of collision between the Emirati, Greek, and Israeli axis and Turkey.
The internationally recognised Tripoli government is backed by Turkey, while the trilateral axis, along with Egypt, supports the eastern Libyan camp led by Haftar.
The maritime delimitation memorandum is the most important expression of this divide because it transforms Libya from an internal conflict arena into an actor in the maritime equation of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Accordingly, the future of Libya, whether unified or divided, will largely determine the shape of the Eastern Mediterranean maritime landscape in the coming years.
A Struggle Over the Post 2011 Regional Order
The conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean is no longer only about gas or maritime demarcation. It has become a struggle over the structure of the regional order after 2011.
The Emirati Israeli Greek axis represents the camp that supports integration into the Western system. The Turkish Tripoli axis, along with Qatar, represents a camp opposed to Israel and its allies.
The importance of the trilateral axis does not lie in the strength of each party individually, but in the depth of their interdependence: Israel’s technology, the UAE’s capital, and Greece’s geographic and institutional position.
For that reason, any attempt to dismantle this axis would need to target the links rather than the individual parties. This is what Turkey is trying to do by deepening its economic relations with the Gulf in order to unsettle the alliance, especially Abu Dhabi’s relationship with Athens.
Greece as Abu Dhabi’s European Gateway
The UAE sees Greece as a stable European gateway inside NATO and the European Union.
It is also a politically aligned maritime partner through which Abu Dhabi can expand its influence from the Gulf to the Mediterranean without entering directly into the complexities of competition with major regional powers such as Turkey.
Athens, meanwhile, views the UAE as a rising financial and logistical power capable of supporting its ambition to become a major maritime and energy hub connecting the Eastern Mediterranean with Europe and the Gulf.
This is why the Greek prime minister’s visit confirmed that the relationship is no longer limited to defence or energy. It has become a strategic relationship covering artificial intelligence, ports, investments, infrastructure, maritime security, and advanced technology.
Israel’s Role in the Emerging Network
Israel forms a central pillar of this axis because it views these networks as an opportunity to transform itself from a peripheral, besieged state surrounded by conflicts into a regional transit hub for energy, trade, and data.
From this perspective, the Emirati Greek project intersects with the Israeli project within a broader vision aimed at building a new Eastern Mediterranean space that is more connected to the Gulf and the West, and less dependent on routes dominated by Turkey or other rival powers.
Turkey, by contrast, understands that these alliances and corridors are not neutral. Ankara sees them as attempts to reduce its natural role as a gateway between Asia and Europe.
For that reason, Turkey has used multiple tools to confront this trajectory, from its maritime agreement with Libya to strengthening its naval and military presence and improving relations with former rivals.
At its core, the conflict is not only about gas or trade. It is about a deeper question: who defines the maps of the sea, the corridors, and the logistical nodes of the Eastern Mediterranean and the wider Middle East?
The Axis Is Likely to Deepen, but Faces Serious Tests
The trilateral axis is likely to continue deepening institutionally through regular joint exercises, shared infrastructure investments, including the submarine electricity cable, IMEC, and ports, as well as political coordination on regional files.
However, it will also face difficult tests.
These include Turkey’s economic resilience and alliances, the war on Gaza and its consequences for Israel’s international image, the early signs of isolation Israel has begun to face, and the volatility of the American position, as seen when Washington retreated from the EastMed pipeline project.
This is precisely what the UAE and its allies fear could be repeated in Europe if governments less enthusiastic about IMEC rise to power across the continent.
