The British army and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have signed a joint agreement to strengthen their relationship.
The UK’s Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Sir Nicholas Carter and the IDF Chief of Staff, Lt Gen Aviv Kochavi met via video link and signed the agreement to formalise and enhance defence collaboration and support the growing Israel-UK partnership.
Most of the agreement is highly classified but the cooperation will include defence medical training, organisational design and concepts, and defence education.
The UK and Israel military cooperation has been growing over the last decade with the relationship viewed as mutually beneficial, commented BICOM, a Britih think-tank specialized on UK-Israel relations.
Both militaries share a commitment to improving and integrating their multi-domain capabilities in maritime, land, air, space, and cyber and electromagnetic.
‘’They share similar interests in the region. While Israel feels the Iranian threat far more acutely due to its relative geographic proximity, both countries wish to prevent Iran achieving a nuclear capability, curb its advanced ballistic missile programme and counter Iranian proxies, particularly in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the shipping lanes of the Gulf,’’ BICOM said.
In February 2019, the British government designated the entire Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation.
In July 2019, the Telegraph reported that the Metropolitan Police and MI5 uncovered a Hezbollah bomb plot in North London in 2015, just months before the UK signed the JCPOA nuclear agreement. Police discovered three tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored inside disposable ice packs when they raided four properties in north-west London, arresting a man on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack. The discovery of the bomb plot was reportedly assisted by information from Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad.