Following the Iran war, Israel will have even larger influence in the region among Arab states, despite a wide range of contradictory trends, top Israeli defense sources said on Tuesday.
Among the contradictory trends cited by commentators have been that at times Arab states have seemed to want to now be closer to Israel, seeing the power it can project to protect them versus Iran, while at times they have seemed more worried by the danger Iran poses or by the concept of Israel emerging as a regional dominator.
These contradictory trends could translate either into expanding the Abraham Accords alliance beyond countries like the UAE to countries like Saudi Arabia, viewed as the crown jewel of normalization, or could translate into distancing Israel from growing the Arab normalization alliance.
Top Israeli defense sources said that the full picture would only become clear when the current Iran war truly ends, and the dust has started to settle.
However, the sources also pointed out that the various mixed trends in the region go beyond views on Israel, given the UAE's exit from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which was once an entirely unified and seemingly all-powerful force in the global energy sector.
The UAE and the Saudis are now in open and repeated conflict on a wide array of major issues.
According to sources, this means that they disagree about handling Iran and their economic interests, and that their handling of relations with Israel is just one of multiple important disagreements on a long list.
Within these disagreements, the defense sources remained confident that Israel's influence overall with Arab countries will grow following the war with Iran, including its defense sales to the region.
Sources also said that it has now become clear that there is a paradigm shift in how wars will be fought in the Middle East going forward, with most wars expected to be longer than the model of Israel winning quick, short wars of the past.
In order to address this unique moment, Defense Ministry Director-General Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amir Baram has invested massive amounts of new funding in developing Israeli weapons independence where possible, including a mix of new technologies, but also old-fashioned "heavy" weapons like tanks, bombs, and bullets.
Baram also streamlined the regulatory process around a year ago in order to speed up the pace of production of certain items as Israel raced to keep up with the pace at which it has had to continually use weapons for new developments in ongoing wars since Hamas's October 7, 2023, massacre.
In addition, Baram approved a jump in foreign workers in defense production installations in order to speed up and increase the production processes.
Against the backdrop of these trends, Israel broke its record for defense sales for yet another year, reaching USD 19.22 billion, compared with USD 14.79 billion in 2024 and USD 13.07 billion in 2023.
In fact, Israel's defense sales have increased every year since 2020, and generally have increased most years over the last decade, other than a couple of interim drops around the late 2010s.
The more than 30% jump in defense sales between 2024 and 2025 came from what defense sources called the unprecedented success of the IDF proving its weapons effectiveness in operations during the ongoing wars and the country's unique ecosystem for public-private sector cooperation to quickly roll out new ideas into practical solutions.
Israel rose in defense sales to North America, Asia, Middle East.
While it dropped considerably in Europe, defense sources said that this was mostly due to an unusual uptick the year before for the Arrow missile system sale and a small number of other large sales, but that in comparison to 2023, Israeli sales with Europe remained steady.
Defense sources said this was true despite many European countries, especially France, sending mixed signals about their willingness to buy and sell defense products to Israel as a result of disagreements over its handling of the wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.
This does not mean Israel is not concerned about future defense sales.
Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv has become one of the most innovative and best producers of new defense technologies and is as or more battle proven with many items as Israel, a new situation.
Further, if half a decade ago, few European countries wanted to spend large funds on building their own defense sector, following Russia's extended threat to Ukraine and Europe, many countries have now built up their defense sectors and no longer necessarily need Israeli weapons.
In some cases, Israeli defense products are superior, but some of these countries sometimes decide to use their own local products as "good enough" and cheaper.
Regarding France specifically, the Defense Ministry on Monday explicitly accused Paris of not only partially boycotting Israel's defense sector due to delegitimization concerns related to the Middle East wars, but also because the French military views Israel as a tough competitor in many areas of defense.
Regarding criticism that the Defense Ministry is not properly managing all the new funds it has received and is not paying its debts to the Israeli defense sector fast enough, sources responded that the ministry received a budget of NIS 143 billion, having requested NIS 173 billion.
This not only would have created a shortfall in any scenario, but given that the war with Lebanon has continued for multiple months past the Iran ceasefire, sources said that all prior budget estimates were wrong since they were based on the assumption that the ceasefire of April 7 would soon end the war with Hezbollah as well.
Instead, Israel is fighting hard in Lebanon and has also recently started to initiate more operations against top Hamas officials in Gaza, even if that front has not yet deteriorated back into a general broad war.