Daniel sent us this one — he's asking about Israel, Cyprus, and Greece, this informal alliance that's taken shape in recent years, and the obvious question that comes with it: why these three, how do their interests actually line up, and what does it mean that Turkey is conspicuously not at that table. It's one of those geopolitical arrangements that looks almost too neat on a map until you start digging into what's actually holding it together.
What's holding it together turns out to be remarkably concrete. You've got three countries that, on paper, shouldn't necessarily be this close — different sizes, different internal politics, different historical trajectories — but they've converged around a set of interests so mutually reinforcing that the alliance almost built itself. The starting point, and I think this is where most coverage begins, is energy.
Specifically the eastern Mediterranean gas fields. The big ones — Leviathan, Tamar, Aphrodite, and Zohr. Leviathan and Tamar are Israeli, discovered in 2010 and 2009 respectively. Aphrodite sits in Cypriot waters, discovered in 2011. Zohr is Egyptian, but it's part of the same geological picture. And what became clear about a decade ago was that the eastern Mediterranean has enough gas to transform regional energy dynamics, but only if the countries sitting on it can actually get it to market.
That's where the geography gets interesting, because Israel and Cyprus can't just pipe gas to wherever they want. Turkey sits in the way of a lot of obvious routes.
The most economically straightforward path for eastern Mediterranean gas to reach European markets would be through Turkey. Turkey's already a major energy transit hub — the Southern Gas Corridor runs through it, bringing Azeri gas to Europe. There's existing infrastructure. But the political relationship between Israel and Turkey has been deteriorating for well over a decade now, and Cyprus and Turkey have their own very specific history that makes any pipeline through Turkish territory a nonstarter for Nicosia.
The Cyprus problem. Turkey occupies the northern third of the island, has done so since 1974, and nobody in the Republic of Cyprus is signing off on a joint energy project with Ankara while Turkish troops are still there.
So you've got this situation where the gas is there, the European market wants it — Europe's been desperate to diversify away from Russian gas, especially after 2022 — but the overland route through Turkey is politically impossible. The alternative is a maritime route, and that's where the trilateral cooperation really took shape.
The EastMed pipeline.
The EastMed pipeline was the flagship project — a proposed subsea pipeline running from Israel's Leviathan field to Cyprus, then on to Greece, and from there into the European grid via Italy. It would have been the longest and deepest subsea pipeline in the world, about 1,900 kilometers, with an estimated cost of around six billion euros. The three countries signed an intergovernmental agreement in January 2020 in Athens, and it was a big moment. The symbolism was enormous.
The pipeline's effectively dead now, isn't it?
The United States withdrew support in early 2022, citing concerns about economic viability, technical feasibility, and the timeline — it would have taken years to build, and by then Europe's energy transition might have made it less relevant. The Biden administration essentially said, we support regional energy cooperation, but this specific project doesn't make sense. So the pipeline as originally conceived is on ice. But here's what's important — the cooperation didn't stop. The trilateral framework outlasted the pipeline.
That's the part I think is most interesting. If the alliance was just about a pipeline, and the pipeline died, you'd expect the alliance to wither. But it didn't.
Because the energy cooperation shifted from pipelines to electricity. The new flagship project is the EuroAsia interconnector — a subsea electricity cable linking the power grids of Israel, Cyprus, and Greece. Cyprus has been an energy island for its entire modern history, completely isolated from continental grids. The interconnector changes that. It's about 1,200 kilometers of cable, with a capacity of 1,000 to 2,000 megawatts, and construction actually began. The European Union designated it a Project of Common Interest and put real money behind it — hundreds of millions of euros.
You go from a pipeline that would export gas molecules to a cable that exports electrons. And the electrons can come from gas-fired plants in Israel, sure, but they can also come from solar. Israel's got enormous solar potential in the Negev, and Cyprus and Greece have their own renewable ambitions. The cable is more future-proof.
It solves Cyprus's energy isolation problem immediately. Right now Cyprus relies almost entirely on imported oil for electricity, which makes power expensive and vulnerable to supply disruptions. The interconnector gives them access to a much larger and more diverse grid. For Israel, it provides a physical connection to the European energy market that doesn't depend on anyone else's goodwill. And for Greece, it positions them as an energy hub for southeastern Europe.
The energy piece is real and it's concrete. But I want to push on something — you said the alliance outlasted the pipeline, and I think that's true, but it also predated the gas discoveries. The Israel-Greece-Cyprus relationship started firming up in the late 2000s, before Leviathan was even confirmed. What was driving it then?
Specifically, the deterioration of Israel-Turkey relations and the simultaneous deterioration of Greece-Turkey and Cyprus-Turkey relations. The trilateral alliance is, in important ways, a balancing coalition. It's not officially described that way — none of the joint statements say "this is about Turkey" — but the strategic logic is unmistakable.
The unspoken fourth party at every trilateral summit.
It's been unspoken but understood for years. Let me walk through the timeline, because it's revealing. Israel and Turkey were strategic partners through the 1990s and early 2000s — military cooperation, intelligence sharing, a free trade agreement, lots of tourism. Then things started fraying. Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009 put real strain on the relationship. The Mavi Marmara flotilla incident in 2010, where Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish-flagged ship trying to break the Gaza blockade and nine Turkish citizens were killed — that was the breaking point. Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador, military cooperation froze, and the relationship has never fully recovered.
Right around the same time, Cyprus and Israel started getting very friendly.
The same year as the Mavi Marmara incident, Israel and Cyprus signed a maritime boundary agreement delineating their exclusive economic zones. This was huge — it established the legal framework for gas exploration and created a de facto maritime partnership. Turkey objected, claiming that the agreement infringed on the rights of Turkish Cypriots, but that objection went nowhere internationally. The following year, in 2011, you saw the first trilateral meetings between Israel, Cyprus, and Greece at the leadership level.
The sequence is: Turkey-Israel relations collapse, Israel-Cyprus maritime deal gets signed within months, and the trilateral framework emerges the next year. That's not a coincidence.
On the Greek side, you had a parallel dynamic. Greece and Turkey have long-standing disputes over maritime boundaries, airspace, and the status of islands in the Aegean. These tensions have flared repeatedly — there were near-misses between Greek and Turkish military aircraft throughout the 2010s and early 2020s. Greece saw in Israel a powerful regional military actor that shared its interest in constraining Turkish assertiveness in the eastern Mediterranean.
You've got three countries that each, independently, have a Turkey problem. Israel's problem is about regional influence and the Palestinian issue. Cyprus's problem is about occupation and sovereignty. Greece's problem is about maritime rights and Aegean disputes. Different problems, same source.
That's what makes the coalition durable. It's not a single-issue alliance. If it were just about gas, it would have collapsed when the pipeline did. If it were just about Turkey, it might have weakened during periods of Israel-Turkey rapprochement — and there have been attempts at that. But because the interests are layered — energy, security, and a shared strategic outlook — the alliance can absorb shocks in any one area.
Let's talk about the security dimension, because that's where this gets really concrete. Joint military exercises, intelligence cooperation, defense procurement — the three countries have been doing a lot together.
The Israeli Air Force has conducted joint exercises with the Hellenic Air Force in Greece regularly since about 2017. These are serious exercises — they involve fighter jets, refueling, electronic warfare scenarios. For Israel, it's valuable training in unfamiliar airspace, over water, against different air defense systems than what they'd face in their immediate neighborhood. For Greece, it's access to Israeli tactical expertise and technology.
The Cypriot dimension?
Cyprus has hosted Israeli forces for training exercises on the island. The terrain is useful for certain types of operations. There have also been reports, some more confirmed than others, about intelligence cooperation — signals intelligence, maritime surveillance. Cyprus sits in a strategically vital position. From Cyprus, you can monitor shipping traffic across the eastern Mediterranean, you can track what's moving in and out of Syrian ports, you can keep an eye on Russian naval activity from their base in Tartus.
The Russian angle is underappreciated. Cyprus has historically had close ties to Russia — lots of Russian money in Cypriot banks, lots of Russian tourists, a bilateral relationship that goes back decades. But since 2014 and especially since 2022, Cyprus has been gradually, sometimes reluctantly, aligning with the Western consensus on Russia. The trilateral alliance with Israel pulls Cyprus further into the Western orbit.
Israel's relationship with Russia has been complicated in its own way. Israel maintained a working relationship with Moscow throughout the Syrian civil war, primarily to ensure that Russian air defenses in Syria didn't interfere with Israeli operations against Iranian targets. But after 2022, that became much harder to sustain. Russia started relying more on Iranian drones, which made the deconfliction arrangement increasingly untenable. So Israel's strategic calculus shifted — less reliance on the Russia channel, more emphasis on partnerships with NATO-adjacent countries like Greece and Cyprus.
There's also the Lebanon connection. Hezbollah is Iran's most capable proxy, and it sits on Israel's northern border. The maritime dimension of the Israel-Lebanon conflict matters here, because any naval blockade or maritime operation would play out in waters that are not far from Cyprus. Having a friendly government in Nicosia is not a trivial asset.
Hezbollah has demonstrated maritime capabilities. During the 2006 war, they hit an Israeli naval vessel with an anti-ship missile. Since then, they've acquired more sophisticated systems. Israel takes the maritime threat seriously, and Cyprus provides a logistical and intelligence-gathering platform that's geographically ideal.
Let's talk about the Turkish response, because Ankara has not been sitting quietly while this alliance consolidated.
Turkey's response has been multifaceted and, in some ways, escalatory. The most direct challenge has been in the maritime domain. Turkey has disputed the maritime boundaries that Cyprus and Israel have claimed, arguing that the Republic of Cyprus cannot unilaterally declare an exclusive economic zone that affects Turkish Cypriots and that Turkey's own continental shelf extends into areas that Cyprus claims. Turkey has sent its own drilling ships, escorted by naval vessels, into waters that Cyprus considers its EEZ.
The Fatih and Yavuz — Turkish drillships that have been operating in disputed waters since 2018 and 2019.
And Turkey signed its own maritime boundary agreement with the Libyan Government of National Accord in 2019, which claimed a corridor of maritime jurisdiction stretching from Turkey's southern coast to Libya's northeastern coast. That agreement cut right across the area where the EastMed pipeline would have run. Greece and Cyprus condemned it as a violation of international law, and the European Union backed them. But Turkey has maintained its position and has been willing to back it up with naval deployments.
You've got a situation where the trilateral alliance is, in part, a response to Turkish assertiveness, and Turkish assertiveness is, in part, a response to being excluded from the regional energy architecture. It's a spiral.
The spiral has military dimensions beyond the maritime disputes. Turkey has maintained a significant military presence in northern Cyprus — roughly 30,000 to 40,000 troops. It has provided the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus with military equipment and has occasionally engaged in shows of force. In 2020, when Turkey sent the drillship Oruç Reis into disputed waters near the Greek island of Kastellorizo, Greece and Turkey came very close to a military confrontation. French and Greek naval forces faced off against Turkish naval forces. It was the most serious Aegean crisis in decades.
Where was Israel in that moment?
Publicly quiet, but the trilateral defense cooperation continued without interruption. And I think that's the real signal. When things got hot between Greece and Turkey in 2020, Israel didn't step back from its relationship with Greece to avoid offending Ankara. It stayed the course.
Which tells Ankara something about the durability of this arrangement. It's not a fair-weather friendship.
There's another layer here that I think gets overlooked in most analysis — the diplomatic and intelligence-sharing dimension that goes beyond military exercises. These three countries have developed what amounts to an informal strategic dialogue. It's not a formal alliance with a treaty and mutual defense obligations. There's no NATO Article Five equivalent here. But the frequency and depth of high-level contacts have created something that functions like an alignment even if it isn't one on paper.
The informality might actually be a feature, not a bug. Formal alliances come with formal commitments, and formal commitments require parliamentary approval, public debate, and they create bright lines that adversaries can test. An informal arrangement is more flexible. You can cooperate deeply without having to specify exactly what you'd do in every contingency.
It allows each country to calibrate its own level of commitment based on the specific issue. On energy, all three are fully aligned and willing to invest real money. On security cooperation, Israel and Greece are the main players, with Cyprus providing basing and logistical support. On diplomatic coordination in European forums, Greece and Cyprus take the lead, with Israel benefiting from their advocacy within EU institutions.
The EU dimension is actually really important. Israel's relationship with the European Union has been complicated — lots of trade, lots of scientific cooperation, but persistent political friction over settlements and the Palestinian issue. Greece and Cyprus, as EU member states, have at various points been voices within the EU arguing for closer ties with Israel rather than more distance.
Cyprus in particular has been a consistent friend to Israel in EU councils. This is a shift from the historical pattern. In the 1970s and 80s, Cyprus was aligned with the Non-Aligned Movement and had close ties with Arab states. The shift toward Israel happened gradually but accelerated dramatically after 2010. And Greece, under various governments, has moved in the same direction. The current Greek government has been especially warm toward Israel.
To summarize the alignment: energy integration through the EuroAsia interconnector, joint military exercises and defense cooperation, diplomatic coordination particularly within EU forums, and a shared interest in constraining Turkish unilateralism in the eastern Mediterranean. And all of this operates without a formal treaty structure, which gives it flexibility.
It's important to note what this alliance is not. It's not a military alliance directed against Turkey — none of the three countries wants a shooting war with Ankara. It's not a replacement for NATO — Greece is in NATO, Israel isn't, Cyprus isn't, and the trilateral framework operates alongside NATO rather than within it. And it's not an exclusive bloc — all three countries maintain relationships with other regional powers, including Egypt, which is a major player in eastern Mediterranean gas.
The Egypt piece is worth pulling on for a moment, because Egypt is the quiet fourth partner in a lot of this. The Egypt-Israel gas relationship is substantial — Israeli gas flows to Egyptian liquefaction plants, gets turned into LNG, and gets exported to Europe. Egypt has its own disputes with Turkey, particularly related to the Muslim Brotherhood and regional influence. And Egypt and Greece have been cooperating on maritime boundary issues.
There was a Greece-Egypt maritime boundary agreement signed in August 2020, which partially overlapped with the area claimed by the Turkey-Libya agreement. So you've got an emerging alignment that's actually broader than the trilateral framework — Israel, Cyprus, Greece, and Egypt, with occasional coordination with France and the UAE. It's an eastern Mediterranean security and energy architecture that, by design or by circumstance, excludes Turkey.
That exclusion is the central tension. Turkey is a major regional power — the largest economy in the eastern Mediterranean, the second-largest military in NATO, a country of 85 million people with a strategic location that's been important for centuries. You can't just ignore Turkey. But the countries in this alignment have concluded that including Turkey on terms Ankara would accept would mean accepting Turkish claims about maritime boundaries and Cyprus that they're not willing to concede.
Turkey's response has been to try to break into the architecture by force of presence — sending ships, asserting claims, making clear that no regional energy framework will be stable without Turkish buy-in. There's a Turkish argument that the trilateral alliance is an attempt to isolate Turkey and deny it its legitimate rights under international law. And there's a counterargument that Turkey's claims are maximalist and that its behavior — occupying northern Cyprus, signing the Libya deal — is what's creating the need for a counterbalancing coalition in the first place.
Which argument you find persuasive probably depends on where you're sitting. But from the perspective of Jerusalem, Nicosia, and Athens, the calculus is pretty straightforward. Turkey under Erdogan has been an unreliable and sometimes hostile neighbor. The trilateral alliance provides energy security, defense cooperation, and diplomatic support. The costs are manageable, and the benefits are tangible.
There's a domestic political dimension in each country that reinforces the alliance. In Israel, the relationship with Greece and Cyprus is popular across much of the political spectrum — it's seen as a pragmatic success story in a region where Israeli diplomacy often struggles. In Greece, the alliance with Israel provides a strategic counterweight to Turkey and has brought economic benefits in tourism, technology investment, and energy. In Cyprus, the relationship with Israel has helped reduce Nicosia's diplomatic isolation and has created economic opportunities that the Cypriot economy badly needs.
What about the United States? Where does Washington fit into this?
The US position has evolved. Under the Trump administration, there was strong support for the trilateral framework — the EastMed Act of 2019, which became law in December 2019, expressed Congressional support for the Israel-Greece-Cyprus partnership and authorized security assistance and energy cooperation. The Biden administration was more ambivalent about the pipeline but has continued to support the broader relationship. The US participates in three-plus-one meetings with Israel, Greece, and Cyprus — that's the formalized format where the US joins the trilateral talks.
Under the current administration?
The Trump administration, back in office since January 2025, has signaled renewed interest in eastern Mediterranean energy and security cooperation. Secretary of State Rubio mentioned the trilateral partnership positively during his confirmation hearings. There's a general alignment between the administration's pro-Israel orientation and support for the trilateral framework. But the pipeline specifically remains unlikely to be revived — the economic case just isn't there, and the administration has other priorities.
Let me ask a question that might be slightly uncomfortable. Is this alliance actually delivering? It's been more than a decade since the trilateral framework started taking shape. What's the scorecard?
On energy, the scorecard is mixed but trending positive. The EastMed pipeline didn't happen, but the EuroAsia interconnector is under construction and will be genuinely transformative for Cyprus when it's completed. Israeli gas is reaching European markets, just not via the originally planned route — it goes through Egypt instead. On security, the cooperation has been real and sustained — joint exercises, intelligence sharing, defense industrial cooperation. Israel has sold military equipment to both Greece and Cyprus, including drones and missile defense systems.
On the diplomatic front, Greece and Cyprus have been reliable voices within the EU arguing against anti-Israel measures. That's not nothing.
It's not nothing, but it has limits. When EU foreign ministers vote on statements about settlements or Palestinian statehood, Greece and Cyprus can't single-handedly block consensus. They can moderate language, they can argue for balance, but they're two votes out of twenty-seven. So the diplomatic benefit to Israel is real but bounded.
On the Turkey question — has the trilateral alliance actually constrained Turkish behavior?
I'd say the record there is also mixed. Turkey hasn't stopped sending drillships into disputed waters. The occupation of northern Cyprus continues. The Libya maritime deal remains in effect. But Turkey also hasn't been able to prevent the trilateral alliance from deepening, and its attempts to break into the regional energy architecture by force haven't succeeded in getting any of the three countries to concede on maritime boundaries. So it's more of a stalemate than a victory for either side.
A stalemate that's probably more tolerable for the trilateral countries than for Turkey, because they're not the ones being excluded from something they want to be part of.
Turkey wants a seat at the table. The trilateral countries have built a table that doesn't have a Turkish seat, and so far it's held.
Let's talk about the future, because the regional context is shifting in ways that could either strengthen or strain the alliance. The Iran situation, for one.
As of today — May 17, 2026 — we're on day 78 of the Iran war. Israel is actively engaged in military operations against Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure. The trilateral partners have been supportive. Greece has allowed the use of its airspace for humanitarian and logistical flights. Cyprus has provided basing for search-and-rescue operations. Neither has been directly involved in combat operations, and I don't think anyone expects them to be. But the war has reinforced the security dimension of the relationship.
It's put Turkey in an awkward position. Turkey and Iran have a complicated relationship — they're competitors in some domains, partners in others. Turkey has condemned the Israeli strikes publicly, but it hasn't done anything to interfere with them. The war has made the trilateral alignment more salient without forcing Greece or Cyprus to make hard choices they'd rather avoid.
The other big variable is the Lebanon situation. The truce extension that was just announced — Lebanon and Israel have been in a ceasefire arrangement that's being extended. If that holds, it reduces the risk of a wider conflict that could draw in Cyprus. If it collapses and Hezbollah resumes operations against Israel, Cyprus becomes more important as a logistical and intelligence hub.
Then there's the Russia question, which I mentioned earlier but which deserves more attention. The trilateral alliance exists in the shadow of Russia's war in Ukraine. Cyprus has been reducing its exposure to Russian finance under Western pressure. Greece has been a strong supporter of Ukraine. Israel has been more cautious — it's provided humanitarian aid but not weapons, and it's maintained a complicated balancing act. The divergence in approaches to Russia could become a source of friction if the war in Ukraine escalates or if Western pressure on Israel to take a clearer stance intensifies.
I think that's right, but I also think the Russia issue is manageable within the alliance precisely because the alliance is informal. No one's asking Israel to adopt Greece's Russia policy or vice versa. The alliance is built on shared interests in the eastern Mediterranean, not on a common approach to every global issue. That's the flexibility advantage I mentioned earlier.
Let me ask you to zoom out for a moment. If you had to explain to someone why this trilateral alliance matters in the broader sweep of regional politics, what would you say?
I'd say it represents a realignment of the eastern Mediterranean away from the old patterns. For decades, the region was organized around the Arab-Israeli conflict, with Turkey as a NATO anchor and Greece and Cyprus on the periphery. What's happened in the last fifteen years is a re-sorting. Israel has built relationships with Greece and Cyprus that are deeper and more institutionalized than its relationships with most of its immediate neighbors. Turkey has drifted away from Israel and, to some extent, from the West. The eastern Mediterranean has become a zone of competition between a Turkish-led bloc and a Greek-Israeli-Cypriot alignment, with Egypt and others gravitating toward the latter.
The energy discoveries accelerated a process that was already underway for strategic reasons.
The gas was a catalyst, not a cause. The cause was the simultaneous deterioration of multiple relationships with Turkey and the search by Israel, Greece, and Cyprus for partners who shared their interests. The gas made the partnership economically compelling in a way that pure security cooperation might not have been, but the partnership would probably exist in some form even without it.
Where does this go in the next five to ten years? Does it formalize into something more like a treaty alliance? Does it expand to include other countries? Does it persist at its current level of cooperation?
I don't think it formalizes. The informality is working, and formalization would create more problems than it solves — it would force each country to define commitments it might not want to define, and it would escalate tensions with Turkey in ways that could be dangerous. I think the more likely trajectory is incremental deepening — more joint infrastructure, more defense industrial cooperation, more intelligence sharing — without a formal treaty.
Expansion is possible. Egypt is already a de facto partner. The UAE has shown interest in eastern Mediterranean energy and has good relations with all three countries. France has been a strong supporter, particularly of Greece, and has conducted joint naval exercises in the region. You could see a broader eastern Mediterranean security forum emerge that includes these additional players without requiring them to sign onto everything the core three are doing.
The wild card is Turkey. If Turkey's trajectory changes — if there's eventually a government in Ankara that's less confrontational, more willing to negotiate on Cyprus, more interested in regional cooperation than in asserting maritime claims — the trilateral alliance would still serve a purpose, but its anti-Turkey dimension would become less central. It could evolve into something more inclusive. But that's a long way off, and nobody in Jerusalem, Nicosia, or Athens is holding their breath.
The other wild card is what happens if the Iran war ends and Israel's strategic situation changes. Right now, Israel is intensely focused on Iran and on the northern front. That makes the relationship with Greece and Cyprus valuable in part because they're stable and reliable. If the regional threat environment shifts, does the alliance remain as high a priority?
I think it does, because the energy and economic dimensions are independent of the Iran situation. The EuroAsia interconnector will still be there. The gas fields will still be producing. The tourism and technology ties will still be growing. The security cooperation might become less central, but the alliance has enough ballast that it wouldn't be defined entirely by the security environment.
One last question. What do you think is the single most underrated aspect of this alliance that most people miss?
The quiet normalization of Israel's position in the eastern Mediterranean. For most of its history, Israel was a regional outlier — surrounded by hostile states, with limited diplomatic and economic ties to its immediate neighborhood. The trilateral alliance has embedded Israel in a regional framework where it's a normal, valued partner. That's a bigger deal than any specific pipeline or military exercise. It's a structural shift in Israel's regional position, and it's happened with relatively little fanfare.
Normalization through pragmatism. Not the Abraham Accords kind, with big White House signing ceremonies and photo ops, but the slow, quiet kind where you share power grids and train together and coordinate diplomatically until one day you look up and realize you're in an alliance.
The glockenspiel of regional integration — it doesn't announce itself dramatically, but it's been chiming away in the background for fifteen years.
Turkey hears it every time.
Now: Hilbert's daily fun fact.
Hilbert: In the 1720s, the Moriori people of the Chatham Islands developed a unique counting system using knotted flax cords as an abacus variant for tracking seasonal bird migrations. The practice was entirely lost after the 1835 Māori invasion, but a single intact knot-sequence was rediscovered in 2024 inside a preserved albatross-bone container in a cave on Pitt Island.
An albatross-bone abacus container. Of course there are.
That's our show. Thanks to Hilbert Flumingtop for producing, and thanks to all of you for listening. If you want more episodes, you can find us at myweirdprompts.com or wherever you get your podcasts — leave us a review if you're enjoying the show.
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