MILEI AND ISRAEL: WHEN FOREIGN POLICY BECOMES PERSONAL

There is something unusual happening in Argentine foreign policy.

Governments have allies. Governments sign trade agreements. Governments cooperate on intelligence, technology and defence.

But Javier Milei’s relationship with Israel has moved beyond the vocabulary normally used to describe bilateral diplomacy.

In April 2026, standing alongside Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Milei described the relationship between Argentina and Israel as a “moral, spiritual and political union.”

That is an extraordinary formulation for a head of state.

And it deserves considerably more examination than either the enthusiastic applause of Milei’s supporters or the reflexive criticism of his opponents.

Because behind the symbolism there is now substance: security cooperation, artificial intelligence, technology, trade, investment, aviation, diplomacy, counterterrorism and strategic coordination.

And then there are natural resources.

Lithium.

Water.

Energy.

And, in a fascinating geopolitical contradiction, oil around the Falkland/Malvinas Islands.

The Milei–Israel relationship is therefore no longer merely an ideological curiosity.

It has become a legitimate economic and geopolitical question.

From affinity to state policy

Milei’s affinity with Judaism and Israel predates his presidency.

His public interest in Jewish thought, his relationship with Rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish and his visits to Jewish religious institutions have been extensively documented. That personal dimension matters because it helps explain why Israel occupies a place in Milei’s worldview that cannot be understood simply through Argentine trade statistics.

But there is an important distinction.

Judaism, Argentina’s Jewish community, the State of Israel and Israeli commercial interests are four different things.

Conflating them would be analytically lazy and historically dangerous.

Argentina itself is home to roughly 173,000 Jews, according to estimates cited by the World Jewish Congress, making it the largest Jewish community in Latin America and one of the largest worldwide.

It is an integral part of Argentine society, not a foreign political actor.

Israel is another matter: it is a sovereign state pursuing national interests.

And Milei has chosen to make relations with that state an unusually prominent component of Argentine foreign policy.

The relationship accelerated almost immediately

In February 2024, only weeks after taking office, Milei travelled to Israel.

His administration subsequently designated Hamas an international terrorist organisation in Argentina in July 2024. The Argentine presidency explicitly connected the decision with Iran and with Argentina’s own traumatic history of terrorism.

That history cannot be treated as background decoration.

The Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires was bombed in 1992, killing 22 people. Two years later, the AMIA bombing killed 85 people and injured more than 300, the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentine history.

Argentina therefore has genuine national-security reasons for taking Iranian-backed terrorism seriously.

That makes part of the alignment with Israel strategically understandable independently of Milei’s personal beliefs.

But the relationship kept expanding.

In June 2025, Milei and Netanyahu advanced a memorandum centred on democracy, freedom, terrorism and antisemitism that Argentina described as laying foundations for intensive cooperation in defence and security.

Then came 2026.

And the relationship moved to another level.

The Isaac Accords

On April 19, 2026, Milei and Netanyahu launched the Isaac Accords.

The name itself is politically significant.

The initiative was explicitly inspired by Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords and conceived as a framework linking Argentina, Israel and other “like-minded” Western Hemisphere countries.

Its objectives include coordination against terrorism, attention to Iranian networks in the Americas, alignment in international forums and cooperation in:

innovation, technology, trade and economic openness.

This is not a photo opportunity.

It is an attempt to build an ideological and strategic architecture.

And the triangle behind it is increasingly visible:

Washington — Jerusalem — Buenos Aires.

Indeed, during Milei’s April visit, Netanyahu explicitly highlighted the close alliance among the United States, Israel and Argentina.

Argentina is effectively repositioning itself inside a geopolitical bloc.

Whether that proves profitable is another question.

$150 million for Israeli companies

One announcement deserves considerably more attention in Argentina than it received.

During the April 2026 visit, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar highlighted the opening of a $150 million credit line to support Israeli companies operating in Argentina.

That is where ideology starts becoming economics.

There is nothing inherently problematic about foreign companies receiving financing to invest in Argentina.

Quite the contrary: Argentina desperately needs capital.

But governments should ask the same question about every strategic partnership:

Where is the reciprocity?

How much Israeli capital will enter Argentina?

How many Argentine companies will obtain comparable access to Israeli financing?

How much technology will genuinely be transferred?

How many jobs and patents will remain in Argentina?

And how much value will simply be extracted from Argentina and monetised elsewhere?

Those are not anti-Israel questions.

They are the questions any serious government should ask China, the United States, Europe, Saudi Arabia — or Israel.

Then comes lithium

This is where the relationship becomes particularly interesting.

During Milei’s first presidential trip to Israel in February 2024, then-Foreign Minister Diana Mondino met executives of Israeli company XtraLit, which specialises in direct lithium extraction.

The Argentine Foreign Ministry reported that XtraLit was examining projects involving the acquisition, production and generation of added value from Argentine lithium.

The company also planned its first Argentine laboratory and the recruitment of local scientific personnel.

This matters.

Argentina sits at the centre of the global competition for lithium resources.

Lithium is not simply another commodity.

It sits inside the supply chain for batteries, electric vehicles, grid storage and potentially an enormous portion of the energy infrastructure of the twenty-first century.

Israeli technological involvement therefore makes economic sense.

But again the question should be:

Who captures the value?

Argentina has spent too much of its economic history exporting raw materials and importing high-value technology.

If lithium simply becomes the twenty-first-century version of that model, Argentina may possess the resource while somebody else owns the margin.

Israel is also involved in Argentina’s water debate

During the same 2024 mission, Mondino met Mekorot, Israel’s state-owned water company.

Mekorot had already entered cooperation arrangements involving seven Argentine provinces — Catamarca, Formosa, La Rioja, Río Negro, San Juan, Mendoza and Santa Cruz — aimed at improving water management.

Again, there is a perfectly rational reason for cooperation.

Israel possesses globally recognised expertise in water management.

Argentina contains enormous territory where water infrastructure, drought and resource management are increasingly important.

But water is also strategic.

And that is precisely why transparency regarding contracts, intellectual property, pricing and long-term governance matters.

Strategic cooperation should never mean strategic complacency.

Artificial intelligence joins the relationship

By April 2026 the agenda had expanded again.

Milei announced an Argentina–Israel memorandum on artificial intelligence covering joint model development, specialist training, productive applications and cooperation in international forums governing AI.

This is potentially far more important than another conventional trade agreement.

Countries that control AI infrastructure, data, models and intellectual property will possess enormous economic leverage.

Argentina has excellent human capital but historically struggles to convert scientific talent into domestically owned global businesses.

If Israeli cooperation helps change that, it could be enormously valuable.

But the metric must be results.

Not ceremonies.

Not memoranda.

Not photographs.

Patents. Companies. Investment. Exports. Productivity.

And then the Falklands created the perfect contradiction

This is perhaps the most revealing episode of all.

One might assume that Milei’s extraordinary political closeness to Israel would make Argentina reluctant to confront Israeli commercial interests.

It did not.

The Sea Lion oil project north of the Falkland Islands is operated by Tel Aviv-listed Navitas Petroleum, which owns 65%.

Rockhopper Exploration owns the remaining 35%, and several Israeli investment funds are among Rockhopper’s significant shareholders.

Sea Lion is estimated to contain approximately 1.7 billion barrels of oil. Phase One is expected to require about $2.2 billion of capital, with first oil targeted for 2028 and initial production around 50,000 barrels per day.

Milei’s government decided to confront them.

On September 8, Argentina filed a criminal complaint against Navitas and executives connected with operations around the islands, which Argentina considers unauthorised because the licences were issued by Britain/Falkland authorities rather than Buenos Aires.

This is enormously important analytically.

Because it destroys the simplistic theory that Milei’s friendship with Israel means automatic submission to every Israeli commercial interest.

When Milei perceived a conflict between Israeli investors and Argentina’s Malvinas claim, he chose the Argentine sovereignty claim.

Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno simultaneously insisted that the dispute would not damage relations with Israel.

That is actually what mature statecraft should look like:

allies are allies; interests are interests.

And no, Israel does not “control Vaca Muerta”

This deserves saying clearly because social media loves dramatic simplifications.

Vaca Muerta is not “Israeli-controlled.”

The dominant company is Argentina’s YPF, alongside Argentine and international operators including Vista, Pluspetrol, Tecpetrol, Pan American Energy, Shell, TotalEnergies and Chevron.

Indeed, one of the most strategically interesting foreign partnerships is Italian.

In April 2025, Eni and YPF signed an agreement concerning Argentina LNG.

The wider project is designed to exploit Vaca Muerta gas and potentially export up to 30 million tonnes of LNG annually by the end of the decade.

The phase evaluated by Eni and YPF involves two floating LNG units with total capacity of 12 million tonnes per year.

Which raises another uncomfortable question for Europe.

While European politicians organise missions to “discover opportunities” in Argentina, international capital is already allocating billions.

The resources are not waiting politely for European delegations to finish lunch.

The real story is not Jewish influence. It is Milei’s geopolitical choice.

This distinction matters enormously.

Argentina’s Jewish citizens do not collectively determine Argentine foreign policy.

Nor should Israeli corporate activity be confused with Jewish identity.

The interesting political phenomenon is much more specific and demonstrable:

Javier Milei has deliberately elevated Israel into Argentina’s strategic foreign-policy architecture.

He has visited Israel repeatedly.

He has cultivated Netanyahu.

He has aligned Argentina strongly against Hamas and Iran.

He wants the Argentine embassy moved to Jerusalem.

He has developed security cooperation.

He has promoted AI cooperation.

His government is facilitating Israeli investment.

He conceived the Isaac Accords.

And he has described the relationship as moral, spiritual and political.

That is an extraordinary degree of presidential commitment.

But what does Argentina receive?

This is ultimately the question that matters.

Foreign policy is not a friendship club.

A president’s personal convictions may explain an alliance.

They cannot be the final justification for it.

Argentina should therefore measure the Israel relationship using exactly the same standards it should apply to China, the United States and Europe:

capital invested;

technology transferred;

Argentine exports generated;

high-skilled jobs created;

research developed locally;

access to financing;

defence and intelligence capabilities obtained;

and strategic autonomy preserved.

If those returns materialise, Milei may eventually be credited with identifying a highly complementary partner before much of Latin America did.

If they do not, history may judge the relationship differently: as a case where presidential conviction travelled faster than national economic strategy.

The Malvinas test may be the most important one

Ironically, the confrontation with Navitas provides Milei with his strongest argument against accusations of unconditional alignment.

He has demonstrated that there is at least one boundary.

When Israeli capital collided directly with Argentina’s territorial claim, Buenos Aires did not remain silent.

That makes the relationship more complicated — and considerably more interesting.

Milei is simultaneously telling Israel:

you are one of our closest strategic partners.

And Israeli investors:

Argentina’s definition of sovereignty still applies to you.

That is not necessarily contradiction.

It may actually be foreign policy.

Argentina should welcome allies — but never outsource its interests

Argentina needs investment.

It needs technology.

It needs access to capital.

It needs international partners after decades of economic underperformance and recurrent financial isolation.

Israel can plausibly provide important pieces of that puzzle.

So can the United States.

So can Europe.

So can China.

The mistake would be believing that ideological affinity eliminates the permanent competition between national interests.

It never does.

The Isaac Accords, lithium projects, AI cooperation, security agreements and Israeli financing therefore deserve attention.

But they deserve scrutiny as well.

Because the relevant question is not whether Milei loves Israel.

He very clearly does.

The relevant question is whether, ten years from now, Argentina will be able to point to factories, technologies, exports, infrastructure and Argentine-owned intellectual property and say:

this alliance made the country richer, stronger and more independent.

Everything else is diplomacy.

And diplomacy, unlike lithium, oil or technology, is very difficult to put on a balance sheet.

Sources: Presidency of Argentina; Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Government of Israel / Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Eni; World Jewish Congress; Reuters.