Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

Germany attached an anti-corruption condition to its 2017 agreement to finance three submarines for Israel. Berlin has never identified who accepted that condition as satisfied, what evidence was examined or when the decisive notification arrived. German court and parliamentary records reveal a wider system of unpublished bilateral instruments under which Israel supplied the formal confirmation, Berlin retained the power to proceed, and Israeli consent later helped determine what Germany could disclose. This investigation traces the undisclosed decision that allowed Israel’s German-financed submarine programme to proceed while criminal proceedings in the Tel Aviv District Court remained unresolved.

INS Drakon left Kiel for Israel on 1 September 2026. Before it could sail, the 2017 financing agreement had to enter into force and Berlin had to grant the final export authorisation it said was still missing in 2025. Yet the public German records reviewed for this investigation identify neither decision by date, author, nor evidentiary basis.

Specialist German reporting places the transfer of responsibility at the Kiel yard of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TKMS) on 22 July 2026, without a public ceremony. A departure ceremony followed on 31 August, and TKMS announced the next day that Drakon had left Kiel. The departure made the outcome visible, but the German decisions that enabled it remain concealed.

IMAGE: INS Drakon operating in the waters off Kiel during the period surrounding its discreet transfer to the Israeli Navy in July 2026. (Source: Kieler Nachrichten)

Part I of The Drakon Files investigation examined whether Berlin’s safeguard was formally satisfied or disappeared inside the secrecy surrounding the deal. This investigation follows the documentary trail through parliamentary answers, budget accounts, export records and court decisions to identify what Berlin disclosed, and the decisive record it withheld.

The condition

In October 2017, as the Israeli corruption affair gathered force, the Federal Government committed up to EUR 540 million towards three submarines for Israel, with a safeguard attached to the money.

The memorandum has never been published, but according to the only substantive contemporary account of its terms, every investigation had to be closed and every ground for suspicion resolved before delivery. Israel’s attorney general was expected to confirm that the investigations were over, but the final judgement belonged to Berlin. An official exchange of diplomatic notes, known in German as a Notenwechsel, was meant to record the governments’ formal declarations that the required conditions had been fulfilled. To this day, Berlin has never disclosed whether that exchange took place or produced either note.

IMAGE: Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the Knesset on 23 October 2017, the day he announced that Israel and Germany had signed the submarine memorandum whose anti-corruption condition remains unpublished. (Source: The Times of Israel)

The Bundestag identified the safeguard as section 10 of the 2017 memorandum, but did not receive its text. One month after signature, ThyssenKrupp chief executive Heinrich Hiesinger added a public assurance of his own, saying the deal would proceed only if it was ‘completely clean’.

On 12 December 2017, the Defence Ministry told Parliament that the agreement would enter into force once both governments had met their national requirements. Its official answer also specified when the agreement would take effect:

‘Maßgebend ist der Tag des Eingangs der letzten Mitteilung bei der anderen Vertragspartei.’ (The decisive date is the day the final notification is received by the other contracting party.)

The notification fixed the date on which the agreement entered into force, but Berlin has never disclosed the date on which it was received. The government also confirmed that the memorandum contained no withdrawal clause, meaning the condition could stop the programme before the notification but offered no contractual route back afterwards.

Between December 2018 and August 2021, the Federal Government repeatedly told Parliament that nothing material had changed, including reporting ‘kein neuer Sachverhalt’, or no new facts, in April 2020. Asked which conditions had been fulfilled and how compliance would be verified, Berlin pointed only to the final notification that would bring the agreement into force. It described the document that would announce the outcome, but not the evidence, threshold or authority behind it.

By August 2021, Berlin had preserved the appearance of a functioning safeguard for almost four years without identifying its decision-maker or verification procedure. Five and a half months later, Israel signed a EUR 3 billion contract with TKMS for three new Dakar-class submarines.

The change

Israel signed a EUR 3 billion contract for three new Dakar-class submarines with TKMS on 20 January 2022, five and a half months after Berlin had told Parliament that nothing concerning the agreement had changed. Germany’s contribution remained capped at EUR 540 million under the 2017 agreement, while the Economics Ministry agreed a separate industrial-cooperation package worth more than EUR 850 million.

Seventy-two hours later, Israel’s cabinet adopted Government Decision No. 1019 and established a state commission of inquiry into the procurement. Its mandate covered the submarines, Sa’ar 6 vessels, naval shipyards and Israel’s handling of proposed German submarine sales to a third country, allowing it to investigate the political and administrative system around the purchases but not the criminal defendants.

A German criminal inquiry had closed one year earlier, but the public record does not show that its findings supplied the missing clearance. ThyssenKrupp announced in July 2017 that it had found no evidence of corruption in its handling of the Israeli contracts, while acknowledging that it could not investigate in Israel, possessed no law-enforcement powers and regarded its conclusions as provisional. Company records reported by Globes indicate that the inquiry interviewed neither Michael Ganor, ThyssenKrupp’s sales agent in Israel, nor any of his representatives, and did not question Walter Freitag, the company executive linked to Ganor’s appointment.

The public prosecutor’s office in Bochum, a city in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, opened a criminal investigation through its white-collar crime unit in March 2019 after reviewing reports on the Israeli proceedings, then closed the case in January 2021 because there was ‘no sufficient suspicion’ of offences by specific domestic persons. No closure memorandum appears in the public record reviewed for this investigation. Consequently, there is no public account of whether Bochum interviewed Freitag, sought assistance from Israel, obtained ThyssenKrupp’s internal report or later reconsidered the file.

The Federal Government has never said that Bochum’s closure satisfied section 10 or identified another German assessment that did. Months after Bochum closed its file, Berlin was still telling Parliament that nothing concerning the agreement had changed.

The criminal proceedings in Israel moved more slowly. Michael Ganor retracted his account in 2019, denied bribing anyone and withdrew from his state-witness agreement. A court ruled his police confessions admissible on 6 May 2025, although neither he nor the other defendants has been convicted.

IMAGE: Michael Ganor, ThyssenKrupp’s former representative in Israel, waits outside the Rishon LeZion Magistrate’s Court in March 2019 after seeking to retract the testimony he had given as a state witness in the submarine affair. (Source: The Jerusalem Post)

The state commission was still at work when Drakon passed into Israeli control. Its January 2026 publication set out systemic findings about the procurement process, including failures attributed to the National Security Council and naval officials and inadequate documentation of contacts with foreign bodies. The separate stage addressing the personal responsibility of the five officials who received warning notices remained unfinished. The commission scheduled 18 closed hearing days between 1 November and 31 December 2026 to hear their evidence. The hearings will allow the five warned officials to challenge the evidence, question witnesses and argue against personal findings before the commission issues its final report.

The money resumed

Germany’s budget record changed in the same year that the Dakar contract was signed and the Israeli inquiry began. Its contribution to Israel’s defence systems appears under Titel 559 01 of the federal budget, where the annual accounts record what Berlin planned to spend and what it paid.

Germany’s budgeted and actual expenditure under Titel 559 01, ‘Contributions towards the procurement of defence systems for Israel’, from 2017 to 2025. The accounts establish aggregate spending under the budget title but do not publicly disaggregate every payment by project. Each linked figure opens the corresponding federal annual account.

After fully spending the line in 2017, Germany paid less than budgeted in each of the next four years and nothing in 2020 or 2021. Full disbursement resumed in 2022, when Israel signed the Dakar contract, and continued each year afterwards. The accounts establish when the money began moving again, but not why.

The 2019 accounts contain the only act in this sequence that identifies a German authority, legal basis and outcome. The Finance Ministry withheld its consent under section 45(3) of the Federal Budget Code to use the entire carried-over balance, but the accounts do not explain why or say whether the decision was connected to the anti-corruption condition.

Germany had entered the entire EUR 540 million as commitments in 2017, before the Israeli proceedings could have concluded. At the end of 2025, EUR 390 million remained outstanding, scheduled at EUR 65 million annually from 2026 to 2031.

The aggregate figures were public, but their allocation was not. In January 2024, MP Sevim Dağdelen asked the government to disclose its financial contribution to Israel’s submarines, broken down by amount, budget year and budget title.

MP Sevim Dağdelen, whose request for details of Germany’s submarine financing received a classified answer. (Source: German Bundestag)

Parliamentary State Secretary Thomas Hitschler classified the answer VS-NUR FÜR DEN DIENSTGEBRAUCH, or classified for official use only, because publication, he said, could cause ‘politischen Verwerfungen’, or political repercussions, in German-Israeli relations.

The aggregate remained public, and a later ministerial answer confirmed that the contribution was non-repayable, but the breakdown stayed secret. The reason given was not operational security but the risk of political damage to the bilateral relationship.

The accounts show when public money began moving again, while the licensing record shows when the submarine itself became capable of leaving Germany. Drakon required an approval under the War Weapons Control Act and another under the Foreign Trade Act authorising the export itself. By January 2025, Berlin had granted the first but not the second, confirming in Drucksache 20/14661 that the authorisation to transport a submarine for export existed, while the foreign-trade licence required to execute the export did not.

Seven months later, ThyssenKrupp shareholders asked about the missing approval. At the company’s extraordinary general meeting on 8 August 2025, the recorded answer was direct.

‘Eine Ausfuhrlizenz liegt vor.’ (An export licence exists.)

ThyssenKrupp later confirmed this wording to journalists. Yet in a letter dated 15 August 2025, one week after the shareholder meeting, lawyers representing the Federal Government said that no Foreign Trade Act licence had yet been issued for the submarine, according to the letter obtained and reviewed by nd and Shadow World Investigations. This directly contradicted what ThyssenKrupp had told its shareholders and raised an obvious question: what approval, if any, was the company referring to?

The government’s parliamentary answer from the same period deepened the discrepancy. Berlin confirmed that the required Foreign Trade Act licence had not been granted but refused to disclose the status or substance of the continuing assessment, placing arms-export decisions within the Kernbereich exekutiver Eigenverantwortung, or core area of executive responsibility. The result was a striking gap between the company’s assurance that the necessary approvals had been secured, and the government’s position that a legally required licence remained outstanding, without a public explanation of how those statements could be reconciled.

If ThyssenKrupp meant the earlier weapons-control approval, it answered a specific question about the missing final licence by referring to a different authorisation. If it meant the Foreign Trade Act licence, the company and government gave incompatible accounts seven days apart. The contradiction remained unresolved when the question returned at TKMS’s annual general meeting on 27 February 2026.

Questioners at that meeting said the Federal Security Council had approved Drakon’s export in December 2023 while the Foreign Trade Act licence remained outstanding. That date has not been independently confirmed and should not be treated as an established government decision. It nevertheless points to a specific approval record that can be tested against the company’s August 2025 statement, the government’s contrary answer, and the authorisation that appeared in the second quarter of 2026.

Germany approved EUR 735,763,266 in arms-export licences for Israel during that quarter, of which EUR 508,750,000 covered war weapons. Around 67 per cent of the total related to ‘ein Großprojekt im maritimen Rüstungsbereich’, or a major project in the maritime defence sector, while another 21 per cent concerned cooperation between German and Israeli companies in the interests of the Bundeswehr.

The government did not name the maritime project. However, Der Spiegel and Globes identified it as Drakon. The maritime share, approximately EUR 493 million, closely matches published estimates of the submarine’s value. Berlin published the quarter, aggregate and proportion, but not the licence date, issuing authority or assessment behind it, including whether the anti-corruption condition formed any part of that assessment.

By the time Drakon left Kiel, Germany’s conduct had changed in every observable respect. The programme had expanded, payments had resumed, aggregate licensing figures had appeared for an unnamed maritime project with a value close to Drakon’s, and the submarine had departed. Yet the decision that made those steps compatible with section 10 remained undisclosed.

The secrecy surrounding the final licence was not an isolated feature of the programme, as court proceedings revealed that unpublished bilateral agreements also governed what Berlin could disclose about its military support for Israel. It appears that Berlin controlled the weapons, but not the public account of their transfer.

What Berlin withheld

A journalist’s attempt to discover whether Germany’s arms-export figures included equipment transferred directly from Bundeswehr stocks to Israel, and what those transfers were worth, reached the Administrative Court in Cologne after Berlin refused to answer.

In its decision of 26 May 2025, the court recorded that transfers from Bundeswehr stocks were governed by bilateral agreements containing a provision headed ‘Vertraulichkeit, Verschwiegenheit’, or confidentiality and secrecy. Germany’s agreement with Israel covered whether transfers had occurred, what they contained and how much they were worth. Berlin argued that disclosure could damage future cooperation and Germany’s standing as a reliable partner. The court accepted the protection of foreign relations as the decisive public interest.

 The government told the Cologne court that it had made the statement ‘im Einvernehmen mit dem Staat Israel’, or with the agreement of the State of Israel, and later told Parliament that Israeli consent to identifying those goods ‘war rechtlich erforderlich’, or was legally required.

Parliament asked which Israeli authority had been consulted, who within the German government had authorised the approach, what legal provision required Israel’s consent and what information had been withheld. The government’s answer identified neither the German decision-maker nor the instrument that made consent necessary, while confirming that Germany had not separately informed the International Court of Justice that its disclosure depended on Israel’s agreement.

In fact, Berlin never produced the agreement on which it relied. The Higher Administrative Court of North Rhine-Westphalia nevertheless accepted the government’s description of its terms without requiring the text and recorded that Israel still opposed disclosure of the transfers’ value on 12 June 2026, leaving the restriction active only weeks before Drakon passed into Israeli control.

The proceedings concerned Bundeswehr stocks, not the submarine memorandum, but exposed the same reliance on unpublished bilateral arrangements. Under one instrument, Berlin decided whether the submarine programme could proceed, while under another, Israeli consent shaped what Germany could disclose about its own military support afterwards.

On Monday 7 September 2026, only six days after Drakon left Kiel, Germany told the International Court of Justice that its ‘strict licensing procedure’, published reports and parliamentary answers allowed the public to scrutinise its arms-export decisions. Berlin was asking the Court to dismiss, on jurisdictional and admissibility grounds, a case brought by Nicaragua accusing Germany of breaching the Genocide Convention and international humanitarian law through its military support for Israel. By then, Berlin had already told a German court that another state’s consent determined part of what it could disclose and had persuaded that court to accept the restriction without examining the agreement that created it.

Germany’s representative Julia Monar at the International Court of Justice for the second round on 9 September 2026. (Photo: Anadolu)

The missing records go beyond the two unpublished instruments. Israel’s state commission found that officials had failed to document contacts with foreign bodies during the naval procurement, including contacts involving German officials and institutions. The German side of those exchanges may survive in files held by the relevant federal ministries or the Federal Chancellery. They may also include Federal Security Council records, whose deliberations are secret. It could not be established whether any relevant material has been transferred to the Federal Archives.

The dispute that surfaced in 2015 over Germany’s submarine sale to Egypt shows why those files are important. Amos Gilad, then head of the Israeli Defence Ministry’s political-security division, approached Christoph Heusgen, Angela Merkel’s foreign-policy and security adviser, to oppose the sale. He learned that Germany had already obtained Israel’s consent from Netanyahu, who later acknowledged giving that consent without informing Israel’s defence minister or military chief.

A 2025 Panorama investigation reported that pressure also moved in the opposite direction. Germany sought Israeli concessions on settlement construction and Palestinian statehood during the submarine negotiations, while Netanyahu sent his close adviser Ron Dermer, then serving in the Prime Minister’s Office, to demand Heusgen’s removal. Merkel refused, and Heusgen later described an exchange reaching the offices of both governments, precisely the kind of contact likely to have generated records on the German side.

Reporting cited by Globes places Ganor within that official channel. Berlin reportedly made delivery of the sixth submarine conditional on Israeli measures concerning the Palestinians, leading Ganor to approach Yitzhak Molcho, Netanyahu’s diplomatic emissary, and ask him to intervene. Ganor was not a diplomat but a private intermediary working on a two per cent commission. His reported involvement placed a commercial agent inside an official German-Israeli exchange, potentially leaving records in TKMS’s or its parent group’s compliance files, the Federal Chancellery, or both.

The industrial-cooperation package agreed in January 2022 created a separate documentary trail. Worth more than EUR 850 million, it directed reciprocal procurement and investment towards Israeli companies. Four years later, Elbit Systems, TKMS and the Israeli Ministry of Defence opened a submarine-component facility in Israel as part of TKMS’s offset procurement.

Assigning credit against that commitment would ordinarily have generated proposals, assessments and approvals. Those records could show which companies benefited, who proposed them and whether any were introduced or represented by Ganor, or linked to his business interests. Obtaining them is therefore central to establishing how the German side of the arrangement operated.

The notification

The last notification marked the moment when Berlin accepted that the anti-corruption condition no longer stood in the programme’s way. Germany has never produced it or disclosed when it was received, what evidence supported it or which official accepted it.

German and Israeli flags outside the Reichstag in Berlin. The notification that cleared the submarine programme remains unpublished. (Source: Middle East Monitor)

Germany committed EUR 540 million, resumed payments while the Israeli proceedings remained unfinished and authorised Drakon to leave. The expenditure and the submarine are public, but the decision that permitted both remains concealed.

That secrecy is consequential and goes beyond this procurement, as Germany continues military support for Israel while the conduct of the war in Gaza remains before international courts and the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Public money, licences and military equipment cannot be governed solely by assurances the public is unable to test.

Berlin can resolve the central question by publishing the notification, naming the official who accepted it and disclosing the evidence on which Germany proceeded. Until then, its claim that strict controls protected the programme remains unproven.

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Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire

Since October 7, Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly denied that he was warned about Hamas’s war intentions before the attack. A new Haaretz investigation, now supported by separate Emirati confirmation, points to an explicit warning that reached him but was not passed to Israel’s security chiefs. His denial is no longer a response at the edge of the story; It has now become the story.

According to the Haaretz investigation, the president of the United Arab Emirates called Netanyahu from Abu Dhabi roughly ten days before the October 7 attack. During the reported 45-minute conversation, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan warned him that Yahya Sinwar was preparing a major operation against Israel and that Israel needed to take the threat seriously.

Netanyahu responded that Hamas was more likely to act in the West Bank and assured bin Zayed that Israel was prepared. An Emirati source familiar with the conversation confirmed to The Times of Israel that the call took place and that bin Zayed warned Netanyahu of a major Hamas attack, corroborating the account by Haaretz journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval.

Haaretz reported that Netanyahu did not tell the heads of the Shin Bet or Mossad, or the IDF chief of staff, about the call. Ronen Bar and Herzi Halevi have since said that no warning from bin Zayed was passed to them.

The warning had begun earlier that month with Sinwar himself. He told a Fatah intermediary that he was preparing a zilzal, an earthquake, and instructed him to alert the Israelis. The message reached Bar on September 15, prompting the Shin Bet chief to brief Netanyahu.

A security meeting followed two days later, but ended without a decision. When Bar returned to the issue on October 1, he proposed targeting senior Hamas leaders, including Sinwar. A security source later confirmed to Maariv that Bar warned Netanyahu that Hamas was “preparing something extreme,” repeated the word “earthquake” and recommended a targeted strike against Sinwar.

Netanyahu did not accept the recommendation. He told officials to continue preparing the capability but, for the moment, to calm the situation.

IMAGE: Benjamin Netanyahu with security chiefs Ronen Bar and Herzi Halevi, who say the Emirati warning was not passed to them. (Source: Kobi Gideon, GPO)

The denial that keeps returning

On October 29, 2023, Netanyahu wrote on X that “at no time and no stage was a warning given to Prime Minister Netanyahu regarding war intentions of Hamas.” Israel’s security chiefs, he said, had instead assessed that Hamas was deterred and interested in an arrangement.

IMAGE: Netanyahu’s since-deleted X post claiming that he had received no warning of Hamas’s war intentions. (Source: Screenshot by Antonello Guerrera on X)

The post caused an immediate political uproar. About ten hours later, Netanyahu deleted it. “I was wrong,” he wrote on X, adding that the remarks “should not have been made” and apologising to the security chiefs he had blamed.

IMAGE: Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the country alongside the security chiefs he later blamed for the October 7 failure. (Source: Reuters)

The dispute resurfaced in February 2025, when Channel 12 reported that Bar had urged Netanyahu to authorise Sinwar’s assassination shortly before October 7. The Prime Minister’s Office called the account “a complete lie”. It said Bar had recommended economic concessions for Gaza while Netanyahu had pushed for escalation.

A security source familiar with the October 1 meeting has now challenged that account. According to the source, Bar warned Netanyahu that Hamas was preparing “something extreme” and recommended targeting Sinwar.

Responding to the Haaretz investigation, Netanyahu’s office called it “an absolute lie” and said he neither spoke to bin Zayed during the period in question nor received a warning from him. By denying that the conversation took place, rather than disputing how the warning was understood or assessed, Netanyahu’s office left two accounts that cannot both be true.

Testing the denial

Netanyahu’s office had denied that bin Zayed called to warn Netanyahu of a major Hamas operation before October 7. Hours later, it expanded its account, saying no warning had come from the UAE and that any relevant information would have reached Israel through intelligence channels.

In an English-language post on its official X account, the office said:

The Prime Minister’s Office:

The press reports are false. No warning was given to the Prime Minister from the United Arab Emirates before October 7th. If there was any relevant information , it was passed through intelligence channels between the two countries.

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) September 8, 2026

Netanyahu’s office has since made its denial more specific. Netanyahu sent a warning letter ahead of a proposed libel suit against Haaretz and journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval. In the accompanying statement, he said that the Prime Minister’s Office, National Security Council and Military Secretariat had examined his call records and found no conversation with bin Zayed between the beginning of September 2023 and October 7. The office also said that calls between the two leaders normally took place inside the Prime Minister’s Office using an encrypted telephone brought by an Emirati representative, and that all such conversations were documented. It said that entry records showed no Emirati representative entering the building during that period and that entry without security registration was impossible.

Those claims directly address the mechanism described in the Haaretz investigation, which reported that an Emirati embassy representative would bring a dedicated secure telephone for Netanyahu’s conversations with bin Zayed. The official records claim therefore sharpens rather than settles the dispute. Netanyahu’s office says the documentation contains no trace of the reported call, while Haaretz says the conversation took place through the established communications procedure described in its investigation.

IMAGE: An official UAE announcement documenting an earlier telephone call between Mohamed bin Zayed and Benjamin Netanyahu. (Source: UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

Eldar has directly challenged the records-based denial. “I have the document, I have records, I have everything that shows that the president of the UAE called Netanyahu a week and a half before October 7,” he told CNN. The dispute has therefore narrowed from conflicting recollections to competing claims about documentary records that should, in principle, be capable of verification.

The Prime Minister’s Office approached the UAE seeking a denial, according to an Israeli source cited by CNN. Abu Dhabi declined to issue one. Instead, it said it does not comment on reports or speculation about conversations between government leaders, while noting that Israeli and Emirati agencies maintain direct channels and exchange relevant intelligence when necessary. The response preserved a degree of ambiguity, but notably did not support Netanyahu’s categorical denial. An Emirati source familiar with the conversation subsequently confirmed to The Times of Israel that bin Zayed had warned Netanyahu about a planned Hamas attack.

Statement by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Response to Media Reporting

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs underscores that the UAE Government does not comment on media stories or speculation regarding conversations between government leaders.

The UAE’s engagement since…

— Afra Al Hameli (@AfraMalHameli) September 8, 2026

The warnings converged

Shortly before October 7, Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel warned Netanyahu that Hamas was preparing “something unusual, a terrible operation,” according to Smadar Perry of Yedioth Ahronoth. Netanyahu reportedly replied that Gaza was under control and that the greater concern lay in the West Bank. It was almost the same answer Haaretz later attributed to him when bin Zayed raised the danger from Gaza.

Netanyahu’s office has renewed its denial that Egypt issued such a warning. But in October 2023, after a classified congressional briefing, Michael McCaul, then chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that Egypt had warned Israel three days before the attack that “an event like this could happen.” McCaul said a warning had been given, although it remained unclear “at what level.” His account supports the existence of an Egyptian warning to Israel.

IMAGE: Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel meets Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. Both Perry and Bennett say Kamel warned Netanyahu before October 7. (Source: JNS)

Between March and July 2023, Military Intelligence sent Netanyahu four letters describing how Israel’s enemies viewed the damage caused by its internal divisions. The letters did not identify the plan that became the October 7 attack, but warned that Israel’s political crisis was altering its enemies’ assessment of its strength and deterrence.

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett told 103FM that he knew “for a fact” that Netanyahu had received warnings from bin Zayed and Kamel that Sinwar was preparing a major operation. “I’m telling you that I know this fact is true,” he said. Asked later by Channel 12 whether he could specifically confirm the reported call with bin Zayed, Bennett did not answer directly, but maintained that Netanyahu had received warnings from both Israeli and foreign officials.

Eldar and Yuval say their Haaretz investigation drew on dozens of sources, including senior officials, recordings, internal documents and correspondence, and that they cross-checked the account. Perry’s earlier reporting describes a separate Egyptian warning, while Bennett maintains that warnings came from both bin Zayed and Kamel. An Emirati source familiar with the reported call separately confirmed that bin Zayed warned Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s insistence that the conversation never occurred rests on both Haaretz’s documented account and the independent Emirati confirmation being wrong.

IMAGE: Naftali Bennett meets Mohammed bin Zayed in Abu Dhabi. Bennett says he knows “for a fact” that Netanyahu received warnings from the UAE and Egypt. (Source: Al Jazeera)

The investigation appeared less than two months before Israel’s national election, with Netanyahu’s conduct before October 7 already central to the campaign. His office denounced the report as a malicious fabrication with clear political timing. Opposition leaders cited it as further evidence that he had evaded responsibility for the failures preceding the attack.

Netanyahu has now sent a warning letter ahead of a proposed libel suit against Haaretz and journalists Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval. In his statement, he again blamed Bar and Halevi, accusing them of recognising warning signs in the hours before the attack but failing to alert him. Haaretz responded: “We stand behind the publication.”

The warnings differed in detail and urgency, and none by itself explains the failure of October 7. Mounting concern reached the prime minister’s office through Israeli intelligence, Egypt, the UAE and the Shin Bet. Bar and Halevi say the warning attributed to bin Zayed never reached them.

That leaves the investigation with a narrower, more consequential question, not whether Israel received signs that Hamas was preparing something larger, but why the clearest reported warning stopped before it reached the officials responsible for assessing it and acting on it.

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The watched route

The route that brought Professor Molchanov into Barentsburg had reopened only the previous year. In June 2025, the Russian settlement received its first visa-free passenger voyage from Murmansk in 27 years, restoring a direct connection with mainland Russia. For Barentsburg, the service brought tourists and revenue, but also workers, researchers, cultural visitors and supplies needed to sustain Moscow’s presence on Svalbard.

Professor Molchanov was assigned to the new corridor in 2026. Ten voyages were planned, with the first leaving Murmansk on 8 March, but Norway was watching from the beginning. The Governor had made monitoring the programme a priority, and Norwegian officers checked identities, cargo and customs documents at every call.

IMAGE: Professor Molchanov prepared to reopen the Murmansk–Barentsburg corridor in March 2026, carrying passengers and supplies to Russia’s settlements on Svalbard. (Source: Yaroslav Nikitin/GeoPhoto via GoArctic)

The ship’s mixed role helped sustain the route while exposing it to the claim waiting in Norway. Professor Molchanov belongs to Roshydromet’s Northern Administration, while Russia’s ambassador said the state-owned Trust Arktikugol operated it. Roshydromet’s history records that the vessel had been converted for passenger service and used for polar tourism before returning to research work. State ownership offered protection, but paying passengers and commercial voyages gave Naftogaz a route around it.

Norway also knew when the ship was coming. At about 71 metres, Professor Molchanov fell within Svalbard’s pilotage rules, which required the vessel or its agent to register the voyage and order a pilot through SafeSeaNet Norway, normally 72 hours before arrival. The reporting system then distributed arrival and departure information to Norwegian maritime authorities, police, Customs, the Armed Forces and the port.

The Justice Ministry later said that “the authorities” knew nothing beforehand, without explaining whether the government knew nothing about the arrest application or Norway’s operational agencies knew nothing about the vessel’s approach. The second interpretation cannot be reconciled with the monitoring programme, the checks at every call and the mandatory advance reporting already circulating through the Norwegian system.

Norway has not identified which agencies it consulted before issuing that denial, whether any operational authority communicated with Naftogaz’s lawyers, or how Covington learned enough about the vessel’s movements to track it for months and anticipate its arrival. Professor Molchanov didn’t arrive unexpectedly. Norway had been watching the route; its agencies knew the ship was approaching, and Naftogaz’s international counsel, Covington, said its lawyers had tracked the vessel for months.

The ship was being watched, its arrival known in advance, but knowing where it would be was not enough. To turn that foreknowledge into the arrest of a Russian state vessel, Naftogaz needed lawyers who knew exactly where and how Norway’s legal defences might give way.

The lawyers who knew the terrain

Covington & Burling was directing Naftogaz’s global enforcement campaign, coordinating the pursuit of Russian assets across national jurisdictions. In Norway, it worked with Wikborg Rein, whose knowledge of Naftogaz’s claims and the Norwegian legal system gave the campaign a local route into Svalbard.

When Professor Molchanov entered Norwegian waters, Covington and Wikborg Rein were already familiar with the hunt for Russian assets. Wikborg Rein, one of Norway’s largest commercial law firms, had joined it years earlier.

In 2018, Norwegian legal press reported that Wikborg Rein was helping Naftogaz seize Gazprom assets in Switzerland, the Netherlands and England after a USD 2.56 billion arbitration victory, having represented the Ukrainian company throughout the underlying disputes

In 2018, Norwegian legal press reported that Wikborg Rein was helping Naftogaz seize Gazprom assets in Switzerland, the Netherlands and England after a USD 2.56 billion arbitration victory, having represented the Ukrainian company throughout the underlying disputes. Covington had secured the Crimea award now being enforced and was coordinating Naftogaz’s pursuit of Russian state assets across roughly ten jurisdictions, with Wikborg Rein providing the route into Norway’s courts.

Five years later, Wikborg Rein brought part of Naftogaz’s arbitration operation into the firm. Olga Ivaniv, appointed legal director in its London office in 2023, had spent the previous six years as Naftogaz’s deputy head of legal for arbitration. The firm’s biography says she managed high-profile Naftogaz proceedings, including Crimea-related investment claims against Russia exceeding USD 10 billion, and belonged to the core team handling its disputes with Gazprom.

IMAGE: Olga Ivaniv joined Wikborg Rein after serving as Naftogaz’s deputy head of legal for arbitration and international matters. (Source: Wikborg Rein)

Wikborg Rein was no last-minute local hire brought in to file papers in Tromsø. A former member of Naftogaz’s arbitration leadership gave it direct knowledge of the Crimea claims that Covington was enforcing across multiple jurisdictions. It also knew the terrain from behind Norway’s lines

Norway’s Foreign Ministry had retained Wikborg Rein under successive framework agreements since 2014. In 2021, it assigned the firm’s Oslo and London offices to analyse money flows, beneficial ownership and damages in Peteris Pildegovics and SIA North Star v. Kingdom of Norway, a dispute connected to Svalbard.

Acting for Norway’s Foreign Ministry, Wikborg Rein moved from analysing money flows and ownership structures to finding investigators who could pursue them across borders. It sought proposals from four international firms: Kroll, Control Risks, Nardello & Co. and Mintz Group. Kroll was instructed and produced a report in September 2021, which has not been made public.

By August 2026, Wikborg Rein knew Naftogaz’s pursuit of Russian assets from the inside. It had also worked for Norway in a Svalbard-related claim, analysing ownership and money flows before helping to bring in investigators. The firm has not identified who handled Naftogaz’s Norwegian recognition proceedings, tracked Professor Molchanov, prepared the arrest application or pursued the forced sale. The names remain undisclosed, but the risks created by Wikborg Rein’s overlapping roles and potential conflicts of interest were already being argued before an international tribunal.

In 2023, the tribunal said it was “disturbed” that Wikborg Rein’s role for Norway had emerged only after the merits hearing and that the precise scope of its work remained unclear. It nevertheless declined to exclude the firm, finding that the claimants had not established a real risk to the integrity of the proceedings.

When the dispute moved into annulment, a new committee took a more guarded approach. Without deciding whether a conflict existed, and after Norway said Wikborg Rein had not yet participated, it barred the firm from becoming involved while the issue remained unresolved. Norway maintained that the external firms it instructed were responsible for conducting their own conflict checks.

Wikborg Rein has not published its conflict review for the Naftogaz mandate, explained how its work for the Ukrainian company was separated from its work for Norway, or said whether the Foreign Ministry was notified. Covington has not identified who selected Professor Molchanov as a target or explained how its lawyers tracked the vessel for months before seeking its arrest. The firms nevertheless arrived at Barentsburg with the vessel’s movements mapped and Norway’s legal terrain already known.

That knowledge placed Professor Molchanov within reach, but it did not make a Russian state vessel seizable. Covington and Wikborg Rein still needed a route through the legal protections surrounding state property, and they found one.

The legal map

Months before Professor Molchanov entered Barentsburg, another creditor had tested how far Norwegian courts could reach into Russia’s property on Svalbard. Yukos Capital went before the Nord-Troms and Senja District Court seeking security for an award exceeding USD 5 billion. Its targets were Russian-linked land and buildings in Barentsburg, Pyramiden, Grumantbyen and Bohemanflya.

IMAGE: Yukos Capital pursued Russia’s property across jurisdictions before testing whether its multibillion-dollar arbitral award could reach Russian assets on Svalbard. (Source: OffshoreAlert)

Norwegian enforcement law extended to Svalbard, with the Nord-Troms and Senja District Court in Tromsø responsible for enforcing foreign arbitral awards. Trust Arktikugol’s name on the register did not end the inquiry into ownership; the court could look beyond it and ask whether Russia was the real owner. Russian property had come within sight, but not necessarily within reach.

In its May 2026 ruling, the court shielded Barentsburg, Pyramiden and Grumantbyen as Russian cultural property. Bohemanflya fell on the other side of the line, allowing Yukos to attach it as security for its claim. Yukos was nevertheless ordered to pay Russia and Trust Arktikugol a combined NOK 11.28 million in legal costs.

The judgment opened a path into Russian state property but protected assets serving a public purpose. Three months later, Naftogaz presented Professor Molchanov as movable state property whose commercial use could place it beyond the protection given to the settlements. The vessel was carrying paying passengers and generating revenue, providing the basis for an argument that Russia could not place it beyond reach through state immunity.

Behind the application was a USD 4.22 billion award arising from Russia’s seizure of Naftogaz’s oil and gas assets in Crimea. Russia had refused to participate in the arbitration and continued to challenge the result, but those proceedings did not prevent Naftogaz from pursuing Russian property elsewhere.

Norway’s recognition of the award opened the door to enforcement, yet it did not place every Russian asset within reach. State immunity still protected property serving a public purpose, leaving Covington and Wikborg Rein to find something Russia owned but used commercially. After months of tracking, Professor Molchanov emerged as a viable target for enforcement.

By carrying paying passengers into Barentsburg, Professor Molchanov had become the asset Naftogaz needed. A dispute born from Russia’s seizure of property in Crimea had now delivered a Russian state vessel into a Norwegian court on Svalbard, where legal enforcement was unfolding amid a wider contest for control of the Arctic. The ship had entered the case as property, but it had sailed into a far larger confrontation. Across the waters it travelled, NATO was expanding the military network built to watch, track and contain Russia in the High North. Naftogaz’s award furnished the legal claim, while Covington’s enforcement campaign turned it into the arrest of Russian state property on Svalbard. The seizure exposed a much larger contest already under way as NATO extended its reach, hardened its northern frontier and sought to shape the balance of power across the Arctic.

NATO’s Arctic arsenal

It was never much of a secret that Britain is seeking a leading military role in the European Arctic. Its Type 26 partnership binds Norwegian naval development to British ships, shared technical standards and joint anti-submarine training across the northern approaches used by Russian submarines moving towards the Atlantic. In February 2026, London announced that it would double the number of British troops training in Norway from 1,000 to 2,000 over three years.

VIDEO: A look inside Camp Viking, the UK Commandos’ Arctic operations base in northern Norway. (Source: Forces News)

At the same time, Norway was tightening control inside Svalbard. Is own 2024 white paper titled Svalbard – the path ahead, promised stronger national control and more consistent enforcement of sovereignty. Two months later, the government invoked section 2-5 of Norway’s Security Act to require state consent before negotiations or any sale of the privately held Søre Fagerfjord property could proceed. The Oslo law firm Thommessen called the intervention unprecedented, while Norwegian legal experts argued that it conflicted with the Treaty’s equal-treatment provision.

By March 2026, the Governor of Svalbard was giving high priority to Russian voyages, working with Customs on passenger checks and inspections of unloaded goods. The measures already moving through Svalbard followed the same combination of administrative scrutiny and strategic pressure that DeVore and Harkness advocated. In May, the Nord-Troms and Senja District Court ruled in the Yukos case that four Russian properties on Svalbard were protected by state immunity as cultural-heritage assets not intended for sale. On 31 August, the same court approved Naftogaz’s secret application to arrest Professor Molchanov.

British and Norwegian military integration was expanding around the archipelago, Norwegian authorities were asserting tighter control within it, and civil enforcement supplied the legal and economic pressure that Western strategists had urged.

Covington and Wikborg Rein secured the arrest of a Russian state vessel serving Barentsburg as security for Naftogaz’s USD 4.22 billion award. Russia received no warning before the application, which Norwegian reporting said had been planned under strict secrecy. Customs had already joined the monitoring of Russian voyages when the court issued its order on 31 August. The Governor enforced it two days later, preventing the vessel from leaving Barentsburg without any minister having to publicly order its detention.

The day before the court approved Naftogaz’s application, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that NATO’s military activity in the Far North posed a direct threat to Russia and raised the risk of an armed confrontation with potentially disastrous consequences. The warning preceded the arrest, but it defined the strategic setting in which Moscow would receive it.

Russia treated the seizure as part of something larger. On 3 September, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Norway’s ambassador and protested both the arrest and Norway’s “recently intensified actions” on Svalbard. Independent reporting confirmed that the protest extended beyond the vessel to what Moscow characterised as broader Norwegian pressure across the archipelago. Moscow placed the ship, the land restrictions and the tightening of Norwegian control inside one pattern that Western reporting had largely kept apart.

That pattern now surrounds the archipelago. Britain and Norway are expanding military integration along the routes used by Russia’s Northern Fleet. Norwegian authorities are monitoring Russian voyages, restricting unwanted land ownership and asserting wider regulatory control. Norwegian courts are stopping Russian state property at the request of a Ukrainian company pursuing assets to enforce a war-related award.

Responsibility disappears into the distance between those who set the machinery in motion and those who carry out its final act. Covington tracked the vessel and brought the claim, the court gave it legal force, maritime agencies knew when the ship would arrive, and the Governor prevented it from leaving. No minister had to order the detention, and no institution had to claim the strategy behind it. The confrontation with Russia had entered the civilian machinery that once helped keep Svalbard apart from it.

Moscow is unlikely to preserve distinctions that Norway’s own system has made increasingly difficult to see. The arrest occurred beside the Kola Peninsula, home to the Northern Fleet and the nuclear submarines that underpin Russia’s ability to retaliate after an attack. A 2026 assessment described the peninsula as home to Russia’s Northern Fleet headquarters, nuclear arsenal and second-strike capabilities. In those waters, a privately directed asset hunt, a shipping restriction and an administrative intervention no longer arrive as isolated acts. They form part of the same pressure moving north through law, regulation and military power.

IMAGE: A submarine in Norway during Arctic Dolphin 26, part of NATO’s expanding anti-submarine warfare activity in the High North. (Source: NATO Allied Command Operations)

Norway and Britain say they are making the High North safer. Their policy is producing the opposite condition. It is collapsing the distance between NATO’s military contest with Russia and the civilian order that restrained it inside Svalbard.

The Treaty kept Arctic rivalry from consuming every institution on the islands, but the arrest shows how far that restraint has already been eroded. A court order reached a ship serving a Russian settlement in waters shadowed by nuclear submarines, while each Norwegian institution confined its responsibility to one part of the result. Together, they stopped a Russian state vessel without any minister having to claim the decision or answer for its strategic consequences.

The next confrontation may also begin with a warrant, an inspection or an administrative decision, but this time its consequences may not remain inside the courtroom. 

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21st Century Wire

On 1 September 2026, the INS Drakon left the TKMS shipyard in Kiel under police escort and entered the canal on its way to Haifa. The submarine had reportedly been transferred to the Israeli navy behind closed doors on 22 July. German taxpayers contributed €135 million towards the vessel, even as the wider naval procurement programme remained at the centre of an unfinished Israeli criminal trial and a state inquiry into decisions that investigators say bypassed the country’s security establishment.

VIDEO: The Israeli submarine INS Drakon passes through the Kiel Canal under heavy police protection on 1 September 2026, beginning its journey from Germany to Haifa, Israel.

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By 2017, the allegations had become serious enough for Berlin to postpone a separate agreement to finance three more submarines. The delay lasted only until October, when Germany committed another €540 million, but this time attached an unpublished condition requiring the corruption investigations to end and the resulting suspicions to be cleared before the vessels could be delivered. A later Bundestag answer confirmed that the memorandum addressed the allegations without revealing how Berlin eventually decided that its condition had been met.

The Israeli attorney general was expected to confirm that the investigations had ended, while Berlin kept the power to decide whether the corruption suspicions had been cleared and to stop delivery if new evidence emerged. The decision was to be recorded through an exchange of notes between the two governments. Neither the exchange nor Germany’s assessment has been published. Although the agreement did not cover the Drakon, which had been ordered years earlier, Berlin had made the corruption case a condition of its next €540 million commitment. It later allowed the programme to continue while the Israeli proceedings remained unfinished, without revealing who cleared the condition or what evidence justified it.

At the centre of the case stood an intermediary whose appointment ThyssenKrupp says it can no longer explain.

IMAGE: Armed Israeli security personnel escort the INS Drakon during its passage through the Kiel Canal in Germany. (Source: Israël, My Beloved via Facebook)

The Man in the Middle

Michael Ganor had represented ThyssenKrupp in Israel since 2009 and received €10.4 million in commissions from the naval contracts. Israeli prosecutors allege that he channelled part of that money to officials who could help steer purchases towards the German shipbuilder.

But Ganor’s potential earnings did not stop when ThyssenKrupp secured a contract. Internal company documents reported by Globes put his commission at 2% and show that he could also earn from procurement used to meet ThyssenKrupp’s offset obligations in Israel. He was therefore positioned to benefit when Israel bought the vessels and again when work generated by those purchases flowed back to Israeli companies. The offset contracts and their beneficiaries remain undisclosed, concealing how far Ganor’s influence and financial interests may have extended through the deal.

IMAGE: Michael (Mickey) Ganor. (Source: Reuven Castro, Walla | Project logo: OCCRP)

The representative Ganor replaced later described the appointment under oath. During a visit to Israel, he said, a senior ThyssenKrupp executive was warned that no further orders would be placed unless Ganor got the job. The outgoing representative waited in the executive’s hotel room while the conversation took place. Less than ten minutes later, the executive returned and told him that Ganor would be appointed.

ThyssenKrupp says Ganor passed its compliance procedures and that an external law firm reviewed his contract. Yet the company can no longer reconstruct how an ultimatum delivered in Israel became an appointment approved in Germany. Its internal inquiry did not interview Ganor and was described by the company’s own spokesman as limited. According to ThyssenKrupp, Israeli investigators declined its offer of documents and interviews, while its Israeli lawyers warned that questioning Ganor during the criminal investigation might be treated as obstruction of justice. The inquiry ended without speaking to the man at the centre of the allegations. Its report was sent to the German government and remains confidential.

Israel continued to follow the money. The trail led to Avriel Bar-Yosef, the former deputy head of the National Security Council, which advises the prime minister from inside the Prime Minister’s Office. Prosecutors accuse him of accepting money from Ganor in return for advancing his interests. He was charged with bribery and breach of trust.

IMAGE: Composite image of Benjamin Netanyahu and David Shimron, his personal lawyer and relative, who also represented Michael Ganor.(Source: Palestine Chronicle)

From Ganor, the investigation that became known as Case 3000 moved closer to Netanyahu. David Shimron, the prime minister’s personal lawyer and relative, had represented Ganor. During a separate tender for naval vessels, Shimron contacted the Israeli Defence Ministry and questioned why the tender had been issued, allegedly seeking to have the contract awarded directly to ThyssenKrupp. The tender was later cancelled, and the contract went to the German company after Berlin agreed to subsidise part of the purchase.

Israeli police recommended charges against Shimron, but prosecutors ultimately closed the case against him. Netanyahu was questioned as a witness rather than a suspect and was never charged. His office has said the allegations were thoroughly investigated and found to be baseless.

An archive of 50 sworn statements submitted to Israel’s High Court revealed a broader breakdown in the way the vessels had been chosen. Former defence ministers, military commanders, intelligence chiefs and senior security officials described strategic acquisitions advanced without normal planning, officials bypassed and decisions concealed from the institutions responsible for determining Israel’s military needs.

Former Defence Ministry director-general Dan Harel described the pressure reaching his own office. He said he was urged to cancel an international tender and structure the acquisition in Germany, or in a way that favoured ThyssenKrupp. Harel refused to act without a written instruction bearing Netanyahu’s signature. None came. He also recalled Netanyahu demanding another submarine despite professional opposition, leaving him with the impression that an interest he could not identify was driving the expansion of the relationship with the German shipbuilder. Harel’s sworn evidence formed part of the High Court filing, and its central allegations were later reported.

The Israeli investigation, which became known as Case 3000, followed the commissions paid to Ganor and the money he allegedly passed to Israeli officials, while the sworn statements revealed the procurement system pushed aside to make those purchases possible. Yet the investigation stopped short of the other end of the transaction: Germany, where ThyssenKrupp had installed Ganor at the centre of its Israeli business, authorised the commissions he received and secured contracts underwritten by German taxpayers.

Ultimately, the investigation had followed the money into Israel, while the unanswered questions led back to what ThyssenKrupp and the German government knew before the payments were made.

What Germany Did Not Establish

By the summer of 2017, the arrests and allegations in Israel had become serious enough for Germany to put the agreement for three future submarines on hold. But the pause did not lead to a criminal investigation. As the Israeli inquiry widened and ThyssenKrupp’s limited internal findings reached the German government, prosecutors continued only to monitor the affair.

Nearly two years passed before prosecutors in Bochum opened a formal investigation in March 2019. The publicly identified trigger was not a referral from another German authority or company records supplied by a whistleblower, but allegations reported in the international press.

IMAGE: The Bochum Justice Centre, where German prosecutors opened an investigation into the naval contracts in March 2019. (Source: Boga)

The Bochum investigators examined whether anyone in Germany had committed bribery or related offences in connection with the naval contracts. They closed the file at the end of 2020 and announced the decision the following January, saying they had found no sufficient suspicion of criminal conduct by any identifiable person in Germany.

The inquiry ended without a public account of how Ganor obtained his position, who approved his commission arrangements, what ThyssenKrupp knew about his alleged payments to Israeli officials, or whether warning signs had surfaced inside the company. Nor did the Israeli indictment or the creation of a state commission of inquiry bring German investigators back to the case, according to NDR’s later investigation. The file remained closed, the questions remained unanswered, and German taxpayers continued to subsidise contracts whose path through Israel had become the subject of one of the country’s largest corruption investigations.

Two Investigations, No Resolution

Four months after Bochum closed its investigation, Israeli prosecutors indicted Ganor, Bar-Yosef and several other defendants. Allegations of bribery, money laundering, fraud and breach of trust surrounding the naval contracts would now be tested in an Israeli courtroom while the German file remained shut. The defendants deny wrongdoing and are presumed innocent.

The trial could determine whether individuals had committed crimes, but not why Israel bought the vessels, how military and government procedures had been pushed aside, or who was responsible for those decisions. In 2022, the government created a state commission led by former Supreme Court president Asher Grunis to pursue the questions the criminal case could not answer.

IMAGE: Asher Grunis, the former Israeli Supreme Court president appointed to lead the state commission examining the submarine affair. (Source: Alex Kolomoisky/Flash90 via Times of Israel)

The commission examined how Netanyahu’s government, the military and the security establishment decided to buy submarines and warships between 2009 and 2016. Its mandate excluded alleged crimes already before the courts, leaving it to investigate how the purchases were advanced rather than whether the Case 3000 defendants had committed criminal offences.

In its January 2026 report, the commission found that the normal safeguards around acquisitions worth billions had repeatedly failed. Professional bodies were bypassed, contacts and understandings with foreign parties went undocumented, and purchases proceeded without a coherent assessment of Israel’s wider security needs. The resulting systemic failures endangered national security and damaged Israel’s foreign relations and economic interests.

The same absence of scrutiny shaped Israel’s response to Germany’s sale of submarines and warships to Egypt. The commission described the handling of weapons sales by allies to third countries as chaotic and found that it had endangered national security. Evidence before the inquiry alleged that Netanyahu approved the German sale without consulting or notifying the Defence Ministry. He denies approving it, and the commission has yet to reach a final finding on his role.

The commission had already sent warning letters to Netanyahu and four former security officials in June 2024. Its provisional findings said Netanyahu had bypassed his government in reaching understandings with Germany and advanced purchases without orderly staff work. High Court proceedings had delayed access to evidence and temporarily frozen the commission’s work. The commission is now due to begin closed hearings in November, when those warned can challenge the evidence before its final report. The public now knows that decisions made beyond the usual safeguards put national security at risk, but the evidence that may reveal who authorised them, and why, will be heard behind closed doors.

Approved Behind Closed Doors

While Israel’s commission was reconstructing how safeguards had been bypassed, Germany was moving towards another approval. According to NDR’s reconstruction, the Federal Security Council authorised the Drakon for export in December 2023, while the commission was still gathering evidence. The operative export authorisation reportedly followed in May 2026, after the commission had found systemic failures in the procurement process that endangered national security.

IMAGE: The Federal Chancellery in Berlin, where the Federal Security Council meets behind closed doors to decide sensitive arms exports. (Source: The Official Website of Berlin)

Those findings did not stop the export, and Germany’s approval process leaves no public record showing what weight, if any, ministers gave them. The Federal Security Council brings together the chancellor and senior ministers, but its deliberations are secret. Berlin has disclosed neither whether the Israeli evidence was considered nor how another submarine was approved while responsibility for the earlier decisions remained unresolved. Secrecy did more than conceal the discussion; in this case, it prevented the public from testing whether the government had confronted the risks at all.

In 2020, more than a year after Bochum prosecutors opened their case, the federal government told the Bundestag that it knew of no investigations connected to the sixth submarine. It neither identified the Bochum inquiry nor explained why an investigation into the wider naval-contract affair did not count. By the time the Drakon was approved, Germany had been confronted with arrests, indictments and findings that the procurement process had endangered Israeli security, yet the public was still given no account of how any of this bore on the export.

Germany did not have to wait for Israel to assign personal guilt before deciding whether the failures already established demanded greater scrutiny. Instead, it approved the submarine without providing the information needed to judge that decision, while committing public funds to the result. What remained hidden in the approval process became tangible in the federal budget, where taxpayers continued to underwrite the contracts without knowing how the risks surrounding them had been assessed.

The Public Money Continued

By the time Germany authorised the Drakon, its taxpayers had supported Israel’s submarine fleet for more than three decades. The policy began during the Gulf War, after German companies helped Saddam Hussein’s Iraq develop missile and chemical-weapons capabilities that threatened Israel. Helmut Kohl’s government responded by financing two Dolphin-class submarines in full and half the cost of a third. Together, the first three boats cost Germany about 1.1 billion Deutschmarks, roughly €560 million.

What began as a response to that crisis outlasted it. Berlin later paid slightly more than one third of the fourth and fifth submarines, committed up to €135 million towards the Drakon and financed roughly one quarter of Israel’s four warships. An exceptional act of historical responsibility had become a standing channel through which German public money supported Israeli naval power. Once corruption allegations surrounded the contracts, that history could explain the spending, but it could not excuse the failure to account for it.

Angela Merkel’s government continued the policy even as the strategic implications became harder to ignore. In 2012, Spiegel reported that Israel was equipping the German-built submarines with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. Former senior German defence officials said they had always assumed the vessels would carry nuclear weapons. Merkel’s government maintained that Germany delivered the submarines unarmed and declined to address their subsequent armament. Berlin was therefore subsidising vessels that former officials understood could serve as platforms for Israel’s nuclear deterrent.

IMAGE: German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem in early 2011. SPIEGEL has learned that Israel is equipping German-made submarines with nuclear-tipped missiles. (Source: Moshe Milner/ dpa via Der Spiegel)

The Drakon was initially priced at about €450 million, including Germany’s €135 million contribution, although later published estimates placed its value between €500 million and €700 million. The federal government has confirmed that appropriations for the procurement of Israeli defence systems do not have to be repaid. Germany’s contribution was not a loan, but a permanent transfer from the federal budget.

Yet Berlin could not tell Parliament where all the publicly supported work had gone. When Bundestag members asked in 2025 which Israeli companies had participated as subcontractors on German-built submarines and what share of the contracts they had received, the government replied that it did not know. It could account for the subsidy, but not identify every company that benefited from it or how much value each had received.

Despite that gap, the next agreement expanded the industrial relationship. Israel’s €3 billion order for three Dakar-class submarines included more than €850 million in reciprocal procurement and industrial cooperation with Israeli companies, including defence businesses. Germany committed a further €540 million, carrying its support from the contracts under investigation into a larger generation of purchases involving Israeli companies, even though the government had said it did not know which Israeli subcontractors had worked on the earlier publicly financed submarines or what share of their value they had received.

Berlin had promised that the next agreement would not proceed until the corruption investigations had ended and the resulting suspicions had been cleared. The condition remains unpublished, the Israeli criminal proceedings continue, and Germany has not disclosed the assessment that allowed the programme to proceed. Yet the Drakon departed, three more submarines were ordered and German taxpayers were committed to another €540 million.

By treating an unpublished anti-corruption condition as satisfied, German officials allowed the submarine programme to expand beyond the corruption affair, converting a decision the public could not examine into billions of euros in contracts and hundreds of millions in public support. Germany has yet to say who made that decision, what evidence they examined or how they concluded that Berlin’s promise had been kept.

Part II of The Drakon Files, “The Clearance Berlin Cannot Explain”, will trace that unpublished condition through the ministries and approval bodies responsible for the contracts. It will examine the commission and offset arrangements attached to the programme, and determine whether Germany’s promised safeguard was formally satisfied or disappeared inside the secrecy surrounding the deal.

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