Angelo Amante and Alvise Armellini – Reuters April 14, 2026
- Rome has criticised Israel’s attacks on Lebanon
- Tension with Israel rose after shots near Italian troops
- Israel says Rome’s move will have no practical effect
- Meloni distances herself from both Israel and Trump
ROME, April 14 (Reuters) – Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Tuesday her government had suspended a defence cooperation deal with Israel, reflecting frayed ties between previously close allies as the conflicts in the Middle East continue.
Meloni’s right-wing government has been one of Israel’s closest friends in Europe, but in recent weeks it has criticised its attacks on Lebanon, which have killed hundreds and injured thousands
Israel also fired warning shots last week at Italian troops serving in Lebanon under a U.N. mandate, causing damage to a vehicle.
“When there are things we don’t agree with, we act accordingly,” Meloni told reporters on the sidelines of a wine fair in Verona, northern Italy.
“In light of the current situation, the government has decided to suspend the automatic renewal of the defence agreement with Israel,” she added.
Meloni’s announcement marked another diplomatic realignment for her right-wing government, coming a day after she criticised another close ally, U.S. President Donald Trump, for his attacks on Pope Leo.
A source close to the matter, who requested anonymity, said Meloni took the decision on Monday with her foreign and defence ministers, Antonio Tajani and Guido Crosetto, as well as Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini.
Israel’s foreign ministry played down the consequences.
“We have no security agreement with Italy. We have a memorandum of understanding from many years ago that has never contained any substantive content. This will not affect Israel’s security,” it said in a statement.
MELONI CHANGES TACK
Meloni has been in power since 2022 and will face a general election by late 2027.
“It’s a repositioning,” Lorenzo Castellani, political historian at Rome’s Luiss University, told Reuters.
“She’s afraid that a sizeable portion of the electorate, even among the centre-right, will become highly critical of Trump and Netanyahu and of the effects of this war on Iran on the economy,” he added.
Italy’s opposition parties had long called for a stop to the deal with Israel.
Signed in 2003 by the government of then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the memorandum entered into force in 2006 and was subject to automatic renewals every five years unless one of the parties withdraws.
It spans fields including procurement, training and the “import, export and transit of defence and military equipment”.
As diplomatic tensions have risen, Rome last week summoned the Israeli ambassador to protest over the incident involving Italian troops in Lebanon. Then on Monday, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned the Italian ambassador “to discuss the situation in Lebanon”.
If true, there may soon be a ‘regime change’ operation underway in Italy.
Politics change. Once-powerful people can find themselves accused of and sometimes charged with offences for which just a few years ago they seemed beyond reach. Although older men like Trump, Netanyahu, Bush and Blair won’t be alive in 30 to 40 years Georgia Meloni might well be. And just as Germans have been prosecuted decades after WWII, she might be worried about accusations of war crimes arms sales coming from rising eastern powers decades after western wars have ended.
Carpet bomb Mordor. Then nuke it. Then fire bomb it. Then thoroughly fumigate the satanic shit-hole. Then every chabadnik, talmudist, kabbalist, and criminally insane christian zionist everywhere should be chased through the streets and liquidated.
Not to worry…
the current ‘THICK Brit Regime’ will more than make up for any short-fall in Izzy’s OFFENSIVE capabilities..🤓
I take it that she was not invited to the Bilderberg meeting in DC the other day, which says a lot about the direction the global control freaks will take, regarding the expansion of Zio Israel and rubbing out Iran.
@MM…
In forty years Melons Meloni would be pushing 90, what you might term a mature lady…it’s unlikely she’ll be facing any time in prison then though..because being a dyed in the wool EU apparatchik she’ll be snuggling up to the soros faction of international jewery… or rather the multiculti liberal wing, which incidentally is why the NKVD wannabe imbecile prime on pirate rock is lol taking us back in..(they love their naval references and gazing… the old buckets of sea men)…
This is the reason old drumpfs a Grump…his band of Zio jewes in true dialectic fashion are having a struggle with the old commie jewes in yourope..who are hanging on and a bit more cautious..
either way you get jewes..the liberal left pan sexual ethnic jewe or the hard right zio populist jewe.who all of course stand with IS RA EL..they just have divergent interests..
which is compound and YOU pay.. from the one you live in…. to the big jew who runs the game..
Italians in Italy are disgusted with the warmongering, genocidal state of Israel. And then there is Trump, who the Israelis would be proud of for criticizing the Pope. Pope Leo is going to continue criticizing Trump and Netanyahu. Italian PM has picked the side of the Pope and the Italian people.
Good on her for that!
Looks like Prez Trump need to do a double whopper regime change in Italy and the Vati-can. NO ONE can criticise Trump in Trump world! No ONE! So lets start off with sending an aircraft carrier to the Vatican to swap Leo for “Trumps favourite brother” and ground troupes to invade Sicily to make a deal with all fractured Mafiosi to set Italy and the Trump world free again.