Here’s how America can actually support Israel’s Iron Dome
If Biden is serious about his commitment to support Israel, his administration should make getting the Raytheon-Rafael Iron Dome production facility.
In their most recent telephone conversation, President Joe Biden reportedly reassured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the US would ensure stocks of the Iron Dome’s Tamir interceptors are replenished after the missile defense system successfully countered the vast majority of the rockets fired at Israel by Hamas in the recent fighting.
But ensuring the ongoing capability of Iron Dome against Hamas can and should go well beyond purchasing additional interceptors, and the events of this month can be the catalyst to fully integrate US and Israeli missile defense.
The US Army originally planned to purchase two Iron Dome batteries in 2020, then cut the order to one because of challenges incorporating the proprietary Israeli system into existing US missile defense architecture.
But these challenges can be overcome with the establishment of the joint Raytheon-Rafael Area Protection Systems Iron Dome production facility in the United States that was announced last August. If Biden is serious about his commitment to support Iron Dome, his administration should make getting this facility operational, supported with robust contracts from the US military, a top priority.
On a visit to an Iron Dome battery outside of Ashkelon in southern Israel in early July 2014, the IDF soldiers manning it peppered the US military in our delegation with questions about combating boredom. Their job at the time was to be on a hair-trigger alert for incoming rockets that never seemed to come. They clearly felt that being stationed in that Iron Dome battery had to be the worst assignment in the IDF.
In a matter of days, these same bored IDF soldiers would be on the front lines of one of the hottest places on the planet. During our trip, the bodies of three Israeli teenagers who had been abducted by Hamas from a bus stop in Hebron the previous month, Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah, were recovered, sparking a furious response from the IDF – which in turn sparked a shower of missiles into Israel from Gaza.
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Coates previously served as the Deputy National Security Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa on the National Security Council staff and the Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Energy in the Donald J. Trump administration. She also served as the National Security Advisor in the office of Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and as Director of Research for (former) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s 2011 memoir, Known and Unknown.
Coates holds a B.A. from Trinity College, a M.A. from Williams College, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, all in art history. Coates is the author and presenter of dozens of publications and conference papers worldwide on the intersections of art and history, including David’s Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art (Encounter Books, 2016) and the forthcoming Seeing the Light: A History of Christianity in Twelve Works of Art (under contract with Encounter Books), which are part of a projected trilogy on the key tenets of Western Civilization: democracy, the Judeo-Christian moral code, and the primacy of the individual.
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