Last Friday a Washington Post front-pager details close military & security cooperation between US & Israeli officials:
Military relations were very close during the Bush administration, but "in many ways the cooperation has been extended and perhaps enhanced in different areas" during the Obama administration, a senior Israeli official acknowledged.
Elliott Abrams, a former senior Bush administration official and a frequent critic of the Obama administration's policy toward Israel, gives the White House high marks for its handling of the security relationship, saying it is "very smart" to insulate it from the diplomatic turmoil.
"It is the sounds of silence," he said. "I do not hear from Israeli officials and officers any griping, and that is in a context when there has been a lot of griping in the past year about everything else."
Missile defense has been a central focus of cooperation:
This week, Israel successfully conducted a test of a new mobile missile-defense system designed to shield Israeli towns from small rockets launched from the Gaza Strip. When the "Iron Dome" system is fully deployed in the next year, about half the cost -- $205 million -- will be borne by U.S. taxpayers under a plan advanced by the Obama administration and broadly supported in Congress. Besides Iron Dome, the United States provides about $200 million a year to two other Israeli missile-defense systems, known as Arrow and David Sling. The costs are shared 50-50, with the understanding that the United States will benefit from the Israeli experience.
"We have been working really closely with the Israelis on every tier of their missile-defense architecture, all the way from [the Hamas] Kassam [rocket] at the lowest level to the [Iranian] Shahab [ballistic missile] at the highest level," said a senior U.S. defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the breadth of cooperation.
All to the good. Israel gets $3B annual defense aid from the US, and unlike most recipients can spend some US aid money--26 percent--on its own programs, rather than simply buying US equipment. The WP notes that US officials hope this cooperation means Israel will not launch a surprise strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Bottom Line. It is odd that Team Obama can pursue its own version of a two-track relationship with Israel: close military cooperation & support, coupled with appalling diplomatic arm-twisting and purposeful escalation of differences into high public visibility.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, 9/11, National Security, Terrorism, Homeland Security, Nuclear Proliferation, Arms Control, WMD, Foreign Policy, Conservative Politics
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