The United States announced on Sunday it will deploy an advanced missile defence system to Israel, along with around 100 soldiers to operate it.
If implemented, the initiative would diverge from the earlier U.S. condemnation of—and lukewarm sympathy with—Israel since the October 7th massacre last year. For now, the U.S. government appears to have paused its repeated calls for ceasefire. If heeded by Israel, any ceasefire simply would have provided first Hamas and now Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy terror group in Lebanon, time to regroup and rearm.
Hours later, Hezbollah underscored the threat faced by Israel by killing four Israeli soldiers and injuring at least seven more in a drone attack on an Israel Defence Forces (IDF) base near the northern Israeli town of Binyamina.
President Joe Biden approved the sending of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system—known as THAAD—to Israel, as well as troops to operate it, allowing the IDF to fend off potential incoming ballistic missile attacks from Iran.
Iran responded by threatening the U.S., saying the lives of these American troops were “at risk” in Israel, and that “we have no red lines in defending our people and interests.”
The move is the first major U.S. deployment of troops to Israel since October 7th, remembered—for better or for worse—across the world on its first anniversary last week.
Biden and his team have spent the whole of this year telling Israel to “cease fire.” According to writer Douglas Murray, this is a command which the U.S. would itself ignore
if 44,000 Americans had been slaughtered in the most barbaric fashion in a single day and 10,000 further Americans taken hostage (which it would be by proportion of population).
Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder said the deployment “underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defence of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel.” The Washington Post, meanwhile, made note of the fact the U.S. election is just three weeks away, and that “U.S. involvement in the conflict has been a polarising issue on the campaign trail.” In addition, officials believe that Israel’s assault on Iran, after it fired a barrage of missiles at Israeli civilians, will—as one Middle East expert put it—be “so comprehensive that the Iranians will have to respond.”
Support for Israel across much of Europe remains cooler. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said over the weekend that countries should stop selling arms to Israel “in the light of everything that is happening in the Middle East,” while one high-profile Labour backbencher in Britain described America’s support for Israel as a “disgrace.”
