Israel - Iron Dome for the West

As the sun set on October 7, 12 hours after Hamas had launched its attack from Gaza and even before they had grasped the full magnitude of what had just happened, Israeli officials were wondering how long they would have to retaliate.

That there would now be a war in Gaza, and that the Israel Defense Forces would go in to dismantle Hamas' military capabilities, was a given. But how long would they have to do so?

In every war for half a century, from the Sinai campaign in 1956 to 2006's Second Lebanon War, at some point Israel had been forced to stop fighting and withdraw. The international community, led by the United States, had called time, pressuring Israel to accept a cease-fire.

There was no doubt in the minds of those planning this war that the time at Israel's disposal to degrade Hamas would be limited as well. They would have, they said, "a window of legitimacy." And all windows close at some point.

In those early days, few if any expected the window to remain open for an entire year and that, by the time of the first anniversary, the IDF would still be operating freely in Gaza.

The opening phase of the ground campaign in Gaza that began on October 27 – the devastating armored assault on Gaza City – was designed largely with that in mind: that this was a short window in which Israel could strike at the heart of Hamas' military and governing structure in Gaza. That at some point in the not-too-distant future, international pressure would close that window.

Yet a year on, the window is still open. Attempts by the Biden administration and other governments to shut it have been half-hearted. There have been no real sanctions, while arms embargoes have been minimal. The serious pressure has been on opening the way for humanitarian supplies to enter Gaza, and trying to limit the scope of the campaign (like the delay in going into Rafah this spring), but not to end the war.

There are myriad explanations for the lack of effective pressure. One is the unique relationship U.S. President Joe Biden has with Israel, and the weakness of other Western leaders who are preoccupied with domestic troubles.

Another is the timing of the war, coming as it does in a U.S. election year. The fact that the Arab countries with which Israel already has diplomatic relations haven't threatened to sever them is also a factor. Why should the West exert itself when the Arabs are just paying lip service in public and in private hoping that Israel finishes off Hamas?

All of these factors and others played a part. However, there is an underlying reality that has somehow been overlooked in much of the coverage, which explains the reluctance to apply the kind of pressure Israel wouldn't be able to resist.

In today's geopolitical reality, with the United States and its allies facing challenges spanning the globe from Ukraine to Venezuela to Taiwan, Israel is a crucial part of the alliance, providing military technology and experience while confronting Iran – a key link in the rival axis.

It may not be a popular thing to say, especially when Israel is led by an unpopular leader, but the West needs Israel as an ally, and that is the real limit on any pressure. What Israel brings to the alliance can be summarized in two words.

What Israel brings to the table

Reporting from Ukraine in the first months of the war there in 2022, I was expecting to encounter negative reactions to Israel's shameful policy of neutrality following the Russian invasion. But in conversations and interviews with Ukrainians on every level, I failed to detect any signs of animosity. All the Ukrainians I met regarded Israel as their "soul sibling" nation.

As they held out against the larger and more powerful Russian invader, Israel and its wars against Arab neighbors was the example they sought to emulate. They were surprisingly forgiving of Israel's national-security calculations in not angering Vladimir Putin, but ended each conversation with "but please, send us the Iron Dome."

Ironically, of all the things Israel could and should have sent Ukraine, its Iron Dome missile defense system would have been the least helpful. Designed to defend relatively small areas by intercepting short-range rockets, Iron Dome would have been of little use in protecting the wide expanses of Ukraine from Russia's arsenal of long-range missiles. But in the 13 years since Iron Dome first became operational, it has come to symbolize much more than the sum of its capabilities.

One politician who has a keen grasp of symbols is former U.S. President Donald Trump. In his rambling nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in July, he said that "Israel has an Iron Dome. They have a missile defense system. Three-hundred and forty-two missiles were shot into Israel, and only one got through a little bit."

This wasn't true. Iron Dome was barely involved in the interception of the 300-plus Iranian missiles and drones back in April. But facts have rarely mattered to Trump, and they certainly weren't going to deter him from promising that "we're going to build an Iron Dome over our country, and we're going to be sure that nothing can come and harm our people."

Once again, Iron Dome as a system is not going to help protect the vast United States of America – with an ocean on either side – from Russian or Chinese intercontinental ballistic missiles. But Iron Dome stands for so much more.

Iron Dome has become a symbol for what Israel brings to the table. It is the second homegrown Israeli weapon to have achieved such a level of global iconography. The first was the Uzi, a compact and durable submachine gun developed for the IDF back in the 1950s that, just like Iron Dome, achieved a status way beyond its actual military use.

In fact, the Uzi reached its heyday in popular culture long after it had gone out of service in most Israeli combat units. But in the '80s, when Hollywood produced its best action flicks, there was always the scene when Chuck, Sly or Arnie blasted their way out of trouble with an Uzi blazing in each hand.

It was the epitome of the inventive ruggedness of a small, embattled nation fighting for survival against the odds. It was small, clever and deadly – a fitting emblem of all Israel had been in its early decades.

Iron Dome isn't just the most recognized Israeli weapon; it serves as the image of how Israel is seen in the West today.

Unlike the Uzi with its square frame and snub-nosed barrel, it has no discernible shape – just a row of nondescript cabins and boxy launch canisters. Excitable teens can't picture themselves firing it, Stallone-style, on the bad guys. Iron Dome is secret algorithms and little puffs of smoke in the sky, or long yellow streaks in the night.

You can't understand how it works, only that it does, and that those genius Israelis have done it again – only now instead of welding some stamped pieces of steel together with a crafty spring, they've done it with math and tech.

Iron Dome is way more than just one of Israel's multilayered missile defense systems. It is a byword for all that Israel brings to the alliance: the technology, the firepower, the know-how and the intelligence sharing. An image of military prowess and experience that even a draft dodger like Trump, with zero understanding of military strategy, can appreciate.

And if even Trump gets it, the more discerning leaders, who for the past two-and-a-half years have been trying to work out how the West can gear up to confront a resurgent Russia and an increasingly aggressive China – after decades of low defense budgets, lack of investment in military industries and a personnel shortage that has sent U.S. Marine Corps recruiters as far as Micronesia – know they can't afford to give up on a small country that knows how to build advanced military might with so few resources.

That image of an advanced and efficient Israel has helped keep the window open in Gaza for the past year, even though so much of what has happened over the past 12 months – the complete failure of intelligence and technology on October 7, and the wholesale destruction of Gaza since – eroded that image. Israel has been able to trade on the reputation it built up before the war.

It's the opposite process to what happened in Ukraine's case where, on the eve of the Russian invasion, the West was about to give up and cut its losses, offering President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a helicopter to fly him out and set up a government-in-exile. Only when it transpired in the next days and weeks that the valiant Ukrainians were proving adept at pinning down, cutting up and ultimately destroying Russia's lumbering armored columns did the West start ramping up support for Ukraine with more and more advanced and heavy weaponry worth tens of billions of dollars.

It's not about the moral case for Ukraine. It's about providing the West with value for money in eroding Russia's capabilities, exposing its vulnerabilities and giving the West more time to prepare its own defenses. Ukraine has been doing all that since February 2022, which is why it now has a fleet of F-16 fighters and hundreds of Western tanks.

Israel's good fortune was that it didn't have to make the geopolitical case when the war in Gaza began. For all the hasbara efforts to show the details of the atrocities of October 7, to counter the pictures of dead Palestinian children in the ruins of Gaza in the international media, what has kept the West in Israel's corner is the necessity of having Israel in the alliance.

It's why it took the leaders of Britain and France – two countries that barely sell any arms to Israel anyway – nearly a year of domestic political pressure to make even the most empty of gestures on stopping arms, even though in reality their militaries and intelligence services remain in deep cooperation with Israel.

It's why, despite the war, the most important development in the Israel-European arms trade has been Germany signing a $4.4 billion contract to buy Israel's Arrow missile defense system as the cornerstone of its European Sky Shield Initiative.

None of this means Israel has a blank check for another year of war – not just in Gaza, but with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran as well.

What it means is that the calculations in Western capitals on whether to continue supporting Israel are not, and will not be, dictated by the footage of carnage in Gaza, but by those same pragmatic calculations that could be upended by an all-out war with Iran – and its wider geopolitical impact on the global energy and on China.

Israel's Iron Dome advantage makes it an asset to the Western alliance, and has bought it a year in which it has been able to operate in Gaza and Lebanon with very few constraints. That will no longer be the case if the Iranian front continues to escalate.

In the second year of war, it may discover that it is becoming more of a liability than an asset.

Anshel Pfeffer