U.S.-Israeli Security Ties: In Some Ways, Hanging in There

J.E. Dyer
Contentions/Commentary
16 July '10

It’s a great thing to have a friendly press. You can tally up the list of things you were going to do anyway — programs and measures instituted by your predecessors — and tout them as your own initiatives, and no one will expose what you’re doing. Indeed, a friendly media will obediently retail your narrative for you, accepting your evidence without critical analysis.

The Obama administration, under political fire for straining U.S. ties with Israel, has a friendly press. The latest example is a July 16 Washington Post puff piece on military relations with Israel, entitled “Despite Diplomatic Tensions, U.S.-Israeli Security Ties Strengthen.” The article takes up the administration’s current theme that security cooperation between the U.S. and Israel has never been closer. Only some of it can be substantiated, however, and the verifiable information ends up mostly tracing back to initiatives from the George W. Bush presidency or before.

President Obama and the current Congress are to be credited with the May 2010 decision — referenced in the Post piece — to fund the deployment of Israel’s new “Iron Dome” defense system against short-range rockets. But no other security “tie” listed in the article qualifies as an Obama initiative. High-level exchanges between defense officials, for example, have been frequent for decades. Such exchanges are typical with close allies and would be remarkable only if they were rarer. This reference sounds like a pure filler. Likewise, the sharing of information on vehicle armor and protection against IEDs has been underway for years; U.S. funding was allocated for such cooperation (and related programs) during the Bush administration.

The article alludes to the exercise “Juniper Cobra,” which took place in October 2009, as “the first such exercise involving boots on the ground between the two nations.” But that assertion is simply wrong. Juniper Cobra, a U.S.-Israeli air- and missile-defense drill, has been conducted in alternating years since 2001 and has involved boots on the ground each time. The 2007 iteration involved the smallest number of deployed troops to date, with 500, whereas the 2009 drill featured the largest number: 1000. The scope of the latest exercise is a positive sign about both nations’ seriousness regarding the defense of Israel at a time when the threat from Iran is growing rapidly. But the implication that it represents a strengthening of security ties specific to the Obama administration is invalid.

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