In theory, a weapon like Iron Dome could be used only defensively. But in practice it doesn’t work that way,’ analyst Nathan Thrall told Jewish Currents. ‘Iron Dome facilitates greater Israeli offensive measures, because it lowers the perceived cost to Israel of escalating or extending or initiating attacks.’ In other words, while the Iron Dome may prevent the deaths of Israeli non-combatants, it has made it easier for Israel to engage in deadly operations that take Palestinian lives.”
100% correct, and this has been a well understood concept in the world of missile defence since the ABM treaty signed between the Soviet Union and United States in 1972, a limit on both sides ballistic missile defence capabilities at the time. There is no such thing as a purely defensive weapon.
Iran’s advanced missiles can’t be reliably stopped by the Iron Dome, so Iran was able to smash Israel and force it to cease its unprovoked aggressions. If Israel had had a missile defense system which could casually swat those missiles out of the sky at a high rate of success, Israel would still be bombing Iran today, and would continue doing so until Tehran looked like Gaza. Israel’s war-horny population would have supported this, because they’d have no skin in the game.
Iron Dome/Tamir doesn’t defend against ballistic missiles.
Israel does have a defensse system that does shoot down medium range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) with a relatively high rate of success, which has been in development since the 1980s in a joint partnership with the US (the Arrow system), it’s why we only saw dozens of direct impacts from hundreds of ballistic missiles fired, and why Israel attacked in the first place. That, and Iran’s MRBMs weren’t accurate enough to existentially threaten Israel’s military and nuclear sites, and the Israeli military and political wing was prepared/made the calculation that Iran bombing Israeli cities was worth it in exchange for Israel getting to bomb Iran. There have been additions to the system (from the United States, and Israel repositioning defence systems internally) since the Iranian Operation True Promise II of October 2024, where a large percentage of Iranian MRBMs directly impacted. The impacts we saw this year were a lot more devastating because a MRBM has a much larger warhead and impacts at much higher speeds than Hamas or Hezbollah rockets.
The joint US-Israeli integrated Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system used to defend Israel from Iranian MRBMs consisted of:
SM-3 Block IB interceptors fired from US Navy AEGIS missile destroyers in the Mediterranean, and Israeli Arrow 3 interceptors fired from within Israel itself, for the exo atmospheric layer of defence (outside of the earth’s atmosphere, over 100km in altitude and at ranges exceeding 2000km, parts of SM-3 interceptors ended up landing in Iran itself).
The endo-exo-atmospheric layer (intercepting both inside and outside of the earth’s atmosphere) consisted of US THAAD batteries/fire units located in Israel itself, operating between altitudes of 40-150km.
The endo-atmospheric layer of defence consisted of Israeli Arrow 2 interceptors operating between 8-50km altitude, and David’s Sling/Stunner interceptors that operate up to 15km altitude for last second point defence. Iron Dome/Tamir was responsible for shooting down balls of debris from intercepts, and shooting down any one way attack drones that made it to Israel. At most, there is footage of Iron Dome maybe being used to intercept one MRBM as a last ditch effort.
I personally don’t think people should defend his poor behaviour and that the “online left” collectively deciding to hitch their bandwagon to Hasan years ago was a bad decision, but that’s just my opinion. Most people on the online left disagree with me on that one.
I’ll never watch a twitch politics steamer, sorry. Pretty much all of them always seem to double down when proven wrong or caught up in any controversy, when apologising would go a long way. Since when has apologising become a bad thing/negative/weak? Admitting fault and moving on is an important part of maturing. All these streamers seem like 30+ year old people acting like kids.