by Peter Huessy
Cranky opponents of the Iron Dome Israeli missile defense claim the system doesn’t work. Some in the arms control community have latched on to such criticism to smear missile defense work in general especially that in the United States.
What happened then to the nearly 3000 Hamas rocket warheads that if not intercepted largely landed somewhere in Israel? The same critics say not only did Iron Dome not work, but the Hamas rocket warheads didn’t work either!
Except when Hamas rockets fired at Israel mistakenly landed in Gaza itself, the Hamas leaders tried to blame the destruction—shown in vivid pictures—on Israel counter strikes.
A great friend of the United States is retired Israeli Ministry of Defense top missile defense guru, Uzi Rubin. In his piece he demolishes the critics of Iron Dome as effectively as Iron Dome itself demolishes Hamas rockets.
This missile defense system brought from research phase to deployed in the field in less than 4 years, allowed Israeli’s government to seek the best way to both minimize the damage to Israel, plan and carry out an effective strategy to eliminate as much as possible future Hamas missile strikes, and to the extent possible, limit the strikes on Gaza and save Palestinian lives.
Without an effective missile defense, Israeli might very well have to re-occupy Gaza and effectively eliminate Hamas’s military capability all together. This would be a very tough job and lead to thousands of additional casualties.
Iran has now bragged about providing both the financing and weaponry for the Hamas rocket attacks, as well as the help in building the terror tunnels now largely destroyed by the IDF. That is what the axis of evil looks like.
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Peter Huessy is the President of GeoStrategic Analysis and Senior Defense Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council.