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TechnoratiUS Considers Deploying Missile Defense Radar To Israel
WASHINGTON - US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has agreed to explore deploying a powerful missile defense targeting radar in Israel, a senior US defense official said Tuesday.
"The idea here is to help Israel create a layered missile defense capability to protect it from all sorts of threats in the region, near and far," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Gates discussed the Israeli request Monday in a meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, the official said.
Besides the radar, Gates also agreed to explore sharing missile early warning launch data, as well as US funding for two costly Israeli projects designed to counter short-range rockets and mortars, he said.
The official said deploying the X-band radar was a near-term proposition, adding "all this is moving pretty quickly."
"We are going to station this land-based system there, and the Israelis would plug into it," said the official.
An X-band radar is a powerful phased array radar that can target the warhead of a long or medium range missile in space. The United States has deployed one in Japan and plans to install a larger X-band radar in the Czech Republic.
The official linked the assistance to the US administration's push for progress on a roadmap for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
But it appeared to be more directly related to Israel's concern about Iran's nuclear program.
"A policy that consists of keeping all options on the table must be maintained," Barak told Gates, according to the Israeli defense ministry.
"Iran's plans pose a threat to regional and global stability. We insist that it is vital to continue tightening the economic and financial sanctions imposed on the Iranians," he said.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell reaffirmed US preference for a strategy that combines economic and political pressure on Tehran to give up its uranium enrichment program.
"I think the Israelis are keenly aware that we believe the best possible avenue of dissuading the Iranians from pursuing nuclear weapons is through economic and political pressures," Morrell said.
"We certainly understand that the Israelis view a nuclear Iran as an existential threat -- they have made that abundantly clear to us, to the world. And we are working diligently to prevent that from happening," he said.
"But the way we are focusing our efforts is on diplomatic, economic, financial pressures," he said.
Morrell added that "a military option is always available to us. It's not our first choice."
Despite the difference in emphasis, Morrell said the two sides had a "shared strategic vision and a common understanding of the threats to the Middle East and emanating from it."
Gates assured Barak that they would explore providing Israel with additional defensive capabilities, Morrell said. But the press secretary would not say what they were.
An Israeli statement said Gates had promised to explore providing a forward deployed missile defense radar, missile early warning launch data, and counter-measures against short-range rockets and mortars.
© 2008 Agence France Presse
13 Comments so far
Show AllMy goodness, the expensive toys the American taxpayers are so willing to pay for! The only real threats in the region are US-Israeli made and no missile shield from here to Saturn can protect Israel from its own stupidity!
The alternative solution is for Israel to move its "security" wall onto its own land, inside the 1967 line, get its settlers out of legitimate Palestinian territory, and recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. And it's a whole lot cheaper than a missile defense shield race to outer space.
The last thing Israel needs, as the 4th most armed country in the world, is more weaponry. If any country is illicitly armed with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons it is Israel, and that is only after the USA.
And the world has to tolerate the threat that they pose because that Zionist entity has a complex. Israel views "a nuclear Iran as an existential threat". Yet it is Iran that is suggesting a nuclear free Middle East.
-Barak told Gates, according to the Israeli defence ministry..."Iran's plans pose a threat to regional and global stability." -
This existential threat myth has gone on for far too long already. It has been a good ongoing excuse for land grabs and war crimes. Global and regional destabilization has been caused almost exclusively in recent years by two countries and two countries only, namely USA and Israel with imperialist or territorial ambitions. We, the rational thinking humans of this world, have had enough of their wars of aggression and illegal occupation already. Both these countries are armed to the teeth and both are in contravention of international laws, mandates, and treaties, but they don't care because they have got the weapons and use them...... So who is a threat? And in that logic lies the fair comparison to the Third Reich.
As someone wrote above, this article is pure propaganda fit to have been released on the authority of AIPAC, and their patsies in Congress or in the Bush or (to be) Obama administration. One has to wonder who takes this kind of circular logic for anything else? Who would take seriously someone who waves a very big and pointed stick, beats people including women and children to death and shouts, "I'm being threatened for my life, and if I don't beat these dangerous people first I think they are going to kill me".
For sure somebody like that should be locked up and kept well away from sharp objects. So, why again are they allowed to have WMD?
Well the Maginot Line worked on paper but for that matter so did Hadrian's wall and the Great Wall and...
Ever read Barbara Tuchman on the lead up arms rasce that saw the rivals scasre each other in arming themselves for war and then having no choice but to fight one ...since the threat from the other side had become so obvious by then.
Is it wise to meet the requirements for waging a WW3 while setting conditions which foster it in the ME?
Any other solution than WW3 anybody?
Extremists set the stage and say their's is the only way on both sides. Both have causes that are just and both do wrong but it is the extremist point of view that leads each side.
You can't ask a soldier if he needs a bigger gun and expect him not to think like a soldier.
Any other ideas anybody... besides preparing for a final military solution in the Middle East?
Anybody WANT peace? Either side?
I'm sick of extremists determining that more war is the only solution if we want peace.
It sounds so final when they say it. At all costs to anyone ...else.
Extremists don't care if they are wrong. They want to continue the fighting on both sides.
Extremists decide... they see no other way but to prepare for more war...bigger war...
It's a solution.
War. Build up for a bigger one ...if you are serious about having one.
Anybody have a different idea ...than has the extremists?
Any serious efforts to build up peace facts on the ground? Or would that help too much? Extremists don't like that stuff.
This article is propaganda. Agence France Presse seems to have crafted itself into an agent of the empire.
The Iranian government is not spewing the volume of outrageous lies, distortions and manipulating propaganda at the Iranian people as its counterpart is spewing in the USA.
Since the Israelis are the Chosen People, we have their word for it, wouldn't their friend in the sky just knock down any missiles headed their way?
I seriously think that this a very bad idea.
They call it "missile defense" shield but doesn't it work by firing missiles? I'm pretty sure that if I was living in one of the countries next door I would feel uneasy about this. It may just tip whatever balance of power there is right now in the ME right over on its side.
Not to mention, from what I understand the system doesn't work very well.
Hey, and Ariel even gets the 1st post this time.
You using google alert or something?
You ever even read any of the other articles on this website?
Ariel, neither - quite obviously - is Isreal. Seems to me that Isreal does indeed want peace, well a piece of Jordan, a piece of Syria, a piece of Palistine anyhow. Remind you of any other warrior state that wanted a little piece too? Mel Brooks is a genius.
The prof, of course they still need that shield in the Czech Republic. How else are they going to put Russia in its place. You didn't really think that proposal was there to fend off missiles from Iran did you? Check out a globe, run a line between Iran and western Europe if that line goes anywhere near the Czech R. I'll eat my shorts.
skippy, israel's neighbors aren't lookin' for love.
Does this mean they won't need the missile defence radar in the Czech republic?
Just out of curiousity, what is the flight time of a missle fired from launch site to target? Of course the closer the missle is to the target the lower the flight time, right? Do the available radars already in the mideast not have the ability to detect or track missles fired from Iraq? Is that why Scuds were able to hit their targets and we didn't know exactly where they were fired from?
Thing is Ariel, even if the state of Isreal gets the fanciest us missle defence system available, the other nations of the region can flood that defence with more missiles.
Just because you can build a wall doesn't mean your enemies can't get bigger rocks. Perhaps it's time to try to get along with, and learn to love your neighbours.
Let's have a balance of power in the Middle East; missile shields for all and nuclear weapons for all. Then no country will use either.
Sounds great to me. I wonder why leftists would oppose this?
Oh yea, it makes it harder to murder israelis...