Chapman’s News & Ideas Israel’s Coming Attack Will Also Assist Ukraine
The next battle in the Middle East may be played out in the skies above Iran. The outcome obviously is meant to help Israel, but may well assist Ukraine, too.
If “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Israel and Ukraine are friends already, and even quiet allies. Both are beset by Iran, which assails Israel directly and through its proxies (Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, etc.). The same Iran supplies thousands of Shahed drones and rockets to Russia for use against Ukraine. Iran is also helping Russia to build a major drone factory east of Moscow. Vladimir Putin makes a show of hosting Iranian leaders.
People in power in the U.S. may not want to talk much in public about the de facto Russia/Iranian alliance, just as Ukrainian and Israeli officials do not discuss their common interest in defanging Iran. But when an expected Israeli attack takes place soon in retaliation for Iran’s early October missile and drone assaults on Israel, it is very possible that drone, rocket, and missile factories will be high on the target list. Those factories are producing weapons for Russia’s war in Ukraine as well as for Iran’s conflict with Israel.
Behind the headlines, one can speculate that Israel and Ukraine have shared intelligence about Iran and Russia for some time. They also may share tactical ideas. Israelis are renowned for their inventive technology in the military field, as well as in others. As Discovery Senior Fellow George Gilder says in the new edition of The Israel Test, Israelis, unlike Americans in the Pentagon, innovate on the fly, not after ponderous studies and funding delays.
Ukrainians, likewise failing to get Western aid to the extent they need it and when they need it, are proving resourceful and nimble. James Brooke of The New York Sun reports that Ukraine is deploying scores of tiny factories that are hard for Russians to scope out and where low-cost drones and even missiles are manufactured. It is even possible Ukraine will develop its own missiles in time, since the Biden administration has resisted sending the embattled nation medium-range American weapons. In Soviet days, after all, Ukraine was a hub of missile production.
It makes sense, then, that the governments in Kyiv and Jerusalem could help each other in various, non-material ways. Washington, indeed, might well support the expression of Israel’s and Ukraine’s common interest in hobbling Iran’s weapons production. Severely setting back Iran in that way could be a kind of “compromise” that the Biden administration will support in return for a promise by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to go after Iranian nuclear facilities, at least for now.
It is hard, indeed, to see a solid argument against some sort of informal collaboration of Israel and Ukraine, with the U.S. abetting that collaboration. An obvious way to assist Ukraine fend off the Russians would be to share the anti-missile technology (Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow systems) that Israel has produced, with American aid.
There are some conservatives who oppose further U.S. aid to Ukraine, and many liberals/progressives who oppose American support for Israel. But most Americans support both. If the Russians, the North Koreans, the Iranians, and the Chinese conspire to oppose us, why should we not aid friendly allies that share our values and are standing up to what has become the new axis of evil?