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| A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) launching station is loaded onto an C-17 Globemaster III at Fort Bliss, Tex., in 2019. (Staff Sgt. Cory D. Payne/AP) |
The mission marks the first significant deployment of U.S. troops to Israel since the war in Gaza began and comes just weeks before the U.S. presidential election.
The deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile system, or THAAD, is the latest indication that the United States expects the Israeli assault to be “so comprehensive that the Iranians will have to respond,” said Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert who has advised multiple Republican and Democratic administrations. The THAAD deployment adds to the more than 50,000 tons of armaments and military equipment the United States has sent Israel since the start of the war last October, according to Israel’s Defense Ministry.
Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, has promised a devastating attack against Tehran in response to its ballistic missile barrage against Israel on Oct. 1. “Our strike will be powerful, precise, and above all — surprising. They will not understand what happened and how it happened,” Gallant said Wednesday.
The Iranian assault, which followed Israel’s assassination of high-level Iranian, Hamas and Hezbollah officials, failed to inflict significant damage as a result of U.S. and Israeli efforts to shoot down the projectiles. No deaths occurred within Israel’s internationally recognized borders; one Palestinian man was killed in the occupied West Bank.
The barrage, however, demonstrated that Israel’s sophisticated missile defense system can be overwhelmed, allowing scores of missiles to hit Israeli soil. And on Sunday, a Hezbollah drone appeared to evade air defenses when it struck an IDF base near the northern Israeli town of Binyamina, killing four Israeli soldiers and injuring at least seven more.
“The THAAD Battery will augment Israel’s integrated air defense system,” said Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder. “This action underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran.”
Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump have vowed to forcefully defend Israel while expressing support for a swift end to the war. The conflict has deeply divided the Democratic Party, with young voters and Arab Americans criticizing Harris for not calling for restrictions on U.S. arms to Israel in response to the killing of more than 42,000 people in Gaza and blockages of humanitarian aid.
Republicans, on the other hand, have attacked the Biden administration for criticizing Israel’s military tactics following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed 1,200 people and saw more than 250 taken hostage.
Despite numerous disagreements between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the course of the year-long war, the president’s decision to deliver the THAAD system before Israel’s attack represents another example of his willingness to trust Netanyahu and give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Once this battery is in place and Israel enjoys the protection of American air defenders, what incentive does Netanyahu have to keep his word and not strike the sensitive targets he promised to avoid?” asked Harrison Mann, a former U.S. Army officer who served as an analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency.
The THAAD system is specifically designed to shoot down ballistic missiles. The ground-based system doesn’t have any warheads and isn’t used to strike buildings or conduct offensive attacks. Rather, the system only counters incoming short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
The shipment, which will be delivered at an unknown date, is the latest example of Biden using “carrots” rather than sticks to induce Israel into less aggressive behavior, Mann said.
On Friday, the Biden administration imposed economic sanctions on Iran’s petroleum industry, targeting Tehran’s fleet of tankers, hoping that such action would lessen Israel’s desire to strike Iran’s energy assets, which could prompt Tehran to target oil facilities owned by Washington’s Arab allies.
The decision to place more U.S. troops in Israel amid an impending attack increases the risk of U.S. casualties — a scenario that could drag the United States even further into the widening conflict, Miller said.
“If Iranian missiles hit a U.S. soldier or pro-Iranian militias in Iraq or Syria kill or wound U.S. personnel, there’s a high probability that the U.S. would take kinetic action against Iran,” Miller said.
Earlier this year, the U.S. military deployed a pier to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, but the Biden administration decided against putting troops on the ground for the mission out of safety concerns for U.S. forces and fears of being dragged further into the conflict.
Mann said the risk to U.S. soldiers who will crew the THAAD system is clear.
“Those soldiers will be operating from Israeli military bases, which Iran already demonstrated the will and capability to strike, at a time when additional Iranian strikes are expected imminently,” he said. “Even if we make the unreasonably optimistic assumption that this THAAD battery can defeat any and all missiles headed its way, the Israeli military cannot guarantee the safety of these troops from drones, which have successfully penetrated Israeli bases in the past.”
Each THAAD battery includes at least six truck-mounted launchers that carry up to eight missiles each. The system is widely sought-after, particularly by Ukraine, which is routinely under siege from Russian ballistic missiles.
The U.S. military deployed the system to the Middle East last year after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Ryder said, and in 2019 as part of a training event.
Israel has other antimissile defenses, including its Iron Dome, Arrow and David’s Sling systems⍐.
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