F-16 Fighting Falcon in the Israeli Air Force (Lockheed Martin)
Michael Oren: The Cold War Arms Race Redux
Thanks to Clarity with Michael Oren
While Iran battles Israel directly or through its proxies, another, more discreet but no less fateful war is raging throughout the region. It is a war with deep historical resonances, a war so potentially destabilizing that even the most dispassionate observers hesitate to revive its name. It is the war between East and West, between, principally, the United States and Russia. Long believed to have ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Cold War is back and is once again being waged in the Middle East. And, as in the past, the crucible of that conflict is armaments.
Though Israel imports military equipment from several Western countries, the United States is, by far, its major arms supplier. With its M4 and M16 rifles, F-15, F-16, and F-35 jets, anti-tank missiles and grenade launchers, Humvees and mechanized artillery, large-caliber shells, smart bombs, surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missiles, and its multi-tiered missile defense system, the Israel Defense Forces brandishes an awesome array of Made-in-the-USA weapons. Funded in no small measure by the aid package Israel receives annually from the United States, and which subsidizes numerous U.S. industries, Israel serves as a showcase for the efficacy and lethality of American arms. An Israeli pilot recently told me that, at twenty-five years old, he had accumulated more combat hours than all other active fighter pilots in the world combined. That statistic, alone, is worth billions for marketers of McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed Martin, makers of the F-15 and F-35.
While the United States arms Israel, its enemies are equipped by Russia. From the ubiquitous Kalashnikov, AK-47, and Dragunov sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, surface-to-air missiles, Sagger, Silkworm, Grad, and Scud rockets, Kornet anti-tank missiles, and the S-300 and S-400 air defense systems, Russian weaponry proliferates in the Middle East. Russian technology, on occasion conveyed through North Korea, was employed in the long-range ballistic missiles fired at Israel by Iran and its Houthi proxy in Yemen.
The extent of this armament has surprised Israel and the United States. Entering Hezbollah tunnels in Southern Lebanon, Israeli troops discovered that as much as 70% of all the massive arsenals they found were of Russian origin. Many of these arms, among them Metis, Konkurs, and Fagot guided anti-tank missiles, were of recent vintage and extreme accuracy. Such revelations confirmed what is already widely known if not yet broadly acknowledged: The United States and Russia are once again embroiled in an indirect Cold War in the Middle East.
That war began in the mid-1950s, when the Soviet Union lavishly armed its Middle Eastern allies, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria. The United States, meanwhile, provided weapons to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other pro-Western monarchies. Subjected to arms boycotts from both superpowers, Israel purchased most of its military hardware from France. To destroy the Egyptian Air Force in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israeli pilots flew French-made Mystère, Fouga, and Ouragan jets. Only in the aftermath of that conflict did American policymakers realize that Israel was a democratic powerhouse that had destroyed billions of dollars in Soviet weaponry. With the subsequent sale of M60 Patton tanks and Phantom jets, the U.S.-Israel strategic alliance was sealed.
The Middle East arms race reached a climax in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. As the IDF beat back the invading armies of Egypt and Syria, Moscow launched a sky train of military resupply. The Israeli forces, their tanks and planes proven vulnerable to the Soviets’ advanced Sagger, SAM, and Strela missiles, were in danger of demonstrating the inferiority of American arms. Less than out of empathy for the Jewish State but rather his refusal to be bettered in a Cold War showdown, President Richard Nixon ordered Operation Nickel Grass, the strategic airlift of 22,325 tons of supplies, including tanks, artillery, and ammunition, to Israel. Nine years later, in the First Lebanon War, Israeli F-15s, F-16s, and Skyhawks shot down 86 Syrian MiGs without suffering a single loss.
The Cold War might have ended with the Berlin Wall’s collapse but not so the superpowers’ military involvement in the Middle East. The Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003, along with the clashes with Libya, Syria, and various jihadist forces, pitted American against Russian-made arms. The Middle East, moreover, continued to serve as a testing ground for Russian and American military technologies.
The practice was hardly new. The first water-cooled machine gun, the Maxim, first saw serious service in the 1898 battle between British and Mahdist forces in the Sudan. As the young Winston Churchill quoted in his memoirs of that expedition, “When all is said we have got the Maxim Gun and they have not.” The first use of the airplane as an offensive weapon took place in 1911, in the Italian conquest of Libya.
The U.S. was no exception. The first armor-piercing bazooka was supplied to GI forces invading North Africa in 1942. Thereafter, and especially after the Six-Day War, the United States tried out numerous military technologies in the Middle East. These have included the anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic systems—Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow—coordinated or developed with Israel.
The Russians, too, have used the Middle East for testing out military innovations such as a sophisticated ship-targeting system, the P-800 Oniks anti-ship missile, and the S-300 and S-400 anti-aircraft batteries. Even as it engages in large-scale operations in Ukraine, deploying thousands of Iranian-made rockets and drones, Russia continues to view the Middle East as a primary armaments lab.
Whether in standard armaments such as tanks and rifles or in cutting-edge weapons that employ the latest in AI and cyber science, the United States has consistently bested the Russians. Iran and its proxies have fired tens of thousands of rockets and drones at Israel but relatively few have penetrated Israel’s defenses. By contrast, the Israeli Air Force operates at will against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi targets, as well as against Iran itself. Apart from a single helicopter downed by an RPG in Gaza, not a single aircraft has been lost. No less than four S-300 batteries, once considered impenetrable, have been destroyed in Israeli airstrikes on Iran. Once again in the Middle East, American arms have achieved a historic victory.
Oddly, then, that the United States has consistently downplayed this accomplishment and, more puzzlingly, worked to contain it. Rather than highlight the superiority of its weaponry and vastly increase their global sales, the Biden Administration has on occasion withheld the shipment of vital ammunition to Israel and threatened further delays still. Whether in the Rafah region of Gaza or in Southern Lebanon, the White House has sought to hold Israel back. American-made warplanes emblazoned with the Star of David might have obliterated Iranian oil facilities and nuclear plants if not for pressure from the United States.
The reasons for this reticence are clear. American officials have been discomfited, to say the least, by civilian casualties caused, however inadvertently, by American ordnance. They feared that an Israeli strike on Iran’s oil and nuclear sites would drag the U.S. into an all-out regional war. No one in Washington—not in the White House, the State Department, or the Pentagon—has taken credit, much less expressed pride, in this triumph of American arms. On the contrary, at a time when Russia is openly expanding its military investment in the Middle East, even offering to share nuclear technology with Iran, the U.S. appears to be backpedaling.
The results have been felt in Israel, where the need to achieve maximum munitions independence from the United States is now universally recognized. Though the IDF will likely continue to rely on American weaponry simply because it’s the world’s best, Israel will hopefully wean itself off U.S. military aid and seek to diversify its arsenal. Other countries, meanwhile, might be reaching similar conclusions. Poland, Romania, and Peru are buying South Korea’s K2 Black Panther tank, a vehicle significantly more expensive and far less battle-tested than the American M1 Abrams. The Panther, though, comes with no conditions attached, no restrictions on its use, or the danger of delayed resupply.
The next U.S. administration, more business-minded, might have a different approach. Rather than a challenge for American morality, it may view the Middle East as a vast opportunity for American profits, prestige, and job creation. Such an approach will certainly be welcomed by Israel and America’s other allies in the region. Americans want to make a good living, understandably, and we, even more urgently, want to live.
