How Israel and US Are Taking Iran’s Drone Threat Seriously
Stand for Israel | April 28, 2021
Even as threats to Israel have heated up both on the Gaza border and in Jerusalem, Israel and her greatest ally – the United States – work to confront another looming threat. The Jerusalem Post’s Seth J. Frantzman reports on the two nations’ concern over Iran’s drone program:
It’s not a coincidence that the head of US Central Command has been warning about drone threats and that the US and Israel are increasingly working on efforts to confront drones.
A readout of US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s bilateral meeting with Israeli National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat on April 27 revealed that the “United States and Israel agreed to establish an inter-agency working group to focus particular attention on the growing threat of unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs] and precision-guided missiles produced by Iran and provided to its proxies in the Middle East region…”
The work between the US and Israel on this issue is important because the rise of Iranian drone threats is increasingly bedeviling US partners in the region. Tehran knows this and keeps unveiling more and more drones.
Iran has a seemingly endless amount of drones these days; it used them against Saudi Arabia in 2019 and also sent a drone from Syria’s T-4 base into Israeli airspace in February 2018. On April 28, the IDF said that it had “downed a drone and located an additional drone belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organization that crossed from Lebanon into Israeli airspace.”
The threat is clear. In January a report at Newsweek indicated Iran may have exported a new type of drone to Yemen, one capable of reaching Israel…