According to this story, Israel has just received an advanced, early warning radar system, as well the crew to operate it, from the United States. This represents a major step forward for American-Israeli defense integration and will greatly improve Israel’s ability to deal with ballistic missile threats.

While it’s being said that the deployment of this system may also reduce Israel’s margin for independent decision making on whether or not to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, and this may be true, it’s also true that once the system is operational Israel will be vastly better prepared to deal with the Iranian retaliation to any such attack.

In any case there are two clear messages to Iran here. The first is that any missile they should now see fit to fire at Israel risks being intercepted at a much earlier stage in its flight, and the second is that strategic cooperation between Israel and the United States is growing ever closer and any major assault on the former is inevitably going to produce a response from the latter.

It might be said that this has been so for a long time. In the broadest sense this is true; the United States has played some role in every major conflict in the Middle East for the last six decades and has not always done so to favor Israel. However, there is a big step from being a power with hegemonic ambitions and thus obliged to take a position when things at the bar get a little boisterous around closing time, to building an ever-deeper military alliance with a state that, unlike some others in the region, Saudi Arabia for example, does not lack the social and cultural capital necessary to defend itself.