If the United States and its allies can rush to Israel’s defense in the skies, shooting down dozens of drones and missiles fired by Iran, why can’t they do the same for Ukraine — which has suffered under Russia’s missile attacks for more than two years?
That’s the question Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his country’s staunchest backers in the West were asking on Monday, hours after the U.S., the United Kingdom, France and Jordan helped Israel shoot down some 300 drones and missiles fired by Iran in retaliation after Israel killed its senior military commanders in Syria.
“European skies could have received the same level of protection long ago if Ukraine had received similar full support from its partners in intercepting drones and missiles," Zelenskyy wrote Monday evening in a post on X.
Because Iran doesn’t have a massive nuclear weapons stockpile.
The last few years have shown that any nation that wants to be taken seriously needs a capable nuclear arsenal. Literally nothing else matters.
Or Israel and Iran are both mentioned in the Bible and the apocalyptic Christians in the charge of the West only care about that?
Iran isn’t directly mentioned. Vague terms like “the North” appear, and historically many American evangelicals have identified the USSR with it, because that was the geopolitical bogeyman of the day. I’ve had older evangelicals insist to me that Russia borders Israel as a result.
Iran’s more plausible than Russia, but if we pretend for a moment it’s not all some desert guy’s mushroom trip it could just as easily be Turkey.
I guess if you want to lean hard into Syria as a Russian client state… maybe?
Although, the truly Big Brain move is to assert the Bible is talking about the Godless Protestants of Europe.
Doesn’t mean we couldn’t send interceptor rockets to Ukraine. We didn’t bomb Iran we just intercepted their missiles and drones.
We’re in for, what? $150B already? I don’t think Russian nukes are what’s holding up Ukraine funding in Congress.
The Rightwing memelords have spent the last two years insisting Ukrainian military aid is tied to Hunter Biden’s cocaine dick and now half of Congress is blacklisting the funding in hopes of pleasing the 4chan party base.
Funding? No. But with the Iranian drone/missile strike US and other allied forces were doing interceptions. That’s not happening in Ukraine unless there are some dramatic escalations, right wing memelords or no.
From what analysis I’ve read, the Iranian strike largely landed in empty desert. It was intended as a show of force, not a provocative attack.
And one thing it showed that the US and Israel genuinely struggle with is that Iran can launch a $100 missile that US/Israel needs a $10,000 defensive rocket to knock down. Yeah, they got 99% of their targets. But they exhausted a fortune to achieve it.
Ukraine has the same problem with Russia. They have to expend enormous amounts of defensive weaponry to counter an incoming Russian strike. And Russia can simply wear them down by targeting over a large border and at a long range.
Because Russia and Iran are operating as war-time at-cost economies, while the US and Israel are running their militaries as for-profit private enterprises, the scale and scope of operations they’re capable of can eclipse more advanced nations simply because they aren’t running every weapons purchase through a dozen middle men.
Ukraine tried to operate as a war-time at-cost economy, but the Russians were too good at targeting their domestic factories and munitions plants. So now they’re out of domestic weaponry and forced to rely on foreign exports.
Israel doesn’t have this problem which - paradoxically - makes them a better market for US arms sales (they’ve got more money to spend and they can afford to spend it at market rate rather than cost).
If Dems retake the House, they’ll start re-gearing the war economy to be at-cost rather than for-profit. Republicans won’t. But that’s what’s really at stake here.