Has Israel’s Iron Dome Defence System just packed up?

Right, so has Israel’s beloved Iron Dome defence system gone somewhat rusty? It was reported yesterday in the Israeli news outlet Israel Hayom, that a strike by Hezbollah on the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Shmona was successful, because the Iron Dome, just didn’t get triggered. Are the forces of the so called Axis of Resistance finding ways to avoid triggering the Israeli defence system, or is it just failing more generally and if so how is that happening and actually when you dig into it a bit more you realise that, although this particular strike garnered some attention from the media, it’s hardly the first time the Iron Dome has failed, so is it simply a case of it’s not all it is cracked up to be, not what it has been sold to the world as, or has Israel simply invited so much by way of repercussion from so many different directions now, that it simply cannot cope?
Right, so Hezbollah, as they have been for a large part of the past 12 months since Israel’s invasion of Gaza following the night of October 7th been giving Israel a pasting, particularly in the north of the country as you might expect, Lebanon is to the north of Israel after all, but also into the occupied Syrian territory of the Golan Heights. As I’m writing this it is being reported that more than 100 missiles have been fired from Lebanon at the Israeli northern settlement of Kiryat Shmona again, where yesterday it was also attacked and it seems the Iron Dome defence system completely failed to be triggered let alone intercept any of the incoming rocket fire. Here’s an excerpt from The Cradle’s coverage of this:
‘According to the Israeli military, about 20 rockets were launched from Lebanon toward Kiryat Shmona and the surrounding area. Shrapnel from the rockets killed two Israelis, while sirens were also activated due to a false alert of a potential drone attack.
Fire and Rescue Services said several buildings caught fire after being struck by rockets. “Fires are raging in multiple buildings that sustained direct hits, and firefighters are working to contain the spread while searching for victims,” said Incident Commander Chief Reshef Dror Buchnik.
Israel launched a major bombing campaign on Lebanon on 23 September that killed over 1,000 people and assassinated many Hezbollah leaders and commanders, including the resistance movement’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah.
However, Hezbollah continues to fire rockets at targets in northern Israel, including at the cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv. Hezbollah ground forces have also repelled ongoing efforts by Israeli ground troops to enter Lebanon.’
It has to be borne in mind that Kiryat Shmona is a civilian area, it is the northernmost city in Israel, therefore the most vulnerable to Hezbollah attacks and I’m minded to think that the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, who was seen as a pragmatic voice within Hezbollah and Netanyahu celebrating that he’s also killed the likely successors to Nasrallah now too, is just making Hezbollah, as well trained and armed as they are, a vastly different kettle of fish to Hamas, they’re much more powerful, has had the effect of letting Hezbollah off the leash somewhat. They fired 20 missiles at Kiryat Shmona yesterday, none of which were intercepted, and it’s being reported now they’ve now fired another 100+. Success one day has led to them increasing their attack five-fold today on the same area. I’ve no idea at this point if the Iron Dome worked this time, but certainly Hezbollah are thinking it’s worth striking again because it didn’t yesterday.
At the moment and perhaps not unsurprisingly, Israel aren’t very forthcoming about why the Iron Dome didn’t respond, but this isn’t the first time it hasn’t delivered and of course another thing to bear in mind is that although Israel have claimed for a long time that their Iron Dome Defence System is 99% accurate, they did of course evacuate some 100,000 people from the north of the country due to Hezbollah beginning attacks as Israel moved into Gaza. If you listen to the IDF on such matters though, they’ll tell you it was all to allow the IDF to have more operational freedom in the area. Yeah OK. That’s going well for you isn’t it?
Now one plausible explanation I suppose is the closer to aggressive borders settlements are, the less reaction time there is for the Iron Dome to respond. Kiryat Shmona is mere miles from the Lebanese border, perhaps there was no time to respond? Well, the Iron Dome has responded to Kiryat Shmona strikes previously and Iron Dome batteries are positioned nearby and in the Golan Heights, so that really oughtn’t be an issue, you’d imagine Israel would have thought of that.
Earlier this year we saw a spate of fires break out across northern Israel, prompting more evacuations, Hezbollah rocket fire the cause, yet again the iron dome not being triggered, which led then to speculation that Lebanon had found a way to evade the Israeli defences.
Another part of the story that is perhaps still relevant is that we know the iron dome defence system has not been running at 100% in the north of Israel anyway, Hezbollah managed to destroy two iron dome batteries last December and it isn’t clear if these have been replaced because they are astonishingly expensive. At $50m apiece, these batteries are costly and the materials to repair them, as well as replacement missiles and components, because these are obviously expendables, have become more scarce the longer the atrocities in Gaza continue, because it means Israel is being spread more thinly, especially now engaging on eight fronts as it is – with only Netanyahu and his government to blame for that of course - so the Iron Dome defences are also having to intercept a lot of ordnance being fired by those other than Hamas and Hezbollah, with Iraqi Resistance increasing their attacks, Israel was attacking Syria again last night with strikes on Damascus, the Houthis in Yemen can now reach Israel whereas back at the time of these northern Israeli fires, they couldn’t and although there are other defence systems Israel has to employ, the Iron Dome doesn’t seem to be cutting it and therefore how much long can the other defence systems, such as Arrow hold up too?
So another possible explanation is that the Iron Dome is simply becoming overstretched and all the more so, the more of it’s batteries get taken out and the more groups fire upon Israel in retaliation for Israeli attacks on them. Have more of these Iron Dome batteries been taken out in the time since, rather than consider whether they’d been replaced?
Things have got to the point, it’s probably fair to say, where Israel are now having to make decisions about what they are going to do about Lebanon constantly committing these rocket attacks, to disrupt the IDF’s aims in Gaza and now their aims regarding invasion of Lebanon itself and when I say that, are they making choices now about whether or not to deploy the Iron Dome to defend settlements at all? Given they have been talking of returning people north, given Netanyahu’s rhetoric about Lebanon turning on Hezbollah and that if they don’t he’ll turn Lebanon into another Gaza, that statement all of a sudden in light of everything else I’ve spoken about here has a ring of desperation to it.
The other side to this, is the fact that if replacement of Iron Dome defences is required, Israel can’t do it themselves anyway, certainly can’t pay for it, because their economy is absolute toast. It’s the public purse of the US population that pays for all of this constantly, so to my mind – and I very much doubt Israel will admit to any of this – is that they’re simply running out of firepower either the interceptor missiles used or the Iron Dome batteries themselves and the system has been overwhelmed and can’t be maintained as it was. As such, we’ll see more claims concerning the failure of the Iron Dome and it being unclear why, but ultimately if they’ve no rockets to fire, it’s completely useless and I genuinely think Israel is running out of juice for their defence systems and that is what we’re seeing. It is the only explanation that makes sense for the increasing frequency of the Iron Dome’s failure. They simply can’t respond to every attack - or possibly even more sinister to think about is they are choosing to protect some areas of Israel over others because of shortages - and they only have themselves to blame. Get out of Gaza, Get out of Lebanon, End your occupation of all occupied territories as demanded by the International Court of Justice. Nothing less will do.
Reinforcing how much trouble Israel are in here though, combined with how deaf to such concerns Benjamin Netanyahu is, is the fact the US have now resorted to trying to bribe him to not target certain Iranian sites. It’s wet as wet can be that they offer free weaponry and diplomatic cover, rather than just pull of it instead and leave them to their own devices but there we are, that’s US foreign policy as far as Israel goes. Give them what they want, hope they see sense. It’s Benjamin Netanyahu, seeing sense is irrelevant when his grip on power is the only thing that concerns him. Get all the details of that story in this video recommendation here ans your suggested next watch and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.