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The New Rocket Threat to Israel

(Commentary) Jonathan Schanzer - Over the past five years, the Israelis have been fighting a quiet war targeting "game-changing weapons" that Iran was transferring to its proxies. Their recent targets are precision-guided munitions, or PGMs. Iran is working overtime to allow its proxies to convert their dumb rockets into smart ones like the deadly Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) which is capable of striking within 5-10 yards of their intended targets. When enough PGMs reach the hands of Israel's enemies, the effect will indeed be game-changing. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's former national security adviser Jacob Nagel recently told me, "With enough PGMs, the impact on certain targets could be close to the impact of a nuclear weapon." For this reason, "after the Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli leaders cite the PGM threat as next on their list." When the Iranian PGM project comes online, Iron Dome may no longer provide the Israeli leadership with the luxury of time to weigh their options when they must respond to a hailstorm of precision strikes. The political and military leadership will be forced to respond more rapidly and with greater force. The writer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, is senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
2019-12-20 00:00:00
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