The unmarked Boeing 707 airliner took off from Ben-Gurion Airport and landed an hour later in the southern resort town of Eilat. It was late at night, and for the tourists walking the beach boardwalk, the plane was a familiar sight. After an hour on the ground, the plane took off again, this time eastward. Ten hours later, it landed in Kolkata, India, spent a couple of hours on the ground to refuel and took off once again. The plane’s destination was the city of Guangzhou, capital of a southern Chinese province. There, a group of German-speaking Chinese navigators boarded the plane for its fourth and final journey—to a sealed-off military base on the outskirts of the Chinese capital.
After landing in Beijing, the “foreigners”—as the group was called—were finally allowed off the plane and taken to a nearby compound that had once served as the Belgian embassy in the Chinese capital. Venturing outside the compound, they were told, was out of the question.
The “foreigners” barely spoke to one another, assuming that all of the compound’s cabins were bugged and their conversations were being taped. If there was something important to discuss, they went outside, into the cold and polluted Chinese night.
The Chinese didn’t really know who the two dozen men were. They had been told that the group consisted of foreign businessman who had connections with several leading international defense companies, including some from Israel. That was just the cover. In reality, the delegation was led by the CEO of Israel Aerospace Industries, the leading government-owned defense company, who was joined by senior representatives from the Foreign Ministry and the Defense Ministry.
It was February 1979, and Israeli defense officials had set foot in China for the first time.
A long time in planning, the trip was a closely guarded secret. Israel and China did not have diplomatic relations. Nobody—except for the members of the delegation, the prime minister, the defense minister and a handful of others—knew about the trip. If word got out, Israel knew that the Americans would be furious. On the other hand, the US was on the verge of announcing official diplomatic ties with China, and if there was a time to go out on a limb, this was it.
It was a match of mutual interests. China was in the middle of implementing far-reaching reforms following the Cultural Revolution and was opening up to the West. In Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini had just returned from exile in France, and the Shah’s regime had collapsed, meaning that Israel was about to lose one of its primary arms customers. China could fill that vacuum.
The man who opened the door to China for Israel was Saul Eisenberg, a Jewish billionaire who had fled to Shanghai like 20,000 other Holocaust refugees during World War II. After the war, Eisenberg built a financial empire in the Far East, becoming one of the first Westerners to do business in China, Japan and Korea. He used these ties to interest China in Israeli weaponry and even donated his private Boeing 707 to transport the Israeli delegation on that maiden flight to Beijing in 1979.1
Nevertheless, the Chinese were apprehensive. They did not want to aggravate their traditional and long-standing allies—the Soviet Union and the Arab bloc—by suddenly opening up to Israel. Both Israel and China needed to tread carefully.
Eisenberg was familiar with Israeli defense products from other deals he had helped broker throughout Asia. After a series of preliminary meetings with the Chinese, he returned to Israel with a shopping list—an unorganized mix of missiles, radars, artillery shells and armor—and urged that the government send a delegation.
In Israel, the decision to go to China was not made easily. Prime Minister Menachem Begin was in the loop from the beginning but deferred questions regarding the shopping list to Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, whom he ordered to personally approve what Israeli companies could and could not sell.2
The Chinese were told that the delegation was a group of Eisenberg’s friends, who had ties in Israel and could obtain arms as needed. The Israelis were just as confused about whom they were dealing with.
“Were they engineers? Intelligence operatives? Military officers?” one member of the Israeli delegation recalled. “They all wore these ‘Mao Suits’ tunics. We had no way of knowing who we were even talking to.”
For the week that the delegation spent in Beijing, they were not allowed contact with Israel. A mother of one of the participants passed away while he was in China, but there was no way to let him know. He heard about her death only when he was on the plane for the flight back home.
During their stay, the “foreigners” presented the Chinese with brochures of different weapons they claimed they could get from Israel. The Chinese were impressed but did not make any commitments. Additional trips followed, some of them made on Israeli Air Force planes, which had their blue Star of David insignias removed. By then, the Chinese knew they were working directly with the Israeli government. Once the shopping list was finalized, it was brought to Begin and Weizman for approval.
The negotiations were a clash of cultures. The Israelis wanted to sign a contract that could be used as a general framework and be applied automatically to future sales. They were hoping for a shopping bonanza. The problem was that the Chinese were not used to complicated contracts. At one point during the negotiations, for example, the Israelis insisted on including a force majeure clause in the contract. “What is that?” the Chinese asked. After the Israelis explained to them that it freed the sides of a breach of contract in the event of an unforeseen act of God, the Chinese answered plainly: “Well, there is no need for that since we don’t believe in God.”
It took a year, but after lengthy negotiations, the sides finally reached a framework agreement. The first shipment—of tank shells—arrived in 1981.
The relationship continued, and even as the ties grew warmer, the deals still had to be done in complete secrecy. The Chinese, for their part, refused to come to Israel but agreed to sign hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of contracts on the basis of a couple of photos of weapons and an occasional piece of video. They never saw real production lines. In the arms sales world, it was an unprecedented leap of faith.
In 1985, the veil of secrecy lifted just slightly. For the first time, the Chinese agreed to issue visas to nine executives from Israel’s agriculture industry, including a government official from the Agriculture Ministry, to learn some of Israel’s innovative farming techniques. That same year, Israel reopened its consulate in Hong Kong, which it had closed a decade before.3 Israel pressed Beijing to establish official ties, but that would have to wait for the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991. Only after the Arabs openly sat with Israel would the Chinese do so.
In 1992, diplomatic ties were finally established. Civilian trade skyrocketed, growing from under $100 million in 1992 to over $8 billion 20 years later, turning China into Israel’s number-one trade partner in Asia. That secret arms trip in 1979 made this possible.
* * *
Since Israel’s inception, defense ties and particularly arms sales have played a role beyond their clear economic purpose of bringing billions of dollars into the Israeli economy. Surrounded by hostile Arab states, Israel has leveraged its superior technology and military expertise to establish diplomatic ties with countries—like Russia, China, Singapore and India—that normally would have shied away from the Jewish State.
The interests have varied. Some countries viewed Israel’s rise as a state with admiration and wanted to try to duplicate its success. Others faced similar threats from countries that, like those on Israel’s borders, operated Soviet weaponry. They wanted to learn from Israel’s experience, honed by years of conflict and war.
While the weapons sales helped establish diplomatic ties, as in the case of China, they also came at a price, often creating tension between Israel and its number-one ally, the United States.
This was the case with the Phalcon, which was at the center of possibly the most disastrous arms deals Israel ever entered into with a foreign country. The Phalcon was an airborne early warning command and control (AEWC&C) aircraft, and its sale to China was expected to reach some $2 billion, Israel’s largest arms deal ever. Israel saw benefit beyond the economic gain. China had influence over some of Israel’s enemies, and Jerusalem hoped that the deal—which would solidify Israel as China’s number-one arms supplier—would create leverage over Beijing’s diplomatic thinking.
Talks over the sale of the Phalcon started in the late 1980s, even before diplomatic relations were officially established between the countries. In 1993, a year after Israel opened its embassy in Beijing, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin became the first Israeli head of state to visit China, and the talks gained momentum. The Chinese had issued a global tender, and Israel submitted an official proposal, alongside Russia and the UK.
AEWC&C systems play a critical role on the modern battlefield, providing real-time intelligence and radar detection needed to achieve and retain aerial superiority. Israel’s Phalcon, developed and manufactured by Elta, a subsidiary of state-owned IAI, is one of the most advanced AEWC&C systems in the world, capable of tracking dozens of targets simultaneously. China planned to use the planes to see what was happening along its sea borders and to project its power throughout Asia.
After his trip, Rabin asked the Defense Ministry to update the Pentagon about Israel’s decision to compete for the Chinese tender. The request was natural. Israel had reached an understanding with the US several years earlier that it could sell weapons to China as long as they didn’t include American technology.
While Israel made an offer to China to install the Phalcon’s systems—a mix of radar and electronic intelligence systems—on a standard Boeing plane, the Chinese insisted on using the Ilyushin, a Russian transport aircraft. This complicated things. Israel had never bought military hardware from Russia, the main arms supplier of Israel’s enemies. Russia had also lost out on the tender. The last thing it was likely to do was help Israel.
But Rabin wanted the deal. So in 1995, he asked Boris Yeltsin for the plane. The response was positive but noncommittal. Two years later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Moscow and finalized the sale. So that the Chinese angle would stay hidden, reporters who accompanied the prime minister were told that the plane was for Israel.4
After Netanyahu’s visit, Moshe Keret, the CEO of IAI, flew to Moscow to work out the technical details. He managed to negotiate the price down to $45 million. The problem, though, was getting the Russian engineers to understand the new design Israel required for the plane so it could accommodate the radar systems that would make it a Phalcon. This proved slightly complicated, since, while the parent company had offices in Moscow, the Ilyushin was assembled in Uzbekistan and the engines came from Ukraine.
Once the deal for the plane was finalized with Moscow, Israel immediately signed the Phalcon contract with China and received a down payment. Everything seemed to be on track.
Netanyahu believed in complete transparency, and after closing the deal for the plane, he updated President Bill Clinton about the progress. The Americans weren’t thrilled but refrained from voicing serious opposition. But then, in 1999, everything changed. Ehud Barak was elected prime minister, and a few months later, the Ilyushin landed at Ben-Gurion Airport. Within days, a picture of the strange-looking plane with the massive dome appeared on the front pages of local newspapers. The China deal was no longer a secret.
Once everything was out in the open, Chinese defense minister Chi Haotian decided to visit Israel for an update. It was a historic visit, the first by a Chinese defense minister. What Israel didn’t anticipate, though, was the anger pictures of Haotian inspecting an honor guard in Tel Aviv would raise in the US.
The influential New York Times columnist A. M. Rosenthal, for example, condemned the Barak government for allowing the visit of “one of the ranking Tiananmen killers.” The Jewish State, he wrote, shouldn’t sell a single pistol to China, let alone technology that would potentially assist Beijing one day in shooting down US aircraft.5
The criticism escalated, and Congress started paying attention to what was happening. Suddenly all hell broke loose.
In April 2000, Defense Secretary William Cohen publicly condemned the deal and warned that it would degrade America’s ability to operate freely in Asia. In June, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution objecting to the sale. The chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Representative Sonny Callaghan, suggested cutting US military aid to Israel by $250 million, the same amount China had already paid for the plane.6
“What will Mrs. Goldberg in New York say when her son serving in the Pacific is shot down because of a Jewish AWACS?” officials in the Pentagon asked their Israeli counterparts.
Keret flew to DC to see if he could get one of the top lobby firms on K Street to take up the Phalcon case. One firm said it would look into it. The rest said nothing could be done. Keret returned to Israel and understood that the deal was dead in the water. All that was left was to publicly acknowledge the flop.
By the middle of 2000, Barak had completed an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon after an 18-year presence there and was getting ready for the Camp David summit, at which he would eventually offer Yasser Arafat a comprehensive peace deal, only to be rejected. To make peace with the Palestinians, Israel would need US support—to be more exact, financial support to upgrade the IDF’s capabilities and evacuate settlements. The Phalcon needed to be sacrificed.
Chinese Rear Admiral Yang Jun-Fei is welcomed by Israeli Navy Brigadier General Eli Sharvit, upon docking in Haifa Port in 2012. IDF
The cancellation of the Phalcon deal, and a subsequent crisis in 2004 over allegations that Israel was using American technology to upgrade drones it had sold China years earlier, infuriated the Pentagon. In response, Israel’s involvement in the development of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a stealth fighter jet Israel planned to purchase, was suspended. Contact between the Pentagon and Israel’s Defense Ministry dropped to a bare minimum. Israel had to choose sides, and under immense pressure, it agreed to completely and indefinitely stop selling weaponry to China.
The Phalcon affair was a critical lesson for Israel. Arm sales can help open doors, but if they are not done carefully, they can also potentially close them, sometimes in more than one country.
* * *
Israel was now stuck with the plane and a massive penalty it needed to pay Beijing for breaching the contract. By then, IAI had almost completed installation of the radar and associated subsystems. It desperately needed to find a new buyer.
Keret went to India and secured a deal—not just for one Phalcon but for three, at a whopping $1.1 billion. India was a strange choice as a customer. The nation had established full diplomatic relations with Israel less than a decade earlier, and at the time of the sale, not much was publicly known about the ties between the two countries; few knew that those ties included a defense component.
As with China, Israeli-Indian relations got their start before diplomatic ties were officially established. Back in the 1970s and 80s, Indian officers frequently visited Israel to ask for help in the war they were fighting in Kashmir against Pakistan. The Indians were interested in learning new tactics, with an emphasis on the emerging use of electronic warfare, an Israeli specialty. The deals were tiny and were carried out mostly through third-party vendors.
But while India benefitted from its relationship with Israel, it did so privately, due to a combination of Cold War alignments, fear of alienating its large Muslim population and a need to maintain ties with the Arab world.
In 1990, the relationship moved into high gear. David Ivry, the former air force commander and now director general of the Defense Ministry, secretly flew to London for a meeting with Indian defense minister V. P. Singh. The war in Kashmir wasn’t going away, and the Indians needed to upgrade their military, which consisted mostly of old Soviet platforms.
A few months later, Ivry dispatched a delegation of senior IDF officers and representatives of defense companies to New Delhi. He then flew there for a meeting with Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. The meeting was the first between a top Israeli defense official and an Indian head of state.
Ivry was accompanied to the meeting by his immediate counterpart, director general of the Indian Defense Ministry. He came bearing a letter from Yitzhak Rabin, Israel’s defense minister at the time, in which Rabin welcomed the prospect of establishing defense ties with India. After introductions, Rao asked his staff to leave the room. He wanted a few minutes alone with Ivry to hear what Israel was offering and how deep a relationship the Jewish State was interested in forging with India.
Ivry gave Rao an overview of Israel’s military capabilities, showed him the letter from Rabin and explained what would become essential to Israel’s emerging relationship with India.
“We don’t have any strings attached to our sales,” Ivry said. “We are a small country. Superpowers attach diplomatic conditions to defense ties. We don’t.”
Rao liked what he heard. Before reaching out to Israel, India had tried purchasing weapons from the US but was told that a long list of diplomatic conditions—mostly related to human rights—would need to be met before the sales could be approved.
Rao called the director general of India’s Defense Ministry back into the room and gave him the green light to sign $2 billion worth of defense deals with the State of Israel. The Israelis had a lot to learn about how to do business in India, but that business ultimately paid off, with cumulative sales topping $10 billion by 2014, making Israel the top arms supplier to India after Russia.7 The arms sales have helped turn the tide in India’s diplomatic view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2015, for example, India surprisingly abstained when voting on three anti-Israel resolutions in the United Nations.
Singapore is another country with which Israel established diplomatic ties after first forging military ties.8 Singapore has evolved into one of Israel’s key allies and, according to different reports, is the funder behind the development of some of the IDF’s most advanced weapon systems. Today, Singapore’s military is one of the best-equipped in the world and receives 20 percent of the island state’s overall budget.
Ties between Singapore and Israel date back to 1965, when Singapore achieved independence from the Federation of Malaysia. At the time, it had no military to speak of, and while the British were helping Malaysia establish an army, the same offer was not extended to Singapore. The country needed help and needed it desperately.
Singapore’s new defense minister, Goh Keng Swee, secretly invited Mordechai Kidron, Israel’s ambassador to Thailand, to the island. Kidron, together with a Mossad representative, arrived within a few days of independence with clear instructions from Jerusalem: offer military assistance to the fledgling state. The offer was attractive. Like Singapore, Israel had gained independence not that long ago and had succeeded in establishing a powerful military in a short amount of time. The two countries had something else in common: they were small in size and surrounded by hostile states with Egypt and Syria along Israel’s borders and Malaysia and China near Singapore.9
Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding father and first prime minister, knew and liked Kidron. They had met a few years earlier, when Kidron had come to ask to open an Israeli consulate in Singapore while it was still part of Malaysia. While he had faith in the Jewish State, Kuan Yew ordered Keng Swee to put the Israeli option on hold until he heard back from India and Egypt, two countries he had already turned to for assistance. A few days later, though, Kuan Yew received disappointing news. India wished Singapore “sincere good wishes for happiness and prosperity” but ignored its request for military assistance. Egypt’s response was similar; it extended recognition of Singapore as an independent state but ignored a request to send a naval advisor. Kuan Yew was especially disappointed with Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, whom he had thought of as a personal friend.10
Left with no alternative, Kuan Yew gave the green light to proceed with Israel but gave instructions to keep the news under wraps in order to avoid provoking Malaysia, a Muslim country. Three months later, a group of Israelis arrived in Singapore led by a colonel named Jack Elazari. To hide the Israelis’ true identity, the Singaporeans referred to them as “Mexicans.”
Before leaving for Singapore, Elazari met with Yitzhak Rabin, then IDF chief of staff. “Remember,” Rabin said. “We are not going to turn Singapore into an Israeli colony. Your job is to teach them the military profession, get them to stand on their own two feet and to eventually run the military on their own.”11
That is exactly what Israel did. Instead of holding large-scale training courses, they focused on small groups of Singaporeans who had a bit of military experience and trained them as commanders. They also got to work building bases, writing doctrine and creating the necessary structure between the military and the political echelon. In total, some 200 commanders were enlisted and trained.12
Kuan Yew wanted a people’s army like Israel, one that was based on a compulsory draft. In the beginning, though, the Singaporean leader wanted the Israelis to draft only people who were unemployed, what he called “society’s primitive people.” Kuan Yew cited the Japanese as an example. Japan, he said, fought against the intellectual British military in World War II and won, proving that intellect was not an asset for a soldier. Soldiers, he said, didn’t need to think much. They needed to know how to take orders.
Elazari and his team disagreed. They explained to Kuan Yew that the Japanese soldiers followed their orders and fought valiantly in World War II since they were dedicated to their emperor. “It’s not a matter of education,” the Israelis explained. “But of motivation.” Kuan Yew was convinced.
While the Israeli delegation continued its work, Kidron returned to Singapore and demanded quid pro quo. It was time, he said, that Singapore recognize Israel and that the two states send ambassadors to one another. Kuan Yew said that that idea was a nonstarter. Establishing ties with Israel would upset the local Muslim population and anger Malaysia, which was clearly aligned with the Arab bloc.
In 1967, the Six Day War broke out. While Kuan Yew was relieved that Israel won, the war presented Singapore with a new dilemma. The UN was debating a resolution condemning Israel, and Kuan Yew knew that if Singapore supported it, Elazari and his team would abandon the country. If he abstained or voted against the resolution, though, the world would immediately know that there was something going on between Israel and Singapore. He was stuck.
After intense deliberation, the Singaporean leader decided to abstain, in effect admitting that the island country had a relationship with the Jewish State. Once that happened, there was no reason not to give Israel what it wanted. Israel was allowed to open a trade office in Singapore in October 1968, and six months later, an embassy.
* * *
China, India and Singapore are three examples of countries with which Israel used what we call “arms diplomacy” to establish diplomatic ties. What Ivry told Indian prime minister Rao in 1990 about not attaching strings to arms sales has been a key principle in this effort, enabling Israel to become a dominant player in markets where other Western countries cannot easily enter—places like Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia.
When Israel was first established, it did not have many real friends—especially not in its immediate vicinity, the Middle East.
A small military, the IDF was not, and still is not, a large enough customer to incentivize local companies to develop high-end weaponry. For that reason, the vast majority of products that Israeli defense companies manufacture are exported. This way, the companies can keep production lines open and prices down for the IDF.
At IAI, for example, 78 percent of sales in 2014 were to foreign customers. This is the same basic breakdown for all of the large defense companies in Israel. This is unlike any arrangement elsewhere in the world. In the US, foreign sales make up a significantly smaller portion of sales for defense conglomerates. International sales at Boeing’s defense division represented about 35 percent of its business in 2014. At Lockheed Martin, that figure was only 20 percent.
Take the Popeye missile, one of the Israeli Air Force’s most advanced weapons, as an example. Developed by state-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the Popeye can accurately hit targets through a window from over 60 miles away. It is one of the air force’s most sophisticated standoff missiles. But how many can the Israeli Air Force order? To keep prices down, it needs to export the missile. That is why one of Israel’s most sophisticated weapons—the type of technology a country would usually want to keep to itself—has been sold to the US, India, South Korea, Australia and Turkey.13
In short, if Israel doesn’t export the Popeye, Rafael won’t be able to afford to develop and produce it.
But this is not always simple. Controversial sales, like that of the Phalcon to China, can create tension and suspicion between friends. Allies need to be able to trust one another, and arms deals can undermine that trust.
In 2005, following the crisis over Israel’s China sales, the Defense Ministry established a new mechanism to oversee its defense exports. Until then, all defense sales were overseen by a Defense Ministry unit called SIBAT, whose primary task was to promote defense sales overseas and help companies make connections with foreign governments. Under the new mechanism, Israel established the Defense Export Control Agency (DECA), which registers exporters, approves sales and issues licenses to sell in foreign markets.
Israel also agreed to increase coordination with the United States. Basically, whenever a sensitive arms sale is on the table, Israel consults the Pentagon. Loss of independence was a heavy price but one worth paying to stay on Washington’s good side.
That new mechanism was what brought a group of senior Israeli defense officials to the Pentagon in late 2008. They had come to discuss something unprecedented—a billion-dollar deal to sell Israeli military drones to Russia.
This was not a regular sale. Israel is the world’s largest exporter of drones; it has sold unmanned aircraft to countries in Africa, Europe, South America, the US and Asia. But it has never sold drones—or any weaponry, for that matter—to Russia. For decades, Russia has served as the main arms supplier of Israel’s enemies, particularly Iran and Syria. Russian arms, such as anti-tank missiles, have also found their way to Hezbollah and Hamas. If Israel sold its own technology to Russia, there was a strong likelihood it would one day find its way to Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.
Russia’s interest in Israeli drones was sparked during the war it fought with Georgia in South Ossetia in the summer of 2008. The war lasted five days, and while Russia ultimately won—ending the war by recognizing the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia—the fighting exposed a severe decline in the Russian military’s technological capabilities, particularly when it came to drones.
In the weeks leading up to the war, and amid growing concern that Russia was going to annex the breakaway territories, Georgia began flying drones on routine reconnaissance missions over the conflict zone. These weren’t just any drones. They were Hermes 450s, manufactured by Elbit in Israel and used by the Israeli Air Force. In the span of three months, Russia shot down three drones. In one memorable downing, Georgia released a video showing a MiG fighter jet firing a missile at the drone and scoring a direct hit.
While the downings of the drones were impressive on their own, Georgia’s use of drones highlighted a problem on the Russia side. To begin with, Russian drones were late to the battlefield and failed to provide real-time intelligence, forcing Moscow instead to dispatch fighter jets and long-range bombers for standard recon missions. One drone used during the war was the old Tipchak, which Russia later admitted made too much noise, making it easy to detect and intercept.
On the other hand, the Georgian military effectively gathered intelligence, largely due to its small fleet of Israeli drones.14
Weeks after the war ended, Russia turned to Israel and asked to purchase the Hermes 450, the same drone used by Georgia. Israel was initially shocked. Russia had never before purchased weapons from a foreign country, let alone from Israel. But the war was a wake-up call for Moscow, which was willing to admit that it needed technological assistance.
Everyone agreed that no matter what, Israel could not sell drones that were still in operational IAF use. During the Second Lebanon War, in 2006, Hezbollah fired dozens of Russian anti-tank missiles at Israeli tanks. The last thing Israel could afford was to have its own drones one day be used against it.
But then defense officials came up with an idea. What if, by selling drones to Russia, Israel could prevent the sale of sophisticated arms that were supposed to be delivered to Iran or Syria? That would not only make it possible to live with the risk the drone sale posed, it could even make it worthwhile.15
In Israel, opinions were split. The Foreign Ministry supported the sale and claimed that it could help strengthen ties with Moscow, especially at a time when Iran was moving ahead with its nuclear program. The sale of drones, these officials argued, would provide Israel with real leverage over Russian policy on issues such as Iran. While the Defense Ministry was in favor of obtaining some leverage over Moscow, it had difficulty overcoming the genuine concern that the drone technology would one day find its way to Iran, Syria and then even Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
At the time, there was one Russian arms deal that everyone in Israel agreed needed to be stopped at all costs: the delivery of the advanced S-300 air defense system to Iran. The original $800 million deal had been signed secretly in 2005, but under pressure from Israel and the US, Russia was delaying delivery.
Israel’s reasons to even consider such a quid pro quo were simple. The S-300 was one of the most advanced air defense systems in the world, was combat proven, could track up to 100 targets simultaneously and had the potential to make an Israeli air strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities impossible.
The Russians were well aware of Israel’s concern regarding the S-300. It came up in almost every conversation. About a week after the war ended in South Ossetia, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert spoke by phone with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. Russia was upset with Israel for supplying Georgia with arms and drones. During the conversation, Olmert agreed to a moratorium on Israeli arms sales to Georgia but also pressed Moscow on its sale of weapons to Syria and Iran.16
Officially, the Kremlin gave Israel assurances that it would not transfer weapons to Iran that could destabilize the region, a message that could be interpreted as a decision not to supply the S-300. At the same time, though, Moscow explained to Israel that if Iran met its obligations to the IAEA—the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog—delivery of the S-300 would be reexamined positively.17 Anyhow, the Kremlin argued, the S-300 was a defensive system, and Israel, if concerned about it, should simply not attack.
Russia refused to reveal its true intentions. In early 2009, for example, US senator Carl Levin visited Russia. Levin was chairman at the time of the Senate Armed Services Committee and had come to Moscow to try to increase cooperation on missile defense in the face of Iran’s continued pursuit of a nuclear weapon. A vocal supporter of Israel, Levin also raised the S-300 sale and urged Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov to hold back from delivering the weapons system to Iran. But Ryabkov stood strong, saying that while the deal was currently frozen, it didn’t help that everyone kept talking about it.
“The less we hear from Washington about this, the better,” he said.18
News of the freeze did not alleviate Israeli concerns. In Jerusalem, some thought that an attack on Iran would need to be moved up so it could take place before the S-300 arrived.
Israel made sure to get this message out to some of the moderate Arab states it was friendly with in the Persian Gulf. United Arab Emirates (UAE) chief of staff Hamid Thani al Rumaithi, for example, met with Richard Olson, the US ambassador to Abu Dhabi, in early 2009 with an urgent request: that the US immediately deploy five Patriot missile defense batteries in the UAE. The reason was fear that due to the S-300 deal, Israel was on the verge of attacking Iran, and Iran would then retaliate against the UAE.19
“I need to be open and frank with you, there are changes in the region that concern us,” Rumaithi told Olson. The Patriot batteries, he explained, would be deployed in and around Abu Dhabi to protect against potential Iranian missile attacks in retaliation to an Israeli strike. When pressed on what might precipitate an Israeli attack, Rumaithi referred to the delivery of the S-300 system. “I don’t trust the Russians, I’ve never trusted the Russians or the Iranians,” he added.
* * *
Back in Israel, the drone deal suddenly became even more urgent. The final decision, though, wasn’t just in the hands of the Defense Ministry. If the Foreign Ministry vetoed the deal, the Defense Ministry could still bring the sale to the Israeli Security Cabinet, which had the authority to overturn the decision.
The Security Cabinet convened a number of times during 2009 to discuss the proposed deal. Russia wanted to purchase long-endurance drones like the ones Georgia had used during the war. Israel made a counter offer: it would consider selling drones, but only older models like the Searcher, which the air force had retired several years before.
In June 2009, Israel’s new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, flew to Moscow. That occurred during a period of flourishing Israeli-Russian ties, cultivated mostly by the Moldovan-born Lieberman. By that summer, five Israeli cabinet ministers had visited Moscow, tourism was at an all-time high, a free trade agreement was in the works and Russia was talking to Israel about hosting a Middle East peace conference in Moscow.
In some Washington circles there was concern that Israel was looking to replace the US as its primary ally. Israeli-US ties were frayed, in any case. Benjamin Netanyahu had been reelected as Israel’s prime minister and was already knocking heads with Barack Obama, the new US president.
During his meetings in Moscow, Lieberman raised the S-300 sale. The Russians, who openly opposed an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, told him that the S-300 was “only destabilizing if you are planning to attack Iran” and refused to rule out supplying the system.20
Lieberman walked away with a clear conclusion—that finalizing the S-300 deal was a matter of Russian prestige and would ultimately be carried out. If there was any doubt about the need to move ahead with the drone sale, it disappeared when Lieberman returned to Jerusalem.
A few weeks later, top American and Israeli officials gathered in Tel Aviv for the annual Strategic Dialogue, a forum established to discuss regional developments as well as practical ways to ensure Israel’s qualitative military edge over its neighbors. The S-300 came up, and the Israelis revealed to the Americans their most recent discovery, that Russia was planning to move ahead with the deal if the United States continued its plan to deploy missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic.21
If Israel was going to move ahead with the drone deal, now was the time.
Before it could sign with Moscow, Israel had to pass one more major hurdle, which was the United States. Russia and America were old adversaries, and Washington would not be happy with Israel’s selling advanced drones to a country that once was—and in some circles still is—an enemy.
One of the first American officials to hear about the proposed sale was Mary Beth Long, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. Long, who was the first American official to give a boost to the Iron Dome rocket defense system, was taken aback by the Israeli request mostly because it came at a time when Israel was asking the US not to sell advanced weaponry to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States. “You are saying I can’t have arms sales to Arab countries without approval and you are selling advanced weapons that may or may not be a derivative of US tech to Russia,” Long told her Israeli counterparts.22
The Israelis argued. First, they claimed that the technology was not based on anything that originated in the US. Second, they told Long that the drones they would sell to Russia were just a slight qualitative improvement over Moscow’s current capability and were no different from drones China was offering to sell the Russians.23
Long asked about the possibility that Russia would one day transfer the technology to Hezbollah or Iran, but the Israelis assured her that even if that happened, the drones currently in Israeli use were a generation ahead of the ones it would be selling Moscow.
If Israel sold the drones to Russia, Russia would occasionally need Israel for routine maintenance, spare parts and know-how. This dependence, Israel figured, could be leveraged into real influence over Russian foreign policy and, particularly, arms sales to Israel’s Arab adversaries. If the Kremlin did something against Israeli interests, Jerusalem could ground the Russian drones by refusing to sell spare parts or perform routine maintenance.
Long brought the proposal to her superiors. A Pentagon team was established to review the Israeli drones and found them to be clean of US technology and on par with the drones China was offering to sell. While Washington did not like Israel’s growing alliance with Russia, it grudgingly gave Jerusalem the green light to move ahead with the sale.
“Because it’s a joint venture and Russia will have skin in the game, the Israelis thought they could later perhaps maneuver to have influence over Russian decision making in Iran and the larger region,” Long recalled.
If a deal was happening, it might as well happen with Israel.
* * *
For nearly five years, Israel’s drone deal seemed to do the trick. Iran kept pressuring Russia to deliver the S-300, but the Kremlin refused to supply the system. Reports that Iranians were training on the S-300 in Russia popped up now and again, rattling nerves in Jerusalem, but the system stayed grounded in Russia.
In the summer of 2015, though, everything changed. After nearly a year of negotiations, Western superpowers led by the United States—the P5+1—reached a historic deal with Iran to curb its nuclear program. With a deal in place, Russia again started making noise that there was no longer a reason to delay delivery. The contract, the state-run Russian Technologies Corporation said, was “back in force.”
Israel began prepping for a new diplomatic fight. But then something unexpected happened. In September, Russia started bombing ISIS targets in Syria as part of an effort to salvage Bashar al-Assad’s regime. It deployed squadrons of combat aircraft to Syria and dispatched navy warships and submarines in the Mediterranean. Israel hadn’t seen the Russian military along its borders since the Soviets left Egypt in the 1970s. Concerned about a potential misunderstanding that could lead to a conflict, Israeli prime minister Netanyahu flew immediately to Moscow to set up, with President Vladimir Putin, a delicate coordination mechanism between the IDF and the Russian army.
In November, a Russian Sukhoi bomber was shot down by Turkey. Furious, Moscow threatened military action and suspended trade with Ankara. But then Putin did something else. He sent the S-400—an upgraded version of the S-300—not to Iran, the place whose acquisition of the system Israel had fought against for years, but to Syria, right along Israel’s northern border, literally in the Israeli Air Force’s backyard.
Like the S-300, the S-400 can track and intercept multiple targets from distances of hundreds of miles, but it also comes with an upgraded radar system more resistant to jamming as well as a variety of missiles that provide several layers of defense. With an extended range, the S-400 can shoot down planes over Tel Aviv all the way from Syrian territory.
For Israel, the news was shocking. “In our worst nightmares, we never thought this would happen,” one senior IAF officer said.
Beyond the operational ramifications—the IAF needed to change some of its flight patterns—the Russian deployment in Syria showed Israel that arms sales are limited in their influence. In a region as complex as the Middle East, reality will always be stronger.