US details Pentagon role in defending Israel against Iranian attack

As Iran launched its highly anticipated attack on Israel on Saturday, the night sky was filled with deadly threats. More than 100 ballistic missiles were fired, senior US officials said, supplemented by around 30 cruise missiles and more than 150 explosive drones.

Israel's vaunted missile defense systems stepped up to attack munitions as they were launched from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Yemen. But they were flanked by American and British fighter jets, a Patriot missile defense system flown by American troops in Iraq and American destroyers off the Israeli coast, each ready to help.

The result, a senior Biden administration official said Sunday, was a spectacular defeat of the Iranian attack, although it was larger than U.S. officials had anticipated.

You can imagine those tense moments, the official said, speaking to reporters Sunday on condition of anonymity in accordance with ground rules established by the White House.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said on the Sunday, April 14 broadcast that President Biden is seeking to deescalate tensions in the Middle East. (Video: Joshua Carroll/The Washington Post)

Among the American forces that participated were the 494th Fighter Squadron, headquartered in Britain; and the 335th Fighter Squadron from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina. Together, the two squadrons used their F-15E Strike Eagles to shoot down approximately 70 attack drones heading toward Israel, and later received a phone call from President Biden. The jets are designed for both air-to-air combat and deep interdiction, the Air Force says.

A senior military official, speaking on the same call, said the destroyers USS Carney and USS Arleigh Burke, in the eastern Mediterranean, shot down between four and six ballistic missiles during the attack. U.S. troops manning the Patriot missile defense system in Erbil, Iraq, shot down another missile that violated Iraqi airspace on its way to Israel, the official said.

In total, Israeli and U.S. officials said 99 percent of the incoming munitions were intercepted, suggesting that only a few may have hit their targets in the Jewish state. At least one ballistic missile prepared by the Houthis in Yemen was destroyed at the launch pad, officials said, highlighting the presence of the coalition that has monitored militant activity in the region in recent months.

There is virtually no damage to infrastructure in Israel, the senior administration official said. This, he said, happened despite Iran's intention to cause significant damage and deaths in Israel.

Iranian drones similar to those used in the attack have been deployed by Russian forces to target Ukrainian infrastructure, and a key strategy is to wear down Kiev's costly air defenses with cheaper and abundant weapons to facilitate future attacks, said Samuel Bendett, a fellow in the Russia studies program at the Center for Naval Analyses, a policy institute based in Arlington, Virginia. Tehran almost certainly took note, Bendett said.

It is worth noting that some of the drones used are slower and less sophisticated than the jet drones they also have in their inventory, he said, and it is likely that Iran knew these drones would be destroyed relatively easily.

But the attack still imposed new challenges on Israel, Bendett suggested. Achieving a 99 percent interception rate requires defenses that are likely far more expensive than the total number of threats launched against Israel, he said.

In this case, the mission was accomplished, he said. Israel had to take off its planes.

Overall, Iran's success has been hit or miss, said Tom Karako, missile defense project director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. There was no strategic surprise and the overall defeat of the threat demonstrated the value of diverse air defense systems capable of handling many types of weapons, he said.

Still, the scale of the operation itself raises questions about the stockpiles now available for air defense systems, Karako said, which are limited and expensive.

The problem here is that Israel has shot a lot of things. So this speaks to their capacity issues, Karako said. You don't remove 100 ballistic missiles of any type without tapping into its capacity. So this is going to be a problem here for the next steps.

Retired Gen. Kenneth Frank McKenzie, who oversaw U.S. forces in the Middle East before retiring in 2022, said Sunday that Iran also spent a lot of resources on the attack, which would affect its ability to carry out something similar soon. Speaking on CBS News Face the Nation, McKenzie said Iran has more than 3,000 missiles of various types scattered across the country, including just over 100 in western Iran, where they can target Israel.

From what the Israelis say, I believe they fired most of these weapons at Israel, McKenzie said. The Israelis obviously managed to intercept most of them. Iran could not repeat last night's attack tonight if it had to.

McKenzie called the attack a maximum effort and said there was nothing moderate about it. Iran used its most important capability, ballistic missiles, in the assault, and it still failed, he assessed.

So I think Israel is much stronger this morning than yesterday, McKenzie said. And Iran is relatively weaker than yesterday.

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