graphic here
Glenn Kessler in WAPO:
This week, Israel successfully conducted a test of a new mobile missile-defense system designed to shield Israeli towns from small rockets launched from the Gaza Strip. When the "Iron Dome" system is fully deployed in the next year, about half the cost -- $205 million -- will be borne by U.S. taxpayers under a plan advanced by the Obama administration and broadly supported in Congress.
While public attention has focused on the fierce diplomatic disputes between Israel and the United States over settlement expansion in Palestinian territories, security and military ties between the two nations have grown ever closer during the Obama administration.
As well it should. You don't ask friends to do difficult things (or accept difficult realities) without incentivizing them.
As always, I like my missile defense close in, covering those whom MAD cannot address except by extension (always mistrusted).
To me, this sort of stuff is exactly how we handle Iran's inevitable achievement of nuclear weapons, which isn't about achieving anything militarily, because nothing can be militarily achieved in this manner. Instead, it's about other subjects, where logically we can and should give Iran just enough rope to hang itself on the question of regime legitimacy--or the popular lack thereof.
In short, you deprive them of the enemy, which is how you Gorbachev their Brezhnevian carcass.