Amid reports today that an American radar system is being set up in Israel, it’s hard not to suspect that there’s more to the story than meets the eye. The Israeli news, like Haaretz, are describing the system as being “meant to augment Israel’s defenses against Iranian ground-to-ground missiles”. The BBC, likewise, emphasizes the added protection Israel receives from Iranian missiles.

I don’t want to sound too cynical, but I think Israel’s enhanced protection is just, frankly, a lucky side benefit of the system’s real purpose, and is being “spun” to make the installation more palatable to the Israeli public. Why? Well, it all has to do with the radar system itself…
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The situation in Somalia involving a Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks and other weapons seized by pirates last week is continuing to develop in interesting ways; the U.S. Navy presence seems to be growing - as the Voice of America reports, there are now an “unspecified number” of both destroyers and cruisers on site. My educated guess is that that “unspecified number” is “one of each” - the destroyer “USS Howard” (DDG 83) and the cruiser “USS Bunker Hill” (CG-52), which is known to be a part of Combined Task Force 150. At the same time, at least one Russian warship is headed to the area, according to reports - the frigate Neustrashimy.

An English-language television interview with one of the captured crewmembers can be seen below; the footage of pirates appears to be from encounters earlier this year. Of particular interest to me is the pirate seen wielding a samurai sword: