Israel has transferred Iron Dome air-defence batteries — along with the personnel needed to operate them — to the United Arab Emirates, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said in a Tuesday morning interview with Israeli radio. The disclosure followed near-identical remarks from US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz at a Monday-evening event at the Israeli mission in New York, in what diplomats and analysts in three capitals read as a deliberate joint release with the blessing of both the Israeli and Emirati governments.
The batteries, which include the radar arrays and Tamir-missile launchers that have become the visual signature of Israeli home-front defence, were sent to defend the UAE against the wave of Iranian drone and missile attacks that began in early May. The Emirates intercepted twelve ballistic missiles, three cruise missiles and four drones in the first two days of May, with schools and universities moving online in response.
Huckabee framed the transfer as a consequence of the 2020 Abraham Accords, the Trump-brokered normalisation deal between Israel and the UAE. "There's an extraordinary relationship between the UAE and Israel based on the Abraham Accords," the ambassador said. "When the Emiratis needed help, Israel was the country that could give it most quickly." Neither government has commented officially. The Israeli prime minister's office referred reporters to the defence ministry, which did not respond.
The Iron Dome export marks the first known operational deployment of the system on a foreign territory other than US training ranges. Israeli defence officials have for years been cautious about transferring the technology, citing both export-control rules tied to the system's American co-financing and concerns about reverse engineering. Approval was reportedly given personally by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant in late April.
The disclosure compounds a separate revelation that emerged earlier on Tuesday: a Wall Street Journal report citing US officials that the UAE itself had covertly carried out strikes on Iranian territory during the war, including on the Lavan Island refinery in the Persian Gulf. The combined picture — a Gulf monarchy operating Iron Dome batteries and conducting offensive strikes against Iran — represents the most significant change in the Gulf's post-1979 strategic posture in a generation.
In Tehran, foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the disclosures vindicated Iranian "warnings about Gulf complicity in the aggression" and warned of "consequences proportionate to the action". Iranian state media reported a 2 per cent rise in tensions but markets did not move sharply on the announcement, with Brent crude holding the gains it had built earlier on Trump's rejection of the Tehran proposal.
In Washington, the apparent coordination of the Huckabee and Waltz remarks was read on Capitol Hill as deliberate signalling — both to Tehran, that further attacks on the UAE will be met with Israeli air defence, and to other Gulf states, that the Abraham Accords have become a working defence framework rather than a paper arrangement. Senate Armed Services chair Tom Cotton called the move "the right answer to the right problem".