TIMES OF ISRAEL
by Rebecca Shimoni Stoil
August 29, 2014
WASHINGTON — Exactly how bad are Israel-US relations today? Who the Hellfire knows. What is clear is that two weeks after the revelation that the US had added an additional level of scrutiny to resupplying the IDF with weapons, business was anything but usual regarding the military-to-military relationship upon which Israel relies.
The administration in Washington is hunkered down tight on the transfer of Hellfire missiles to the IDF — a transfer that would most likely have been routine until the additional level of scrutiny was applied. And, despite optimism that the transfer would soon go ahead as planned, no such action has been confirmed by Washington. Details on the timeline for the release of the Hellfires have proven elusive. Even on Capitol Hill, the sense is that the missiles will be released “soon” — a word repeated in numerous off-the-record conversations on the subject — but neither the timeline, nor the mechanism for their release, is clear.
Washington has, in fact, been extremely closed-lipped about the Hellfires. It has been two weeks since The Wall Street Journal first reported that the White House had been caught off-guard by transfers of military equipment from the Pentagon to the IDF in the course of Operation Protective Edge.
According to that report, the administration responded to the surprise by tying up further arms transfers in an additional multi-agency review process. Some transfers requested by the IDF have since been released, but a request for additional Hellfire missiles remains unfulfilled…..
ArchitectGuy on Israel 