In order to supply Kyiv with artillery shells, the United States decided to tap into an unknown American ammunition depot in Israel. A decision that puts Tel Aviv in a delicate situation vis-à-vis Russia, which Israeli diplomacy is trying to resolve.
American military aid to Ukraine sometimes takes surprising paths. These are happening in particular to Israel, a country which, however, has pledged not to supply arms to either warring faction since the beginning of the war.
The Pentagon is indeed drawing on the ammunition and equipment reserves that the United States has on Jewish state soil to support Kyiv against Moscow, the New York Times revealed Tuesday, January 17.
Ammunition hidden somewhere in Israel
Tel Aviv agreed that Washington would withdraw about 300,000 ammunition to send to Ukraine. Half is already being shipped, Israeli and American officials told the New York Times. The request was “made during an encrypted phone conversation between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and then-Israeli Secretary of Defense Benny Gantz,” explains the American daily.
This deal was therefore negotiated ahead of December 29, 2022 and the return to power of conservative Benjamin Netanyahu, who is known to be closer to Vladimir Putin than his predecessor Yair Lapid.
This Israeli detour of American aid highlights the existence of an arms depot in Israel, little known to the general public, which contains an undetermined number of arms and ammunition stored in locations whose location is undisclosed.
These are the WRSA-I – the War Reserve Stocks for Allies-Israel or “War Reserve Stocks for Allies-Israel” – which have “a maximum of $4 billion worth of ammunition and weapons,” according to a US congressional report Aid for Israel releases in 2022.
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The establishment of this depot was decided by mutual agreement between Washington and Tel Aviv after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. It was intended to facilitate American military support to its key ally in the region in the event of a crisis and “to prevent what happened in 1973, when US President Richard Nixon delayed arms deliveries to Israel,” Politico said in an article published in 2014 via WRSA-I.
Initially, in the 1980s, the ammunition stored there could only be used by the US should it intervene directly in a conflict in the region. Furthermore, these weapons were never exclusively reserved for the defense of Israel.
In 1989, President George HW Bush allowed the Israeli military to use it, but only as a last resort during a crisis. And Washington had to agree. So this turning point had everything to do with the US government’s efforts to sell armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia, the congressional report underscores. The United States wanted to reassure Tel Aviv by giving it access to this gigantic ammunition depot.
Ukraine fires 90,000 shells a month
Washington opened the doors of the WRSA-I much wider in the early 2000s. The Israeli request to dive into these reserves required only the approval of the American military. Political power may not even be informed.
A reality that caught the White House by surprise in 2014 during one of the only two episodes in which Israel used these munitions. Eight years after receiving the green light from Washington in 2006 for use during the conflict against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Israeli army used this stock during the war in Gaza. Only Barack Obama didn’t know about it in 2014. The US President was presented with a fait accompli when he discovered that mortar shells from his stockpile in Israel had been used to bomb Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“This discovery came as a shock that made Barack Obama angry with Benjamin Netanyahu,” reported the Wall Street Journal in 2014. But the American president couldn’t do much about it: Tel Aviv had followed the procedure to the letter, which didn’t ask him just for approval of American soldiers to get.
Likewise, the Israeli government cannot really prevent Washington from using a stash it owns to help Ukraine. The United States has no real choice if it wants to continue supporting Kyiv.
Ukraine is almost 100% dependent on western artillery shells to continue holding its own against Russia, the New York Times recalls. Problem: Ukraine consumes nearly 90,000 shells a month, almost twice what the United States and its European allies can produce monthly, according to American authorities polled by the New York Times.
It is therefore necessary to dive into stocks. Washington doesn’t want to draw too heavily on its national reserves, preferring to mine its stockpiles abroad, the two main ones in Israel and South Korea. Seoul accepted without flinching.
The art of not upsetting Moscow
For its part, Tel Aviv does not want to upset Moscow. “Primarily because Israel must maneuver freely in Syria and Russia controls the Syrian skies,” says Omri Brinner, analyst and Middle East geopolitics expert at the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS) Verona, an international expert collective in Verona international security issues.
But that’s not all. Israel must also have good relations with Russia in order to have access, if necessary, to information about the actions of Iran, one of Moscow’s best allies in the region.
“However, this transfer of ammunition from Israel to the Ukrainian front should not affect Israeli-Russian relations too much, since Tel Aviv can always say that it is American ammunition transported by the Americans,” Omri Brinner emphasizes. However, this expert would not be surprised if Moscow asked Tel Aviv “for a concession, be it in the field of intelligence [échange d’informations, NDLR] or in the economic field.
The American decision also poses an internal security problem for Israel. “Had the government believed that there was an imminent threat to Israel, they would certainly have protested this ammunition transfer more strongly,” said an expert on Russian-Israeli relations interviewed by France 24, who preferred to remain anonymous.
In a way, Israel’s approval, received by Washington without too many problems, proves that the Jewish state is feeling pretty safe right now. The United States has certainly promised that they will replenish the WRSA-I as soon as possible, but in the current context of the war in Ukraine, finding 300,000 ammunition overnight may not be easy. . But not impossible, believes Omri Brinner: “Washington can quickly access the other stocks they have in the region, whether in Egypt or Saudi Arabia.”
