Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz surprised observers last week when he announced that Israel and several Arab countries had joined a U.S.-led air defense alliance aimed at countering Iran. 

If Gantz can be taken at his word, this “Middle East Air Defense Alliance” (MEAD) isn’t particularly new. In fact, he said it has already thwarted multiple Iranian attacks, possibly dating back to last year.

The announcement may have also been news to Congress. Just two weeks before Gantz’s comments, members of the House and Senate introduced a bill calling for something that sounds a lot like the MEAD. And sources on Capitol Hill told Responsible Statecraft that there is currently only loose “coordination” on air defense in the region, suggesting a disconnect between Washington and Tel Aviv on what’s actually happening on the ground.

One thing is clear amid this confusion: If the MEAD does exist, none of its other members are as zealous as Israel about promoting it. No U.S. sources have confirmed its existence, and the names of Arab participants have not been made public (though many assume it could include Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Jordan, all of which reportedly took part in a high-level military meeting with the United States and Israel in March).

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, said Gantz’s announcement might be an “information management strategy” ahead of President Joe Biden's trip to the Middle East next month.

“It could well be the case that it's an attempt also by the Israelis to create narratives around the idea of regional cooperation with Arab Gulf countries, such as the UAE and potentially Saudi Arabia, given that they feel that they share a common threat from Iran,” said Coates Ulrichsen.

Pentagon spokesperson Major Rob Lodewick told Responsible Statecraft that the DoD is “well aware” of Gantz’s announcement but declined to weigh in on it directly. “DoD’s commitment to increasing regional cooperation against shared threats emanating from Iran is nothing new,” said Lodewick in an email, adding that “networked security cooperation remains a high priority.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), one of the bill’s cosponsors in the House, said in an email that “integrated air defense architecture that protects civilians and infrastructure is overdue” in light of Iranian attacks. “​​I am confident that this bicameral, bipartisan bill will protect US security interests and will strive to preserve peace in the Middle East,” Bacon wrote without directly acknowledging Gantz’s claims.

Responsible Statecraft also reached out to the White House, Israel’s Ministry of Defense, and sixteen additional members of Congress, including the other nine cosponsors of the bill, known as the DEFENSE Act. None responded to questions about the MEAD’s existence or its supposed operational goals.

“Middle East NATO” and its discontents

If MEAD is real, it’s just the latest in a long line of U.S.-led attempts to build a formal military alliance in the Middle East. The most recent try came in 2017 when then-President Donald Trump launched the Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA), which aimed to bring the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Jordan, Egypt and the United States under the same security umbrella.

In the end, MESA hit up against the same set of obstacles that any future air defense alliance might face. Notably, potential participants have diverse security interests that are sometimes at odds. “These countries have different threat perceptions of Iran,” said Giorgio Cafiero of Gulf State Analytics, adding that even willing countries “cannot easily integrate their military platforms and technology.”

Israeli participation adds further complications. As Cafiero noted, many Arab states are unwilling to publicly work with Israel. Prominent GCC members like Oman and Kuwait have never had official relations with Tel Aviv, and Iraq recently passed a law that could lead to life imprisonment for anyone who promotes normalization with Israel.

Some are wary of how news of an alliance would be received in Tehran, especially as Iraq continues its efforts to restart direct talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Qatar is also keen to keep things cordial in the region as it prepares to host diplomats from the U.S. and Iran for nuclear talks. 

“​​I think that the concern is the way it's being presented as something that is designed to deal with Iran, to confront Iran,” said Barbara Slavin of the Atlantic Council, arguing such a provocative framing isn’t “particularly wise.”

“But on the other hand, it is reality,” Slavin continued. “That's what brings these countries together. It's not love for the Palestinian cause. It's fear of Iran.”

America is back?

Even if the MEAD announcement was an exaggeration, many in Washington are champing at the bit to increase security cooperation in the Middle East. Exhibit A for this trend is the above-mentioned DEFENSE Act.

The bill’s supporters say they want to incorporate it into the 2023 defense budget, which is currently making its way through committee mark-ups in the House and Senate. If they succeed in this effort, the proposal may not end up facing much scrutiny. After all, last year’s defense spending bill stretched to over 900 pages, leaving ample room for things to slip through the cracks. But, given the bill’s potential effects on U.S. policy, it’s worth taking a closer look.

The proposal’s backers say an air defense alliance is key to deterring Iranian aggression and building on the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab countries. But detractors worry that it could force the United States to maintain a major military presence in the region, increasing the risk that Washington gets drawn into regional disputes. After all, the plan calls for defending against Iran and its regional partners, which are spread  across Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq.

The bill also raises questions on the domestic front. Saudi Arabia would be a key member of any defense alliance in the region, but the powerful monarchy’s brand has taken major hits in recent years among members of Congress and activists in the U.S. As rumors swirled in recent weeks that Biden plans to offer “security guarantees” to Riyadh, Sarah Leah Whitson of DAWN called it a “humiliating capitulation.”

“Biden’s promised recalibration of America’s decades of disastrous support for Saudi Arabia’s government is mutating into an unprecedented deepening of U.S. obligations,” Whitson wrote in the American Prospect.

Despite the bad optics, Biden seems determined to respond to accusations that the United States is withdrawing from the region. With rising oil prices and waning chances of reviving the Iran nuclear deal, the White House may be trying to reassure its partners as they get ready for a “more insecure” post-JCPOA world, according to Coates Ulrichsen.

But for many observers, the only sustainable path to security in the region is through a return to the JCPOA, followed by further rounds of regional diplomacy.

“The JCPOA, in my view, is the only realistic way to prevent nuclear brinkmanship from spiraling out of control,” said Cafiero, adding that MEAD-style defense alliances will never be enough to “guarantee the safety of these countries from Iran surrogate operations.”

“It is through diplomacy with Tehran that countries in the region can find ways to lower the temperatures and decrease friction with the Islamic Republic and find some ways to stabilize their relationships with Iran,” he said. “And I believe the U.S. should be encouraging regional actors to do so.”