In December, the Israeli Defense Ministry announced that it would buy tens of thousands of new standard-issue rifles from a domestic manufacturer, instead of importing them from the U.S. And on Tuesday, it sealed a deal with Elbit—known for its drones and other advanced military technology—for the manufacture of heavy bombs and the raw materials used for producing rocket and missile fuel. The goal of these measures isn’t to make American military assistance unnecessary, but to lessen Israel’s dependence.

The editors of the Jerusalem Post consider the event last March that made it “painfully evident” that this dependence had become a problem:

three soldiers were killed and another fourteen were wounded when an explosion went off in a booby-trapped building in Khan Yunis. In the debate that followed the incident over why the IDF sent in troops to destroy the building, rather than doing it from the air, one reason proffered was that the IDF was reserving the type of bomb that would have been needed to level the building for other operations. In other words, Israel was afraid of running out of bombs, and the IDF was carefully monitoring its supply of ordnance to be able to fight a long war on numerous fronts.

The long-term danger of this type of dependence on the U.S. for arms became even more acutely evident in November, when Senator Bernie Sanders sponsored three different bills that would have embargoed future arms sales to Israel. . . . Though the bills were roundly defeated, about one-third of Democratic senators voted for the measures, something that justifiably causes concern when considering whether the U.S. will continue to be as forthcoming in its sale of arms to Israel a decade from now.

No country, especially not one of Israel’s size, can attain full weapons independence. But at the same time, this dependence can be reduced, so as to decrease the amount of leverage other nations—even friendly ones like the U.S—can have on Israel’s decision-making process during times of war.

In a recent episode of 60 Minutes, a former State Department official tells the interviewer that U.S. support for Israel following October 7 has “put a target on America’s back” in the Arab world “and beyond the Arab world.” The complaint is a familiar one: Middle Easterners hate the United States because of its closeness to the Jewish state. But this gets things exactly backward. Just look at the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its various Arab proxies: America is the “Great Satan” and Israel is but the “Little Satan.”

Why, then, does Iran see the U.S. as the world’s primary source of evil? The usual answer invokes the shah’s 1953 ouster of his prime minister, but the truth is that this wasn’t the subversion of democracy it’s usually made out to be, and the CIA’s role has been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, Ladan Boroumand points out,

the 1953 coup was welcomed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, [the architect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution], and would not have succeeded without the active complicity of proponents of political Islam. And . . . the United States not only refrained from opposing the Islamic Revolution but inadvertently supported its emergence and empowered its agents. How then could . . . Ayatollah Khomeini’s virulent enmity toward the United States be explained or excused?

Khomeini’s animosity toward the shah and the United States traces back to 1963–64, when the shah initiated sweeping social reforms that included granting women the right to vote and to run for office and extending religious minorities’ political rights. These reforms prompted the pro-shah cleric of 1953 to become his vocal critic. It wasn’t the shah’s autocratic rule that incited Khomeini’s opposition, but rather the liberal nature of his autocratically implemented social reforms.

There is no need for particular interpretive skill to comprehend the substance of Khomeini’s message: as Satan, America embodies the temptation that seduces Iranian citizens into sin and falsehood. “Human rights” and “democracy” are America’s tools for luring sinful and deviant citizens into conspiring against the government of God established by the ayatollah.

Or, as George W. Bush put it, jihadists hate America because “they hate our freedoms.”