The highly coordinated manner in which America and Israel – specifically, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) and the IDF – swung into action against Iran on February 28 would make it seem as if things were always this way. But, as the song goes, “it ain’t necessarily so.”
Indeed, James Forrestal, the US’s first Secretary of Defense, may well be spinning in his grave.
In his day – when he led the newly created Department of Defense (now the Department of War) following World War II – the organization, and he personally, were fierce opponents of President Harry Truman’s support for the creation and recognition of the State of Israel.
Frustration over this matter may have contributed to Forrestal’s decision to take his own life. For decades later, the American defense establishment continued to look upon Israel as a liability, not an asset.
Yet now, for the first time in history, we have reached the point of full cooperation in battle as true allies, even if no formal treaty binds us.
Game changer
One can trace the roots back to 1970, when Israel was willing to go to war with Soviet-backed Syria to protect Jordan. Another milestone was President Ronald Reagan’s concept of strategic cooperation.
Yet, even if by 1979, it was clear that the new Iranian regime was a common enemy, and that Israeli-Egyptian peace broke the myth that Arab-Israeli relations were a zero-sum game, when Reagan created a new regional command – CENTCOM – to defend the Gulf countries, Israel was still left out, remaining in the EUCOM Area of Responsibility.
In 1991, when Israel came under attack by then-president Saddam Hussein’s missiles from Iraq, it was still US policy to bar Israeli participation in the military effort to liberate Kuwait, for fear that the Arab countries would leave and the coalition would disintegrate.
Due to the need to provide early warning, CENTCOM did establish a liaison at the headquarter of the Israel Defense Forces – but that was the exception, not the rule.
The real game changer came five years ago, when Israel was formally transferred from EUCOM to CENTCOM. What may have looked at first like a technicality was, in fact, a transformative event, paving the way for much of what we have been seeing since October 2023, and culminating in the combined current operations, respectively called Epic Fury by the US and Rising Lion by Israel.
Significant developments
Two significant developments made this decision possible, one of them cumulative and the other more dramatic.
The cumulative change reflected the growing sense within the ranks of the US armed forces that Israel is indeed an asset. To begin with, Israel never asked Americans to lay down their lives in its defense. Churchill’s famous saying, “give us the tools and we shall finish the work” applies to Israel more than it actually did to wartime Britain.
There are those in America and elsewhere who have tried to tar the US military operations in Iran in 2025 and 2026 as instigated on behalf of Israel (or the Saudis). But, in fact, the challenge posed by Iran’s nuclear proliferation efforts is as much a threat to America’s interests and to global stability as it is to Israel’s survival.
Moreover, American officers and soldiers learned to appreciate what Israel had to offer. At the level of ground combat, Israeli battle-tested solutions to mines and IEDs saved many lives and limbs; looking skywards, Israel shared the technology and battle experience of the first-ever missile defense systems to be fired in anger.
Above all, in the age of the global war on “terror” (actually, a war against Islamist totalitarianism), intelligence-sharing with Israel became almost indispensable. The value of the relationship came to be felt throughout the ranks. Thus, the walls CENTCOM once built to fend Israel off began to come down, with growing signs of local cooperation and occasional meetings between CENTCOM’s commander and the IDF chief of staff.
The second element was the establishment of the Abraham Accords. This, too, reflected the cumulative effect of Israeli covert relations with key Gulf states (and with Morocco) over years and even decades.
But it was the act of coming into the open that enabled the US to shed off the last concerns about bringing their key Arab clients under the same strategic roof with Israel.
The results were quite dramatic. In operational terms, this led to the creation of a CENTCOM-coordinated capacity to detect and intercept drone and cruise missiles and MRBM attacks from Iran or from the Houthis in Yemen.
This was already put to a successful test of fire against Iran in April 2024, and again in October that year, and more regularly with the foiling of Houthi attacks throughout the years of war. By the time Israel chose to take preemptive action against Iran in June 2025 – the so-called 12 Day War – US and allied support against incoming attacks grew in importance, and CENTCOM’s role culminated with the Midnight Hammer strike against Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.
At the level of high command, CENTCOM commanders General Michael Kurilla and his successor Admiral Brad Cooper, became regular visitors in Israel after October 2023, coordinating support efforts.
More recently, since the ceasefire in Gaza, it has been CENTCOM that has worked with the IDF to create the Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), located in Kiryat Gat, in itself an unprecedented model of bilateral as well as multilateral cooperation.
Thus, when the political call was made to use force in Iran, both CENTCOM and the IDF were well prepared to work closely together. Ultimately, as Secretary of War Pete Hegseth made all too clear, the strategic affinity with Israel is a political matter (and, indeed, political polarization in America is taking a toll on the traditional support for Israel).
But what we are seeing now is the rising importance of the relationship built in recent years between the defense establishments of both countries, translated into an allied effort never witnessed before.■
Col. (res.) Eran Lerman is vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.