Sometimes when decisions do not work out exactly as intended, they work out just fine.

In the midst of Operation Protective Edge — Israel’s response to 182 Hamas rockets and mortars fired at Israeli towns and villages in the first week of July 2014 — the Obama administration accused Israel of “heavy handed battlefield tactics,” including the use of artillery instead of precision-guided munitions. U.S. President Barack Obama halted the supply of Hellfire missiles and announced that all military equipment supplied to Israel would be vetted individually in the White House, instead of shipped, according to prior agreements, by the Pentagon to Israel.

The President, it appears, had been reading wild press stories about the damage to Gaza — which ultimately turned out to be concentrated in areas in which Hamas was stockpiling munitions and rockets and conducting command and control operations, which included firing more than 2,700 rockets and missiles during the rest of July. Israel struck an UNRWA-administered school, prompting cries of outrage, but UNRWA later admitted that it covered up that Hamas had used the school for military operations.

The Hellfire decision was especially ironic because it is a precision munition, generally less broadly damaging than bombs dropped from aircraft. The Hellfire can be fired from airplanes, drones and helicopters.

Ironic, too, because the United States has used Hellfire missiles against terrorists — often without the permission of the countries in which the terrorists were killed. A Hellfire was used to kill Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Kahn, American citizens, in Yemen. Al-Awlaki was designated a terrorist, and Kahn the editor of the al-Qaeda magazine Inspire, but U.S. law may have been violated by their assassination.

Israel carried the Hellfire on its Apache helicopters — and the story of Israel’s purchase of 42 Apaches is also one of difficulty. In 2009, the Obama administration blocked the delivery of six of the Apaches to Israel, on the grounds Israel might use them in Gaza. U.S.-Israel military cooperation on the Apache was made difficult and as Obama’s dislike of Israel and Israeli security policy increased, the Hellfire on the Apache became the White House target.

For this reason, Israel concluded that the U.S. under Obama was not a reliable supplier of either helicopters or missiles. After the 2014 operation in Gaza, Israel turned to the Israeli manufacturer Rafael, developer of the hugely successful and potent Spike anti-tank missile. Rafael was to adapt Spike technology to the Apache, while the helicopter retained Hellfire capability at the same time.

The decision was fairly easy, because Israel was already working on adopting the Spike to helicopters in Europe, where the Spike is a big hit. Spain has already installed the Spike ER version on its Eurocopter Tiger attack helicopters. Others in Europe and Asia are doing the same.

A Tiger attack helicopter carrying two racks of Israeli Spike ER missiles. (Image source: Airbus Helicopters)

Israel’s Spike is superior to the Hellfire. It has longer range, making it safer to use against an enemy that possesses shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles known as MANPADS. Since Benghazi, sophisticated MANPADS, including US-made Stingers (the same as were used in Afghanistan in “Charlie Wilson’s War”), have been smuggled from Libya and are now in the hands of terrorists including Hezbollah and ISIS.

The Spike features a non-line-of-sight firing capability, making it a more flexible weapon. But one feature of Spike that is entirely missing in Hellfire is that the operator can change target in mid-course or even destroy the weapon in flight if the target turns out to be wrong — a capability that is not trivial. During the Yugoslav war, NATO aircraft on a number of occasions hit targets that should have been aborted. One such incident occurred during an attack to knock out the Grdelica Bridge near Belgrade on April 12, 1999. When the missile was launched, the bridge was empty; when it struck some minutes later a civilian train was crossing and destroyed. On May 1, 1999 in Kosovo, NATO planes hit a bridge at Luzane where, again, a school bus came along after the missile was launched, killing many school children.

The Obama administration should never have cut off the sale of a precision weapon such as the Hellfire in the middle of battle. It was bad policy: it signaled the unreliability of the U.S. at that time as an ally. Worse yet, despite Saudi Arabia’s horrible bombing performance in Yemen, the U.S. continues to sell the Saudis billions of dollars’ worth of weapons, and has stepped up shipments of munitions. So Israelis have reason to believe that America failed her at a moment when it counted.

But there is a silver lining. The Spike is a better option than the Hellfire and safer to use, which is why 25 nations now use the missile and 25,000 or more have been produced.

Stephen Bryen is President of SDB Partners, LLC. Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center.

Iran continues to take Americans and other Westerners hostage, indicting three dual-nationals just days ago on unknown charges. This remains a troubling pattern of diplomatic blackmail, negotiation by coercion. Last month in Lebanon, a so-called parliamentarian for Hezbollah, a terrorist surrogate of the Iranian regime, called for “Israeli civilians to be kidnapped in a future war with Israel.” He “boasted” that Hezbollah’s missiles “can now reach Tel Aviv from Iran, not just Damascus, Beirut, or Cairo.”

The German intelligence service recently reported on numerous Iranian attempts to clandestinely obtain dual-use chemical, biological and nuclear technology. The report by the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), the domestic intelligence service of the Federal Republic of Germany, also noted “a further increase in the already considerable procurement efforts in connection with Iran’s ambitious missile technology program, which could, among other things, potentially serve to deliver nuclear weapons.”

In early May, the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Brigadier General Ali Abdollahi, reportedly revealed at a conference in Tehran that the regime had test-fired a high-precision ballistic missile “with a range of 2000 kilometers and pinpoint accuracy of 8 meters.” In March, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launched two Qadr medium-range ballistic missiles. On one of them, in Hebrew, was inscribed the phrase, “Israel must be wiped out.”

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister recently said, in response to the U.N. Secretary General’s statement that Iran’s ballistic missile tests are “not consistent” with the “spirit” of the multilateral nuclear agreement: “We will severely confront any move — be it political, legal, or technical — that hinders our missile program.”

Also recently, U.S. Department of Energy officials confirmed the purchase from Iran of nuclear materials. Congress voted to block such transactions but as media reports indicate that the purchase, amounting to $8.6 million in taxpayer funds, was conducted in April, the vote was to no avail.

More surprises could be in the offing. An oft-overlooked benefit in the JCPOA can be found in Annex III, where the parties decided to engage “in different areas of civil nuclear co-operation,” including construction and modernization of Iranian light water reactors, provision of technical assistance and on-the-job training.

Meanwhile, Israel has been denied a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement with the U.S.

Some argue that, in light of the security challenges posed by Iran as well as other state and non-state actors, Israel should accept whatever the U.S. offers in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). This acceptance would be a mistake. A close ally — the only democracy in the Middle East — and a much needed partner in U.S. efforts to combat regional and global threats, Israel must not be turned into a beggar, particularly when Obama Administration policies have, arguably, contributed to an escalation of the dangers Israel faces.

Consider the billions in previously frozen assets released to Iran under the nuclear agreement. As least some of it, by Secretary of State Kerry’s own admission, will fall into the hands of the IRGC and other Iranian entities, affiliates, and surrogates designated as terrorists and terrorist-enablers. A separate $1.7 billion the U.S. Treasury transferred to the Central Bank of Iran in January of this year, as Tehran released Americans it had unjustly held captive for years, will be used to fund Iran’s military expansion.

For these and many other reasons, Israel’s reported MOU requests on security assistance, missile defense, and regional qualitative military advantage are justified.

Israel is a major strategic partner, as declared in the United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act, enacted on December 19, 2014. The new law laid the foundation for expanded bilateral cooperation in a wide variety of spheres including defense, intelligence, and homeland- and cyber-security. Among other provisions, it enhanced “Israel’s trade status to expedite export licensing” for certain defense-related technologies and products, and expanded “authority for forward-deployed U.S. weapons stockpiles in the Jewish State.” Israel is also a major non-NATO ally and, in May of this year, was granted permission by the North Atlantic Council to open a diplomatic mission at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

Israel is a major strategic partner, as declared in the United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act, enacted on December 19, 2014. The new law laid the foundation for expanded bilateral cooperation in a wide variety of spheres including defense, intelligence, and homeland- and cyber-security. Above, Israeli PM Netanyahu meets President Obama at the White House, May 20, 2011. (Image source: Israel PM office)

Perhaps it is time to fill the void in the security relationship with the Jewish State, elevate the discussions beyond an MOU, and consider a more fulsome security arrangement — one that is comparable to those with such trusted allies as the United Kingdom and Australia.

The Congress should lead the way, as the Obama Administration does not have “clean hands”. A newly released Senate Subcommittee report explains how the State Department awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in government grants to an Israeli organization that used the funds to mount a campaign against Prime Minister Netanyahu in the 2015 parliamentary elections. President Obama once even questioned the necessity of maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge.

Ultimately, the terms of any U.S.-Israel agreement must withstand comparison to the concessions offered Iran in the JCPOA and show unequivocally that Israel, a trusted ally and major strategic partner, fared better in negotiations than an unconstrained enemy.

Yleem D.S. Poblete, Ph.D. is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at the Catholic University of America. She served for close to 20 years on the staff of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, including as Chief of Staff. During her tenure, she was responsible for such consequential measures as the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006, and the 2007 MOU with Israel.