Senate and House members of the Abraham Accords Caucus rolled out the bill, called the DEFEND Act, in a press conference Thursday outside the Capitol and described it as means of advancing the U.S.-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab countries that collectively bear that name.
“The full potential of the Abraham Accords, economic cooperation, education exchanges, trade agreements between Israel and our Middle Eastern partners, cannot be achieved without a commitment to collective security,” said Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican who is the lead co-sponsor of the bill with Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Jewish Democrat. “America’s role in activating and networking our allies and partners in the Middle East must evolve as violent extremists, like Iran, change their tactics and onboard new systems capable of catastrophic damage against civilian targets.”
It’s not clear from the bill how formal the arrangement would be. The bill tasks the secretary of defense with establishing an “architecture” and “acquisition approach” for an “integrated air and missile defense system” to counter threats from Iran. READ MORE
