Not even close? The Iron Dome is the most tested and effective air defence system in the world. That’s a fact. In terms of actual national coverage and success rate it’s a fact.
To say “not even close” on Israel’s air defence capabilities, developed and funded alongside the US, would be like saying China isn’t even close to being one of the biggest economies in the world.
Because Iran was attacked openly and directly it had to respond openly and directly. It couldn’t hide behind a proxy. Why didn’t the US hide behind Israel for all Middle Eastern conflicts of the last 30 years when “provoked”? After all we’d all have known “who gave the order”.
Iron dome is the most effective and tested air defense system in the world...against short range, unguided, none-manouvering rockets with a ballistic trajectory. Hint: most of the intercepts today were not even by Iron Dome. It's completely useless against LRBM's and Cruise Missiles.
I am saying that Iran's Air defense system is mid tier. It has no segregation of concern against exoatmospheric and atmospheric targets, with Arrow 3 covering both. David's sling is a more cost efficient Patriot derivation when they realized that Pac-3 would cost too much. In fact, David's sling uses the same radar ANPQ-65 as Patriot, just they wanted a less effective, cheaper, kinetic inteceptor. Iron Dome was specifically built to intercept cheap shit by being the 'lo' in the 'lo-high' calculus of Air defense. Arrow 3 and David's Sling are the High.
Israel does not have naval BMD nor does it have any form of ICBM defense or GBI's, nor does it have exo-atmospheric Naval defense.
Israel has no real tactical red zone layered air defense in the form of something like D-E Shorad, M-Shorad or Pantsir. It has no multi layered, tridented missile tracking, relying almost entirely on ground based radar installations. It has no aerial based interceptors (though F-15 with AIM-120 may be able to do the job) and it does not have a networked, multi platform data link across all it's defense networks.
If Iran had launched a volley of 100+ Surface hogging cruise missiles (Thankfully they don't really have fully capable ones), Israel would be screwed without American help. No AWACS for top down data linked interception, no naval radar for early tracking. If Iran fired something akin to JASSM-ER, TLAM's or such, we'd be seeing devastation across Israel. Thankfully, they don't have any of that.
All in all, Israel is a solid 6.5 out of 10.
If your statement was "Israel has the best and most proven effective air defense against shitty short range rockets fired by militants who cannot afford the good stuff", sure.
But yeah, you've proven you have no idea what you're talking about.