The Biden administration is sending an advanced anti-missile defense system and 100 U.S. troops to Israel in advance of expected retaliatory strikes against Iran. This marks the first significant deployment of American troops to Israel since the beginning of its assault on Gaza, though the U.S. has spent an estimated tens of billions of dollars on the Israeli military and related operations.

“The irony here is the Iranian missile attack is only going to happen if we help Israel strike Iran first,” says Win Without War’s Harrison Mann. With the deployment of troops to Israeli military installations, says Mann, “Israel now has its own sort of American human shields” and “a new mechanism to drag America into a war with Hezbollah and Iran.”

Mann, who is Jewish, is a former U.S. Army major who resigned from his position at the Defense Intelligence Agency in protest of U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza, a decision he says was inspired by student antiwar protests on U.S. campuses.