[Marcello]

I remember that, several years ago, in some circles it was discussed the option of sending Abrams to Israel to boost the number of modern tanks, since at the time the Merkava aquisition program was supposedly running into some problems.I thought that these units were supposed to represent that as the 2005 date would have been consistent with that scenario.
If however they are there to represent an hypothetical emergency reinforcement program does being available from 2005 make sense? Maybe a bit earlier like 2001 for some hypothetical post 9/11 conflict?
Any comment about the Tiran tanks?
From what I gather they did not make it past the early 90's in service. The israeli spent the 80's getting rid of them by selling them (es. Uruguay), giving them to the SLA or converting them (Achzarit). There may still be a few tens of them sitting in some graveyard with about zero chance of coming back in service even in an emergency and that is.