The White House praised the retaliatory airstrikes on sites connected
to Iran.
Those strikes might have disrupted operations,
but are they enough to deter future attacks?
Joining us now? General Jack Keane,
Fox News Senior Strategic Analyst So that is the big
question of the night.
General Keane, has this done anything to dampen the Houthis
enthusiasm for attacking
US ships and others in the Red Sea in the
Gulf?
Well, we'll have to let these play out.
We're early into the operation certainly and I think we
could
step up our game here rather significantly with the Houthis
because
they have 10s of thousands of rockets and missiles,
but it's finite, their command and control and their guidance
systems are finite as well and
they're going to keep shooting at as long as they
have them.
And we we should have a very sustained campaign and
recognize here,
I mean it's such an obvious connection with the Iranians
who are providing intelligence been well reported and documented on
the ships that are passing,
entering the the Red Sea,
you know from the east or from the north and
also flagging all of that to the Houthis in terms
of what ships to attack and when to expect them
etcetera. And as a result of that,
certainly we should make the connection to the Iranians and
bring them into this as as part
of what we're attempting to do here is shut the
Iranians down.
But in terms of the operation that the administration is
conducting,
we've got to wait, get the battle damage assessment.
Let's see how long this campaign is and judge the
results of it.
I certainly want it to work.
In other words, that it will shut down
Iran's support for the proxy war that they have expanded
in the Middle East with every single one of their
proxies.
That's what we're trying to really stop here
and and hopefully that'll take place.
I'm highly skeptical because Iran who is propagating is,
is left out of it and the criticism myself and
others
of the administration certainly surrounds that basic fact.
They believe that if they take any military action whatsoever,
even limited military action, we're suggesting we're not talking about
an all out war strategy where you takedown all the
major targets in the city of Tehran,
the national command authority, all of their infrastructure that the
American people have seen us do in the past.
No one is suggesting anything like that.
We're talking about a limited military strike on some of
their valuable assets,
mostly those that are, that are controlled by the IRGC.
And we believe that would have an impact on Iranians
because the threat of more to follow would be what
they were concerned about.
But the administration, John, has made the fundamental,
I think, flawed assumption that if we do anything at
all against the Iranians,
then that will widen the war and we'll find ourselves
in direct conflict with the Iranians.
The facts of the history of Iran does not suggest
that whatsoever.
It is a flawed assumption in my judgment.
I was going to suggest general,
during the Trump administration, we took out their top military
leader,
General Qasem Soleimani. And you know,
there were all these worries that Iran was going to,
there's going to be a lot of blowback and Iran
was going to start attacking Americans all over the world.
It really didn't happen.
No, it didn't. And when Reagan in 88,
you know, took out three warships,
several patrol boats, 2 fighter jets and two oil platforms,
that shut them down. And.
And that's the reality of what what we're dealing with.
Listen, this is something we know for a fact Iran
does not want a war with the United States.
Why is that? It would be so stupid on their
part because it results in a regime change for them.
It results in taking away the number one thing the
mullahs want is to stay in power.
So that is job one.
Is that why they are so content to arm the
Houthis,
Hezbollah, Hamas and other groups and have them make trouble?
Oh, absolutely. Listen, they started
during the Reagan administration. They blew up our Marine barracks.
They blew up our embassy in Lebanon.
They blew up the annex when we moved to it.
They blew up the embassy in Kuwait,
all in 1983. And what did we do as a
result of that?
We moved our troops out of Lebanon.
Now, you can argue and litigate should they have been
there or not,
but what did Iran think about that check mark?
We accomplished what we wanted.
So the Reagan administration figured it out that they had
to deal with Iran directly.
This was a new strategy,
you know, using a terror organization in a foreign country
to attack the United States on behalf of its sponsor.
That we really hadn't seen quite like that in the
past,
but we adjusted to that.
This administration has got to reset its strategy with Iran
and just come to the grips with the fact that
since
January of 21, this strategy has failed.
They try to renegotiate the deal.
It's not working. We got to isolate Iran diplomatically.
We got to hammer them with sanctions and shut the
flush of money down
because of their oil visit.
The Trump administration showed us how to do that and
make certain that the loopholes are covered,
massive cyber attacks to go after their nuclear system and
and limited attacks against their assets that they value to
make certain that they understand more assets will be held
at at risk as well.
And we have got to set us clear message about
their nuclear program.
No one's talking about it,
but they're getting closer to it.
And likely, unless we make certain Iran understands that we
mean business,
there's going to be a fighter complete here like we
had in Korea.
All of a sudden they're going to have nuclear weapons.
That's a scary thought. Very quickly,
you heard Senator Cotton. I I assume,
say that essentially we should go after Iranian leadership or
perhaps he met Houthi leadership,
but going after radar sites and that kind of thing,
infrastructure doesn't necessarily get the job done or send the
right message.
You agree?
Oh, yeah, certainly. I mean,
it seems obvious we should go after IRGC leaders.
Some of them have certainly are in the field operating
with the proxies,
but they're lower level leaders.
Their primary leaders do visit those proxies in a
consequentially to help in operations,
but they're staying out of the field right now because
for obvious reasons United States is striking.
But we should take their leaders down and take their
take their assets down.
The pathway has already been shown for us how to
do this.
General Jack Keane, always good to talk to you.
Thank you, General.
Yeah. Take care, John.