The New York Times outlined some key questions.
Has Iran's attack been enough to satisfy its calls for
revenge?
Or, given the relatively paltry results,
will it feel obligated to strike Israel again?
Will the Prime Minister of Israel,
Netanyahu, see his country's air defenses strong performance
as a sufficient response? Or will he choose and his
war cabinet?
It isn't singularly his decision to escalate further with an
attack on Iran.
I want to bring in retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel
Davis,
who talked about this as a possibility,
Senior fellow at Defense Priorities and host of the Daniel
Davis Deep Dive Show.
You told me months ago
that if you show weakness,
should there be anything going on
that Iran would want to get involved with,
like the killing of one of its top generals,
Iran might do something like this.
How did you know?
Right. Because Iran desperately wants to avoid a war
with Israel or the United States.
They they want to keep their,
you know, their Kingdom safe,
so to speak. And and they they like to do
their nefarious things,
but they definitely want to keep it on a low
level and not a war.
But they can't be seen as being weak.
What not many people realize is that prior to this
attack on one April against the Iranian embassy,
Israel had already assassinated 17 different senior
Iranian officials in various locations throughout the Middle East.
And they were coming under a lot of pressure already
from within,
from not responding enough. So once they Israel hit that
embassy,
there was really no doubt that they were going to
have to do something.
But I do take issue with that New York Times
piece there suggesting that
this was a paltry response from Iran because I think
it was very calculated and actually accomplished exactly what they
wanted.
And the vice chair of the Senate Intel Committee,
Marco Rubio, said that this was much more than what
anybody had expected.
I mean, early on we,
we didn't know the exact number of drones,
but we certainly no one had it north of 300.
And what I'm reading this morning,
according to the IDF, Iran used
66, zero, 60 tons of warheads.
That leads me to believe that they have a whole
lot of this stuff.
Thank the good Lord. The warheads were just ballistic
and didn't get any help from North Korea.
Maybe putting something on a plane that would have a
nuclear device in it.
Look, that's not outside the boundaries.
Talk to me about what they have.
Yeah. And. And that's why I say that this was,
this was not a paltry.
This was very calculated by the Iranian side.
That imagery you showed just a second ago,
what's what happened in inside Iran with all the cheering
and everything,
that was what Iran wanted to do.
They that's why they sent so many drones on all
these attacks
so that it would make their people
not want to press them for more and feel like
they had satisfied it.
But it's the top of ordinance that they sent the
fact that they
not just Telegraph but outright told Israel and the US
through Turkey where these things were coming so that they
would be shot down and they wouldn't hit targets in
Israel. But, and this is key,
they have a lot of capacity where they can do
a lot more if there are subsequent rounds.
And so Israel has to be cognizant of that.
They can't get too carried away with emotions because they
could get hit in the second round.
What you're saying if this is what they are potentially
capable of doing with a huge heads up,
what happens when you don't get one.
So the former president's National Security Advisor,
John Bolton was talking this weekend,
and he said this about a possible retaliation by Israel.
The way you establish deterrence is by telling your adversary,
if you ever tried that again,
the price you will pay will be so much higher
than any gain you think you can get.
You shouldn't even think about it.
So I think Israel has a wide range of potential
targets.
And most importantly, I think Israel should be looking at
this as an opportunity to destroy
Iran's nuclear weapons program. You know,
under Biden we have lost the potential to see anything
about those strikes the IAEA kicked out.
And and so we don't really know much about it,
but Israel has great Intel.
Do you think that's where they should go
hit those nuclear sites? I'll
tell you, Bolton is 100%
wrong there. All that would do was probably push Iran
into a nuclear weapons program.
But much more than that,
then it would put our troops at risk in Iraq
and in Syria because Iran has said they won't attack
our troops unless we participate in something that's going up
on north. And I can't imagine is Israel attacking those
nuke facilities without our help.
So if that happens, then all of a sudden our
troops are at risk there.
And I assure you those same drones that that Israel
shot down with these our troops can't because we don't
have that kind of air defense capacity over all of
these sites. So we would be at great risk of
having our own troops attack if by
Bolton got his way. Yeah.
Look, we're not getting hard numbers out of the Pentagon
anymore as we were when it was about
2530 strikes that those proxies via
Iran had hit our our military
in the Middle East. But but it's north of of
200 now.
And you've got to bet that that would be tougher
on our men and women who are serving.
Colonel, always great to have you start you out the
hour.
Start out the hour with you.
Thank you very much.