From this moment, we must be crystal clear. We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel. We will make sure Azho has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself and respond to this attack. There's no justification for terrorism, there's no excuse.
And I don't remember if Joe Biden mentioned it or the National Security Advisor did in the press conference afterwards, but we are replenishing the Iron Dome because we brought that up on the show yesterday. Huh. Is Amas just going to wear out the Iron Dome to where they don't have, but we're going to replenish it. I guess.
Well. Let's discuss all of those topics and more, including some breaking news with doctor Jeff mccauslan. Jeff is a CBS News military consultant for TV and radio. Jeff, good to have you back. How are you?
Yeah? I would be okay, but busy day to say the last.
Yeah, I'll bet. There are reports that Hesbalah is officially opened to northern front against israel Is CBS A that as well.
I have not seen that I have In the last few days, there has been exchange of artillery and mortar fire between Israeli forces in Hitswella in an area called Shiva Farms, which is right along the northern border of Israel and that contested area. I've actually fisically been up there a couple of times, and literally, if Hitsball becomes involved, this is kind of a game changer because in terms of their military capabilities, they are far more sophisticated than
larger than Hamas number one, number two. They literally have ends of thousands of rockets and missiles already prepositioned instead of Lebanon to hit targets all across Israel. So this would be a massive change in the war. It caused Israel to a divert significant amount of its military forces. And as you guys are saying, before we began threaten I think perhaps just overwhelming Iron Dome in terms of the number of missiles and rockets to be getting towards Israel.
Can we replenish the Iron Dome missiles in time to keep Israel sustained.
It's unclear if we can. To me, we can resupply Iron Dome, that's an Israeli produced weapon system. We can provide them other weapon systems of an air defense character that might be very valuable. There are six pre positioned weapons storage sites belonging to the United States Canada across Israel with about two billion dollars with the munitions that are already positioned there. They're positioned there for two reasons.
One frankly, for American continuencies that might occur across the Middle East where that would be useful to have them already there. And number two, to provide access to the Israelis during a national crisis by the Israelis, and I would imagine those particularly stock files, are already being access But again, the United States could provide additional military support
for I think air defense systems, probably smart nitions. There have been some reports that Boeing already has delivered additional military supplies to ISRAELMA like a thousand smart bombs being overed to Israel. But frankly, any uptick in US military assistance to Israel is going to provide going to require congressional action. Oh, by the way, right now, we don't have a function in the United States Congress because we don't have a speaker.
So speaking of the US role in this, the gerald Ford, the massive aircraft carrier, was moving across the Mediterranean to be closer to Israel to deter bad actors. If indeed Hesbela has said yeah, we're in h is that an empty threat or might US forces play a role?
Well, clearly the Jerald Ford is there to deter, as you said, other people getting involved, most notably it's Balah or expanded efforts on the part of the law. It might be there as well to assist Israeli with providing intelligence of incoming attacks. It could assist their defense networks. Number three, it could be there as well to provide potential evacuation of Americans. Did the situation worse even far
beyond where we are now? And last, of course, it underscores with President Biden that they talked about in the speech, and that is full square support by the United States to the state of Israel. Would the United States become directly involved and for example, start hitting hetsmelaw targets. That is possible, I guess, But I'm sure something that people in washing and prefer not to have happened, are preferred that hits Bela stays out of this.
I want to get back to that. But while we were talking about resupplying Israel, this topic keeps coming up on Twitter and everywhere I read, So I just want to hear you address it. Does US resupplying Israel have anything to do whatsoever with our helping arm Ukraine? Like does one affect the other? Or how does that all work?
Well? Could potis has got an endless supply? Is you know my weapon? Let's just let's face it. In US more times talks have been drawn down to a degree goodbye. The assistance human have been provided to Israel and how low those are obviously is very classified, and I don't know that. Being said, I would still think the United States at this point and continue to provide assistance to both.
One of the challenges we have, however, is in terms of defense budgeting, the Congress is voted a continuing the Resolution as opposed to a new budget. Well, that kind of continues everything at the funding levels that we're at
right now. But the Pentagon once is an actual budget because in the twenty four budget there's expanded funds to frankly dramatically expand the US industrial base, to expand our production of what we found to be enormously necessary items now in modern industrial warfare, artillery, ammunition, air defense weapons and alike, which are very key, not only to the war now in Israel, but also the war that's been
going on in the Ukraine. So the inability of our Congress, frankly, to pass the budget is going to hamstrung us to a degree or at least slow our ability to expand. What becomes increasingly clear is a need to dramatically increase that industrial base.
Jeff McCausland, CBS News, military consultant on the line. Jeff, Well, just keep you for another minute or two, but I'm sure you know Ian Bremer of the Eurasia Group, he is tweeting that has the militants have entered northern Israel from Lebanon, and the US government has announced the immediate evacuation of our embassy in Beirut and Tell and has told all Americans to leave Lebanon.
Yeah, that suggests, as we were saying a moment ago, that there may be now verted Tampa hitz Mala to become involved in this particular war, which is terribly, terribly unfortunate. Number one, and second, as I mentioned a moment ago, one of the reason why the gerald for there is just an evacuation of Americans from the region, which might include now Americans coming out of Lebanon.
Well, how long do we bend over backwards we in the Israeli government to pretend that we don't know Iran is behind us?
Well, I mean it's yeah, that's a good question. But right now the israelis another handful for the the warfront and Gada, they may have their hands full, and a second warfront in Lebanon. They may have a third front, which is we've seen increasing frankly Palaestinian militant activity on the West Bank, a place where the Israeli defense forces have been conducting expanded operations for the last several months.
So do you want in the middle of all that have a fourth front and that is direct involved in with Iran? And that's an open question that one has to think about diplomatically, politically, and strategically. Furthermore, though there's no doubt about it that Iran has provided military assistance to Hamas to the tune, we think of about one hundred million dollars a year, and a lot of the rockets that are striking Israel were produced in Iran, or the try out from Iran was used to have them
produced locally. But again, the United States provides three billion dollars in military assystems are more to Israel on an annual basis. That is a far cry from direct iraniant involvement in the actual planning and execution of this attack.
Though there have been reports Wall Street journalm Ticker suggesting that the Iranians were directly involved in the planning and execution of the attack, either the United States government or the Israeli government I've seen so far has made that claim and provided evidence that would point to Iran as an actual protagonist in this conflict.
Doctor Jeff mccolson, CBS News Military consultant, Jeff, thanks so much for the time. We appreciate it.
Always a pleasure, guys. A