I know that you have paused with your president shipments of two thousand pound US bombs to Israel due to concern that they could be used in any offensive on Rafa. Have those bombs, those powerful two thousand pound bombs been used to kill civilians in Gaza?
Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers. And I made it clear that if they go into Rafa, they haven't gone on Rafa yet. If they go into Rafa, I'm not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Raffa, to deal with the cities, to deal with that problem.
So if.
An ally that you said on Tuesday that we are rock solid standing behind, if their military judgment is we need these weapons to win our war, we're going to say no, no, we don't think so, so we're not going to let you do that.
Well, and I despise is the way he phrased at the way they go into population centers, right, yeah, yeah, there could get into population centers because that's where Hamas is Well again, every bit of the wording in that interview. If you didn't like, if you flew in from outer space and didn't know the story. You'd think Israel was the bad guy in this story because nothing bad was said about Hamas at all or no, there are no red lines for Hamas apparently, but I wanted to know.
I was just wondering the reality of these weapons. Does Israel need them to go into Raford? Can they go into Rafa without them? What else we got to ask an expert?
Yeah, so let's.
Discuss that question the situation in a broader context as well with Mike Leon's military analyst. Mike, of course, served the United States military in a variety of capacities throughout the world through his career.
Mike, it's always a pleasure.
How are you tank money, guys, Great to be back with you.
How significant is this holding back of the heavy bombs.
It's not from a if you're fighting a city war, fighting this urban conflict that the Israelis are going to like to do.
They're not stopping.
I mean, this is their only way to defeat Himas is to defeat the military, get their leadership to surrender that. This is the this is how wars are won. What Joe Biden is doing is pure politics. It's almost signaling to political forces in our country. And to hear a president make the kind of comments he's made about not killing another thirty thousand civilians or so, it's just nonsense. I mean, the policy is incoherent, it's asides a moral
from a military perspective. But the Israelis are faced with a situation that their survival is at stake.
So I think they're.
Going to recalculate they might hold back a few more weeks, let's say, but when the time comes, they will likely go into Rafa. No one's dropping two thousand pound bombs on city centers there and killing civilians wantly. The Israelis never not doing that, but they're not stopped until they can completely eradicate the military threat. And there's still battalions sitting inside that city that they're hiding because that's that's the last fashion of the place where they can escape to.
I don't want to make this a Biden bashing conversation necessarily, but you're you're the you know, military historian, and you participated in some of these things. So one thing Joe Biden said yesterday is he'd warned bb Net and Yahoo don't do what we've done. We went after Bin Lauden and then we went into Afghanistan with all these troops and we went into a rock with all these troops
and and don't do the same thing. And we were trying to figure out what is the parallel between that and going into Rafin getting Homas out.
So it's totally different. I just wonder who's putting these thoughts and words in Joe Biden's mouth as he spouts them out like that and yesterday, I mean and things he says, because it's not the same analogy. We went after Asamo bin Laden for the attack that was made on nine to eleven, and.
It took us almost ten eleven years, the.
Same amount of time it took the land of Man on the moon. It took the to capture, kill and capture him. But the Colon Powell rule once you you know, kind of you break it, you buy it. You know, we tried to stand up a government Afghanistan. Then we got distracted. We got distracted inside of a rock that was a kind of a separate mission. So you look back and in the United States definitely committed mistakes in those wars there, but it's not.
The same thing.
Israel is fighting for its existence, it's fighting an enemy on three fronts. This is not the same thing as that. Right now, Hamas is just hoping that the United States will continue to treat Israel the way they're treating them, and because they're going to survive. They're going to survive another day. They get a ceasefire, they got a six weeks cease fire. They're going to do something to try to survive, and that's that's their goal here. And if
they do, then Israel doesn't win this war. And politically, the Israeli leaders now look bad and Israel now continues to spiral downward.
Wow, it was my speculation that the Biden administration is just desperate to get the accord going with the Saudis and the Emeran and that they're essentially saying, Israel, look, what's in our best interests is for y'all to calm down for a little while.
Do you think that's more or less accurate?
No, for sure, this is this is a political quid pro quo. Right did we have the last president get pieced over this? I mean, trying to do me a favor, stay out of Rapa while I come the political forces on my side here with regard to the situation here, I'm not seeing the difference here that you want to see a good analogy. There's a good analogy there, But the bottom line is there's no legitimacy within the Biden administration to do that, to create that diplomatic kind of environment.
They're not not Anthony Blincoln. Not when you whip saws back and forth between support for Israel and support for Hermas.
Not when we don't. We don't have the.
Same level of credit credibility with regard to what actually we're going to do when who we're going to support. And the political forces unfortunately against Joe Biden right now, are such that they're threatened US national security.
Look at that.
If anybody doesn't think this is a challenge or a problem inside our country with these pro Palestinian protests, you're not paying attention way worse than white supremacist I mean, where's the FBI, where's everybody you know concerned about this? These college campuses are these places where these things are happening. The Democrats are going to have this problem in the summertime at their convention, and they're trying to do everything
they can to keep that from happening. But there's there's this clear cross blurring up the line between national security, what's investments of the United States, and what's going on politically right now, and right now the Democrats and Joe Biden particular, whatever's putting the word in his mouth, are choosing the political side of this.
Since you said BB is going to go in no matter what, maybe in a couple of weeks, but it's still going to happen.
What is that going to look like?
How likely is it that they're able to wipe out those last couple of battalions, you know, get the Osama bin laden of Homas and be able to feel like they won.
Well, I think they're going to have to capture the leader Sinwar. They're going to have to do show extensive amount of kill and capture of the leadership there. And that's that's one thing that they've tried to work on. Continue to destroy the tunnels. I'd say this kind of court on the kind of offensive operation where the city is totally surrounded, they'll let they'll probably start to limit humanitarian supplies that go in. There'll be somewhat of a
feeds there. Hamas won't be able to hold off there for long, and we're waiting for the tipping point for gods and citizens to recognize that Hamas is not acting in their best interests. But Israel is going to win this war conventionally, kind of the good old fashioned way. They're going to find somebody that says we surrender and the war's going to stop it. Then they're not stopping just because the United States is telling them to stop.
Well, and on that topic, you have an enemy that began the fighting has vowed unequivocally to continue it until you're wiped off the face of the earth. And the Biden administrations of session with what's escalatory is really frustrating. And it's not like you know, as as a guy far too old and sore of back to go fight, I don't want to be talk show warmonger guy. It's a cliche, but you know there's some people who are
guilty of it. But at the same time, if you intend to win a conflict, and there's plainly a conflict in front of us, you're gonna have to escalate.
That's what winning is.
Yeah, And we take we've made assumptions about things that are just aren't true because we say they are for example, you know you can't use force to change the ideology. History show that, yes, you can use force to change ideology. If you escalate that force, I think you're going to see at the end of this Israel taking.
Much more control over gods.
They're going to have to This two state solution is now off the table from their perspective. I know that our our administration still thinks that's some kind of possibility.
But the challenge is.
Until the United States puts pressure on tar and other governments that are housing these Hamas leaders, you know, they continue to control and operate this territory from outside Goslam. So that's that's part of the problem. And if if we can't, if we we should be putting pressure on Hamas and the leaders of these other countries in order to get our hostages back number.
One, and then then having them not.
To have the influence inside of the city, then then maybe you'll see that Israel would would acquiesce and have new leadership for the thousand people, for the Palestinian people there. But until that happens, you're not you're not seeing any change. Israel is going to continue to just raise the earth down there.
Military analyst Mike Lyons, Mike, thanks so much. Really interesting. We appreciate it.
Thanks guys, thanks for having me