Israel's response, and there should be a response should not be proportionate. It should be far stronger, because when the turns fails to re establish it, you have to teach the adversary that any gain they may hope to get by any future attack will be more than outweighed by the damage that will be caused.
Oh you recognize that voice, perhaps as John Bolton, who's one of the hockiest of the hawks out there, former Trump administration dude. All the way he hates Trump. He says, we get Israel has to hit back hard at Iran, and the administration has made it very clear they're the exact opposite. You take the win, and if you try to hit back, WI ain't going to help you.
For those who are busy watching the Masters or other fare, over the weekend, Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel. The vast, vast majority of them intercepted and did very little damage. But what comes next? Doctor Jeff mccauslin, CBS News military consultant joins us now to discuss.
Jeff.
It's always a pleasure. How are you.
I'm doing very well and great with you guys.
Well, let's just start with the witch of those two approaches. Do you like the Bolton approach or the Biden approach?
Well, I'm kind of leaning towards the Biden proach quite frankly at this take your moment. I mean, one has to talk about using military force to what end. Mister Bolton, who has known for a long time when had encounters with it, has been a very hard and very conservative, very hawkish kind of guy, as you described, and he's right. You could argue that by doing a massive response this serves to enhance the terrence for future and perhaps prevent
future war. You can make that particular argument, but this will in this case, I would argue, Israel's got a lot of war right now to take care of, and so expanding this and going into another major conflict with Iran might not be the most appropriate thing to happen at the moment. You know, you do deterrence, as he
talked about, through punishment, That's what he's just striving. He also did do deterrence through denial, and that's exactly what the Israelis did, in which they really, in some ways, I would say, made the Iranians look strategically kind of foolish. When you fire three hundred drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles and only a handful actually hit target, ninety nine percent are destroyed, and then reality, Okay, we fired seven missiles at a target in Damascus, they all hit target.
They killed an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general officer whose deputy and several others, and your effort of three hundred weapons managed so far to kill one Palestinian girl. Might we want to focus our attention on the war in Gaza? Might we want to use this as an effort to diplomatically isolate Iran even further and perhaps recruits some of
the loss we've had in the world community. Might we actually want to use this as a leverage to encourage the United States to move forward as quickly as possible in providing US additional military aid. I think that might be a better tack for the moment for the Israeli.
Government, Jeff. I think if you assume that Iran has made its move, and this was the move, then I can see that point of view a little more clearly. But I've heard it suggested by some that this was
something of a test of Israeli air defenses. It's a dry run address rehearsal if you will, and that a multi front attack could be coming, and that's why you wanted might want to exact a price from the Iranians and let them know if we go tit for tat, we're going to make every single level of this too expensive for you.
Yeah.
No, And you can certainly make that argument, but concerned I would have with all the conflicts. If all these other conflicts weren't ongoing, then that argument might become much more persuasive. Your military forces are heavily engaged with the about five fronts right now, you have a front and gos I. You're facing a major offensive military operation Rofit.
You're facing a very high likelihood of having to make a military incursion to southern Elebanon to drive Hitsviel off far the north and allow eighty thousand Ukrainian or Ukrainian forgive me Israeli refugees to return their homes. You've got increasing violence on the West Bank groups that you need to keep an eye on in Syria and elsewhere. You got the Huthis down in Yemen. So should we take on another conflict at this particular moment is the question?
We can respond certainly at a time and place of our choosing. That's a phrase the Israelis used a lot. Could that response be a massive cyber attack against Iran? Israelis are capable of doing that. Could this be over time a whole series of special operations missions by Israel against targets in Iran have very possiblely done that in the past. It killed off as Iranian nuclear scientists and others. Might those the other ways are going about some kind of a response over time.
Was this a real attempt by Iran to blow stuff up and kill people in Israel? Or was it a telegraphed gesture for all kinds of different political reasons that they knew would be thwarted. Do you know some US officials said yesterday that Iran was attempting a mass casualty event.
Well, I mean fire three hundred weapons to somebody, it seems to me to the attempt to do an awful lot of damage. And you know, the idea we fire three hundred weapons because we want we want to be defeated and we want our military to kind of look pretty badly and its employment does not seem to pass to me the logic test. But perhaps that is the case. So the Iranians has really try to argue that this
should be the end of this picure event. They have, I guess, assuaged their honor for the killing of this Iranian general and they've made a response. A lot of this, don't forget, is not for public opinion at home, for the Uranian people to say, what is our government doing when we get hit? Well, we actually have done something, and they'll try to describe it, I'm sure in the
public present or on as a major success. But I do think it's a little bit of a stretch to say we're going to fire three hundred weapons hoping we don't hurt anybody, and by trying to do it in certain ways that it precludes major damage to our opponent.
On CBS military analyst on the line, Jeff, I'm really intriguing, and I think one of the most significant aspects of this whole thing may be the fact that the Israelis received significant help, intelligence and hands on guns from not only the US, but a number of Arab countries as well. Feels like maybe the dawn of a new relationship there.
Yeah, these people don't like Aroan. I was just at a major series of meetings in Paris with some senior folks kenicalon of golf and their biggest concern, their biggest threat is are on. So there's no great love lost there for sure. But at the same time, and this
is also a danger now they're protecting their airspace. The Jordanians have spoken very loudly since his attack occurred that they did intercept a number of these weapons as they were heading towards Israel because they were violating Jordanian airspace. Quite frankly, Saudi's may have provided some information in tracking as well, and less clear about that. This signate is
a problem for Israel. If Israel is going to strike back, it's going to violate their airspace as well, and I'm not sure we would see them then, just were of ignoring that, which would indicate they were actively involved in an Israeli counterattack against Iraq, which might pull them into that particular conflict. In fact, the jority of the Deans have suggested, we defend our airspace. If it's Iranian missiles
heading westward, we're gonna shoot those down. But oh, by the way, if it's Israeli missiles going eastward, we're want to do the same thing. And for the Israelis, a major response could be done to some degree using missiles they have sun but the Israeli military force would be I think more likely to try to employ aircraft. I have thirty five in some type of series of air strikes.
That's a very complex operation based on the distances involved, the country's airspace that you have to fly through, your ability to do aerial refueling, which Israel has at best a very limited ability to do so absent direct US involvement. And the Biden administration has said, hey, we're going to defend you, will help defend you, but we're not going to participate directly. The United States is not going to provide military forces. Three part and parcel of an Israeli counterattack.
Jeff mccauslin's CBS News military consultant, Jeff, thanks so much for the time, good stuff.
Take care of guys, Armstrong and Getty