The War In The Middle East: Dr. Jeff McCausland Talks to A&G

Iran attacked Israel yesterday and the world is waiting to see how Israel is going to respond. 

CBS News Military analyst Dr. Jeff McCausland joins The Armstrong & Getty Show to talk about it.

You can listen to the entire conversation in a new episode of Armstrong & Getty's Extra Large Podcast....

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
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

(00:40):
to hit back, WI ain't going to help you.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Jeff.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
It's always a pleasure. How are you.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
I'm doing very well and great with you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Well, let's just start with the witch of those two approaches.
Do you like the Bolton approach or the Biden approach?

Speaker 4 (01:08):
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

(01:33):
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

(01:55):
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.

(02:16):
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

(02:37):
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.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
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

(03:12):
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.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:25):
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

(03:47):
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?

(04:09):
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.

(04:33):
Might those the other ways are going about some kind
of a response over time.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
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.

Speaker 4 (05:00):
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

(05:22):
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

(05:43):
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.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
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.

Speaker 4 (06:23):
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

(06:44):
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

(07:05):
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

(07:26):
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

(07:48):
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.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
Jeff mccauslin's CBS News military consultant, Jeff, thanks so much
for the time, good stuff.

Speaker 4 (08:15):
Take care of guys, Armstrong and Getty