Israeli Security ‘A Cornerstone of Peace in Middle East’

To assess the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, let's bring in National Security Analyst Rebecca Grant. She's a Senior Fellow at the Lexington Institute. Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us. Glad to be here. Well, Iran has said that it plans to retaliate against Israel after the deaths of senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah. What are your expectations of Iran's actions here in the coming days, if not hours? Well, Washington and of course all the countries in the region are watching very closely. We are hearing reports of potential retaliation within the next hours or even days. And what's going on now is a flurry of phone calls, as your reporter said, between President Biden talking to Jordan and of course Secretary of State Blinken talking to our G7 allies and others as well. All this is happening because the scenario is a retaliation by Iran and then perhaps another strike in retaliation from Israel. This happened back in April. The concern this time is that Iran's attack may be a little bit more complex. Remember back in July, a missile came out of Yemen, hit Tel Aviv from an unusual approach over the sea. And there's concern that we need to have U.S. forces in place to assist Israel and other allies in case Iran does launch a retaliatory strike. And now before we move on, I just want to play a quick clip here from the State Department spokesperson, Matthew Miller. Let's take a look. We have been sending consistent messages through our diplomatic engagements, encouraging people to communicate to the government of Iran that escalation is not in their interest and that we will defend Israel from attacks. So Rebecca, right now, we're seeing the Pentagon moving more military assets to the Middle East and President Biden's meeting with his national security team today. Considering all of this, where do you think the U.S. stands on this issue? Well, there's a diplomatic message, but the military force posture is the real message. And they're trying to get across to Iran, keep a lid on it, don't escalate. Of course, that was done back in April and Iran carried out the strike anyway. But the larger piece of this is so that Iran's leaders know that with the amount of U.S. military power we have in the region, our aircraft carrier, our land-based fighters, F-22 fighters on the way, that we have plenty of overmatch for anything that Iran might try. Remember, with our U.S. military help and Israel and Jordan as well, they were able to shoot down almost all of the missiles and drones that were fired back in April. So our posture now is to try to keep a lid on it, but also make sure that our U.S. forces that are there, whether it's in Syria and Iraq and the naval forces there in the Red Sea, that they're protected as well. And we continue to see the Houthis shooting missiles and using unmanned vessels to attack our forces and the shipping lanes up in the Red Sea. So it's pretty tense right now. And the message to Iran is don't do it. We overmatch anything you bring to the fight. Do you think peace in the Middle East here will be reached through diplomatic efforts? And if Iran attacks Israel, what does the future hold for the Middle East and the United States? Iran's attack on Israel, April, really changed the equation. We thought it was something we'd just never see. But now we understand that Israel must be able to defend its territory and its population. And Israeli security is really a cornerstone of peace in the Middle East. The ceasefire talks over Gaza are on hold right now until we see how the next days of military operations play out. But when that's done, the Biden administration's been very clear they want to get right back to Hamas agreeing to that ceasefire so they can then bring massive humanitarian aid into Gaza. Israel's made some pretty big concessions in order to get that agreement going. But right now it's really up to Hamas to say yes to the ceasefire agreement. But don't expect any of that to happen until we see what Iran's move is next. Definitely. Well, Rebecca Grant, Senior Fellow at the Lexington Institute, thank you very much for your insight here today. Thank you.