Brit Hume: This was a 'spectacular failure of deterrence'

Protests, big cities all across the country. We saw them all day. They’re continuing at this hour. Anti Israel protests, supporters of Hamas many times in Gaza. Let’s bring in our Fox News Chief political analyst, Britt Hume. He’s looking at all of the political reaction to what happened over the weekend and what we saw today. Britt, good evening. First, your thoughts. Big picture in the reaction to the weekend events and what we just talked about with General Keen, the Iran strike. This was a spectacular failure of deterrence and the spectacular success of defense, good news and bad. I think that the fact that this, this attack, which was manifestly intended to do terrible damage in Israel, to hit civilians and kill them by the hundreds if not thousands, and the fact that it failed is something we can all be thankful for. But let’s make no mistake about it. If we had proper deterrence in that part of the world from a country as relatively weak toward a country as relatively weak as Iran, this would not have happened. President Biden’s appeal to Iran saying don’t. It was not the first time he’s used that word to appeal to an aggressor, Russia being the other other most spectacular example, don’t. He kept saying they did. Iran did as well. When you’re in a situation with with a country like Iran who is bound and determined if it can to destroy Israel, take it off the map and we are relaxing sanctions and taking other measures which frees up money for them to purchase weapons, it is clear that we’re not making a very serious effort toward deterrence. So we can all be grateful that it failed as it did. But the objective has to be a foreign policy against aggressors has has got to be effective deterrence, which means they’re afraid. I think there’s a very good chance that when Iran looks at the United States and its might, it it is tends to be afraid. Consider what the prominent mission to the UN from Iran said on. I guess it was day, night before last, day before last. It came out and said that the matter can be deemed concluded indicating this is not the beginning of a of of a series of attacks. And then it later said there’s a conflict between Iran and the rogue Israeli regime from which and this is now in capital letters, the US must stay away. Well, that doesn’t sound like they’re confident they could handle the US and they know perfectly well they don’t want to get into a confrontation with the US. So for for us now to be in the face of all that, just telling Israel now, staying out now and now Israel don’t, don’t, don’t overreact. Here I think is an attempt to to to do to to let to keep Israel from doing something Israel feels properly it must do. So I think overall that’s where we are. What about the political implications here in the US for President Biden? We see all of these protests around the country. A lot of them are chanting about President Biden and his policies. How do you think the rhetorical walking the line politically is going for this administration and this president? Well, it hasn’t succeeded in tamping down the the criticism of the administration, the resistance of the administration from people who support the Palestinian resistance and support, frankly, Hamas. I think it’s a very tiny fraction of our population, our voting population, but it is certainly enough people involved, as today’s demonstrations across the country showed, to make the Chicago Democratic Convention in August pretty messy. And I think the administration seems obviously worried about that and is attempting to do what it can to assure everybody that that that we’re, you know, we’re trying to restrain Israel, which I think is, you know, strategically probably a mistake and the kind of thing that makes people in places like Iran think that it’s a good time to attack Israel. So I think that on on a political level, it’s probably not going to make any difference in the United States. And on A and on a geopolitical level, it it’s a mistake because it emboldens, emboldens the aggressors, particularly in this case Iran. Brett as always. Thank you.