Israel's response to Iranian attacks should be carefully calculated, says Tufts' Dan Drezner

Going to dig further into Israeli potential response and what it could mean for the US and foreign policy, Joining me now is Danielle Pletka, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an NBC News contributor, along with Dan Drezner, Professor of International Politics at Tufts Fletcher School. Welcome to both of you, Danielle. There’s a limited supply of these sorts of defensive measures that were used to intercept this Iranian attack. So if Iran were able to do and and were to do something of this scale again, the result wouldn’t be guaranteed to be the same. How much of this is is the Israel’s need to show Iran that it can’t get away with just going ahead and doing something like this? And how much of this is potentially tipping into something far more dangerous in the next round? I think that’s really, it’s an excellent question but it’s one that’s very hard to answer. For the Israelis, there’s no question I think that they are going to respond. The only question is when and how they need to. You know we all, we’re all using these these phrases, escalation, ladder, restore deterrence and and at a certain point you sound like you’re in, you know you’re in grad school and you’re not in the real world. The Israelis performed admirably with the Americans, the French, the Brits and the Arabs this weekend. But seven missiles got through. They weren’t targeting cities. If they had been targeting cities, we could have imagined a very different outcome. The Israelis need to remind the Iranians that there are consequences to them of these kinds of actions. How they’re going to do that is an excellent question, Dan. Where’s the escape hatch here? Whether it’s diplomatic, I don’t know where countries get to still look strong but also pull back from what could tip into something very, very dangerous, right. It’s worth remembering that to place the context of Iran’s attack, recall that this is in response to the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing multiple Iranians. So you could argue that Iran’s response in terms of, you know, all the missiles you’re talking about, I think what one person described as a spectacular but not deadly attack. If I was Israel, what I would want to respond on with is a perhaps deadly but unspectacular attack. In other words, the the thing you want to be sure is that Israel’s response might actually cause cost to Iran, but is not so public as to require an additional response by Iran. Otherwise, you are moving up that escalation ladder and we are leaving a grad school seminar and entering the real world where you would have a much wider Middle East war that would be extremely devastating on all sides. Danielle, all of this takes on a different tint given Netanyahu’s political fragility and the election season that we’re getting deeper into in the United States, nobody wants to be perceived as being weak. How how do you expect to see them navigate this? Well, I don’t think that nobody wants to be perceived as being seen as weak. Frankly, the White House has been, has been perceived as weak by the Israelis on the one hand for for urging, constantly urging caution, for telling them they can’t go into southern Gaza to rescue their hostages and finish off Hamas week in dealing with the left flank of the Democratic Party when the president could stand up. So you know, but you’re right of course that politics are intervening much more. Nonetheless, as as Dan rightly says, we’re dealing with the real world here. The Israelis can’t play on 2 fields. At the same time. They cannot play in American White House politics and defend their nation, deal with Hamas and deal with the Iranians. So they are focusing, I think correctly, on their own national security threats and letting the White House walk this tightrope rather inexpertly. Well, Dan, I’m I’m not sure what an expert walk would be in the situation given that Bidens base is is pretty upset with how things are playing out there in Gaza in particular. But I can’t imagine a scenario where the United States let’s Israel be on its own facing an attack from an Arab neighbor. Well first of all Iran’s Persian not Arab got to clarify that. And second I mean that actually already has been the message from the by administration I believe over the weekend the by administration made it clear that it would not support a direct Israeli attack on Iran making it clear that it wants what’s going on to to be de escalated. It’s also worth noting that the one area where the US does have deterrence has been in response to the October the Hamas attack. After Iran’s proxies launched a number of attacks on U.S. soldiers throughout the region, the was responded in force and that caused the Iranians to have to sort of tell their proxies to stand down. I think to some extent the problem here is that I agree with Danny to some extent, that the White House is sort of hemmed in, in terms of what it can tell Israel. I think that the message it probably wants to communicate is that Israel rushed in in response to Gaza after the horrific attacks of October. But I’m not sure strategically that’s worked out very well for Israel. What it would probably want Israel to do is to take its time in terms of thinking of how to respond to Iran in a way such that Iran pays a price. But again, you don’t move up the escalatory ladder. Yeah, not easy to figure out, Dan. Danielle, thank you.