for more on Iran's attack on Israel and the rising tensions in the Middle East let's bring in Michael Rubin senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum Michael it's great to have you here and what are your thoughts this hour hey Kelly thank you well first of all I'm glad to see that the barrage is over and that casualties are minimal but before we celebrate the fact that so many of these missiles were shot down or missed their target remember as in last April when Iran sent
its previous barrage if only seven or eight missiles get through but those seven or eight have chemical biological or radiological Warheads then we're talking a whole different ball game I'm afraid now that this has happened twice that the Israelis are going to be tempted to respond and respond hard I think we're now in the last days of the Islamic Republic of Iran what would a hard response look like something aimed at the oil facilities at the nuclear ones well if Israel were to strike at the nuclear facilities their pilots aren't suicidal so they might go
in with surprise but they're not going to be able to fly out with surprise so first they're going to need to take out command and control and anti-aircraft batteries but I suspect they're going to do what the Israelis did with Isel hania and Hassan nasala they're going to go for the head of the octopus hoping then that the tentacles will wither away I believe that what they're going to do is go after supreme leader Ali Ki and the top leaders of the Islamic revolutionary guard Corps to try to leave a vacuum at the top the
woman life Freedom Movement protest that uh began just over two years ago showed that the regime has very little legitimacy among the Iranian people the challenge is going to be how do you take out the regime without antagonizing the Iranian people Michael it's D to that point can you take us through what you hyp thetically think think hypothetically would be the the Ripple effects or the next response from them let's say they do go that route and they do start an active engagement uh a war if you will between Iran and Israel if you were
to go about that path that you spoke of do you then have to move troops in is is there anything that has to happen beyond that that could escalate or bring other parties from the Middle East other countries into that conflict as well um as you know I used to teach uh as a civilian in um on Navy ships and when I would ask Admirals to a man and a woman what they would say if you want the Iranians to take American diplomacy seriously and understand the need to stand down what you need to do
is remove US Air um aircraft carriers from the persan Gulf that may sound counterintuitive but if our aircraft carriers are 400 miles away in the northern Indian Ocean the Iranians and the Islamic revolutionary guard Corps will know we can strike at them but they can't strike back at us so actually no there should not be American troops present there should not be boots on the ground this is not Iraq what Kelly said before with regard to oil remember that most because Iran's Shore is very shallow and very Rocky most of Iran's oil exports occur from
offshore oil terminals the question then becomes whether the United States and our special forces as during the Reagan Administration will go after those and Target those more precisely is there the possibility of a more modest Israeli response here Michael and what would that possibly look like well Kelly there is of course uh a more modest response that could be possible and Israel would have a range of targets Iranian ships that are supplying the houthis for example the Islamic revolutionary guard Corps leaders ship generals and so forth uh there's a whole menu look from Israel's point
of view in 1981 they took out the Iraqi nuclear program and in 2007 they took out the plutonium processing plan in derer uh Syria Iran is a much more complicated problem set because it's six times the size of Great Britain four times the size of Iraq and the program um the targets are far more desperate the only good news here is if Israel or the United States wanted to take out the underground nuclear facilities they don't need to destroy those facilities that are buried under mountains they only need to take out the entrances in the
exits
