David, I'm going to assign you to get us up to, up to speed. Um, I want to read something that you wrote this week, um. Israel has recovered the military primacy it lost when Hamas fighters surged across the Gaza border on October 7th and ravaged Israeli civilians.
Hamas has been tamed militarily. Hezbollah is reeling from the targeted killing of its leader Hassan Nasrallah, and most of its top military commanders and Iran's retaliatory barrage appears to have been absorbed by Israel without major losses, so right now, what are the chances we're looking at a major Israeli retaliatory strike. To pay back for the previous retaliatory strike.
My guess is that we'll see a significant strike but not an overwhelming one, not certainly not on nuclear facilities, uh, I think the Israelis have made that clear to President Biden, probably not an oil facilities, but I'm not sure when I've asked, I've been told expect a demonstration by Israel that we can hit anything we want in Iran like what they did after April 14th. But not something that would ratchet this conflict up to an entirely different level that really would be all out war. Donald Trump said this week that he thinks it's crazy to advise Israel not to hit the nuclear facilities in Iran and obviously we know Netanyahu's Prime Minister Netanyahu's predisposition on that question.
So why wouldn't they use this opportunity right now to go do some lasting damage to. A couple of the key nuclear facilities only because Joe Biden is asking them not to. No, I mean, I, I do think there is a temptation when you're on a roll as Israel has been now for for some months it's hard to stop.
I mean you know there just seems to be no Iranian capacity to to prevent them from knocking down one proxy after another and uh you know from acting at will against Iran itself, so there is a temptation to keep going when you. Say strike at their nuclear facilities. I always have to remind myself that that's not an easy thing to do, uh, you know, these facilities are centrifuges.
They're buried deep underground, the, the, the, the Iranian expertise is really in the minds of the scientists, so the the idea that with a bombing campaign, you could take out the Iranian nuclear program, I think most experts would say is unrealistic and Attacking oil facilities, um, that could certainly cause problems for President Biden and Vice President Harris, in the next 4 weeks is that why they're advising against it? Yeah, I mean, look, that is an easier target to David's point than the nuclear facilities, oil facilities are there and easily hit, but the question is what does world markets you're already seeing the price of crude go up. Could they hit just the refineries, for instance, that mainly handle internal domestic consumption wouldn't necessarily Hurt uh the, the global markets possibly, but that's something that Biden doesn't want to see because the election may be also there because he doesn't want to see the spiral that he's been trying to avoid for 12 months.
He has been, that's been number one goal aside from supporting Israel's right to defend itself has been supporting its right to defend itself up to a point, right up to the point that we don't engulf the region, right? Francesca, you were just with the president yesterday, give us the sense from the White House this week about the calibration that's going on. terms of the advice or requests being made by the White House to Israel right now.
Well, and it's not just the White House, it is the Defense Secretary who is talking to his counterpart in Israel, Y on a near daily basis, I am told, and what we aren't seeing is the president of the United States who's speaking directly to Bibi Netanyahu at this point, and he has suggested repeatedly that a call could be coming soon. When is the last time? The last time that they had spoken was in August, and notably when the United Nations was taking Netanyahu came to New York after Biden was already back in Washington.
He was meeting with President Zelensky at the White House at the time, so they did not cross paths when they were in New York. As far as a phone call that could take place, the, the calculation on that has been that Biden doesn't feel the need to speak to him until something is actually going to happen. When I spoke to President Biden about this last night, he said that he hadn't spoken to him because nothing was taking place right now, so that tells you a lot about the movements in the couple of days, maybe to a week, that he has not felt the need to have a conversation at that level yet because the White House only believes he needs to weigh in when a decision seems to be imminent.
Frank, what would the, what is the thing that the White House is looking for? I was just thinking back to that conversation in August which took place in a totally different world where Biden was trying to bring Bibi along to a place where he would settle, he'd come to an agreement over the terms for the peace deal with Hamas that would be. Hamas and it was a very was to get the hostages it was a very uncomfortable call and it happened in a totally different era.
I would be comfortable as a euphemism for they yelled at each other a lot. What was it? Yeah, yeah, more or less.
I mean I don't think it was in it was not a 10 on the scale of those conversations, but it wasn't a totally friendly call. Is it Biden who doesn't want to turn to Netanyahu, or is it Netanyahu also doesn't want to talk to Biden. I think it's mutual at this point.
I think that there's a lot of kabuki that happens in these calls where Biden gets performatively angry and Netanyahu because he's a lot of pent up feelings towards him and Netanyahu knows what's coming and he knows what he needs to tell Biden in order to get things back on course, right? So what, what does Joe Biden want right now? Does he want a comprehensive ceasefire on the northern front and on the southern front, uh, and I, I ask this because there are, there are people who are more hardline in the administration than others and some people say, well, it's going to David's point.
You know, maybe we're, we're the Israelis are doing a pretty good job of destroying Iran's terrorist proxies. Why would we stop that from happening, kind of the point that President Trump made this week. So I mean, what is, what is Joe Biden, and now I'm asking you to do like a soup saying, What does Joe Biden want relates to what's happened over the course of the last couple of weeks in Lebanon where the administration's position has markedly changed from pushing for a ceasefire to give Israel more room to operate.
