President Joe Biden advised Israel to move on and show restraint after Iran launched a series of missiles and Israel managed to shoot them all down in the air. But WWL's Newell Normand wondered, 'why should they show restraint?'
Daniel DePetris, a Defense Priorities Fellow, joined Norman to give his expert opinion on what happened, why it happened, and what may happen next.
"When do we get to the point that enough is enough?" Normand asked him. "We're asking everyone to exhibit restraint at this point ... If this happened to the U.S. what would our response be? In modern times, I think back to 9/11. It wasn't an exhibition of restraint."
DePetris said the Israelis are under an immense amount of pressure and he believes they've been signaling that if an opportunity arises, they'll target Iran directly.
"They live in a tough neighborhood, and they have lived in a tough neighborhood since the state of Israel was founded in 1968," DePetris said. He added the U.S. is probably 'burning up the phones' to tell Israel they can't let this dispute with Iran get out of control.
The Israelis have made it abundantly clear they will escalate against the Iran military if they have to, and the goal now -- which is 'very difficult' -- is to ensure the U.S. doesn't get snared into a conflict with Iran.
So, is there an end game?
"The problem is in the Middle East there are no good solutions so we have 'butt ugly' or 'extremely butt ugly' -- those are our choices, right -- so we have to make the best of the reality that presented to us ... If the Israelis don't retaliate at all, this could, not necessarily blow over, but we could get back to the point where we were two or three weeks ago. Granted, that wouldn't be great, but it would be far better than the alternative of a more violent conflict."