Evening Edition: Israel Strikes Secret Iranian Military Bases
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Monday, October 28th, 2024. I'm Eben Brown. Israel fires back at Iran, stopping short of destroying its feared nuclear sites, but yet leaving the Islamic Republic very defenseless. And that is born of the administration's preference for

de-escalation over deterrence in the Middle East, which has put us in this very precarious situation. As a major ally in the region, Israel is proving that actually there is a way to kind of restore deterrence and there is a military option. This is the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition. ♪

Hey, folks, I'm John Rich. Just as wokeness and censorship have subverted the music industry, they've also crushed free expression on social media. Censors have suspended social media users, canceled entire news channels, obliterated online discussion platforms, and even banished a sitting American president.

from big tech platforms. Well, I'm here to say there's a place for you. A place where patriots can speak freely without fearing some unknown unseen speech enforcer that wants to shut you down. That place?

It's called True Social, a free speech social media platform that hosts breaking news, TV streaming channels and powerful commentary on all the issues facing our great nation. Break free of big tech and make your voice heard. Join me on an uncancellable platform where I like to debut my songs and where you can read exclusive commentary from our 45th president, Donald J. Trump.

I'll see you on Truth Social, where freedom lives. Download the Truth Social app or visit truthsocial.com.

Israel took its return shot, replying to Iran's bombardment of it earlier this month with hundreds of missiles. Israel's air force early Saturday morning penetrated Iranian airspace, destroying much of its air defense and perhaps more poignantly, much of its missile production capabilities. Israel didn't strike at the Islamic Republic's infamous nuclear facilities and where it is developing a nuclear weapon.

It also left intact the country's oil and gas energy production plants, something the Biden administration may have demanded.

But was it enough to convince Iran's hardline rulers to stop making war, to stop buoying its proxies in Gaza, in Lebanon and in Yemen? It may be too soon to tell, but the Israelis struck hard and the Iranians are feeling it. Based on what we know from reporting and commercial satellite imagery and analysis of said commercial satellite imagery, it's

The Israelis went after prospective capabilities, particularly on the military front. Benham Ben-Taliblu covers both Iranian politics and Middle East security as an analyst for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. And that is particularly tied to the ability of the Islamic Republic to defend its own airspace. They went after some of the major countries.

surface-to-air missile capabilities of Iran's layered, but nowhere as well layered as Israel's air and missile defense assets on the home front, as well as the domestic production capacity for its ballistic missiles, particularly the more advanced solid propellant systems which Iran has been

testing, transferring and using much more recently. And taken together, this guts the two pillars of future deterrence by denial, the ability of Iran to deny future Israeli attacks through its air defense, and deterrence by punishment, be able to respond to future Israeli attacks by threats against targets, be they military or civilian, by Iran

by launching more ballistic missiles. So the first thing about framing this entire attack by Israel, which was a retaliation to the biggest ballistic missile barrage in a single day in history, which was the Islamic Republic's barrage firing between 180 and 200 medium-range ballistic missiles against Israel on October 1st, many of which are capable of carrying a nuclear weapon, by the way. That's a small print in there.

This is Israel's tailored response to that, not as an operation, but as a move in a much larger campaign. I think the shadow war between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel can no longer be confined to the shadows. And the nature of the target selection by Israel, which is just as imperative politically as it is militarily, tells you that there will be more in the future. The Iranian people might...

see this. There is no real way that the Islamic Republic, the Supreme Leader, its government can keep this quiet from its own people, which for years, decades even, we have been told there has been dissent fomenting and they're just waiting for their opportunity for a weakness in the Islamic Republic's governance. How do those people see this? They take notice of these things. Well, one of the real...

uh saving races of this strike was that it actually had no reported civilian casualties thus far there have been four confirmed military casualties of Iran's artesh the National Army the air defense force they're in uh but otherwise this is a huge win for these really to be able to strike at the adversary and make sure the civilian population inset territory remains safe

Part of that has to do with the military targeting. The rationale was only military sites. That was something the Biden administration made clear for the Israelis. But also, in this instance, the timing of the attack

you know, in the wee hours of the morning on October 26th. And the stealth and the success of the Israelis has advanced warfighters to be able to carry out these pinprick strikes. So taking all of that together leads you exactly to this joke I'm about to tell you that has been circulating in Iran and made its way into social media and has come into the Iranian diaspora in America and around the world. And the joke is, what's the difference between Iranians and Israelis in the Middle East today? Go ahead. And the answer is...

And the answer is, when there's a war in Israel, Israelis run to bunkers underground.

When there was a war in Iran, Iranians rushed to the rooftops to see if the Supreme Leader's office has been hit yet. That's a reality for us. Anti-regime sentiments that exist therein. There was even a piece of graffiti. You may have seen it or your friends and colleagues may have seen it floating all around social media in the aftermath of Iran's October attack while folks were waiting and talking about the scale and the scope of what could be Israel's military response. There's a piece of graffiti in Persian

I think on a government building, if I'm not mistaken. I have to double check if it was a residence or a government building, but it said in Persian, in Iran, Israel.

Israel, the first strike is yours, the last strike is ours, meaning that that person personifying a sentiment within Iranian society basically saw themselves as allies of the Israelis against the government of the Islamic. It is certainly noteworthy how much that sentiment has grown and increased and how it has gotten more vocal and noticed around the world. I think certainly, you know, with

things like social media and the ability of the Iranian people to communicate that with the rest of the world. But what happens next? I mean, the Israelis, I think, have perhaps sort of set this up to leave it in Tehran's hands to say you don't have to do anything further, but there's probably a lot of pressure on this supreme leader to maybe do something further, another missile barrage perhaps.

We don't know what that would look like or when it would come. Certainly the Israelis have said they're ready. But what happens next? You know, with the shadow war having moved out of the shadows now, particularly since April, but certainly since October, I think there's an element that's unspoken about Israeli strategy here that we have to discuss, which is they are now in the position of trying to have the Islamic Republic

because they know there is no behavior change coming from this regime so long as the supreme leader and the islamic revolutionary guard power because there is no behavior change operation what you need to do is put the regime in the position of making more mistakes put the regime in the position of making bad decisions at home and abroad leading with its chin and potentially that's what this strike offers the iranians

If they respond overtly, directly, and conventionally, as many hardline newspapers throughout this weekend were calling for, they were calling for revenge, they were calling for a hard response and response to a soft attack, all this language, all this hyperbole, all this inflammatory stuff, if they do that, they will be

cutting off their nose to spite their face, or in so doing, find a way to save face and risk losing their head altogether because they cannot compete with Israel in the overt conventional space, which is why they've been mastering proxy warfare, first of all. Conversely, if they do absolutely nothing, that vindicates the new theory that we've been seeing from the Israelis of incremental military success against the proxies and the patriots.

and reversing the tide of the past two decades of the Middle East, where it was the Islamic Republic that had attrition warfare and had engaged in limited warfare against the US and against our partners in the region through a limited war, but had denied against it for all of their adversaries limited war. Israel is now in the business of trying to validate the theory that there is a limited war option. And if the Islamic Republic does not respond,

then you could expect probably more ratcheting up pressure against the patron as well as against the proxy network. And because this is such a bind, we saw Iran's Supreme Leader on Sunday give a major address trying to thread the needle between the two. And he said we shouldn't exaggerate the Israeli strike and we shouldn't minimize the Israeli strike. I thought it was an interesting comment.

Our guest is Benham Ben-Taliblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies as we discuss Israel's retaliation upon Iran for the missile strike earlier this month. On the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition, please like and subscribe. We'll have more straight ahead.

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Part of this response, we have to acknowledge here, may have been either directed or commanded or limited, maybe is the better term, by the Biden administration. The Biden administration is on record for saying they want de-escalation more than anything. There are plenty of reports from the whispers in Washington that

The Biden White House told the Israelis not to strike nuclear facilities, not to strike oil production facilities. And so the Israelis did not do that. Was that pressure on the Netanyahu government or was that the Israelis finding a real cause for not striking those things yet? Yet is the word I'm using. Yeah.

I think it's a combination, but if it's a cocktail, you know, if this is a martini, the major ingredient, the gin or the vodka is the Biden administration's pressure and restraint and constraint. There's only a little bit of vermouth in there, but the major ingredient here is the Biden administration. And you saw that in the public commentary. Immediately after the October attack, President Biden said that Israel had a right to defend itself and use similar language like this. But in the days following that comment, there was the circumscribing. There

There is no going after nuclear facilities. Then a few days later, no going after energy and oil facilities. And that is born of the administration's preference for de-escalation over deterrence in the Middle East, which has put us in this very precarious situation. As a major ally in the region, Israel is proving that actually there is a way to kind of restore deterrence and there is a military option.

And in this space, neither the two shall meet with two fundamentally different views and philosophies of the region. But the Israelis did find a very clever, creative way to square the circle based on the targets that we had reported now from their October 25th attack against the Islamic Republic.

Two future look-aheads here. One, you know, the U.S. election is next week. We may find ourselves with a different but same government, meaning we may have another Trump administration, which touted its policy towards Iran very loudly and has said that they would resume, or at least President Trump has said that if returned to office, he would resume that policy of maximum pressure.

We're not sure what the...

a Harris policy towards Iran would look like if it is steeped in what the Biden policy is, then I guess we would have some idea. The Israelis are watching. The Iranians are watching. What does the next week look like in that front? The problem is everyone is watching. It's like 1968. The whole world is watching, if you will. And they're watching, waiting and learning, but also looking for opportunities to exploit. Even before this entire tit for tat crisis took off,

There were concerns that the Islamic Republic would use the lame duck period of the Biden administration to significantly advance its nuclear program, regardless of who came in and perhaps even significantly advance its nuclear program.

and more so than it would otherwise if the Trump administration came in because the Trump administration was going to return to maximum pressure and try to gut the regime's economy. And therefore they needed all the leverage and all the capacity that they could hit the gas on in the months between November and January of this year and next year. I think, unfortunately, that still remains part of the thinking of the Islamic Republic, how best to find a way to exploit this. But that brings me back to how the regime may respond here.

uh particularly if the regime does not respond uh to this attack and in november you have uh vice president kamala harris elected i could see the regime weaponizing their non-response to allow them the time and space to continue the nuclear program admittedly through incremental escalation and then through the non-response try to hoodwink the new democratic administration

and buy time for unproductive nuclear diplomacy, and also to try to translate that non-response by the Iranians to have the Americans, again, preference de-escalation over deterrence and put the political handcuffs on the Israelis and prevent that larger campaign from ever happening.

Venom, Ben Taliblu, you're a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where you focus on Iranian security and political issues. Thank you so much for being with us on the Fox News Rundown Evening Edition. Thank you. A pleasure. Thank you.

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