CNBC: 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. It’s great to have you here. What are your thoughts this hour?
Rubin: Thank you. 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, 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.
CNBC: What would a hard response look like, something aimed at the oil facilities, at the nuclear ones?
Rubin: 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 Ismael Haniyeh and Hassan Nasrallah. They’ll 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 Khamenei and the top leaders of the Revolutionary Guard Corps to leave a vacuum at the top. The Woman, Life, Freedom movement protest that 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?
CNBC: Michael, it’s Dom. To that point, can you take us through what you hypothetically think would be the ripple effects or the next response from them? Let’s say they do go that route and they do start an active engagement, 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 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?
Rubin: Dom, as you know, I used to teach as a civilian on Navy ships. And when I would ask admirals, to a man and 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 U.S. aircraft carriers from the Persian Gulf. That may sound counter-intuitive, 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.
CNBC: Is there the possibility of a more modest Israeli response here, Michael? And what would that possibly look like?
CNBC: Well, Kelly, there is, of course, 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 Corp leadership, generals and so forth. 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 plant in Syria. Iran is a much more complicated problem set. It’s six times the size of Great Britain, four times the size of Iraq and the program — the targets are far more disparate. The only good news 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 destroy the entrances and the exits.
