Dr. Michael Oren, formerly Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, opened the rpogram this AM:

Audio:

04-15hhs-oren

Transcript:

HH: Joined now by Dr. Michael Oren, formerly Israel’s ambassador to the United States, former deputy minister in a previous Netanyahu government. Good morning, Dr. Oren. I’m glad everyone survived Saturday night. I am curious what you think Israel should do now.

MO: Well, good to be with you as always, Hugh. Israel should do three things. One, Israel should mount an international diplomatic effort to galvanize a front against Iran, to expose the fact that Iran is the source of instability, violence, war in the Middle East. It’s now been, the veil has been lifted, and we should take advantage of this moment. It’s an extraordinary moment, in that way. Secondly, we should change the rules of the game. I can’t stress this enough. For the last 15-20 years, the United States, Israel, we’ve all been playing by the Iranian rules. What are those rules? Iran should get its proxies to shoot at us, and we shoot back at the proxies. And for Israel, it’s a terrible game, because the proxies hide behind their civilian population, and we get branded as war criminals. And every single round, Iran gets away Scot free, without a scratch. That’s got to stop. Now, every bullet, every bomb that comes across our border, we exact a price from Iran, and only from Iran. Thirdly, Israel has to maintain its deterrent power. You cannot build deterrence power solely on defense. You can’t win a football game only with a defensive line, true?

HH: Yeah.

MO: You have to have an offense. And every country in the world has to understand that if they’re going to fire 350 projectiles at us, and if even one of them had gotten through, it could have killed thousands of people. That’s a level of aggression that cannot go unanswered. And I appreciate that the United States, and certainly this administration doesn’t want to get dragged into a regional war. And you should know historically, the United States has really never given Israel a green light for counteroffensive action, almost never. And so it’s not unique to this administration. But we can’t do that. We can’t afford to do that. There has to be deterrence.

HH: Dr. Oren, I agree with that. I agree with that, but I think we’re going to be preaching a little bit to my choir this morning. But I want to underscore if Israel doesn’t attack now, if the West holds Israel back from a counterpunch, under what circumstances could you imagine anyone ever doing anything about Iran’s nuclear program?

MO: Right now, I can’t imagine anybody ever doing anything about Iran’s nuclear program.

HH: Exactly!

MO: I can’t. So Israel has to act. And by the way, the nuclear program is certainly in the bank of targets here. And the question is, you know, our capabilities, can we do to the same thing the United States have? I don’t want to get into too much details, but I’ll tell you just right off the bat, Israel does not have strategic bombers. The United States does. And that doesn’t mean we don’t have capabilities. But nothing should be off the table. Nothing, Hugh.

HH: I’ve got to ask for how you understand the perspective of other people. I’m going to ask everyone the same sort of questions today. O’Brien’s coming on, Robert O’Brien, Schanzer. First question. How is Sinwar in his tunnel viewing all this, the last 48-72 hours?

MO: He’s not happy. He’s not happy. It’s taking the focus off of him. And one of the things that I think Israel should do is at the same time we’re dealing with Iran, we should deal with Rafah and get it over with. Rafah. Get it over with. And people are afraid of losing international sympathy. International sympathy is good for about three hours in any case.

HH: What about Nasrallah? What is Nasrallah thinking about this?

MO: Oh, he’s thinking about am I going to get dragged into this or not. And he might. And if we do, and we have to deal with everybody, we’ll deal with everybody. I was just telling somebody about the last scene of Godfather I when Michael Corleone was new in the…

HH: (laughing)

MO: The bad guys just knocked off his father, knocked off his brother. And what does he do? He went and took care of the heads of all five families, and nobody messed with him again.

HH: Yeah, during a baptism. Yeah.

MO: And nobody messed with him.

HH: Okay, what does MBS and MBZ think about this?

MO: They want us to do this, of course. Of course, they want us to do this. And you know, they may say different things, but you know, behind the scenes, they say the twin existential threats of Sunni radicalism and Shiite radicalism, and we are the only power standing up to both of them. And we have to do that. And by the way, the degree to which we stand to both of them and we win, we’ll get peace, because that’s the way you get peace in the Middle East, by being strong.

HH: Now Dr. Oren, I have followed overnight, I followed the various reports. I don’t know what to believe about what the war cabinet is thinking and doing and debating. I do know what Biden is doing, what David Cameron is doing, Macron is doing. The West doesn’t want Israel to do anything. And I can’t understand this.

MO: Of course.

HH: I just, it really seems to me to be appeasement on display. What, is there possibly a backchannel saying we have to say this, but go ahead and do what you need to do?

MO: It would be nice if they did that, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. And it hasn’t happened historically, not just with this administration. And again, election year and all that, and we’re also dealing, you can read the article I think I sent you that was in the Free Press today about…

HH: Yes, I did, appeasement.

MO: Appeasement.

HH: I put it out there.

MO: And it didn’t start yesterday. And so you have a deeply ingrained mentality that seeks, still, that still thinks there’s hope of some type of rapprochement there.

HH: You know, Dr. Oren, I spent yesterday rereading Daniel Gordis’ book, Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn. And I was struck by the Ben Gurion decision to build nuclear capability, because Israel was meant to end Jewish vulnerability, whatever that would take. We have never seen Jewish vulnerability on display the way we saw it last night, not since 1973, at least. Does, do you think the West gets that?

MO: Well, we get that. The West is not going to get that, and we’re going to get that. And that’s important that we understand what we need to do in order to defend ourselves, defend our sovereignty. And yes, the IDS had an extraordinary accomplishment the other night, and really, truly historical, along with the United States, along with the Jordanians, along with the French and the British. It’s all great. But I just reiterate. A defense does not equal deterrence.

HH: I agree with that.

MO: And actually, the Iranians, the Iranians may feel tremendously humiliated. You know, you heard about the pictures of the Texas fire, right?

HH: Yeah. Pretending that they hit something, yeah.

MO: Yeah, they put up a picture of a Texas forest fire. Yeah, and they may feel humiliated. My guess is the Iranians are going to try something again. And if I were in their place, I would do something again, because you know, they, you can’t keep these things secret from the population very long. And everyone’s going to say you guys failed. You guys are weak. And let’s say…

HH: A great…

MO: Hugh, I have to go on Israeli television.

HH: You betcha. You betcha, Dr. Oren. Thank you so much.

MO: Take care. Thank you. Have a quiet day. Bye.

End of interview.