Last night, Israel finally struck back against Iran. Of course, earlier this week, over the weekend,

Iran had struck Israel with some 350 drones, missiles, and Israel was expecting that it was going

to have to fire back against Iran in some form or fashion. There were a few different options

that had been tabled, that had been considered. One was a full-scale attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, for example, completely degrading

their nuclear program.

Another option would have been to do virtually nothing, which is what Joe Biden wanted

to do.

Israel last night decided on a third option.

That would be a targeted strike limited in nature inside Iran, mainly to show the Iranians

as a warning.

Okay, guys, if you decide that you're going to escalate this thing, we are going to get to you much more than you are going to get to us. And that is what Israel pursued last night, which is, in fact, a useful means of deterrence. It is probably the best available scenario for both America and for America's allies in the region. If Israel had gone really heavy,

there was always the possibility of serious escalation via Hezbollah in Israel's north that could have turned into a larger, full-blown war. Now, would it have been more in Israel's interest

to completely destroy Iran's nuclear facility? Sure, it also would have been a lot riskier.

Right now, the United States and Israel have been in this very fraught negotiation over what

the United States will allow Israel to do. And so the Israeli government took a sort of conciliatory

middle road by issuing this targeted strike against Iran. And the goal, of course, was deterrence

of Iran itself directly saying, listen, you guys fired 350 drones, missiles, we knocked nearly all of that down. We basically can hit you anytime, anywhere we want, so you guys better stand down. That was the goal of the Israelis. And it also offered, because it was so limited to nature, the Iranians in off ramp. The Iranian off ramp would be to deny that any of this ever happened, which of course is exactly what Iran did. Iran had been mouthing off a lot about the idea that if

Israel launched a serious strike into Iranian territory, then Iran would up the ante with a broader

retaliatory strike and then you would have an escalating conflict. Israel issued a strike limited in

nature so as to allow the Iranian government the possibility of basically

denying that anything had ever happened. And that's basically what happened last night.

Again, Israel is playing a different game than Joe Biden is used to. Israel is playing in an area,

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