Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast.

Today is Monday, May 15th, 2023. I am John Puthor. It's the editor of commentary magazine with me as always executive editor, a greenwald high Abe.

Hi John, media commentary columnist Christine Rosen, high Christine.

Hi John.

Christine's colleague at the American Enterprise Institute and our Washington commentary columnist Matthew Contanetti. Hi Matt.

Hi John.

And joining us today for his expertise on matters is Rayleigh and Middle Eastern, the author of the article in the June commentary entitled Iran's multi front war against Israel from the foundation for the defensive democracy's Jonathan Shanzer.

Shanzer, welcome again.

Thanks John. Great to be with you.

So John the Ginger, you wrote a book in 2021 called Gaza conflict 2021. So the first question to ask you after after the high jinx last week where 1466 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel is are you going to write a book called Gaza conflict 2023 hell no.

The last one I wrote in in something like six weeks and it was just I was so outraged at the way that that war was covered in the way that it was discussed in our media and the way that it was just portrayed around the world that I really felt compelled to write about it. This round was a little less outrageous.

I think we might even call it kind of a garden variety rocket war. Unfortunately, that's where we've arrived now in the Middle East.

But I do think that there were a few cards flashed over the last month or two, which we discuss in in the piece that I wrote for commentary that I think we're getting signals of what may come.

And that is not a garden variety war, but rather something for more troubling.

I was just about to say that in your piece, Iran's multi front war against Israel, you posit that for the first time really in 50 years since the 1973 home could poor war.

Israel is facing a potential military direct military challenge conventional, even though we're talking mostly about rocketry, but a conventional military challenge.

Literally in multiple sites on its borders. So Gaza won Lebanon to the go on heights three and then not on its border 900 miles away.

Tehran, which is directing all of this and which also may have a direct military role in some really massive conflagration.

What's interesting about what happened in last week in the rocketry fire on Israel is that it came from the Gaza Strip, but it did not come from according to the Israelis for the most part.

It did not come from Hamas, the governing terrorist entity on the Gaza Strip, but from Islamic jihad, which has I think been thought of mostly in conflict with Hamas.

Or having a different military sort maybe maybe maybe I'm sort of like a lighting pointer. I'm getting too deep in the weeds, but so Hamas is saying like, hey, it's not us. It's them.

And then Israel saying, well, you're the governing authority here. So you're to blame if rockets are firing from your territory.

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