Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, Senior Vice President for Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said in an interview late last week that the “soft landing” Israel is looking for as it launches its war against Palestinian Islamic terrorism was for the U.S. to keep its two aircraft carrier strike groups positioned in the region to deter Iran from escalating the war.
The U.S. has deployed the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group to the Central Command area of responsibility in addition to moving the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The U.S. also deployed Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries as well as additional Patriot battalions to locations throughout the region and placed additional forces on “prepare to deploy” orders.
Schanzer told Margaret Hoover on PBS’s “Firing Line” that Hamas’ horrifying terrorist attacks changed the region forever after 1,400 of its citizens were murdered.
“Up until two weeks ago, the Israeli military establishment looked upon Hamas as what they called a tactical threat, an annoyance that can be deadly, but that was manageable,” he said. “It’s no longer manageable from Israel’s perspective. I heard one former Israeli official say the moment that they killed that many people was the moment that [Hamas] lost the right to exist. Very stark language.”
Schanzer said that Iran was “one hundred percent” helping Hamas prepare for Israel’s ground invasion into Gaza by helping them under the series of events that would happen as a result of their attack.
He said that President Joe Biden has take the right steps by deploying heavy military assets to the region “that are designed to stare down the Iranian regime and to stare down Hezbollah.”
“The strategy here is to try to isolate Gaza from all of the other action that could occur,” he said. “In other words, deter Iran, convince it that it could actually suffer consequences by entering this battle; do the same with Hezbollah. And if this works the way that I think the Israelis want it to, and maybe the Americans as well, it would be a situation where the Iranian axis looks on somewhat helplessly while Israel, with assistance from the U.S. in some way or another, removes one of Iran’s chess pieces from the board.”
“In other words, they have nothing that they can do but watch as Israel destroys Hamas and frees up one of its borders from the Iran-backed threat,” he continued. “This would be, I think, the soft landing that the Israelis are looking for. Whether it’s an easy battle is another story entirely. But the last thing Israel wants, I think, is that multi-front war. That said, I think the Israelis, they’ve made it clear that if they need to fight a two front battle, they will. And it will be tough.”
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