Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the Intel committee, spoke to RCP’s Phil Wegmann about what we know about Israel’s attack last night on Iran, and Iran’s possible retaliation, on Friday’s edition of the RealClearPolitics podcast “Well, I guess we know two things,” Himes said. “Number one, the initial Israeli strikes were superbly precise and accompanied by a massive failure of intelligence on the part of the Iranians.” “Stunningly precise, difficult, probably years of planning.” “Just now we’re starting to see the Iranian response,” he said. “And then you’ll have the Israeli response to that. So I think we are far from a moment where we can say with any certainty there won’t be a major escalation here.” “The debate inside the White House is probably very complicated,” he said. “On the one hand, you have a hawkish, almost neocon instinct. On the other hand, you’ve got the MAGA instinct of ‘do not get involved with foreign wars.’ But I also have very little doubt the Israeli prime minister, Prime Minister Netanyahu, has been determined for a good third of my lifetime to attack Iran.” “I have to acknowledge when you look at the Israeli strikes on Hezbollah, on Hamas, they dramatically outperformed the expectations of people who are bitterly pessimistic about the ability to get the ‘bad guys’ in the Middle East. Our experience with the Iraq War conditions all of us to think you go in with the best of intentions and you end up leaving with bitterness, but that has not been what the Israelis have been able to pull off. Remarkable weakening of Iran.” “I don’t think there’s any chance that there is likely to be a negotiation in a week-the Iranian regime can’t sustain the visual of being bombed into negotiating. On the other hand, their ability to attack-certainly through their proxies as well, Hamas and the Houthis-has been seriously reduced but not eliminated.” “It is still a very, very dangerous array of tools the Iranians have. Look, if nothing else, shutting down the Straits of Hormuz-that’s a twenty-mile-wide gap through which something like twenty percent of the world’s oil goes-and it is not hard for the Iranians to shut that down. That means gas prices are now going up at the pump, and that means there’s a higher probability that the United States gets involved. So, you know, it’s been a pretty remarkable twenty-four hours, but again, long experience tells me the Middle East will surprise you-and not in a happy way.” “It’s very early, but there’s very little question that Netanyahu’s goal here is regime change-and not forced regime change, but regime change brought about by the Iranian people,” Himes said. “The Israelis could have gone after an awful lot of oil infrastructure, which they have not done; they have limited their strikes to the nuclear infrastructure, to nuclear scientists, and to military commanders. They don’t appear to have taken a shot at the national leadership-given everybody else they’ve been able to very precisely eliminate, they presumably could have gotten the Supreme Leader, but did not do that.”
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