Why things between Israel and Iran haven't escalated into all-out war

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This is just an excerpt from The Ezra Levant Show. To see new, ad-free episodes, which air Monday - Friday @ 8 p.m. ET | 6 p.m. MT, become a subscriber to RebelNews+. This episode originally aired on April 19, 2024.

On Friday's episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra was joined by Middle East Forum president Daniel Pipes to discuss Israel's retaliatory strikes against Iran.

The United States has been helping to defend Israel militarily, while releasing funds to Iran, placing them on both sides of this conflict. The relatively muted Israeli response to the Iranian attack may also seem confusing to some from the outside, but Pipes explained why things have played out this way.

One factor is the weakness of the Iranian military. "Strikingly, amazingly even, the Iranians have not managed to buy modern military aircraft since the revolution. And they're still using American-purchased planes from the 1960s and 70s."

Another contributor is the conflicted nature of current U.S. policy. While President Joe Biden claims proudly that his relationship with Israel goes back 50 years, he has also enabled the encroachment of Iran. "He keeps saying that he has Israel's back and ironclad commitments and so forth. At the same time as you pointed out, President Obama and now Biden have a great interest in luring the Iranians back into the so-called family of nations," Pipes commented.

Iran's direct attack on Israel marked a turn for the Islamic Republic, which has preferred to use its terrorist proxies to attack the Jewish state directly. But it seems that Israel did not take the opportunity to execute a large-scale strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, leading Ezra to ask Pipes for his thoughts: "I suspect the Israelis have come to the conclusion that it is a better deal to go along with their allies and to put pressure on them. To hold over them the threat of attacking Iranian nuclear infrastructure to get the allies to take more aggressive steps."