Prominent American theoretician: Israel was shocked by Iran’s attack

Iran’s retaliatory attack and Al-Aqsa storm severely damaged Israel’s deterrence. Mersheimer announced this. Andrew Napolitano, in an interview with this prominent world theorist in the field of international relations in America, asked: Did Iran succeed in delivering the message it intended to send by attacking Israel?

Mearsheimer replied that “there is no doubt about it. What happened on Saturday night as well as what happened on October 7th, if you put these two issues together, Israel’s deterrence has suffered a major blow. You have to remember that at the core and center of Israel’s deterrence strategy is “dominant escalation”. Israelis act on the principle that if someone strikes them, they should be able to retaliate and inflict more severe damage on their enemy than their enemy inflicts on them. This is the meaning of prevailing over the escalation of tension”.

Napolitano questioned that “they (the Israelis) want the world to fear them. Is this what I said true?”

Mearsheimer replied that “yes, of course, and that’s what it means to prevail over escalation… They can escalate because they’re going to win, but you don’t want to escalate.”

According to him, the Israelis “did not expect Iran to retaliate for the attack on the embassy (but) the Iranians retaliated, in a significant way, and it is not clear that the Israelis have the ability to retaliate in a way that would cause the Iranians to retreat.” be”.

The prominent American scientist added that “if the Israelis don’t retaliate or retaliate a little, they will look weak. Remember that this is the first time that a country like Iran has been able to attack Israel from its own land. This is really shocking from Israel’s point of view.”

He said: “The expectation was that the Israelis would completely let go of restrictions on Iran and punish them severely, but this is not the path that Israel is moving towards.” But if I am wrong and Israel is on this path and retaliates in a severe way, the Iranians will retaliate again, and then the question will be, what will Israel do? The answer to this question is that they do not have control over the escalation of tension”.
Mersheimer stated that “it is now clear that the Israelis made a mistake, they made a serious miscalculation that the Iranians would do nothing… The Iranians were very wise in attacking. They put the Israelis in a situation where they have no good option to retaliate.”

Source: Fars