David, I'm going to assign you to get us up to -- up to speed.
I want to read something that you wrote this week.
Israel has recovered the military primacy it lost when Hamas fighters surged across the Gaza border on October 7th and ravaged Israeli civilians.
Hamas has been tamed militarily.
Hezbollah is reeling from the targeted killing of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of its top military commanders.
And Iran's retaliatory barrage appears to have been absorbed by Israel without major losses.
So, right now, what are the chances we're looking at a major Israeli retaliatory strike to pay back for the previous retaliatory strike?
David Ignatius, Foreign Affairs Columnist, The Washington Post: My guess is that we'll see a significant strike, but not an overwhelming one.
Not -- certainly not on nuclear facilities.
I think the Israelis have made that clear to President Biden.
Probably not on oil facilities, but I'm not sure.
When I've asked, I've been told, expect a demonstration by Israel that we can hit anything we want in Iran, like what they did after April 14, but not something that would ratchet this conflict up to an entirely different level, that really would be all-out war.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Donald Trump said this week that he thinks it's crazy to advise Israel not to hit the nuclear facilities in Iran.
And obviously, we know Netanyahu's -- Prime Minister Netanyahu's predisposition on that question.
So why wouldn't they use this opportunity right now to go do some lasting damage to a couple of the key nuclear facilities?
Only because Joe Biden is asking them not to?
David Ignatius: No, I mean, I do think there is a temptation.
When you're on a roll, as Israel has been now for some months, it's hard to stop.
I mean, you know, there just seems to be no Iranian capacity to prevent them from knocking down one proxy after another and to, you know, from acting at will against Iran itself.
So there is a temptation to keep going.
When you say strike at their nuclear facilities, I always have to remind myself that that's not an easy thing to do.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.
David Ignatius: You know, these facilities are centrifuges.
They're buried deep underground.
The Iranian expertise is really in the minds of the scientists.
So the idea that with a bombing campaign you could take out the Iranian nuclear program, I think most experts would say is unrealistic.
Jeffrey Goldberg: And attacking oil facilities, that could certainly cause problems for President Biden and Vice President Harris in the next four weeks.
Is that why they're advising against it?
Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Yeah, I mean, look, that is an easier target, to David's point, than the nuclear facilities.
Oil facilities are there and easily hit.
But the question is, what does world markets, you're already seeing the price of crude go up, could they hit just the refineries, for instance, that mainly handle internal domestic consumption and wouldn't necessarily hurt the global markets, possibly?
But that's something that Biden doesn't want to see.
Because the election may be also, because he doesn't want to see the spiral that he's been trying to avoid for 12 months.
He has been - - that's been the number one goal, aside from supporting Israel's right to defend itself, has been supporting its right to defend itself up to a point, right?
Up to the point that we don't engulf the region.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.
Francesca, you were just with the president yesterday.
Give us the sense from the White House this week about the calibration that's going on in terms of the advice or requests being made by the White House to Israel right now?
Francesca Chambers, White House Correspondent, USA Today: Well, and it's not just the White House.
It is the defense secretary who's talking to his counterpart in Israel, Yoav Gallant, on a near daily basis, I am told.
And what we aren't seeing is the president of the United States who's speaking directly to Bibi Netanyahu at this point.
And he has suggested repeatedly that a call could be coming soon.
Jeffrey Goldberg: When was the last time?
Francesca Chambers: The last time that they had spoken was in August.
And notably, when the United Nations was taking place, Netanyahu came to New York after Biden was already back in Washington.
He was meeting with President Zelenskyy at the White House at the time.
So they did not cross paths when they were in New York.
As far as a phone call that could take place, the calculation on that has been that Biden doesn't feel the need to speak to him until something is actually going to happen.
When I spoke to President Biden about this last night, he said that he hadn't spoke to him because nothing was taking place right now.
So that tells you a lot about the movements in the next couple days, maybe to a week, that he has not felt the need to have a conversation at that level yet because the White House only believes he needs to weigh in when a decision seems to be imminent.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Frank, what is the thing that the White House is looking for?
Franklin Foer, The Atlantic National Correspondent: I was just thinking back to that conversation in August, which took place in a totally different world, where Biden was trying to bring Bibi along to a place where he would come to an agreement over the terms for the peace deal with Hamas that would be acceptable to Hamas.
And it was a very -- Jeffrey Goldberg: That was to get the hostages out, Israeli hostages out.
Franklin Foer: Like, yeah, it was a very uncomfortable call and it happened in a totally different era.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Uncomfortable is a euphemism for they yelled at each other a lot?
What was it?
Franklin Foer: Yeah, yeah, more or less.
I mean I don't think it was in -- it was not a 10 on the scale of those conversations, but -- it wasn't a totally friendly call either.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Is it Biden who doesn't want to talk to Netanyahu or is it Netanyahu who also doesn't want to talk to Biden?
Franklin Foer: I think it's mutual at this point.
I think that there's a lot of kabuki that happens in these calls where Biden gets performatively angry at Netanyahu because he has a lot of pent-up feelings towards him and Netanyahu knows what's coming and he knows what he needs to tell Biden in order to get things back on course.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.
So what does Joe Biden want right now?
Does he want a comprehensive ceasefire on the northern front and on the southern front?
And I ask this because there are -- there are people who are more hardline in the administration -- than others and some people say, well, going to David's point, you know, maybe the Israelis are doing a pretty good job of destroying Iran's terrorist proxies.
Why would we stop that from happening?
Kind of the point that President Trump made this week.
So, I mean, what does Joe Biden, now I'm asking you to do like a soup saying, what does Joe Biden want?
Franklin Foer: Well, as it relates to what's happened over the course of the last couple of weeks in Lebanon where the administration's position has markedly changed from pushing for a ceasefire to giving Israel more room to operate.
That's based on, I think, increased faith in Israel's military capabilities that they didn't expect that they would perform as well against Hezbollah.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Going to David's point in this column that there's nothing that beats winning here.
Franklin Foer: Yeah.
Jeffrey Goldberg: Yeah, yeah.
Franklin Foer: Yeah, but there's also been this muddled thinking ever since October 7th within the administration where Biden, I think, is overwhelmingly agreed with the objectives that Israel wants to achieve but he has this fear of escalation, the same fear of escalation that dominates his thinking about Ukraine.
And he believes that the Israelis may be well-intentioned about certain things but they're also not necessarily thinking straight, that their strategic thinking is marred by trauma and anger.
And he worries where that would go.
