houthis

Well Joe Biden’s dilemma is made even more complex because of Iran’s role as Puppet Master in the region well our International correspondent Alex Rossy is with me now and Alex you know for months we’ve heard uh the US say we’re trying to avoid escalation but that’s exactly what’s what’s happened now here

And um what we’ve seen is exactly that escalation yda we are now coming to an inflection point and in many ways this is what Joe Biden and his administration were really trying to avoid they were hoping to a avoid remember that the policy that the United States has

Pursued since October the 7th has been one of unalloyed unbridled support for the Israelis but at the same time trying to contain the fire from spreading across the region but it is spreading remember now where this theater has opened up Syria Iraq Lebanon Israel Gaza and now of course with the surface

Personnel in Jordan as well three uh arm Armed Forces members killed he has to respond he has to try to restore his deterrent how he does that it’s difficult there aren’t any good choices but it comes to either sending a very convincing strong message in a region

Where hard power is respected or looking weak and as far as many of these actors in the region are concerned the United States is already looking weak tonight yeah so talk us through the options then what are some of the options that Biden has well this is you know what he’s

Being pushed to do domestically is I suppose the the kind of big red button option and that is a direct strike uh in Iran the calculation of course is that all of this chaos that we’re seeing across the region really starts in tan and you need to send a very convincing

Message to tan to desist and stop it and by striking on Iranian salt you do that but of course the risk is that actually you set off a chain reaction across the region which worsens things but to do nothing again this cycle continues we’ve got we’ve had what 170 attacks so far on

US forces and this one was deadly so they have to do something when they do it again we don’t know I suspect it will be seriously thought about calibrated there will be things that they can look at you know certain things that they can can hit but I think they’ll take their

Time going back from hitting Iran they could hit say Iran revolutionary forces in Iraq or Syria that would be another option and I suppose the the least option that they could do is Target the militias who perpetrated this attack on US forces yeah as you say a number of

Options there that we will continue to discuss uh on the program Alex thanks so much