Retired U.S. Ambassador Chas Freeman argued in a June 12 interview with The Watch Eye youtube channel that, as a result of their failure to achieve their military objectives in Iran, the U.S. and Israel can no longer operate in Southwest Asia with impunity. “Israel and the United States, but mostly Israel, could do whatever it wanted because it had a qualitative edge militarily and was backed by the United States. So it could bomb its neighbors, it could murder people, conduct massacres in Lebanon and so forth with no fear of retaliation, effective retaliation. But that era is over,” he said. “Iran has now declared openly that it will retaliate for any attack on the elements of the resistance that it supports. This includes Ansar Allah in the Houthis in Yemen, who have now re-instituted, they say, a blockade against Israeli-affiliated shipping in the Red Sea. It includes Hezbollah in Lebanon, it includes Hamas, which is in Gaza.”
Freeman noted that “Israel is conducting a very aggressive ethnic cleansing campaign in the West Bank and we’ve just been informed that the number of Palestinians who’ve been murdered by settlers over the past two years is unprecedentedly large. It’s over 1,200 people, about one-fifth of whom are children. So Israel now faces retaliation for anything it does.
“And the United States, which has been aiding and abetting Israel, also faces retaliation.”
