The cease-fire negotiations going on between Israel and Hamas are "another election-year gambit" staged in hopes of benefiting Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign, former Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie told Newsmax on Tuesday.
"Hamas is right," Wilkie said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "This is another [President Joe] Biden election-year gambit to save Kamala Harris in Michigan. The negotiations have absolutely no relevance when it comes to Israel's national security."
Meanwhile, Israel's preemptive strikes against Hezbollah will likely continue over the next few months, and the focus of the war will remain on Hezbollah, as it is a "much greater threat than Hamas ever has been."
Wilkie also Tuesday said he disagrees with Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said Tuesday that the risk of a broader war has eased after the exchange between Israel and Hezbollah.
"I do think that Israel will continue to press Hezbollah," said Wilkie. "This is something this White House refuses to understand if it understands it at all."
He added that he hates to use the term "existential" because "it's overused," but still, he thinks that Israel does face an existential threat.
"They are surrounded by Sharia-obsessed fanatics, led by the Iranians," Wilkie said. "In the end, it will have to be Iran in the crosshairs and what this administration has done, just look at its rhetoric. It says we're here to defend Israel. Well, that's a very different prospect from saying we're here to deter Iran or to destroy Iran's capability to create havoc throughout the region."
Iran is "in tandem" with China and Russia, Wilkie added, who "want to destroy the U.S.-led world order."
"They consider us to be the greatest obstacle to their ascendancy, and that's the kind of hard politics that Harris and Biden have never understood," said Wilkie. "They don't know how to respond to it."
Wilkie also Tuesday responded to comments made Monday by White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who told CNN that those working to clear the Kabul airport during the evacuation of Afghanistan "created order out of disorder" and the "opposite of chaos."
"People were falling out of the wheel wells of American aircraft desperately trying to get away from the Taliban and 13 young Americans died because this administration told the troops on the ground, you can't fire at prospective terrorists even when you have them in your sights," said Wilkie.
He further pointed out that Harris says that she's always the last person in the National Security Council Room and she's "very proud" of Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.
"That's the kind of nonsense that we are faced with and nonsense that has deadly consequences," said Wilkie. "The world has already taken its measure of Kamala Harris, and I can tell you that the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians are waiting in great anticipation for [her] arrival."
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