The Biden administration should be celebrating an Israeli airstrike that took out two Hezbollah leaders rather than calling for "restraint and de-escalation," retired CIA analyst Fred Fleitz, who served as the National Security Council chief of staff under former President Donald Trump, said on Newsmax, Sunday.
"It was a major victory in the war against terror," Fleitz told Newsmax's "Wake Up America Weekend." "But I think what we're seeing right now is what we were predicting earlier in the year that this was going to be a bad year, given Joe Biden's weakness, and he is now the lamest of lame ducks."
Saturday's airstrike on a Beirut suburb claimed the lives of Ibrahim Akil, who was in charge of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force, and Ahmed Wahbi, another senior commander in the group’s military wing.
Akil, the main target in the strike, has been wanted for years by the United States for his role in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and for taking American and German hostages in Lebanon in the 1980s.
The State Department announced a reward last year of up to $7 million for Akil, and he has been under U.S. sanctions.
"There is a need right now for a global leader to unite the world against Hezbollah, against Hamas, to stop the fighting," he said. "There isn't one right now because the United States has a leader [who] we're not even sure he's running the country."
And that means it will be a "very dangerous year, a very dangerous time until the election," Fleitz added.
Meanwhile, retired U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, also on Sunday's program, commented on Saturday night's strike on a Ukrainian apartment block, which killed more than 20 people.
He said that he expects Russia to escalate strikes, particularly with the ongoing fight in Kursk and Ukraine.
"I think this escalates, and I think Russia has to achieve some kind of strategic and operational counterattack here to not only restore the border that they claim," he said. "Right now, Ukraine is beginning to make some kind of inroads into the Russian ability to wage its long war right now against Ukraine."
Fleitz also on Sunday spoke out about a new book from former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, "At War with Ourselves: My Tour of Duty in the Trump White House," and said he finds it suspicious when such books show up just before elections.
"This is a former national security adviser who President Trump fired after 15 months on the job," said Fleitz. "They had a terrible relationship because McMaster is part of the foreign policy establishment.
"He didn't want to do all the things, the revolutionary things that President Trump wanted to do to take back our country, to reestablish American leadership and to keep us out of unnecessary wars."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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