The United States' main step toward keeping the war between Israel and Hamas from becoming a regional crisis in the Middle East is to work to contain Iran, Newsmax foreign policy analyst Walid Phares said Sunday.
"What's behind the Gaza war is Iran," Phares said on Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "So what our forces and our capability in Syria and Iraq need to do is cut down or cut off the link between Iran and northern Israel, and that would be the Iran forces sitting at the Syria-Iraq border."
Rich Goldberg, senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also on the program, added that he believes the United States must have a stance that reiterates it can respond to Iran's threats.
"We're not trying to have a war with Iran here," he said, "but if you signal to Iran that you can walk all over the Middle East, you can walk all over Americans, kill Americans, take Americans hostage, you will get a war.
"The idea here is to restore deterrence. Remember Reagan said peace through strength. We've had a lot of weakness demonstrated, which is why we have conflict."
Meanwhile, Israel has pulled its diplomats out of Turkey after President Tayyip Erdogan told thousands at a pro-Palestinian rally that the Israelis are acting as war criminals, and Phares said Turkey is becoming important in the conflict because "masks are falling in the Middle East."
"Those radical forces, including the Muslim Brotherhood, one of its branches is the AK Party now in charge of Turkey," Phares said. "It is now telling the world that they will sign with Hamas, as simple as that, but that has consequences. Turkey is a member of NATO. Turkey is located geopolitically in an extremely important position, so there needs to be two things."
That means not only must Turkey and the United States speak about what is in store, but Turkey should also speak with the command of NATO in Brussels and "fall in line: either Turkey is pro-West or Turkey now is heading toward becoming a new Taliban. You can't have both."
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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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