Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt told Newsmax on Wednesday that "Israel has taken on a new tack" following the killing of 12 children in the Golan Heights by a rocket strike, purportedly by Hezbollah, on Saturday.
Holt said on "Newsline," "What is clear to me is that Israel has taken on a new tack after the bombing at the soccer field" that killed 12 children, for which Hezbollah has denied responsibility, "and they are going after and showing that they have very clear intelligence about where a lot of these leaders are."
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin declined to comment when asked by reporters during a press conference about the recent killing of Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas leader that the group says was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Tehran, though Israel has neither confirmed nor denied this.
When asked about Austin's statement, Holt said, "I think my reaction to that statement is that the White House is not coordinated yet on its communications with its national security team, and how they want to approach this."
He added, "It may or may not have been in their hands before the strike," noting that "the Pentagon was saying they had advanced warning" about the Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Fuad Shukr in Beirut on Tuesday, "but that could have been like four minutes."
Holt also claimed that Israel "may have just hit a fourth" target, Iranian Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who commands the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Forces.
He said that Hajizadeh is "the responsible planner for the missile strike in April on Israel … So Israel is not letting up, and this can escalate. But I would remind everybody at home that all the terror groups and the proxies are represented right here in the United States. And so there is nothing to keep Iran from activating those cells here."
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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