Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt told Newsmax on Monday that while things have been going extremely well for U.S. forces in Iran so far, service members must remain vigilant.
"You need to take a step back and you need to understand that war has second and third order effects, cascading effects," Holt said on "Greg Kelly Reports."
"The Iranians very much still have fight in them despite losing their entire navy today."
"We have to understand that they have cells all over the world, in Europe and the United States," he added.
"The United States military has issued an order that servicemen should not be wearing their uniforms off post. We have terror attacks that have erupted."
"While we are encouraged about how we see developments rolling, this is far from over," Holt continued. "And this is a very dangerous situation. But we can take heart that the United States military has performed near, near perfectly, just admirably.
"And the Israelis as well. A regime that has just wrought so much death and destruction is now finally in shambles."
China expert Gordon Chang said that President Donald Trump has cut Beijing down to size with his moves in Venezuela and Iran.
"At the beginning of this year, people were saying, 'they're the next superpower,'" Chang said, referring to China. "Well, they're not a superpower. They talk big. They talk really big."
"But when it comes to it, we see President Trump, he's taking away their proxies Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria. He's taking them out of Panama. This is great," Chang added.
He also praised the Trump administration's decision to offer the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iranian security forces immunity if they surrender.
"It makes a lot of sense, because if you can get a large number of members in the regime to defect, that regime fails," Chang said. "And ultimately that's what we need because it is the nature of the Iranian regime that has caused all this death and destruction for 47 years."
"This is very good strategy — the opposite of what we did in Iraq," Chang said. "But we've got to remember what we did in Iraq did not work."
Holt said Iran's attacking its neighbors such as Oman and Bahrain is risky.
"They were trying to sow dissension amongst the allies and against the United States, that if we hit all these states, then they'll turn on the United States," Holt said. "They'll be in disarray. And then they could stabilize themselves. In fact, the opposite happened."
"The unification amongst the Arab states, the United States, Israel, it's monolithic now," Holt said. "And there is no quarter for the Iranians."
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Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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