There are far-reaching consequences beyond the Hamas attack, former Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer Efrat Fenigson told former professor Bret Weinstein during a Tuesday appearance on his "DarkHorse" podcast.
"We are being pushed into a tragedy," Weinstein began, fighting back tears. "What is about to happen in Gaza is a tragedy that Hamas wanted — and whoever their partners are wanted. The overreaction of Israel to what took place is inevitable, and that's what the barbarism was about.
"And it is very hard to accept that bad people who are willing to do that to innocent folks — on either side — have such control over our future."
"Well," Fenigson replied, "I always said that we're facing a few strategic points in the world right now that are detonators like Taiwan and China, like Israel-Palestine, and Ukraine-Russia."
Fenigson then noted that it appears as if Ukraine's counteroffensive toward Russia was "not as effective anymore as [President Joe] Biden would have liked ... it's as if they're pulling the next step in the plan, and I was dreading this day, and we're there. My only hope is that this will not spark a third world war."
"But," Weinstein replied, "that is very much on the table."
Following Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel — advanced at the behest of Iran, which the Biden administration has not been enforcing sanctions on — the West now looks to front a proxy war with two of the world's top producers of natural gas: Iran and Russia.
On Wednesday, The New York Times reported Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a "surprise visit" to NATO.
During his visit, Zelenskyy expressed concerns that Western assistance would "dwindle," the Times reported, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas, sponsored by Iran, ratchets up.
Reportedly, senior NATO officials discreetly conceded that Ukraine may have reason to worry amid the ongoing violence in Israel and the budget dispute in Congress, which could jeopardize American war funding.
According to former State Department official Mike Benz, one of the bets of the Washington elite was that if Iran's rich natural gas supply could be controlled, it would be funneled via Azerbaijan to Europe. Some of the noteworthy former board members of the United States-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce include former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Biden allegedly has ties to the Chinese energy company CEFC, which also has an interest in securing Iran's natural gas.