Retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt said Sunday on Newsmax that a recent Houthi missile strike on Israel reflects a desperate proxy force taking direct orders from Tehran.
Holt, a former NATO deputy military representative and current Newsmax contributor, spoke after the Israel Defense Forces reported that Iran-backed Houthis launched a ballistic missile with a cluster bomb warhead at Israeli territory late Friday.
The attack prompted Israeli retaliatory strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen.
"Well, so this is the gasping, the last gasp of a regime or a proxy group that is now lost its funding, lost its supply chains, its logistics, but it's still very much getting orders from Tehran," Holt told Newsmax's "Sunday Agenda." "Fight or resist? Throw anything at Israel you possibly can. So that's exactly what they're going to do ... Israel is not going to be bashful about returning the favor and going back after them."
He cautioned that the missile attack could widen the war.
"The thing that we should watch is for a wider expansion of the war, because Gaza is about to be taken out by the Israelis," Holt said. "In total, Hamas will be gone. So what do you think you could do with 60,000 reservists looking southward at Yemen? So what we want to see is probably U.S. assistance and intelligence in getting Yemen to knock it off."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to defeat Hamas militarily. According to reports, more than 16,000 Palestinians have already fled Gaza this month. Hospitals in northern Gaza have been warned by Israeli authorities to prepare for mass evacuations as the conflict intensifies.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency has documented severe shortages of food, fuel, and medicine in Gaza, while reporting that humanitarian convoys face restrictions. Israeli officials, however, maintain they are permitting controlled deliveries through checkpoints and accuse Hamas of diverting aid for military use.
Holt argued that Israel’s humanitarian efforts are overlooked.
"It's a disappointment that the Arab world is not taking in their own people as refugees, and everybody's just putting the burden on Israel," he said, "but I don't know of any nation in history that has done as much to feed the population of their enemy as Israel does in Gaza. This doesn't seem to be recognized, but Israel is going out of its way to take care of the civilian population so they can focus on Hamas."
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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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