Ruddy: It's One War and Spreading

Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel is not an isolated one, but part of a larger and growing war that started in the Ukraine almost two years ago.

This expanding war threatens to become a global one due to failed U.S. leadership.

The new Middle East war has been a boon to Vladimir Putin. It is well understood in Russia and Ukraine that the war started Oct. 7 — Putin's birthday.

The Israel aspect of the war has helped Russia by moving world attention from Ukraine as U.S. resources are stretched helping two allies fight.

Meanwhile, Putin's fingerprints on the Middle East war are everywhere.

Iran is his ally and has played a crucial role in his war on Ukraine.

Israel believes Iran is the mastermind of the Hamas attacks, Hezbollah's attacks on Israel's northern border, and the more than 70 attacks on U.S. forces across the Middle East in just the past month.

The local wars in Ukraine and Israel appear to be played out of Putin's playbook, both with unprecedented human devastation.

In February of 2022, Russia launched a surprise and unprovoked attack on Ukraine.

The attack has included mass civilian killings, indiscriminate missile attacks on civilians, brutal acts of rape and torture — and even the taking of civilian hostages, including many children.

The two wars we are witnessing are only distant in terms of geography, otherwise they resemble each other.

Why did Hamas attack now?

It is a good question, and many analysts say the attack was all about stopping the imminent announcement of a Saudi-Israeli peace treaty.

Perhaps.

I place more concern on Iran's imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Start with the idea Tehran has long been aware, if they were too close to achieving a nuclear war head, Israel's leader Benjamin Netanyahu would likely attack. He has said as much.

We know the Hamas attack was extremely well-organized and appears to have been aided by intelligence from both Russia and Iran.

Hamas terrorists even knew the vulnerabilities in Israel's defensive perimeter — and locations of its computer command and control systems.

Knowledgeable Israeli sources have told me Hamas trained with Iran's help for one to two years in preparation for the attacks.

Iran and Hamas began planning their attacks without knowing Saudi Arabia's move to a peace deal with Israel would actually happen.

But the planning did coincide with the advent of Russia's war on Ukraine.

Iran might well have decided to play "prevent offense" and bring the war to Israel first — before the Israelis launched an attack on its nuclear facilities.

Walid Phares, a Newsmax commentator and one of the best Middle East political analysts, has his own twist on this.

He suggests Iran will now use the war as an excuse to purchase tactical nuclear weapons from Russia or other powers like North Korea.

The result is the same: Iran is one minute from acquiring nuclear weapons through manufacture or purchase.

Ultimately, this war — with breakouts in Europe, the Middle East, and throughout Africa and Asia — could become a nuclear one.

Russia is preparing for that scenario.

But, for the moment, Russia and Iran have a strategy to keep the U.S. and its allies occupied on several fronts.

As Israel is focused in Gaza, Iran is igniting more fires, including ones among Palestinians in the West Bank, Israeli Arabs, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Iran may well light some here in the U.S., with sleeper terror cells attacking the U.S. homeland.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is playing out its own script, one that may have doomed Ukraine and could do the same for Israel.

After the Ukraine war started in 2022, Biden stepped up and did the right thing, helping the Zelenskyy government with military aid.

With U.S. and European support, Ukraine was in a unique position to decimate Russian forces who were disorganized and poorly supplied.

But rather than take advantage of Russia's vulnerabilities, the Biden administration purposefully slow-walked military equipment transfers, undermining Ukraine and forcing the current stalemate.

Effectively, Biden was saying to Ukraine, "We'll help you, but you need to play by our rules."

Despite the limited military support, Ukraine had significant success in its 2022 counteroffensive against Russia, gaining as much as 20% of its own territory back.

Had Ukraine had 60 HIMARS at that time, instead of the 14 the U.S. provided them, the UAF may well have quickly pushed Russia back to its border by the end of 2022.

Instead, Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive was destined for failure because the U.S. gave the Russians a year to build up their defense lines, raise fresh troops, and improve their technical systems.

Joe Biden had given Putin a gift of time.

The American president is now giving one to Hamas and Iran.

Biden is using a similar approach with Israel he used with Ukraine.

The U.S.' bear hug of military and financial aid is apparently coming at a price — as Israel is being pressured to engage in a cease-fire and limit their war on Hamas.

Biden's intentions may not be bad. He believes he is avoiding a wider war.

But he isn't.

When bad actors like Putin and Hamas engage in the barbarity of the scale we have witnessed, a failure to respond forcefully will most certainly lead to a wider war.

The war, in fact, has been getting wider due to Biden's policies.

It was Biden's bad decision in 2021 to leave Afghanistan in such a cowardly and chaotic manner that opened the door to Russia's aggression.

His bad decision there was compounded by his failure to forcefully resupply Ukraine in 2022 and early 2023.

Today, as Iran's proxies have made dozens and dozens of attacks on U.S. forces, Biden's response has been to ignore them.

He doesn't want a wider war, but the war gets wider without his consent.

We need to read what Putin said in his national address at the beginning of his invasion of Ukraine, comments that he has repeated often.

He said this was not a war on Ukraine, but a war on the U.S. and NATO. He claimed the West was imperial and morally corrupt, adding that such societies should not exist.

Since then Russia's war has morphed, adding new allies along with an eruption of global hotspots, including African coups, uprisings in Kosovo, China's threats against Taiwan, North Korea's military activism . . . and now a war in the Middle East.

With President Biden in office, Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea are seeing a unique opportunity to rework the global map in their favor.

Joe Biden does not want a bigger war, but our adversaries have other plans.

Christopher Ruddy is CEO of Newsmax Media, Inc., the parent company of NEWSMAX, America's fastest-growing cable news channel. Read more Christopher Ruddy Insider articles — Click Here Now.