The Viewpoint of American Expert Chas Freeman on the Mideast

Chas Freeman is a senior U.S. diplomat, now retired, who during his 30-year career of service, was ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He was interviewed on the breaking situation in Southwest Asia by EIR’s Mike Billington on Oct. 9, of which he said the following:

“We are seeing a disturbing tendency in our press to invent Iranian direction of this war, that somehow Iran put Hamas up to the attacks it has carried out. I think that is completely wrong and very dangerous, because it could be used to justify an Israeli or an American attack on Iran, as indeed we have threatened for years.

“The fact is that Palestinians have come to the point where many of them feel they have nothing to lose. This attack was an act of desperation and it came out of the blue. I analogize it to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, which achieved objectives that no one had imagined. Namely, it convinced the public at large that the existing policies toward Vietnam were doomed to fail. And it ultimately produced a withdrawal from Vietnam by the United States.

“I think Hamas will lose decisively on the battlefield, but it may win the war, especially if Israel carries out its threat to reduce Gaza to the dimensions of Dresden in World War Two. I think that genocidal act would mobilize a lot of people against Israel who’ve been sitting on the fence. So this is a very important moment in the history of the Middle East and in U.S. policy toward it. It’s quite clear that neither Israel nor the United States have any answer to the resistance by the Palestinians to their humiliation, eviction from their homes and the attempted erasure of their presence from their homeland.”

The interview will be published in full in an upcoming issue of Executive Intelligence Review.