Israeli restrictions on Palestinian access to the old city of Jerusalem and its places of worship constituted a flagrant violation to international law, including international humanitarian law, the historical and legal status quo, and the principle of unrestricted access to places of worship.
Well, I'll start with my biggest concern moving forward, and it's just the sheer lack of planning and thinking through all of the second and third-order consequences. Sullivan criticized the problem, in part, as being due to a lack of clarity around the administration's objectives were in acting militarily.
Early on a spring morning, camouflaged trucks carrying the US-made terminal high-altitude area defense (THAAD) missile-defence system rolled into Seongju, as the country's government ignored protests from locals who said the deployment would make them a target for Pyongyang's ballistic missiles. The conservative government in Seoul, backed by Washington, insisted that Thaad was the most effective way to locate and destroy North Korean missiles before they threatened the South and the 28,500 US troops stationed there.
I emerge from this briefing as dissatisfied and angry, frankly, as I have from any past briefing in my 15 years. I am most concerned about the threat to American lives of potentially deploying our sons and daughters on the ground in Iran. We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish any of the potential objectives here.
Within hours of the United States-Israeli attacks on Iran, US assets in Iraq's Kurdistan region came under retaliatory attacks from Tehran-backed groups, dragging the country into the conflict that has since expanded across the Middle East and beyond. Since then, US assets located in Iraq have come under multiple attacks from pro-Iran groups and Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC).
The war will continue without any time limit, for as long as necessary, until we achieve all the objectives and decisively win the campaign. Israeli and U.S. officials say they are preparing for at least two more weeks of strikes in Iran.
