Israel formally declared a state of war on Sunday, a day after Hamas invaded Israeli territory and committed the greatest slaughter of civilians in the 75 year history of the Jewish state. On Monday, Israel put the Gaza Strip under full blockade, with no food, gas or electricity supplies. Both Israel and Palestine have so far reported hundreds of dead and thousands of injured as a result of the escalation.
"The United States will support Israel reflexively but this will set off a much wider anti-US reaction across the Middle East and the wider Muslim world," Freeman, who also served as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the Clinton administration, said in an interview.
The crisis is unlikely to be confined to Israel and Gaza and will metastasize to other neighboring countries, Freeman warned.
"The geopolitical dangers could very well rapidly spread to Lebanon and Syria," he said.
The Israeli-US "pipedream" fostered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that relations with Saudi Arabia are going to normalize is now also "gone" for the foreseeable future, Freeman believes.
The Biden administration itself appears to have been caught off guard by the ferocious suddenness and success of Hamas' invasion, Freeman suggested.
"National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan last week made the truly idiotic claim that the Middle East region had reached a reassuring level of stability," he said.