Former Florida AG Pam Bondi has been replaced as the No. 2 at the Department of Justice by Todd Blanche, who has been running the day-to-day operations of DOJ behind the scenes, but he s already been playing a very important role behind-the-scenes role that in many ways has been more important and more impactful than what he s been doing in front of the cameras.
00:03:39.040it doesn't make any sense. Mark, to ask a rhetorical question, is the DOJ any safer in
00:03:44.640the hands of anyone whose name is currently on the president's shortlist? No. In fact,
00:03:49.480I think it could get quite worse. I mean, the thing about Pam Bondi is she was, you know,
00:03:54.040she was of the election denier movement, but she also fashioned herself to be a, you know,
00:04:01.220a prosecutor. You know, this is the reason why some people early on when she was first nominated,
00:04:05.440I think, were taken in by her. I never was, but there were people who were because they said,
00:04:08.520look, she'd been an attorney general. There are a lot of people that can be put forward who are
00:04:12.820much worse, who are just straight up election hires and are just, you know, are much more
00:04:18.100cold blooded in their willingness to overturn the results of free and fair elections. And there are
00:04:22.680a lot of those names that are familiar. There are some of those names that would be less familiar
00:04:26.080to people. But just to answer Todd Blanche's question, you know, the two the two people who
00:04:32.160were most famously gunned down and killed in the streets of Minneapolis were both U.S. citizens.
00:04:37.240The people who we see had their windows broken in their cars and dragged out and their seatbelts cut off, those were U.S. citizens.
00:04:44.880The people who were harassed and tear gassed for simply standing and holding up a cell phone to record what was happening, those were U.S. citizens.
00:04:55.460So why should U.S. citizens be worried about ICE at the polls?
00:04:59.820I can I can name dozens and hundreds and thousands of tragic incidents in which U.S. citizens were victimized.
00:05:07.140So those are just some of the reasons why they should be worried myself and my colleagues.
00:05:10.580And that is that despite close to five weeks of war now that Iran maintains, as you said, John, significant ability, 50 percent of its launchers, 50 percent of its one way attack drones,
00:05:24.800a significant percentage of its coastal defense missiles, as well as large inventories of both
00:05:32.400medium and long-range missiles. One problem we're hearing is that Iran has maintained a capability
00:05:39.600to move those missiles around with mobile missile launchers and hide them underground, which has
00:05:45.560made it difficult for the U.S. and Israel to take out all of them, despite more than 12,000 targets
00:05:53.000hit since the start of this war. And I'll tell you that continued capability explains what we've
00:05:59.460been experiencing quite consistently here in Tel Aviv, John, over recent days, which is consistent
00:06:05.520incoming fire from Iran. Yesterday, one of the busiest days since the start of the war. And of
00:06:12.920course, this contradicts what you've heard from President Trump last night, but also the Pentagon,
00:06:16.860that that missile capability has been dramatically destroyed, reduced maybe, but not eliminated.
00:06:26.080And some of the sources telling us that Iran may be holding back some of those capabilities,
00:06:32.600which explains some of the reduction in fire in recent days.
00:06:37.040I should note here was the White House response to the story.
00:06:40.420White House spokesperson Anna Kelly saying, quote,
00:06:43.340anonymous sources desperately want to attack President Trump and demean the incredible work
00:06:48.240of our United States military in achieving the goals of Operation Epic Fury. We should note
00:06:53.820that this is a U.S. military assessment that has found that continuing Iranian capability.
00:06:59.880Iran is undeterred, and China is more powerful, Russia is richer, NATO is weaker, and Americans
00:07:08.380are less safe and more isolated. This has been Operation Epic Failure, and this president owns
00:07:15.980it in entirety. There have been presidents in the past, John, that have started wars that they've
00:07:20.900had to hand off to their successors. There have been presidents in the past that have had to end
00:07:25.520ingloriously wars that were not working. But Donald Trump is going to be the only president
00:07:31.320in American history to single-handedly start and lose a war. And this is what the president's
00:07:36.640getting briefed on, I mean, what would you say to him? How would you put it to him, given what
00:07:41.660he's also considering and the exit and how that works? I would say the thing that I'm saying to
00:07:50.640you, and that is you have to be really clear about your purpose in your end state. There are lots of
00:07:56.320different options you can choose. We have fewer now than we did at the beginning, notwithstanding
00:08:01.360The fact that we have certainly degraded a malign regime, we have certainly disabilized it.
00:08:09.760But the idea that that an air and maritime assault would overthrow a regime or leave a nation of that heft without action still to play is just is not realistic.
00:08:24.500So my question would be, here's the situation on the ground. Here's what we assess. What are we going to do now?
00:08:30.500And the other thing I'd just say is people don't intend to escalate.
00:08:36.580They tend to escalate because they will think it will lead to deterrence.
00:08:40.900And so I think that's one of the soundtracks you're hearing by both the president and by Iran is they're doing this thing of can I make a threat?
00:10:01.480And instead, this president is berating NATO, making it weaker,
00:10:04.680and he's strengthening our adversaries in China, Russia, and Iran.
00:10:07.800Job, job, jobs report, expecting 65,000.
00:10:12.000We are significantly stronger, 178,000.
00:10:17.840However, there's a pretty big revision in the rearview mirror.
00:10:21.440If we look at the minus ninety two thousand, it becomes minus one hundred and thirty three thousand.
00:10:27.720So the two month revision ends up, actually, if you look at the previous month, only minus seven thousand.
00:10:34.960So not as bad. One hundred and seventy eight thousand.
00:10:38.300One was the last time we had a number that strong.
00:10:40.600We have to go in the way back machine all the way to May of twenty three when we were, excuse me, June of twenty three, where two hundred and twenty five thousand.
00:11:30.600I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
00:11:36.020Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
00:11:39.800If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
00:11:45.460Save War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Mann.
00:11:55.400It is Good Friday, 3 April, in the year of our Lord, 2026, the most solemn day in the Christian calendar, Good Friday.
00:12:04.520We'll have our programming today, plus special programming tomorrow on Holy Saturday, and then Easter Sunday.
00:12:10.140I'll talk more about that in a little while.
00:12:12.940As we come on the air, I think, and I'm not sure we've gotten confirmation from CENTCOM, but I believe there's at least enough reporting out there that a F-15E Strike Eagle has been shot down or the pilots have ejected in Iranian territory.
00:12:32.940territory. We've got Dr. Bradley Thayer is going to join us in a moment, and Brandon Weikert is
00:12:39.460going to join us, and we're going to talk through everything about the escalatory trap. What's
00:12:43.740happened in the last 24 hours as the war intensifies, we said President Trump in looking
00:12:50.560for a, not an off-ramp, but looking to roll this thing up in two or three weeks. He said he was
00:12:56.540going to, if they didn't look like he was going to get a deal, he was going to escalate. I think
00:13:00.680they kind of escalated a little early they took out bridges and infrastructure uh bb netanyahu's
00:13:06.540been on israeli tv uh talking about the infrastructure and the um and other aspects
00:13:13.180of iranian civil life that the israelis are pounding so last night another intense
00:13:18.620uh bombing campaign um we're also going to have uh we're going to talk about pam bondi this entire
00:13:24.900situation. There's so much going on, particularly in the state of Texas. Julie Pickren and others
00:13:32.040are going to join us to talk about this Texas School Board meeting on Tuesday. We need people
00:13:37.340lined up today by 5 p.m. Central Daylight Time. We need you to sign up if you're going to address
00:13:44.920the Texas Education Board. We need to do it by today, and that's where I'm going to have almost
00:13:49.980a whole lot going on. Birch Gold, we have the, Philip Patrick is going to join me for a couple
00:13:56.880of segments tomorrow morning. We're going to walk through everything in the global capital markets
00:14:02.320and commodity markets, particularly precious metals. Now more than ever, we've put out series
00:14:07.520number eight, the eighth installment at the end of the dollar empire. You can get it by going to
00:14:12.260birchgold.com promo code war room um excuse me promo code bannon i think i would know that by
00:14:20.440now promo code bannon you get the a3 installment here we very much focus on the current status of
00:14:26.640the dollar which is under assault from both deficits here the brics nations on the shoulder
00:14:34.840of the dollar rests so much of financial stability of this planet so we get into it in great detail
00:14:41.020Installment number eight, Birchgold.com, promo code BANNIT.
00:14:43.680But most importantly, you get to talk to the experts, Philip, Patrick, and the team.
00:16:05.360one you don't have to lose yours text my name bannon b-a-n-n-o-n to the number 989898 to join
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00:16:20.880to 989898 and do it today here's your host steven k bann
00:16:28.200okay uh so this is um very very very sketchy but we'll report to you unless we've got uh dr
00:16:37.680thayer and uh brandon uh weikert uh brandon i think they're reporting in the uh near the town
00:16:44.320of isa in kuzistan which i believe is near the iraq border and it's where a lot of the horrific
00:16:54.060Iraq-Iran war took place um give us what we know so far I think there's an F-15E that's down
00:17:02.620yeah and the Americans we have sent in it looked like forces strike eagle we've sent in Blackhawks
00:17:08.780and others C-130 gunship uh to uh retrieve the pilots give us what you know yeah it looks like
00:17:16.460there's a search and rescue SAR operation going on and one of these videos that you were showing
00:17:21.380I saw earlier because apparently the locals are shooting at our Blackhawks and the C-130.
00:17:29.800They were apparently mid-air refueling and they were flying low and people on the bridge
00:17:36.740started shooting at our planes. But they are looking for the pilots. It's a two-seater.
00:17:43.580So my assumption is that our guys got out. We've got some pretty great ejection systems. So I'm
00:17:49.740sure that our guys survived um and hopefully they are you know laying low the locals there's a local
00:17:56.260news report in that district of iran in which the um the anchor of the news uh there is encouraging
00:18:04.180all the locals to go out and uh arrest the pilot pilots and and hand them over to the irgc
00:18:10.900so so much for this being a people's revolution uh also unconfirmed reporting that might be
00:18:17.200connected to whatever the plane was doing that was shot down. I am hearing that there is a UH-60
00:18:23.560Blackhawk that crashed in southern Iraq right across the border. So there's no further reporting
00:18:30.600on that. CENTCOM hasn't even commented on this one. But clearly the operational tempo, as you
00:18:37.260noted, Steve, is increasing after the president's speech a couple days ago. Yeah, I think that
00:18:45.040people shouldn't um think that uh in in the winding down he's going to keep the pressure on
00:18:51.520i mean the last last night or since the president talked has been pretty intense um dr thayer uh
00:18:58.180and of course this is what's going to happen in war you're going to get people particularly
00:19:01.740running these many uh combat sorties i think the combat sorties have been now almost 12 000
00:19:08.140So the op-tempo of naval air and also our Air Force assets in the region have been incredibly intense.
00:19:17.080And this is about the defanging and declawing.
00:19:20.240I mean, the way that you take down this regime's conventional forces is you just pound.
00:19:26.280The president said that's going to happen.
00:19:28.260Any updates that you've got on this situation, Dr. Thayer?
00:19:31.340Other than to what Brandon provided, that it was it seemed to be about 50 kilometers inside or that is north of the Persian of the Persian Gulf.
00:19:43.460So it looks like southwestern Iran in terms of the location.
00:19:51.560And I hadn't seen Brandon mentioned a 60 down and I hadn't seen that.
00:19:57.020but uh obviously that's uh we obviously pray for the crews of both the 60 if it went down and then
00:20:03.620of course of the f-15e well what what it people should uh take heart that uh you know you've got
00:20:11.520american search and rescue looks like you get a c-130 and a bunch of black cars and they're trying
00:20:15.740to get the pilots i understand that it appears and i think this is why they weren't on local media
00:20:21.560to have locals go and search for the pilots that they're both it looks like the ejection seats
00:20:27.660were hit uh i mean were were were um used and so the pilot use the pilots look like they've
00:20:36.100at least made it out of the plane before it crashed that's what it looks like and obviously
00:20:42.300if the locals are are putting out these these news so-called news reports encouraging
00:20:47.320their tribesmen to go out and hunt these uh these pilots down obviously they have very good reason
00:20:54.220to believe that the u.s pilots are uh alive now these pilots as you know steve are trained in
00:21:00.080evasion tactics um they actually my understanding is i think they go through seer training as well
00:21:05.680so these are these are not just uh fly boys these these guys are designed to to evade and
00:21:12.760withstand a lot if they are shot down so it's a it's a matter of time now it's a race to the
00:21:18.160to the finish our guys get them or god forbid the iranians find them
00:21:23.120i'm sure it's uh the air force also but the navy every pilot my kid brother's a lamps helicopter
00:21:30.040pilot who was in the gulf during the um during the tanker wars of 86 and 87 uh you had to go
00:21:38.520to seer school and seer school is very intense so the training for the pilots to evade and to stay
00:21:43.420alive until they're rescued uh is is almost as intense as their pilot training which is the best
00:21:49.040in the world brandon i want to go because um you know both you guys are authors of amazing books
00:21:54.840it's one of the reasons i think you're both you guys although you kind of take different
00:21:59.300views of the world are such good observers and analysts because you've done deep research into
00:22:05.640the topics you have your book on iran i think is spectacular just this part of the of uh iran where
00:22:12.460they are i people people forget you know after the uh failed house you know after the shah fell
00:22:19.980and they took the in in 79 and they took the uh they then took the uh embassy in early november
00:22:26.320and that's when my ship deployed from the pacific fleet we sent carrier battle groups which
00:22:31.400and that we had never done before the the fifth fleet at that time was you know a couple of ships
00:22:36.680i think were painted white like the british fleet uh in bahrain it was very small but ever since
00:22:41.920that time the americans have really the north arabian sea has been back then it was camel
00:22:46.600station and gonzo station where the two battle groups were but a lot of people don't remember
00:22:51.760probably outside of world war ii one of the most horrific wars of the 20th century took place
00:22:58.880shortly thereafter between iraq and iran and remember yeah in our fiasco in iraq a big part
00:23:05.200of iraq today is is basically controlled by the shiites because uh the vatican of the of the
00:23:12.480shiite religion happens to be geographically i think it's in the jaff right where we had that
00:23:18.160during the uh during our movie the last 600 meters we showed uh we showed the assault on that in fact
00:23:23.600If you look at Moulton, the congressman, who's a left-wing congressman now, he was the kind of heroic Marine captain that led that assault for a couple of weeks.
00:23:33.480Talk to people about this 10-year war, because right now it looks like our pilots are down in that region that was so intensely fought.
00:23:39.700I think there was a million casualties.
00:23:41.780Am I correct on that, between both sides?
00:23:44.060I think it was one of the bloodiest wars of the 20th century.
00:23:47.280And it was very similar to World War I, where you had sort of you initiated with a war of maneuver and then it just became this locked in trench warfare struggle for 10 years in which the U.S. nominally backed Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
00:24:04.620He even gave them precursors for chemical weapons, sarin gas and whatnot, which they then promptly used on the Iranian front lines.
00:24:13.760And then the Iranians, who were still sort of rebuilding from the revolution that overthrew the Shah just a few years before the war began,
00:24:23.120they started conducting human wave attacks where they basically would round up people as young as nine years old,
00:24:30.880give them a Koran, give them a green bandana, the color of Islam,
00:24:34.880and tell them, run at the Iraqi front, run at the foxholes.
00:24:39.720And, of course, the Iraqis were well-armed, but they were not as numerically superior.
00:24:44.800And, ultimately, the green wave is what it was called.
00:24:47.860And that was how the Iranians pushed the Iraqis back.
00:24:51.920And if you listen to the rhetoric ever since then of the regime in Iran,
00:24:56.200They speak about the Iran-Iraq war in much the same way the Russians and the Soviets talk about the, quote, Great Patriotic War.
00:25:04.060In fact, there was a lot of similarities between the Eastern Front, between the Soviet Union and the Nazis of World War II, and the Iran-Iraq war.
00:25:16.400They had a lot of advantages, but they weren't able to overcome the will, the ideological will of the Persians and the Islamists of Persia.
00:25:25.100And the fear today, I talked with Matt Bracken, a former Navy SEAL on my show a couple weeks ago. He said his fear is that the United States is essentially on a grander scale, possibly replicating the Iraqi basically failure in the Iran-Iraq war.
00:25:42.040And we don't understand the Persian mindset, and we certainly don't appreciate the ideological fervor with which the Islamic Republic rules Iran.
00:25:52.380And if they're shooting at our search and rescue birds, as you see in those videos, that indicates to me that the Shiite resistance mentality, going back to the breakdown of the Sunni-Shiite split, you know, hundreds of years ago, I think that's now informing their response to us.
00:36:20.180All they see is that they're bombing first military targets or communications,
00:36:25.200and the next thing you know, you're taking out bridges
00:36:27.860and taking out the basic functions of life.
00:36:30.020It was like the Israelis bombing the the oil, you know, the oil depots on Saturday night and causing a firestorm like Dresden a couple of Saturday nights ago.
00:36:41.700And then and then coming back a couple of days later and bombing the week later and bombing the gas fields.
00:36:47.560The Iranian people are completely blacked out. Right. There's there's no Starlink.
00:36:52.940There's no Internet. That is one of the reasons we took took out command and control.
00:36:57.780so how is this signaling is this going just to we hope the the iranian whatever's left of the
00:37:05.180iranian guard and all this dispersion and still we can't get uh we can't get face-to-face
00:37:10.940negotiations we're going through some of the most nefarious people in the world the pakistanis or
00:37:16.820the turks or i mean this is kind of what i'm not saying upsets me but in this region of the world
00:37:23.040starting in israel and going to saudi arabia and going to uae and going to pakistan you can't trust
00:37:29.700any of them you can't trust any of them none of them have america's interest in hearts and so
00:37:35.960dr thayer when you're saying this bombing how is that what is what is being communicated to the
00:37:41.620persians what's being communicated of course is that we can escalate and that we could go after
00:37:47.740additional targets, an economic target set that would greatly hurt the Iranian economy. We haven't
00:37:58.100done that yet. Our objectives, as they've been laid out, don't require that, but it's something
00:38:05.240that we could do. Likewise, the threat is present from the 82nd and from the Marines that the United
00:38:13.340States could take. Karg Island has been discussed many times or other parts of Iran. So there's
00:38:23.440the threat of escalation to attempt to coerce clearly the Iranian government to come to some
00:38:31.320type of an agreement, which is what President Trump wants. All of this should be expected as
00:38:36.860President Trump has identified this is going to be going on for weeks, right? We're going to have
00:38:42.540yeah uh you know weeks two or three weeks more of course in the conflict
00:38:48.880but you believe now it's going to go more than two weeks but hang on a second i'm gonna come
00:38:54.320back to you i want to go back to this round war because one of the engine room one of our engine
00:38:59.020room uh personnel just brings to mind said hey look at the time that this war took place
00:39:06.840people got to remember what it was like back then the uh the persians under the shah
00:39:12.280they were it was a different middle east israel wasn't our big ally our big ally was iran the
00:39:21.640shah yeah they had the most sophisticated weapon systems in fact one of the reasons that
00:39:26.620it got so big and intense is that the weapons industry had a customer another customer besides
00:39:33.660uh the u.s government and particularly with the wind down of the vietnam war they're always
00:39:39.040looking for new markets they were they were loaded up when i went to officer candidate school in
00:39:43.280newport i think we had a couple hundred midshipmen go through every class you know we're 90 day
00:39:48.100wonders there were 500 iranians they would all send them to newport or island for their first
00:39:54.460training and then they would disperse them out to go get air down to texas or pensacola to learn
00:39:59.580how to fly or they go to other aspects for military preparedness we were my point in that
00:40:05.520time in the all-volunteer force post-vietnam we were training as many persians over here as we
00:40:11.880were training people to go because at that time we didn't have reagan's 600 ship navy you had 200 i
00:40:17.280think we had 250 ships the navy was quite small when i got in and we were training as many as
00:40:22.580iranians when the shah fell that was the strategic ally of the united states and we pumped in the
00:40:28.860most sophisticated weapon systems in the world when uh when we were thrown out unceremoniously
00:40:35.580right in 79 when the shah left and then when they seized the embassy uh brandon weicker in your book
00:40:41.620what what sodom was saying because he's always the the cleverest guy right it wasn't just taking a
00:40:47.920province he was going for a deep strike to take the oil he thought hey these guys are all messed
00:40:53.060up you got the you got this crazy guy from paris they're they're all you know they've thrown all
00:40:57.500their officers are dead all the leaders of the iranian milit they don't know how to use this
00:41:01.520equipment and i just want people to understand something when they had their because you see
00:41:06.040president trump telling the europeans hey hormuz is precious you just go in and seize the oil
00:41:11.900the last time someone tried to seize their oil they sent nine-year-old kids and and they took
00:41:17.600a million casualties you know why because they don't care okay they don't care they sent nine
00:41:23.060year old kids to beat saddam hussein you know what they did they fought him to a standoff and i would
00:41:28.800actually say i think they kind of in their mind they beat him brandon well if i can just build
00:41:33.780off that i would argue the the straight line from the end of the iran iraq war to desert storm to
00:41:39.9602003 collapse of saddam hussein it all goes back to the iran iraq war had saddam never done that
00:41:47.220i don't think there would have ever been any problems with iraq and kuwait or iraq and us
00:41:52.640that was all a downstream unintended consequence of the iraq war because hang on you're sticking
00:41:58.660around hang on okay people don't okay 1979 three things happened that changed and this was the
00:42:07.140most important geopolitical year post-world war ii they the shah fell this you know the islamic
00:42:15.240revolution because up until then most of these guys were arab nationalists it was kind of secular
00:42:20.260the shah was obviously very secular but the arabs were secular the muslim brotherhood was getting in
00:42:25.860there in both egypt and and you know where nasser had been and and so and in syria you had the you
00:42:31.960had the fall of the shah in 1979 you had the siege of the great mosque which they never they never
00:42:38.240talk about it anymore they seized the great mosque right it in the saudis this was the beginning and
00:42:45.140then you had the russians going to afghanistan yep of which the americans obviously we funded
00:42:50.740the mujahideen to beat them back and so all of this from 1979 is all in a strictly linked
00:42:57.360to today and those people don't forget that history that history is as alive to them today
00:43:04.820as it just happened to us you mentioned 1979 people go well oh you know what wasn't uh what
00:43:12.120was the rock music that was number one or didn't the yankees win the world series no they they
00:43:16.460don't think like that they think very differently history is the lived history of that of today of
00:43:22.560today's lived experience is informed by their history and as now we have a search and rescue
00:43:30.080attempt in a province near the tigers tigris and euphrates river right down there on the iraq
00:43:39.160border. Keep that in mind. Keep that in mind as you pray today on Good Friday for our American
00:43:45.840pilots and the search and rescue teams that are there to retrieve them. Short break, back in a
00:43:52.000moment. If you're 65 or already on Medicare, listen up, folks, and grab a pen, maybe even a
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00:45:29.500so i don't think the networks are confirming this but cnn's had some reporting up let's play cnn
00:45:39.460jack basobo is going to join brandon weikert and uh before we go to that real quickly brandon
00:45:45.420um about uh the iran iraq war remember you mentioned sarin gas and the gas um that was
00:45:53.240used later when he used it because he was outnumbered and he had these nine-year-old
00:45:57.180kids coming in when not all nine years but but young people coming in waves he did use sarin gas
00:46:03.580he did use on the kurds of course that was used against him years later in his weapons of mass
00:46:10.080destruction that's the same people on fox cheerleading this war right now with the same
00:46:15.420exact crowd lindsey graham and that crowd cheering you know bill crystal we're going to be you know
00:46:20.420they're going to be throwing roses in front of uh the u.s marines as they go to baghdad those guys
00:46:25.200are the guys that were saying saddam hussein is the biggest monster in the world right because he
00:46:31.160used uh he used gas didn't the united states didn't we make it i memory serves me correctly
00:46:35.860Didn't we make a deal to provide that to him?
00:46:38.760Yes, we claimed it was to provide pesticides.
00:46:41.600It was the precursor for pesticides, but in fact it was the precursor for sarin gas.
00:46:45.820And it was the young Don Rumsfeld who became George W. Bush's secretary of defense during the Iraq war.
00:46:53.140Young Don Rumsfeld was the front man for that deal in the 1980s between Saddam and the U.S.
00:47:01.620Let's play CNN's reporting of this, and we'll bring in Jack Posobiec to join us.
00:47:05.860Tell us more about what you're learning about these claims from Iran that its forces downed a U.S. fighter jet.
00:47:13.980Pamela, I'm going to be very careful because the information we have at this point is incomplete, but here's what we know.
00:47:20.420Iranian state media is reporting that search and rescue operations are underway in southwestern Iran by the U.S. for downed pilots.
00:47:29.060As you noted, they previously claimed today that they had shot down a U.S. aircraft.
00:47:34.800There are videos that have been circulating online which appear to show a refueling operation in the air,
00:47:43.060an aircraft refueling to helicopters, which would at least be consistent with a search and rescue operation.
00:47:51.120Earlier, as you noted, there were pictures posted and shared by Iranian state media
00:47:56.480which appear to show a piece of wreckage from a U.S. aircraft consistent with an F-15.
00:48:05.420CNN has repeatedly reached out to Central Command, U.S. Central Command,
00:48:09.100and has not yet received comment on whether a jet was indeed shot down
00:48:14.060and whether search and rescue operations are underway.
00:48:17.440We continue to seek comment from them.
00:48:20.000I don't have to tell you, Pamela or Wolf, the seriousness of this if it is confirmed
00:48:25.840that a jet has been shot down and that those pilots are on the ground,
00:48:29.720either been captured or that Iranian authorities are now looking for them.
00:48:34.800But again, we're treating this with caution because the information is incomplete at this hour.
00:48:40.080Our reporting from CNN regards a U.S. military assessment that has found that even after close to a month of war now
00:48:48.000and the U.S. striking more than 12,000 targets in Iran, that Iran maintains a missile capability,
00:48:56.100that it still has 50 percent of its missile launchers, 50 percent of its one-way attack drones,
00:49:02.860as well as a significant percentage of its coastal defense missiles,
00:49:06.140those particularly important because it allows Iran to project power over the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,
00:49:12.800to threaten shipping there, not just shipping of oil, fertilizer, containers, etc.,
00:49:17.920but also potentially U.S. warships operating in that area.
00:49:22.620We're told that according to the assessment, while the U.S. has had great success striking multiple ballistic missile targets,
00:49:29.500launchers, missile storage facilities, that it has been more difficult to strike mobile missile
00:49:35.100launchers and to strike both launchers and missiles that are stored underground. The response has been
00:49:41.660to try to strike the entrances to those underground storage facilities to block them in, and it seems
00:49:47.380that they've had some success there. But at a minimum, Iran maintains what I think you could
00:49:52.340call remarkable capability a month into the war, and that helps explain the fire, the continuing
00:49:56.800incoming fire we've seen here in Tel Aviv. In fact, just a few minutes ago, we were back in
00:50:00.880the shelter here in Tel Aviv once again. It looks like it's real, unfortunately. And based on the
00:50:07.020pictures that we've seen so far, it is consistent with an F-15, not an F-35, as the Iranians have
00:50:12.960said, but an F-15. So one of the key things about this is the F-15 is not a stealth fighter. It's
00:50:18.740an older generation aircraft. It is designed for multiple missions, but mainly air superiority
00:50:25.700And it is vulnerable to the kind of anti-aircraft fire that the Iranians are capable of conducting. So, you know, in conjunction with the reporting from the U.S. intelligence community that says that the Iranians still have major capabilities, this is one more evidence, piece of evidence that they have those capabilities and it's dangerous still for our pilots.
00:50:50.160You know, Jack Posobiec is pretty amazing after, I think, 11,000 or 12,000 combat sorties.
00:50:59.500They finally, if this is true, CENTCOM has not confirmed it, but it's been a remarkable record so far.
00:51:05.820But these type of things happen when you're in a shooting war.
00:51:09.700You're going to have pilots shot down, you're going to have planes shot down, you're going to have search and rescue.
00:51:13.660And the danger of search and rescue is orders of magnitude even more than the pilots going in the first time.
00:51:20.160your thoughts, sir? Well, Steve, that's absolutely right. And I would remind everyone that it was
00:51:25.920that friendly fire incident over Kuwait, where there was, again, three of the F-15 Eagles that
00:51:33.480were shot down in that friendly fire incident. But in that incident, all of the pilots and crew,
00:51:39.600the WIZO, the weapons officers, were able to eject and were safely recovered. So there are
00:51:46.480indications that we've seen this already in Operation Epic Fury, where there's been ejections
00:51:51.260and recovery. Now, of course, not over Indian territory, Indian country like this is here in
00:51:56.760Iran. And that's why those CSAR missions are out there the way that they are. But it seems to be
00:52:03.000that every indication is that with them flying low and slow the way they are, that they do perhaps
00:52:07.840have indications that an ejection did take place so that the pilots can be recovered. Of course,
00:52:13.420We're also monitoring Iranian channels on Telegram and other places to see if locals attempt to pick up the pilot.
00:52:21.360We saw that in Kuwait a number of times. So we will see what happens there.
00:52:25.420And Steve, I just got to say, man, Jim Shudo. Seriously, this guy is the he'd like never served a day in his life.
00:52:31.920He is the biggest wannabe over at CNN sitting over there in Tel Aviv.
00:52:36.540Look at me. Look, he's an Obama staffer. All right. This guy was an Obama staffer.
00:52:40.620they stuck him over with gary lock in the u.s embassy in beijing and he's running around look
00:52:45.020at me look at me like he served it's he's the biggest joke every time i see him unconstituted
00:52:50.080russia gator all of it um real quickly cencom has not confirmed any of this correct has been
00:52:57.300total locked down on uh any any confirmation well i saw at one point that cencom was actually
00:53:02.120denying uh i think that they were denying that an f-35 had been shot down and yet uh we are getting
00:53:08.800Axios, CNN, and the reports are beginning to come out.
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