00:05:54.580When we have men and women in uniform, Democrats and Republicans in independence, fighting an enemy, fighting terrorists, the greatest terror regime in the world history, and we're winning.
00:07:17.640And I could go on and on and on about the hypocrites in that party.
00:07:22.400It's their president that was about to hand nuclear weapons to this enemy.
00:07:26.160It's their president who handed them billions of dollars in cash and so forth.
00:07:30.540This president isn't going to put up with it. And he has it. God bless our president. God bless the prime minister of Israel.
00:07:38.840The Israelis are striking targets in Iran's capital this morning. The U.S. operation is also expected to continue.
00:07:45.800Do you think these two forces will be able to decimate all of the hardliners in the Iranian regime?
00:07:54.020Good morning, Pamela. That's a great question. But the answer, the short answer is no.
00:07:58.020So this is, you have to remember, this is an ideology that permeates the entire society.
00:08:03.300Now, that doesn't mean that that ideology and the people that represent it aren't weakened.
00:08:08.880They certainly have been weakened. There's no question about it.
00:08:11.800But what we're talking about is really what is in people's hearts and minds.
00:08:15.980And that is really hard to change, especially if they have the belief system that they've had for, what, 47 years now.
00:08:23.940That's a really difficult thing to change.
00:08:25.940The strikes that Israel and the United States have launched against Iran have been very directed at leadership targets,
00:08:34.340taking out the head of the armed forces of Iran, taking out just a few minutes ago,
00:08:41.600the IDF reported they were taking out two fighter jets, old fighter jets, F-4s and F-4s and F-5s,
00:08:49.160that was about to take off from Tabriz Airport in Iran.
00:08:52.780And that really shows that this is a multiple targeting effort.
00:08:58.240In other words, what we're doing is we're taking out the leadership, but we're also taking out some of their instruments of power.
00:09:04.120And that's going to go a long way to neutralizing Iran, but it is not going to completely eliminate the ideology behind this regime.
00:09:22.780But what we are seeing is a very divided picture, of course.
00:09:37.440I want to take the city of Isfahan, the second largest city in Iran, as an example.
00:09:41.380We saw these massive pro-government rallies in the streets, people mourning, crying for the supreme leader's death.
00:09:48.400You have to remember, of course, though, that Iran is trying to orchestrate an image of strength
00:09:52.400Because just hours earlier, social media video shows people honking their cars in the streets, celebrating women, waving their hijabs in celebration again.
00:10:02.360And that divided picture that we're seeing on the ground in Iran is, of course, reflected across the region.
00:10:08.840You mentioned the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Karachi, where you see those protesters breach the initial security barrier and then bang on the consulates with sticks.
00:10:18.760Very dramatic images, very similar to what we saw in the green zone in Baghdad, which is where the U.S. embassy is located.
00:10:25.060There as well, flashbangs being used, security forces cracking down on protesters, angry about the death of the supreme leader.
00:10:33.040But you're also seeing celebrations abroad as well, particularly among Iran's expat community.
00:10:39.240There's a strong expat community here in London.
00:10:41.520Some of them were out celebrating this weekend after the announcement of the death,
00:10:45.680as well as in Los Angeles, of course, in the United States.
00:10:48.920But then there's also some anger and some resentment in the U.S. as well.
00:10:52.100There was a demonstration in New York saying, hands off Iran.
00:10:55.760So as the memory of the Ayatollah is being debated and played out across the region and globally,
00:11:02.260you're seeing this very divided reaction.
00:11:05.060But very importantly, this is a man who's going to be remembered in his final months
00:11:09.200for a brutal crackdown that killed thousands of Iranians.
00:13:45.040I want to thank Real America's Voice, Parker and Rob Sig, our entire team in Denver.
00:13:50.900Also, our fantastic team here at the War Room.
00:13:53.260We're going to go seven days a week because of like events have just happened here in covering this major military operation, as the president defines it, or war until that time it's deemed unnecessary to cover seven days a week.
00:14:09.560So we'll be seven days a week. This is our first. And I want to thank we've got we're packed with some of the smartest minds about the region, the nation, geopolitics, military operations.
00:14:20.640and I really want to thank them for changing their Sundays up to be with us.
00:14:25.620Jack Posobiec, CENTCOM has just put out.
00:14:29.100Lindsey Graham and Mark Levin, I mean, I think to torture the boardroom posse,
00:14:34.860we'd play an hour of Mark Levin, just the over-the-top revolting comments of Levin.
00:14:43.100But we'll spare you one in the cold open just to see what's playing on Fox 24-7.
00:14:49.400We're trying to give you a, quite frankly, a more detailed and sophisticated look at what is actually happening.
00:14:55.860Jack Posobiec, CENTCOM has just announced, I think, three Americans killed in action, many others wounded, sir.
00:15:05.020And I'm working right now with my sources at the Department of War within the Pentagon and other areas of the intelligence community and the military to be able to try to figure out exactly who that was.
00:15:18.420CENTCOM saying that they're going to be holding back the information for 24 hours while family
00:15:23.900members are contacted. We don't know exactly which it was. I'm trying to see if we can figure
00:15:30.160out if they'll release at least which branch it was. Early indications seem to be, just based on
00:15:36.540what I've seen, that this may be related to some of those on-base attacks, those strikes that we've
00:15:41.300seen Bahrain, Qatar, some of the other ports all along the Middle East. But of course, we've also
00:15:48.180seen attacks on U.S. bases otherwise. One of the interesting pieces that we've seen is that there
00:15:54.920was a Sikorsky helicopter that was flown from Bahrain. It's known for medical combat rescue.
00:16:02.620It was flown from Bahrain to Doha International. That's something that we're tracking to see
00:16:06.100if that was related to this attack. But as we can see right now, this is not bloodless for
00:16:11.620the United States. We've lost three American service members, and we're told four or five
00:16:18.000in critical condition. CENTCOM, by the way, confirming that the IRGC had claimed at one
00:16:24.860point that they had targeted the Lincoln with four ballistic missiles. This is just about an
00:16:28.840hour ago. CENTCOM now confirming that the Lincoln was not struck by those ballistic missiles,
00:16:34.120so this does not appear to be related to any attack on the Lincoln.
00:16:37.940And to be sure, if the Lincoln was hit by a ballistic missile, there'd certainly be more than four.
00:16:43.000Well, let me ask you, the Iranians claimed earlier they had targeted the Lincoln with four ballistic missiles.
00:16:49.200So CENTCOM's—because a lot of times the Iranians are, you know, obviously in the fog of war, the first casualty is truth.
00:16:57.160They're always putting out—obviously the first hit yesterday they said was a girls' school that's still being worked through, whether it happened or not.
00:17:04.300But did CENTCOM actually concur that four ballistic missiles had targeted the Lincoln?
00:17:12.180Well, they said that the missiles did not come even close.
00:17:15.780So I take that to mean that the missiles did target the Lincoln.
00:17:19.780We know that Iran had supplied those anti-ship cruise missiles to the Houthis across the Arabian Peninsula there in the Red Sea area with anti-ship cruise missiles in the past.
00:17:31.840So certainly this is within their capabilities to target the carrier.
00:17:36.160Of course, the carrier would be the ultimate target for any of their strike forces, strike packages.
00:17:41.500And that's why the carrier has that defensive screen with the standard missile three interceptors fired from the Arleigh Burke destroyers with their Aegis and their Aegis air defense systems.
00:17:52.180They're fully capable. Again, we don't know exactly what the status was, how it was that those missiles did not strike.
00:17:58.200Now, they're saying ballistic missiles, not cruise missiles.
00:18:00.240That could be something that's lost in the wash.
00:18:02.460But, of course, it remains to be seen exactly what capabilities they're bringing to bear.
00:18:07.200But, yes, it does appear that it was targeted by missiles and the missiles, at least as of now, as we know, they have not been struck.
00:18:14.260And, of course, if the carrier had been struck, we'd be seeing images and videos and Iran would be showing it everywhere.
00:18:19.900I mean, this would be a high value target in terms of propaganda for them.
00:18:24.080So we would know immediately if that were struck.
00:18:26.020There was a carrier that Iran seems to have struck, or excuse me, a tanker that Iran seems
00:18:31.600to have struck in the Gulf of Oman, the port of Oman, a Palau-flagged oil tanker that is
00:18:38.040currently sinking right now, as well as, by the way, CENTCOM striking an Iranian naval
00:18:42.620Corvette that is currently on its way to Davy Jones' locker.
00:18:46.480Yeah, Captain Fennell is going to be on about this, the Straits of Hormuz, because that will
00:18:50.740have a definite impact on oil markets tomorrow.
00:23:21.300I said it before. I said it weeks ago in your show, not that this should this should not be the path forward.
00:23:27.240And the president chose to do it. I just wonder who pressured him that much to do it this way.
00:23:33.920uh you're one of the president's biggest supporters you you've worked uh around and with
00:23:40.800the administration the first time you've been a you've been i've known you now for what 15
00:23:45.300almost 20 years uh you are certainly america first uh but you've seen all the conflict all
00:23:51.820over the world you've been supportive what the president's done to date particularly things like
00:23:55.240venezuela although and for hemispheric defense a lot of people are not even happy with that
00:24:00.020just let's walk through this because you're an important voice here why are you disappointed
00:24:06.260with what the president's actions have been if there is a if there is a viable ground force
00:24:13.280that could seize and hold terrain and control terrain then i guess air power and a decapitation
00:24:21.100strike makes more sense to me but uh clacking off against the leadership um
00:24:27.920And leaving a real void right now, I I'm I'm concerned that it's going to ensue with a lot of chaos because who knows what other weapons the Iranians have stocked away and they're going to unleash on the region or what they would do inside the United States now.
00:24:47.220So it is undoubtedly a bold move. I hope it was the president's decision alone to do this and that he wasn't arm twisted by supporters or billionaire donors around him to do this.
00:25:01.340um they're they're saying now axios reports that if there had been a viable uh diplomatic
00:25:09.860solution and the reporting is pretty deep on this that kushner and whitkoff did think they
00:25:16.100were getting tapped along at the end that the persians really weren't addressing the issues
00:25:20.800the americans needed to address particularly ballistic missiles and other things about the
00:25:24.440nuclear program uh do you believe it's a it's a correct response the president's put down
00:25:30.560They can't have a nuclear weapon. And I'm not really getting anywhere in negotiations to go in and take out the leadership.
00:25:37.620Or do you think there's so many it's so deep in the Mula bench, in the IRGC bench that you're just going to get even worse bad hombres up there?
00:25:47.180Why are we so worried about nuclear weapons now if we had all these strikes a few months ago that supposedly eliminated their nuclear program?
00:25:57.320And again, if regimes get changed by, yes, removing the top management, taking away the inevitability, but then having a viable replacement, I have yet to see any evidence that there's a viable replacement anywhere that can actually seize control of what was a significant empire.
00:26:17.02090 million people, intelligent, hardworking, with a lot of tech and a lot of capability, is not an easy endeavor to accomplish.
00:26:29.560And so the air power alone, I'm concerned.
00:26:35.660And I'm concerned that this is not our fight, that this is Israel's fight that we got dragged into.
00:26:41.260And already, three Americans dead, five seriously wounded.
00:26:45.120that's troubling to me uh you're you're uh you said you had to have a substantial ground force
00:26:52.180really do regime change here you're not implying that that would have to be an american you're
00:26:55.980saying oh or some com or some combination of uae not is not israel we're not uae uh iranians
00:27:03.820iranians from across the the ethnic spectrum there that are willing to take up arms and go against
00:27:10.620the IRGC and free themselves. So they have a huge army that's not IRGC. Now,
00:27:16.060it may be equivalent to a militia. But you're arguing that to see regime change here, that
00:27:22.360that army or some part of that organized that's not IGRC or maybe some rebel units from that are
00:27:28.300going to have to lead the Persian people against the apparatus? Yeah. I mean, the natural option
00:27:33.860here would be the Kurds, the Kurdish, the Iraqi Kurds supporting the Iranian Kurds to do it. But
00:27:42.380this is an extremely bold move. I don't know why it was decided that I had to do it now.
00:27:50.680I'm shocked. And I'm just wondering what political pressure was brought to bear
00:27:55.020for the president to make this, because this is certainly not what he campaigned on.
00:27:59.160Yeah, real quickly, we got two minutes. I know you got to bounce
00:28:01.680because I know the president respects your opinion.
00:28:04.860If you had a chance to talk to the president today,
00:28:07.480what would be Eric Prince's recommendations to the commander in chief?
00:28:13.000Don't ever contemplate ground troops in Iran.
00:28:25.600I didn't really think that he was going to do it.
00:28:28.220eric prince uh where can people uh track you i know you got a podcast you've been busy uh all
00:28:34.820over the world particularly in places like haiti chasing down bad guys bad hombres uh where can
00:28:40.200people uh follow you sir at uh i'm on twitter at uh real eric d prince thank you sir appreciate
00:28:47.940you taking time away on sunday to join us eric jack basobic we've got about a minute to break
00:28:52.680your observations on eric prince who's one of the been one of the president's biggest supporters sir
00:28:57.620Well, Steve, nobody knows this. Nobody knows this territory better than Eric himself. And, you know, it reminds me, in a sense, what he's talking about.
00:29:10.020I wonder if he's drawing back from the lessons of Libya, where the United States came in, United States Navy predominantly with airstrikes on the infrastructure, airstrikes on missile defense, the leader being taken out.
00:29:22.880People in that case rose up, but those people ended up being rebels.
00:29:28.020They joined in with ISIS, and it led to a mass civil war.
00:29:33.100Yes, I think some very tough days ahead of us, although the top of the regime, Ayatollah, graveyard dead, 40 of his top associates, graveyard dead.
00:31:18.360It's not some kind of a secret that they would try to use their naval forces to try to go after us.
00:31:24.240But I think the reality is, is that we have been there for the Lincoln's been there for at least two weeks with her support ships and her submarines that are in escort of the strike group.
00:31:34.660and they have had what we call air supremacy and sea supremacy. And so they are watching
00:31:41.540the undersea domain. There are assets there that can provide information on where this is.
00:31:47.260And so the Iranians can try it. They may get lucky. That's the risk of war. But I think at
00:31:52.780this point, we haven't seen anything even close to getting near our carriers. The fact of the
00:31:58.800matter is, we have knowledge of where they are. And so even before that slipped out,
00:32:03.820We knew if it was leaving. So I think it probably slipped out before combat operations started, since we've already seen them attack and sink a Jamar class, Jamar class, not class, but this Jamar frigate that was in base in Shabahar, which people are talking about now.
00:32:22.260Let me go back. You said air superiority, air supremacy, air dominance. To Brandon's thing, that we're still doing standoff. Do you think that we've taken out – I mean, is there any knowledge you have that we have taken out the Iranians' air defense and that we can have at them at will?
00:32:41.900I think the Iranian air defense was already severely degraded in the strikes in June.
00:32:49.100And then since then, and with all due respect to Brandon, he just told us that we had B-2s that flew from continental United States and flew over Iran and delivered ordnance.
00:32:58.500We have Iranian or Israeli Air Force taking out two or three Iranian fighters, two F-5s and one F-4 that were trying to take off at Tabriz.
00:33:09.700So we're operating over the country. We have, and doctrinally, the Air Force calls it air superiority where you have control for a time and air supremacy when you have more time, long duration and greater geographic areas.
00:33:23.940So I believe that we're in the air supremacy phase. You can call it air dominance, but doctrinally it's called air supremacy. And I think we're operating at will over Iran with due regard, because there are man pads, man, portable air defense systems, handheld things that can still be a threat.
00:33:40.400But for the most part, there are no strategic SAMs left in Iran that I am aware of that are being effectively employed.
00:33:47.940So we are, what I said yesterday, we're in the process of defanging the Iranian military regime.
00:33:55.920We have to take out their missiles, as the president said, the missiles, missile production industry.
00:34:01.160We have to take out their Navy and all these coastal defense, cruise missile sites and artillery sites.
00:34:06.520They have to be taken out. And we're doing that in a systematic way. There was over 900 sorties from the U.S. side attacks, probably with TLAM and aircraft. If you have two carriers, 200 sorties a day, that's at least 400 sorties flying off of the Ford and the Lincoln. And then the rest are from our ground-based air assets and TLAM.
00:34:29.180So we're going through the target list and then we'll be going back systematically down that list, going for things that we may have missed and then being on call for what we call time sensitive targets.
00:34:42.820So there's no reason to celebrate. There's no reason to be negative either.
00:34:47.340We're in the war right now and we're we're going forward.
00:34:51.740And I think what's really interesting is we haven't seen a lot from CENTCOM.
00:34:56.340We haven't seen a lot from the Pentagon, the president either, because this is deadly serious.
00:35:02.080And so for the past 35 years with CNN, when we did Desert Storm and we watched Baghdad, Bob tell us there was no problems.
00:35:10.120We have been in this age of information where we expect to be hand fed all this information.
00:35:15.660And I think President Trump and his team recognize we're at war.
00:35:20.040People's lives, Americans' lives are at risk and our allies' friends are at risk.
00:35:24.420And we're not going to be involved with being so concerned about running a public affairs campaign as we are more focused on taking out and defanging the Iranians and taking out their senior leadership, which is what the president said they're about to do and are doing.
00:35:39.780Captain Finnell, let's talk about the straight-door moves and tankers and oil.
00:35:43.720And also, I'm not sure I totally understand the Iranians' logic for trying to go after
00:35:50.440the Gulf Emirates, at least in the first couple of days.
00:35:53.080I mean, they're hitting, I think, Dubai, they hit Doha.
00:35:56.780I think they hit, obviously, Bahrain, but even Saudi Arabia.
00:37:55.560And so what we're seeing is a reaction. It could have been the last best orders that those on scene missile brigade commanders received from their leadership a week ago, two weeks ago.
00:38:07.260Who knows? But we're not seeing anything that's coordinated. It seems sporadic.
00:38:11.540It seems obviously to it does that does that surprise you, given their order of battle and naval forces, given their order of battle in air defense and air forces, given the supposedly strict discipline they had.
00:38:25.480We only got about a minute. Is that surprise you that even with the American Israeli hits and on their common air, that it doesn't seem to be a more organized strike back?
00:38:36.980I think they're in shock and their command and control has been destroyed or severely degraded.
00:38:42.940And that's why we're not seeing anti-ship cruise missile attacks or anything at all against our fleet, which is good.
00:41:04.100We have to be prepared for any kind of contingency while we continue to stab them in the heart.
00:41:10.300Now, that may sound cruel, but that's what we're trying to do is defang them, take away all their military capability and take away that military leadership.
00:41:18.380and those police that are murdering Iranians and then let the Iranians do what they need to do.
00:41:23.760But for now, we have to be able to operate with impunity over the seas and the air in and around Iran.
00:41:31.360And we have to be able to do that without fear of a shot being popped off or something like that.
00:41:37.420So the strikes will continue for the next 24 hours.
00:44:34.740At the same time, we have to face reality of exactly what in the hell are we doing here?
00:44:40.760What is the plan? What is the commitment?
00:44:44.300We couldn't be in a more dangerous time as we are now in the beginning of the kinetic part of the Third World War.
00:44:52.060And how do we bring it to a conclusion?
00:44:54.220that's in the benefit of the United States of America, our citizens.
00:44:59.620War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Vann.
00:45:08.040Get here, Kurt. And there's reporting at this news site you've showed me coming out.
00:45:13.240I guess I found it sent to you, but you know it quite well.
00:45:17.640It's saying that President Trump, one hand, he's saying 30 days,
00:45:20.160But there's also discussion that he may be looking for an off ramp in the next three or four days after he's pounded Tehran enough and eliminated enough of the of the leadership of Iran.
00:45:32.020Your thoughts are. Yeah, I mean, we got here, frankly, at the behest of a foreign power.
00:45:37.860I mean, as the rabbi notes, I'm not entirely clear or not entirely sure the appetite of the American people to absorb fatalities.
00:45:50.140Three Americans have been killed. Five apparently have been grievously wounded.
00:45:53.420And that's just what the government is conceding. Very notably, they're not telling us how they died.
00:45:58.780And very notably, the leading intellectual architects of this war, people like Senator Tom Cotton, are arguing now.
00:46:06.040they're already moving the goalposts to a small ground force, as he told the Sunday shows this
00:46:10.800morning. This is an out of control war. And this is a war that is being driven, frankly,
00:46:17.320by an older generation that has- Hang on, hang on, hang on, take a deep breath. When you say
00:46:22.700out of control, as we've gone through the day, militarily, it's pretty systematic how we're
00:46:27.120trying to take down their defenses and the leadership. Is that part out of control? Or
00:46:33.260Are you saying the expanding nature of it is out of control?
00:46:37.660I mean, the Fifth Fleet just got hit yesterday.
00:46:40.080I mean, it's entirely unclear, with the exception of the supreme leader, if the Iranian—I mean, the bombings, in a lot of ways, were less severe than the ones in June of 2020-25.
00:46:49.640And the Iranian counterattacks are much more severe.
00:46:52.380And the Israelis are going to try to escalate this to keep the U.S. in.
00:46:55.720They just basically carpet-bombed Tehran.
00:46:58.360They give the Iranians, quote, the Gaza treatment.
00:47:00.720There was some idea that they were going to treat Persians any different than Arabs.
00:47:04.320And I think there's going to be a real desire to keep President Trump in here.
00:47:07.960I think the president has gotten very poor counsel.
00:47:10.580And I do think it matters politically that he was the no more endless wars candidate in 2016 and 2024, particularly.
00:47:17.500And this looks like an open betrayal of the base.
00:47:19.840And now there's there there are there's an argument that this is different than the Bush era neocon wars.
00:47:24.940But I will flag what Bush era neocon is not for this today.
00:47:30.000Find me one name. Name one. Bolton is pleased as hell about what we're doing.
00:47:34.840He went. He said his only regret is that he didn't convince Trump to do this in twenty eighteen.
00:47:40.140Talk to me about Tom Cotton. Tom Cotton has been doing the Sunday shows today.
00:47:43.640And when they put up a trial balloon, that means they're thinking of something.
00:47:46.760What Tom Cotton has now said, just a small, just a small, a tiny, just a teensy ground for us.
00:47:53.400Are they running that up the flagpole and seeing if anybody salutes?
00:47:57.140For sure. Look, I mean, look, the president is impressed by Tom Cotton and he's an impressive guy. Double Harvard, young senator. He's very tall. He's a very careful veteran. Combat veteran, it used to be said. Yeah, people look at him and they see CIA director, defense secretary, president.
00:48:13.800But the reality is, Cotton represents a constituency which is getting narrower and narrower and older and older in the American public.
00:48:21.820And he is, frankly, a foreign policy radical.
00:48:25.220He sees no real problem with the Bush legacy.
00:48:28.540He's a former protege of the Weekly Standard editor, William Kristol, and he represents a strain of republicanism that Trump's initial rise was all about rejecting.
00:48:39.180Remember, the never-Trumpers were the neoconservatives.
00:48:51.660The National Review that came out with that thing, never Trump or against Trump, one of the principal arguments was neocon.
00:48:57.940President Trump had a totally different way of looking at it.
00:49:00.340Before I leave you, Peter Baker, you just put a you retweeted something that Peter Baker said and put some commentary on it.
00:49:06.380Now, Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for the for the beloved paper of record, The New York Times.
00:49:13.340Talk to me quickly about this poll that he's just put up and your comments on it.
00:49:17.660Yeah, so the polling initially conducted overnight on the strikes is overwhelmingly negative.
00:49:23.120But most importantly and most central to this show, it appears that a majority of Republicans don't know why we're doing this and or don't support it.
00:49:30.920So, look, I think it needs to be level set.
00:49:34.160Tens of millions of Americans are happy that Donald Trump is the president.
00:49:38.100I'm one of them. I don't regret my vote for President Trump.
00:49:42.100I don't think Kamala Harris would be doing this better. But there is such a thing as motivation or opposition to the administration on it on discrete issues and a new war in the Middle East that looks a lot like the Iraq war, though it looks a lot like the same people making the arguments for the Iraq war.
00:49:58.220And basically an argument that is mired in the past, respectfully to Chairman Kennedy, where Brian Kennedy, who I like a lot and consider a friend, he's arguing about military exercises that occurred in the 90s.
00:50:13.260A lot of people who voted for President Trump weren't alive when these military exercises occurred.
00:50:17.860Yes, Iran is an adversary of the United States, but it was not an imminent threat at all.
00:50:22.420It wasn't an imminent threat in January of 2025.
00:50:25.580This is not something that President Trump needed to handle for the interest of the United States.
00:52:31.200But give us, I need your battle assessment of where we are after last night, sir.
00:52:36.600In my opinion, the war is set to expand even more.
00:52:40.600the Iran systems, as Jack was just noting, to now these more advanced systems. There is a massive
00:52:47.660strain on the particularly Qatar and Israeli air defense interceptor arsenal. So if this thing
00:52:56.040continues to go on, as you and I believe they will, then the defense of these countries gets
00:53:01.720even more precarious. I also want to point out the Houthis have not yet opened up on the Red Sea.
00:53:07.080The Saudis are moving most of their oil transportation away from the Strait of Hormuz into their Red Sea port.
00:53:14.660I think the Houthis are waiting for them to be totally reliant on that, and then they're going to seal it up.
00:53:19.420But we now have the issue of the Eritrean coastline.
00:53:23.600The Ethiopians have taken operational control.
00:53:26.540They are saying they're going to allow U.S. or Israeli forces to use ground-based missiles to break up the Houthi capabilities across the way in Yemen.
00:53:36.280And what that means is, Steve, we're now talking about a war expanding, not just to Azerbaijan, not just to Beirut, you know, and all these other places, but now possibly in the Horn of Africa as well.
00:56:59.820And the Israelis, I said this to you last time I was on your show,
00:57:02.420it was a mistake that the Israelis were actually kind of hoping they'd make
00:57:05.720because this goes back to the ceasefire with Hezbollah going back more than a year
00:57:10.160where the Lebanese government committed itself to disarm Hezbollah by the end of 2025.
00:57:16.140And of course, they did nothing of the sort.
00:57:17.740They don't even have the ability to do it.
00:57:19.280But the Israelis sat back and said, OK, you know, we'll give you a chance. Go for it to see if you can do it.
00:57:25.660And and they never did. And the Israelis are once and for all going to go in there and get rid of this threat on our northern border.
00:57:33.560And quietly behind the scenes, the Lebanese and some of them not so quietly, there's more public figures who are saying this.
00:57:39.900They're grateful to the Israelis to finally liberate the country of Lebanon from this Iranian occupation it's been under for the last four decades.
00:57:47.520So the Israelis are planning a real a real invasion. They're going to be they're already clearing out the populations from the southern part of Lebanon and looking to recreate a kind of buffer zone up to the Latani River, which is about 18 miles from the Israeli border, which is that entire area has been a kind of hornet's nest of Hezbollah tunnels and weapons depots and and towns that are basically Hezbollah operatives with their families.
00:58:15.780So Israel, Israel means business this time and plans to once and for all rid Lebanon of Hezbollah.
00:58:23.800And that's what's happening. Rabbi, you and I are friends.
00:58:27.540But as you know, and people know, we disagree on a lot, but we're still friends.
00:58:31.300One thing I've said is the Greater Israel Project brought on this disaster in Gaza and particularly what I call the two state solution of the Qatar of Qatar financing in Turkey,
00:58:42.740being the security guarantee with President Trump's Board of Peace, and he's kind of signed
00:58:46.780off on it. Last night, a helicopter was shot down, it looks like, or had mechanical problems.
00:58:52.620I think it was actually taken out with a number of Qatar and Turkish military officials together.
00:59:01.000Is the whole situation in Gaza, that whole framework of peace, is that just really by the
00:59:07.240board? Is that not going to happen now, given the expanding intensity of this, particularly
00:59:12.500if there's going to actually be ground troops in Lebanon, you know, the Arab nations and the
00:59:17.360Persians are going to dig in even harder. Do you think the whole thing in Gaza is just over and
00:59:22.820finished with? And we'll have to go back and think some of the Board of Peace, the Qataris as
00:59:27.580financiers and the Turks as the security guarantors on the soil of Israel ain't going to happen.
00:59:34.880Well, that's a great question. What's going to happen in Gaza? I think from the Israeli's
00:59:39.100perspective. They're trying to kind of keep it in a holding pattern, keep it on a low boil
00:59:42.780until we see which way things go with the war in Iran. Because dealing with the Gaza situation
00:59:50.160where there's in a reality where there's no longer an Iranian regime, which is not a done deal yet,
00:59:56.020but dealing with dealing with it where there's no longer an Iranian regime and no longer a Hezbollah
01:00:00.440on our northern border is very different than dealing with it where there is. And we also don't
01:00:05.180know where the Gulf states, Saudis, and even where they're all going to fall out in terms of
01:00:10.960relations with Israel and relations with the United States after this is all said and done.
01:00:16.400We don't know what's going to happen. If Lebanon is actually rid of Hezbollah and normalizes
01:00:20.940relations with Israel, there's a lot of different pieces of the puzzle, including the Egyptians.
01:00:26.480How are the Egyptians going to respond? They're always hedging and playing all sides of everything.
01:00:31.220A big question is always the Saudis. You know, the Saudis are always also waffling, you know, not waffling.
01:00:39.300They're always playing both sides of everything. And where that all shakes down is going to have a lot of impact on how we move forward with Gaza.
01:00:46.860And I think from the Israeli perspective, we'd rather not deal with that head on.
01:00:50.980And I think that that's why Hamas, no one's noticed this because there's been other headlines in the Middle East, but Hamas has been scrambling to restart negotiations just since this war has started because they're in a tight spot.
01:01:04.120Their two patrons, Qatar and Iran, are at war with each other and they got themselves into a pickle where they they praised Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war and and said, you know, and we're cheering for Iran.
01:01:17.460And the Qataris looked at them and said, you better walk that back or we're going to cut you off.
01:01:21.160So they so they walked it back and told and condemned Iran for bombing its Arab neighbors.
01:01:26.360And then Hezbollah turned to Hamas and said, what are you doing?
01:01:29.380We've been standing with you for years and now you're condemning Iran.
01:01:32.000So they they're stuck. But in terms of what's going to happen in Gaza, it's just going to have to wait until until the Iran war is over, because we don't know what the Middle East is going to be.
01:01:46.140Rabbi, where do people get your content, particularly your videos are always, I think, great to give people the perspective of what's happening in Israel in a very accessible and clear minded way, although everybody may not agree with it.
01:01:58.000You at least get it. That's fine. It's accessible. Where do people go?
01:02:02.000And for your columns. Oh, thank you very much. So for my columns, you can go to the Jerusalem Post.
01:02:08.120You can find my author page there. And for the videos, go to Israel three six five news on YouTube.
01:02:14.180We're uploading videos multiple times a week, almost every day now. And Israel three sixty five action dot com.
01:02:20.760That's the Web site you see up on your screen now. Just sign up there for our newsletter and you'll get news and information from Israel and won't cost you anything.
01:02:29.220And you'll get our updates. You'll get all the videos, too. They're all up on that website.
01:02:33.080And you can follow me on X at Rabbi P.W.
01:02:36.740Don't be prepared, I don't know, Monday or Tuesday to go into this more.
01:02:40.580But I was thinking over the weekend that one of the other great strategists, maybe arguably the greatest strategist and field commander combined.
01:02:50.140in history. Alexander the Great had this issue about the same part of the world in
01:02:56.780324 BC in a retreat from India, maybe a strategic repositioning, I think they would call it,
01:03:06.780he and his generals, the War Council, because the Macedonians and Greeks, as hard as they were,
01:03:13.460as tough as they were, going from Greece through Persia, all the way through the Khyber Pass
01:03:19.080into india i think all the way the indish river maybe beyond they decided maybe we've gone too
01:03:24.520far from our logistics chain and maybe it's time we go back and this concept was hey maybe we go
01:03:31.140back and we'll go back to babylon right that's the nicest place and we'll we'll regroup and we'll
01:03:38.360rethink and if you want to be the king of asia maybe we go back to egypt and north africa and
01:03:43.100we do the whole thing and then you can call yourself the the king of asia all the way from
01:03:46.900where we touched India all the way back through it.
01:03:51.060At around this time in 324 BC, think about that.
01:06:20.040The greatest, probably military genius of the West, greater than Caesar, greater than Napoleon, Alexander the Great.
01:06:26.460In fact, the one from Caesar to Mark Antony to Napoleon to all of them used as the template.
01:06:34.120In fact, there are many stories about what Caesar went to the when he was in Egypt, went to the tomb of Alexander the Great.
01:06:43.020The Cleopatra saw him and he weep and he wept because Alexander had done by the age of 31, 32, 33, what Caesar had not accomplished in his 50s.
01:06:54.280going through the same logistics problem.
01:08:36.440I think that this points to an even larger problem.
01:08:39.120Admiral Hall was talking about NATO and UK capabilities, they're becoming increasingly clear that this is a serious problem and all of the UK assets, I think, need to be looked at.
01:08:50.800There was a drone strike on one of their two bases in Cyprus, for example, and now the Cypriot government is talking about, oh, we're going to have to perhaps renegotiate or take a new look at having UK bases in Cyprus after this conflict is over.
01:09:07.280That's another real serious problem for the U.S.
01:09:10.500There are, I think, some major signals, intelligence operations going on out of Cyprus.
01:09:15.480And we're seeing a degree of potential penetration of the U.K. government that raises concerns also in financial sectors where you've got that large embassy that they're talking about.
01:09:28.060The Chinese are talking about building in London being built near some of the cables that transmit key information into and out of the city.
01:09:37.280And of course, those transmissions are very time sensitive if you're doing trades or things like that.
01:09:42.760And there was also reporting they've arrested a few people in the UK recently on suspected spying for the Chinese.
01:09:52.380One of them, a labor advisor, spoke directly to Marco Rubio in December 24 about Chagos just before he became secretary of state.
01:10:03.220So they are we're going to have to really look not not just at them being not particularly helpful, perhaps, as Admiral Hall was describing, but potentially being an actual vulnerability across multiple areas.
01:10:19.200The CCP and all of this, give us your perspective.
01:10:22.740I know you focus on Micronesia and the islands in the Pacific, the western part of the United States.
01:10:54.080So I was recently in Yap and Palau and Guam. And in Yap, if you remember, we covered the Chinese rebuilding of that Imperial Japanese runway on Woolley Eye. That construction crew has now moved on to the main island of Yap, where the U.S. is putting in two billion dollars worth of infrastructure.
01:11:14.720and according to Secretary Hegseth's public statements although the negotiations aren't
01:11:20.580complete and this is where you get a concern I'm I look more at kind of the left of bang what
01:11:26.500happens before things blow up so that hopefully things don't blow up that same Chinese company
01:11:31.400that was doing the runway is on the main island doing a bridge which is in a location between
01:11:36.320the port and the airport that the U.S. is looking at rebuilding and they've also settled in to do
01:11:42.900over a dozen secondary roads on the island so from a situation of about a year ago where there was
01:11:49.400essentially no chinese installed government linked operations on the island of yap
01:11:56.100there's they're now settling in and they they do the relationship mapping figure out who they can
01:12:02.260buy who they can influence and they're settling in for the long run so that runway which is about
01:12:07.520400 miles from guam which they've completed they've completed the runway but they've left
01:12:13.220behind on woolly eye containers and i don't know what's in the containers they also left behind
01:12:19.920a couple of tenders one of them has sunk and has leaked oil into the lagoon so the locals are
01:12:25.580having problems with their fishing supplies it's just it's not dialing down um so i hope that
01:12:32.780they're reconsidering, but all of this, everything we've spoken about, the islands,
01:12:37.460Dio Garcia, what's happening in Cyprus, this is all logistics. This is all about the four,
01:12:42.840right? And unless we can kind of do a proper assessment and regain control on the logistics,
01:12:50.180which is where the Chinese are trying to cut off the U.S. If you remember, Admiral Keating was
01:12:55.980testified in 2008 that he was told by a Chinese official, you take Hawaii East, we'll take Hawaii
01:13:01.840west and they're putting in place uh logistical control in order to um to try to make that happen
01:13:09.000like happened with the japanese during the door too they're looking at the same map
01:13:12.580uh cleo you're putting up great stuff all the time of us the geo strategic confrontation between
01:13:20.920the chinese communist party in the united states of america where do people go uh uh x just my
01:13:27.220name, Cleo, C-L-E-O-P-A-S-K-A-L. And I'm real Cleo still on getter.
01:13:39.980Always great. Well, how's that going to go down with the President of the United States
01:13:43.660referred to our NATO allies as cowards, quote unquote. How is this going to play with that
01:13:51.140group and do you see any true participation even as feeble as they are because the houthis once
01:13:58.260the houthis get involved in this and they may be the ace in the hole for the iranians once you get
01:14:03.500the red sea that that's all about europe this whole thing's about europe and asia and the
01:14:08.540president said to the american people said a couple times he said hey look maybe we just uh
01:14:13.380maybe we just do do some more defanging and declawing this week and we head out and toss
01:14:18.480to you and uh you go on uh you go on escort duty sir steve so much to wrap up here i have to say
01:14:28.320if you'll forgive me the analogy much of um you know they're talking about defanging degradation
01:14:34.900and all the rest of it i can't help but think that the the u.s israeli campaign so far if that's what
01:14:41.800it leads to um you're going to say bye now over to you guys it's much like the opening five minutes
01:14:47.260of team america um and and the liberation of paris from the terrorists look you know let's tie all
01:14:55.440this together what was i saying just before the break that and the reason europeans don't want
01:15:00.300anything to do with this is because politically they realize that a protracted third goal for
01:15:08.960in as many decades is political suicide it's political it's politically toxic that's why
01:15:14.720They want nothing to do with it. And that's why Marco Rubio is in the witness protection program, because anyone with 2028 ambitions doesn't want to be on this side of the microphone, this side of the television defending a war, which if it is still somehow going by the time of the midterms, by the time of 2028, it's kryptonite.
01:15:38.580So let's look at what Scott Besson was saying
01:16:00.060And this is somewhat a communication strategy
01:16:02.580Asymmetry between the US side and the Iranian side
01:16:06.440When the U.S. when the Iranian side is signaling something, they're signaling it to Washington, D.C., almost 100 percent, of course, because there's very little Internet in Iran right now.
01:16:16.540When the U.S. is signaling things, I'd say 75 percent of that signaling is to the U.S. domestic audience, specifically to MAGUS.
01:16:25.740And that's where I would put the president's truth, social, verbal bomb on the Europeans that call him the couch.
01:16:36.220That's meant for the US domestic audience. That's meant for MAGA.
01:16:39.900EDEM, Scott Besson's saying let's escalate to de-escalate, because, of course, the key word that everyone is going to look at there isn't so much the escalation.
01:16:49.420It's the de-escalation, because there is this instinctive view, I would suggest, in the administration that the toleration for this war,
01:16:59.120While it's been high so far, it's going to taper off very, very quickly.
01:17:11.560Of course, the problem is that de-escalation really leads to de-escalation.
01:17:17.960And that's why I think it's a pretty dangerous strategy.
01:17:21.040As I was saying, though, let's wait for this 48-hour ultimatum to pass
01:17:26.160and then see what kind of territory we're going to be in then.
01:17:29.120Hang on. You've got about a minute or so. Give me your closing thoughts. We're going to have you back on during the week. Of course, you're doing the Wednesday and Friday show, which are extraordinary. Your thoughts as you leave us on a Sunday, sir, from Rome.
01:17:41.820Yeah. OK, 60 seconds. Steve, I think Bibi had absolutely right in the cold open that the Iranian strike at Diego Garcia was an indication to the world, to America, that it that it has longer than was understood missile range.
01:18:00.420it was considered to be about 2 000 uh kilometers um but now you know it's possibly and the upper
01:18:08.880reaches around six and a half thousand kilometers that which which massively widens the amount of
01:18:14.260damage that the iranians can do and it's not going to go down in the annals of fighting war with honor
01:18:19.780what they're doing but it's certainly effective it's pretty much what the bad guy does in any
01:18:24.280film that's ever been made put your gun down or the kid gets it and that's what iran is basically
01:18:30.860doing right now it's not primarily focusing its targets on striking the united states but
01:18:36.840striking the united states allies in the region it's effective and we'll we'll see um who blinks
01:18:43.020first i think uh it's not just who blinks first i think we're going to find out over the next
01:18:49.460couple of days do we have a cornered rat or we have a cornered grizzly that intelligence is uh
01:18:55.680you know it's going to be quite important and we'll find out how good these intelligence
01:18:59.600agencies are in dia and all of it ben uh where what's your uh social media sir till we get you
01:19:04.640back on here my social media platform of choice getter harnwell is my surname tapping at harnwell
01:19:12.260there i am pushing out my daily provocations on getter thanks to you enjoy the rest of the war
01:19:17.580Well, first, Steve, let me speak to Palm Sunday in Jerusalem.
01:21:31.420He was not going with some grand procession, even he was going privately with another clergy to the church to say mass on Palm Sunday and barred.
01:21:41.560So it's when you if you give a gun and a badge, you get a bigger one.
01:21:47.940And perhaps that's the case of some security apparatchik in Jerusalem that doesn't care that it's a cardinal, has no respect for Christendom.
01:21:59.160Uh, this is a really, really bad look for, um, look, you, you, it starts to take away, um, any understanding about, uh, or I guess it has the understanding of, of even Muslims that are, are angry at, uh, their access to Al-Aqsa Mosque.
01:22:18.920Um, and again, it could completely unforced stupid error by, uh, Israeli security forces today.
01:22:29.160Bullet point two, Steve. We live in a very, you know, in a world of transparent battlefields.
01:22:34.840If you get within 30, 40 kilometers of the front line in Ukraine, you are completely at risk because of the amount of surveillance and drones sensors.
01:22:47.760the idea that you're going to hide a amphibious ready group or mu with an lha that's probably a
01:22:57.540what eight or nine hundred foot ship weighs 40 or 50 000 tons um believe me there's multiple
01:23:05.080countries in the world that own the means to track that in real time and so if you by doctrine
01:23:13.040If you try to get that entire amphibious group within a range of them starting to discharge their troops, they're going to be heavily and highly targeted for the same reason that they pulled the carrier air wing back mysteriously after the laundry fire on board the USS Ford.
01:23:37.160So highly dangerous to put amphibious troops into that area because of their so many precision missiles.
01:23:46.120And obviously, there's no surprise left.
01:23:48.700If they somehow managed to get all those Marines off and move them somewhere else to launch an amphibious operation to try to force open the Straits of Hormuz, maybe.
01:24:02.600And second, they truly don't have maritime superiority when the Iranians can launch as many missiles, drones and suicide, suicide vessels against them as they can.
01:24:14.540could you um could you actually um do a uh without active arab support could you actually
01:24:24.780take karg island from um the um could you actually go to karg island unless you got the lhas unless
01:24:32.840you got the amphibious ready group at least part of the uh contingent into the persian gulf or
01:24:38.420Would you do it stand off and station the helicopters and the and the Osprey, I guess it's some, you know, up in Qatar, you know, to the to that point, you know, up.
01:24:50.940I think I think I think the view has in Iran, in Iran, Iraq.
01:24:55.440I mean, is that as I recall that that you would have a maximum of 10 V-22s on board.
01:25:01.840And so you're not going to move more than 20 or 30 troops per lift.
01:25:05.180So, yeah, your initial assault in the Karg Island is going to be mighty thin because those aircraft have to cycle.
01:25:11.140And that's assuming you don't have any losses for maintenance or for missiles.
01:25:16.800Do you do a mass drop of the 82nd on the Karg Island?
01:25:20.880Again, that's that's pretty sporty and a an airborne invasion in a place that has thousands and thousands of missiles, not to mention the Iranians have been learning.
01:25:34.960They've certainly been paying attention to modern drone warfare and have certainly implemented FPVs down to the squad level.
01:25:44.200I mean, you see videos of the Israelis in southern Lebanon losing tanks, losing armored personnel carriers to the same FPVs that the Russians have been using with great effect in Ukraine.
01:25:56.120So it is, again, a fight against Iran.
01:26:03.680They're Aryans. They are highly intelligent, highly skilled warfighters, and it would not be the pushover by comparison that you see of the Iraqi army that worked.
01:26:20.860The other thing the Iranians have done, seeing what the U.S. military did to Iraq in 2003 and 2004, where they decapitated all the military command structure, is they decentralized the decision-making into 31 military districts with a standing order to make war, as much war, for as long as you can.
01:26:40.960And the only person that can countermand that is the supreme leader, not their minister of defense or their chief of the armed forces or their president, only the supreme leader.
01:26:50.780So it's at that point even hard to negotiate with any of the other people that come to meet J.D. Vance or whatever.
01:27:01.760And I think we just killed the head of the parliament, who was the other guy that was supposed to come and negotiate with J.D. Vance.
01:27:08.740So I'm not sure that U.S. interests are even in parallel at all to Israeli interests because they seem to be whacking a lot more of the leaders.
01:27:20.040taking those names off the board, people that are supposed to be negotiating peace with.
01:27:27.220Look, clearly, President Trump, I keep saying, and Rubio picked it up, optionality.
01:27:32.720He needs optionality, needs a range of alternatives, and you're never going to give your strategy.
01:27:37.520That being said, the National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, and the Vice President were pretty
01:27:42.860adamant to go back to the military objectives. President Trump doesn't even refer to it as a
01:27:46.880war anymore. It's a military operation. You've got those four or five objectives of, you know,
01:27:52.320de-industrialize them, taking out the Navy, taking out the Air Force, their defense capabilities,
01:27:58.500air capabilities. We have air supremacy now, or at least air superiority. You know, and Marco was
01:28:04.720adamant or pretty adamant and repeated many times, we're not going to need combat troops for this.
01:28:09.020is is is the combat troops we have in another 10,000 being prepped is that so president trump
01:28:17.420has another option is it for leverage against these guys or how real how real do you feel right
01:28:23.220now moving in to take uh to make sure they take that those those couple of islands down by straight
01:28:28.420or whore moves and then karg island and you're thinking this through and putting in that logistics
01:28:33.740base or that logistics premise, a predicate, how real do you think we're moving on with
01:28:40.640the cheerleading of Mark Levin and Thiessen and all these other, you know, the Lindsey
01:29:03.740And those two islands on the north side, one is Keshem and one is Larrick.
01:29:08.680Keshem is the size of Okinawa. Larrick is the size of Iwo Jima.
01:29:12.540Anybody that knows anything of American maritime amphibious history knows those names and how many thousands and thousands of soldiers were killed by a very dug in enemy.
01:29:24.620Now, those islands are generally flat.
01:29:26.820So even if you put guys over the beach and you take them, the bunkers, prepared fortifications, which I would imagine are there, worse than that, on the mainland Iran, there are mountains very, very close by,
01:29:45.520which are also laced with caves, tunnels, and survivability from which can be launched rockets, missiles, and drones,
01:29:55.320making both of those islands that you're trying to put, potentially putting Marines ashore, as one large beaten zone.
01:30:03.380And I think it's important to think of other military history of a grand amphibious operation planned by the British in World War II at Gallipoli,
01:30:12.820which is to try to take the Dardanelles and take out Turkey from the war.
01:30:18.500And it ended very badly because they never seized the highlands.
01:30:22.320And so seizing those highlands is ugly.
01:30:26.340First, you know, look, CENTCOM undoubtedly over the last two years
01:30:31.540had all their target sets that they wanted to hit in Yemen
01:30:35.660to make the Houthis comply and to open up the Babel Mandaab Unlimited.
01:30:40.640The only reason that was opened over the last year is because the Houthis allowed it.
01:30:45.900It was not done by coercion by CENTCOM.
01:30:49.460So my concern about CENTCOM saying, yes, we have another 3,500 targets to strike.
01:30:55.400That's the ones that they think they know of.
01:30:58.380And my comment about the captain saying, well, things are quiet and they're not really shooting back from the Straits of Hormuz.
01:31:05.320As I read history, the Germans did not engage until the troops hit the beach.
01:31:14.720And the Japanese did not open up on Iwo Jima or Okinawa until the troops hit the beach.
01:31:21.400And so I really hope no one is considering some kind of a forced entry there because it will be a significant casualty event and a massive blow.
01:31:30.520And I just hope that the administration is not going to give the enemy the fight that the enemy is expecting because it's not going to go well.
01:31:40.860Now, on an even more serious topic, on Palm Sunday, look, whether it's some mid-level bureaucrat that went off the rails to block the cardinal from going to mass,
01:31:55.660I'm told, I just read that he had asked for four people to go to the church, to live stream mass from there, and they even barred him from doing that.
01:32:32.240Well, the former Iranian foreign minister is sending up a trial balloon.
01:32:35.940And former Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif has talked about the necessity of having a comprehensive peace plan to resolve what he calls a stalemate, that he's recognizing that this is not a war that Iran should continue or is going to achieve victory, identifying again as a stalemate and is calling for then the conflict to be resolved.
01:33:05.360So that's a very important trial balloon, Steve, that shows.
01:33:10.340Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
01:33:12.660Why do you think it's a why do you think it's a very important trial balloon?
01:33:16.500You think he's got any authority to do it or he's just another guy throwing it up there?
01:33:22.860I'm sure he's I'm sure that he's got ties to the existing the present Iranian regime.
01:33:31.640And so I don't think he's just throwing spaghetti at the wall here.
01:33:36.800If you look at the details of what he's saying, even though, of course, it's a bit ambiguous, again, it's a trial balloon, it's showing that there are elements in the Iranian government, if not the totality of the Iranian government, saying it's time to recognize that this is a stalemate.
01:33:57.900uh as he as zarif identifies they'd be willing to uh give up the nuclear program in return for
01:34:06.740lifting sanctions uh and uh the other points there of course uh are going to be important
01:34:13.240but that's a huge step forward uh for um uh potentially bringing the the conflict to an end
01:34:20.060um walk through we got about a minute i want to hear again your your thoughts on you don't
01:34:29.180believe president trump is is is walked in like a lot of his critics saying it walked into an
01:34:33.600escalatory trap uh before we go to break we got about a minute walk through your logic for saying
01:34:39.140that because i think that's very big element of where we are strategically in this if true
01:34:44.220Sure. If true, absolutely. So it begins, I think we need to recognize that President Trump is not boxing himself into any particular path. So he wants to maximize the optionality that he has, like every good statesman.
01:35:03.000He wants to ensure that he's going to use only as much force as needed in this contingency, in this case, and not more.
01:35:13.520At the same time, if he needs to do it, he will.
01:35:17.240And he's got forces in the region now that can be deployed, as we've discussed this morning and as we've discussed previously.
01:35:27.040So if he chooses to escalate, right, Moses only brought down 10 commandments from Mount Sinai, Steve.
01:35:36.840So we know the 11th commandment is not that you're going, if you escalate, you're going to get into a trap, right?
01:35:42.320There's good logic, military logic for escalating in the right circumstances.
01:35:47.400U.S. military history is replete with examples of escalating to bring about the defeat of the adversary.
01:35:57.100Linebacker, too, of course, perhaps being most famous.
01:36:00.980Or Allied Force, too, where we began to spread out the targets set from the military targets to the Serbian economic targets as well.
01:36:10.480So, Dr. Bradley Thayer, give me your thoughts on a good Friday, sir, to sum up where do you think we are in this war?
01:36:19.520Well, absolutely, Steve. I just want to say that in the Dark Ages, it was the Irish monks who saved Western civilization.
01:36:26.020And if Western civilization is going to be saved again, it's going to be people like Julie and Brandon and the people who show up on Tuesday to ensure that Texas history is preserved, American history is preserved, and Western civilization is preserved, right?
01:36:43.100That's absolutely essential because of Texas influence in the book market, in the educational market.
01:36:48.800Do you want your kids taught by the Texas Board of Education or the California Board of Education?
01:36:54.420And that's what everyone needs to ask themselves. And that's really the argument of the book, Steve. We've been in a long war against communism, a hundred years war against it. It was the ideology of the Soviet Union. It's the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party. Communism is illegitimate and it's hyper aggressive.
01:37:12.140And the deep problems that we face, from the Chinese Communist Party to George Soros to the anti-Americanism of the Democratic Party, are responsible for that.
01:37:23.760The neo-Bolsheviks have penetrated our identity, Western civilization.
01:37:30.740The book explains why, but I'm proud to stand with Julie and with Brandon and other great folks, the folks who are going to show up on Tuesday to win the fight.
01:37:41.400I want people to get, by the way, this is why Thayer is so special.
01:37:46.780He makes a direct connection from Lindisfarne, the monastery at Lindisfarne,
01:37:51.520and the Irish monks all the way to Texas, and what's going to happen on Tuesday.
01:37:56.440And you know what? It's exactly the same.
01:37:58.900You know, trying to keep away the barbarians, right, and the pagans,
01:38:04.300and in this case the Islamists and the terrorists from poisoning your children.