00:08:10.760We're in a very, very bad place, Steve.
00:08:13.560So let's talk about Trump saying he's going to take down the civilization tonight.
00:08:18.200Iran might be second only to China in terms of the longevity and continuity of civilization.
00:08:25.480Depending on whether you want to go back to Cyrus the Great or the rise of Islam, it's either 2,500 years old or, you know, well over 1,000 years old.
00:08:36.300But it's one of the longest continuous civilizations in world history.
00:08:40.840And the thing about a civilization like that, they're actually not fragile or brittle at all.
00:08:45.780They're actually very robust because they've been through many, many crises, et cetera.
00:08:50.000Your prior guest, you know, obviously very, very knowledgeable.
00:08:53.300Well, he's still talking about this uprising.
00:09:16.700Now, here's where it gets interesting, to your point, Steve, about the internal enemies.
00:09:20.380I'll take this. I believe Senator Kelly from Arizona, he was one of five or six, you know, basically veterans who said who warned the U.S. military do not obey illegal orders.
00:09:32.900And then there may be repercussions from that. But what are we hearing now that taking out civilian infrastructure, power plants, desalinization, railroads, et cetera, these are war crimes.
00:09:42.760Now, maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but the fact that we're hearing about war crimes,
00:09:47.880Iran's saying we're going to circle them with civilians, so if you blow up the planet,
00:09:52.100you're going to kill all these civilians.
0.98
00:10:23.440And it's one of many problems with this where I think we're using a fairly conventional military doctrine and we don't understand we're up against a theological enemy.
00:10:31.480um patrick k o'donnell and jim finnell have made pretty strong cases that uh the regime has been
00:10:44.420shattered that uh this is now going into part two you know looking at as a system for a state
00:10:50.920collapse um do you believe that's where we are you just said hey the regime hasn't collapsed
00:10:57.080and they're fighting asymmetrically this is one of the most significant decisions or pieces of
00:11:03.820intelligence and this is why it all comes down to one person has to make this decision this is why
00:11:11.040our system is structured like this the commander-in-chief article two makes it down to the
00:11:17.360office of the president one person to make this decision how do you weigh and measure uh this
00:11:23.660decision he'll make of whether this regime is is is is already done right and basically shattered
00:11:30.560and so now i'm going to go to the next phase of state collapse or the counter argument that hey
00:11:36.180these guys think they're winning they've they've they've they've uh shut down her moves they got
00:11:41.920west texas intermediate as a piece of evidence at 117 dollars a barrel and they just doubled down
00:11:47.200and said hey look you get tough with us tonight we're going to shut down the red sea sir well
00:11:53.400Well, you're right, Steve. They think they're winning. But as a pro-American analyst, I would say they're probably right.
00:11:59.540They probably are winning by their terms, by their definition, which is, are we still here? Are we still functional?
0.55
00:12:05.720You know, you've heard about the Mosaic defense. They haven't actually had to use it that much.
00:12:09.260But if you're a brigade commander and you get cut off from central authority, you have you have authority to launch weapons on your own.
00:12:17.200Have we done physical destruction? Absolutely. The physical kinetic performance in the military
00:12:23.640has been brilliant, but it doesn't matter because the regime is still standing.
00:12:28.440And then once you kill, we killed all the leaders, 30 or 40 on day one. Then we killed all the
00:12:34.160replacements. So another 30 or 40, we're talking about top theologians, generals, political
00:12:39.100officials, et cetera. We can keep killing them, I suppose, with good intelligence, but they keep
00:12:43.940replacing them. There's always somebody standing in line, so to speak. And again, this kind of war
00:12:50.440just makes them stronger politically, culturally, from a civilizational perspective. So you're not
00:12:56.680going to see regime change. Now, can we keep blowing things up? Yes. But they're sucking
00:13:03.000Trump in. We're getting closer to committing what are arguably war crimes. Now, the United States
00:13:08.480This is not a party to the international criminal court, so we're not going to be hauled in front of any Nuremberg-style trial.
00:13:16.060But I dare say it might have planted some doubts in the minds of some military officers, which is very detrimental.
00:13:22.140But this is nothing compared to what we did over Nazi Germany and what we did in the firebombing of Tokyo before the nuclear weapons,
00:13:33.460because the electricity and the power generation and all those are all inextricably linked to the
0.53
00:13:40.260war machine of the theocrats right this this talk of war crimes is is uh is a desperate attempt
00:13:46.600to try to uh to try to put doubt in actually military commanders minds and young sailors
00:13:53.820and young soldiers which which american history and the application of american power
00:14:23.320because they all had wooden structures
00:14:24.440and we were dropping napalm, basically, on them.
00:14:27.280But that was before the post-war war crimes trials, the Yamashita precedent, the Nuremberg trials, and the latest changes in the Geneva Convention.
0.50
00:36:48.420Well, Steve, I think the president is, you know, tried every which way to extend the deadline as you opened in the show and showed the different extensions.
00:37:03.580He's also applied pressure, and even today with this combined strikes on Karg Island and the bridges and whatnot, to get across to whoever is running Iran at this point, that it's better to negotiate than to go to this next phase.
0.56
00:37:21.400I hope and pray that they make a deal and they bend a knee.
0.58
00:37:25.660But if they don't, then you're going to see those second and third rings of infrastructure and the oil and the production, those rings that were in John Warden's systematic analysis of how to take down your adversary, those are going to be destroyed.
00:37:46.340We're not going to strike civilians.
0.99
00:37:48.280The Iranians are saying they're going to put civilians around, but we'll watch out for that.
1.00
00:37:51.840But we're going to shut down their ability to have electricity, their ability to transport goods, military equipment, and things of that nature.
0.99
00:38:01.340And if they continue, he'll take out Karg Island and shut off their ability to get any oil revenue from oil sales.
00:41:54.700And, you know, hopefully, hopefully the Iran regime will come to the table and we don't have to bomb all their power plants and desolonization plants and basically cripple the Iranian people.
0.95
00:42:08.800But President Trump's on a mission. We'll see what he does.
00:42:17.680What assessment? Give me your assessment of what got about a minute here.
00:42:21.220will keep you through the break over the weekend just an incredible rescue but as i tell people
00:42:26.220the military is trained for that they're going to do that um and they do it do it with a steely
00:42:31.900resolve your observation since it was a lot of seal team six involved in that yeah they the
00:42:38.700operation was it was incredible they went in there and they they got this uh american backseater out
00:42:43.980he looks like this guy was a full board colonel he was he was riding the back seat with that 15s
00:42:48.900There's some speculation that he may have been an air boss for a bigger mission.
00:42:54.260But they put two MC-130 special operation birds on the ground in Iran and then rolled out little birds, launched them with SEAL Team 6 operators and recovered this full board colonel, brought them back.
00:43:10.040And then apparently they had bad intelligence about the airfield.
00:43:14.540It was wet and sandy and the plane sunk in.
00:43:16.960so but at the end of the day they got they got they got our guy out that's the most important
00:43:21.700thing but it was a huge loss of equipment you know we lost f-15 a-10 two mc-130s three little
00:43:28.860birds and then reapers and we don't know if there's anything else that's all the stuff that's
00:43:33.620in public so it was a very costly mission but it was worth it yeah tage hang on for one second