00:03:26.800President Trump, of course, focused on changing this.
00:03:29.580Also talked about the potential for looking at Cuba for a new operation, potentially a
00:03:36.040new deal, a new regime change, or a new situation there.
00:03:40.180Opening up and reestablishing diplomatic ties, however, with Venezuela on the same day.
00:03:45.660Also, we've seen reports about the reestablishment of U.S. to Venezuela direct flights from Florida.
00:03:53.480So, you know, really seeing a model with Venezuela that where very quickly we saw the Operation Maduro, which just a couple of weeks ago, now to the resumption of diplomatic ties.
00:04:08.000Could this be a setup whereby in the United States is able to see with a new leader, new leadership in Iran, an ability to have these relations, these tensions, these operations lead to a better place, not only for the United States, but for also the people of Iran and the world?
00:04:29.940What have we also seen since then? Look, Iran has struck the U.S. base in Kuwait. We saw fires taking place over there. Patriot systems, tankers, Iran also, of course, losing their Iranian drone carrier as the U.S. attacks on tankers also heat up.
00:04:46.480So we're seeing both sides target the economic situation, both looking to impose those economic financial hardships on each other.
00:04:57.260Multiple explosions outside of Shiraz, where an Iranian army ammunition depot near Bushir was hit.
00:05:05.460Of course, the Bushir is also the site of Iran's nuclear power plant.
00:05:10.380We also know Israeli forces struck S-300 launchers in the Isfahan area and multiple strikes carried out on Tehran itself, particularly on the Parchin military industrial complex, the IRGC's Paran base, the 5th Intelligence Police base, the District 18 municipality building, the Waterfall Public Park and the headquarters of Iranian intelligence.
00:05:31.820Also, we saw last night an Israeli F-35 fighter supposedly, we're told, shot down an Iranian fighter over Tehran.
00:05:40.440This would be the first confirmed kill for the F-35 air platform in combat operations.
00:05:47.040The F-22, I mentioned this the other day, still has yet to score a confirmed kill in any operation.
00:05:53.420So the first for the F-35 platform, this being, of course, the variant purchased by Israel, scoring that kill over Tehran.
00:06:01.820We haven't seen American pilots and American fighters operating over the skies of Tehran yet in this instance.
00:06:09.940That is more what Israel is focused on with their Operation Rising Lion, whereas with Operation Epic Fury, you're seeing the more standoff attacks taking place.
00:06:21.300We also saw Azerbaijan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stating that drone attacks were carried out from Iranian territory.
00:06:28.040Now, Iran, interestingly enough, is denying this. And so real questions as to whether or not this was militia that set that off, as well, these real questions about the Kurds in Western Iran will, or I should say in on the border of Western Iran on Iraqi territory, will they be sending this ground force, which has been much discussed, will they be sending that ground force into Iran?
00:06:51.480Qatar also reported shooting down two Iranian Su-24 bombers from approaching Al-Adid Air Base.
00:06:58.540So the United States Air Base in Qatar facing a lot of attacks.
00:09:20.620So, you know, this has been something where we know that all the way back to Operation Ajax, all the way back to World War II, CIA, MI6, Western powers have really focused on Iran as a country where we've tried to install pro-U.S. government.
00:09:42.000and of course at the same time seen Islamic radicals, seen pro-Soviet types take over in
00:09:49.820the past. When we look at what's going on with the Iranian regime right now, how would you say
00:09:56.000that history plays into what we're seeing take place on the ground today?0.99
00:10:01.880Well, it's an inextricable part of it. The fact is we are trying to accomplish regime change
00:10:09.140and this was something that we tried to do in 1953 it was done at that point you're you're
00:10:17.320correct to point out that that point that was a joint u.s uk operation and notably the uk is on
00:10:24.440the other side of it this time there's a there's a pretty significant dispute happening right now
00:10:29.920between the U.S. and U.K. over the U.K. posture around what's just transpired.
00:10:38.260But at that point in 1953, we installed a pro-U.S. regime in Iran that was precipitated by the Iranian attempt to nationalize Anglo-British petroleum and several other matters.
00:10:54.380that Shah regime lasted from 1953 to 1979.
00:10:59.220At that point, the Iranian revolution happened
00:11:02.680at a time that Jimmy Carter had decimated the CIA.
00:11:14.380That set off a new era of a national security state
00:11:17.440in the United States after the 1979 revolution.0.89
00:11:21.540And what you're dealing with fundamentally here is that there is mean reversion back to what the Shiite Muslim population there wants without very heavy CIA, U.S. military, USAID support.0.71
00:11:41.540There was a pretty savage secret intelligence state in Iran during those periods of American effective occupation.0.72
00:11:53.000There was the Savak, there was a pretty famous heavy hand that was used to suppress the, unfortunately, organic will of the people of Iran for some sort of Islamic state.
00:12:13.940My concern about what's happening here is I'm concerned that the scale of the protests has been overstated.
00:12:24.940stated you have a basically 95 shia population and it you know at about 90 million people that's
00:12:35.620about 80 some million shiite muslim folks at who are supportive of a shiite muslim state
00:12:46.400What we have here is basically a minority that we've been supporting, and that minority will not be able to rule without a permanent stability apparatus installed.
00:13:01.400installed. So even in the best case scenario of a regime change, you are still talking about
00:13:07.240decades or centuries of internal meddling and suppression in order to stop mean reversion back
00:13:17.900to, I mean, unless you basically try to eradicate an entire religion of a quarter billion people,
00:13:26.240the Shiite faith around the world, and knocking out their key religious figure,
00:13:36.620in addition to all the assassinations, what we've bit off here is not a small amount to chew.0.97
00:19:36.800We're talking about the potential.0.79
00:19:39.320Is this is this the final showdown with Iran and Nicolo Soldo, who once wrote the essay Turbo America, says, yes, says that this is the final showdown with Iran.
00:19:54.480And he writes that when you strip away is a great essayist, people can follow him stripping away moral considerations, domestic policies, biases.
00:20:02.740The author contends this is the best time to, quote, finish off Iran once and for all, with Iran being severely weakened, isolated, vulnerable, making it, quote, ripe for the plucking.0.71
00:20:13.460Removing the Islamic Republic would eliminate the last major state level challenger to U.S. hegemony in the Middle East, finally pacifying the region, incorporating it fully into what he calls the U.S. sphere of influence.
00:20:25.920So it talks about the protests, talking about the 40-year regional strategy, which has largely collapsed in the last couple of weeks, the recent joint strikes.0.76
00:20:35.280Of course, we've seen the U.S. and Israel damaging Iran's nuclear infrastructure, Iran's retaliation, seemingly as if they're mortally wounded, and international isolation, where, you know, of course, as we know, Russia is bogged down in their existential war, where China is playing a long game without intervening.
00:20:54.180And you have these these allies like Assad and Hezbollah either either exiled or humbled and, you know, really, really seeing Al Qaeda and, you know, the rebranded Al Qaeda taking over Syria.
00:21:10.380So here are the U.S. objectives. Secure U.S. secure oil supplies, fuel the global economic growth, exert leverage on non-aligned states, control of energy resources, protect and expand the position of Israel, heavily influenced, of course, by pro-Israel domestic constituencies in the U.S.
00:21:27.960And you look at the past interventions which have served these goals with side effects, obviously, 9-11, no question, tied to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, which have offended Islamic norms.
00:21:39.220But you really look at this regional picture of the secular Arab regimes having been removed and Iran, of course, being the sole remaining state opponent to U.S. designs.
00:21:53.660So, so, Benz, that's the that's the Niccolo Soldo analysis, the final showdown with Tehran.
00:22:02.260In a summary, I wanted to get your your sense of where you stand on that.
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00:29:26.180sip should feel like a win. All right, Jack Posobiec, we're on with Mike Benz. Benz, when we
00:29:32.980left, we started talking about the questions of the Gulf states, the Gulf nations. Financial Times
00:29:38.700had a big piece last night that a lot of people were sending around talking about how
00:29:43.700Qatar, how Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Dubai, Jebel Ali, Abu Dhabi, how they are putting
00:29:53.140pressure on the administration to say, wait a minute, we need to keep the party going. We need
00:29:59.080to keep the economic money flowing as well as the oil itself. So here's the real question.
00:30:05.480Are they going to go along with the United States escalating these tensions or do their economic realities and their economic models want them to sue for peace?
00:30:22.060It's it doesn't look like their consent was secured prior to the attacks.
00:30:29.860This is now it's I suppose it makes sense.
00:30:34.140The surprise nature of the attacks probably necessitated in the eyes of the White House, a very small need to know basis.
00:30:43.560But I think that all the Gulf states learned about the attacks at the same time we did, which is unusual in the Bush administration, in the regime change wars at that time.
00:30:57.460I think the Saudis were brought in at the ground floor level.
00:31:07.900I think that there's widespread recognition in the region0.58
00:31:12.840that this is an event of enormous implication and long-term implication.
00:31:24.200As you said, they want the party to keep going.
00:31:26.420They had a good thing going. There was relative stability. Iran was weak and not posing an imminent threat to shutting down the Strait of Hormuz or to, frankly, an economic threat even to the Saudis or the other Gulf partners because of the sanctions that have been in place.
00:31:50.560And now everything's up in the air and we don't know.
00:31:56.420And when we see this, I want to go through the list.
00:32:01.040Again, we're talking Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates.
00:32:07.520And particularly when it comes to Dubai, people have been talking about the plight of the influencers and the OnlyFans models, the OnlyFans capital of the world.
00:32:19.000But really, Dubai has pitched itself and positioned itself for years.
00:32:23.860It's taken them 15 years to establish themselves as sort of the Las Vegas of the Middle East.
00:32:30.580And rapidly, that reputation is going to be leaving because they are losing all of it.
00:32:37.300Every time you see a missile flying overhead, whether it be air defense or an Iranian missile,
00:32:41.980they're directly striking into that reputational investment that they had built up so much0.74
00:32:49.480because simply you're not going to be able to have these parties, this nightlife, all these things going on
00:32:54.920if people still revert back to, as you say, revert back to mean,
00:32:58.400and the mean being that the Middle East is a hot area, it's a place of war,
00:33:02.020and it's a place where wars constantly break out.
00:33:05.380Yeah, we'll see if the attacks there escalate.
00:33:08.900I think that the physical stability, I think if there were to be a very serious attack on Dubai,
00:33:16.340It's hard to say. We don't know all that much about Iran's stockpiles. The big
00:33:24.760target, we're told, this week has been the remaining stockpiles of missiles at all the
00:33:32.720various sites, both above and underground, inside Iran. While there is considerable,
00:33:39.960I think, hysteria within our own military establishment about our own stockpiles.
00:33:48.100There is a unknown unknown about Iran's. And while it's true that they've struck out it,
00:33:55.580I think the list is up to 13 different countries and territories all over the Gulf.
00:34:01.860You can't keep that up forever while still trying to hit Israel and U.S. military bases.
00:34:09.240We've seen that the largest munitions deployments in the past two nights, for example, have been at Tel Aviv.
00:34:17.940And I'm not sure that Dubai will be under physical kinetic assault a month from now in the way that the U.S. and Israeli assets are likely to be.
00:34:30.120But who knows? It's what we've done now with the Iranian Navy, which was intended, I think, to stop the ability for Iran to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, may drive Iran to pursue some sort of surprise attack against something like Dubai proper.
00:34:53.300Or we saw, I think it was even one of the hotels associated with the Burj Khalifa, you know, basically.
00:34:59.500I mean, they may attack something of great symbolic value.
00:35:06.960You know, for example, if you were to have some of these marquee projects in Saudi or in Dubai struck in the way that some of the ones in Iran were, I think Iran will be looking for pressure points.
00:35:20.660And the best case scenario is that they don't strike them.
00:35:28.240But now there's talks about boots on the ground, which will be necessary even in the event of success.
00:35:39.180As I said, you're going to need boots on the ground to support whatever regime you prop up at the end of this.0.57
00:35:44.320There's simply no way that the small minority of the folks inside Iran that we've been supporting and who are trying to throw off the yoke of a pretty nasty regime, the fact is they are a minority.
00:36:07.920And it will require boots on the ground one way or the other, whether you call that a invading military force or whether you call that a peacekeeping internal foreign defense force.
00:36:23.180And the response, I believe, from the Iranian foreign minister on on the news last night, I think he was interviewed by MSNBC or CNN, and he he said, bring it on so that we're waiting for them.
00:36:42.300They are certainly preparing for it. And they're certainly, I would say, baiting President Trump and trying to say that that they are not going anywhere, that they want to be out.
00:36:53.420We're also seeing, by the way, Bahrain, as to your point, just banned public gatherings.
00:36:58.120I'd also throw out that, you know, the question of these drones, the question of Iran's massive drone stockpiles and construction capabilities,
00:37:08.580the same way that we've seen them be able to supply these to Russia for the Ukraine fight are going to be another huge factor in all of this,0.80
00:37:17.180Because, yes, the ballistic missiles are far more powerful, but these kamikaze drones are an asymmetric capability that Iran has built up over the last couple of years and been using to such great efficacy that even the United States has reverse engineered them.0.56
00:37:34.020Unfortunately, that's all the time we have with Mike Benz today.0.78
00:37:36.660Benz, where can people go to follow you to get more of your cheery and optimistic analysis?
00:47:02.840What has the president seen in terms of the assassination attempt, which we were told, and it's been reported, and I heard this as well, even back during 2024, back during the campaign, that there was an assassination attempt on the president that was tied to Iran.
00:47:19.500What does the president know about that?
00:47:21.620And will he come out and tell the people of the country all about it?