00:00:17.000They're counting on pathetic, muling Europeans, ridiculous, sad sex.
00:00:21.000Democrats just hate Trump and don't care about America winning.
00:00:24.000And most of all, they're counting on vicious, parasitical, horseshoe, right-wing isolationists that somehow whine the president into leaving the battlefield.
00:00:31.000If you wish to follow a movement led by closeted and not-so-closeted homosexuals, then I guess you could do that.
00:00:37.000Or perhaps these people are maybe worth ignoring because President Trump's strength here has truly exposed the peddlers of horses on all sides.
00:00:46.000Now, folks, we've been covering this live all weekend long.
00:00:48.000We're bringing you soup to nuts coverage, the experts, the analysis you want, all of it.
00:00:51.000You need to go to dailywire.com right now and subscribe so we can continue to do that sort of stuff and bring you the content you love.
00:01:19.000The answer is that since 1979, the number of American deaths that have been caused by Iran and by its proxy terrorist groups, at least 1,000 dead, plus a couple of attempted assassinations on the president of the United States, we are talking military personnel.
00:01:38.000If you are including Afghanistan, where Iran was shipping IEDs into Afghanistan to help the Taliban, you're talking about at least 1,500 deaths.
00:01:45.000But if you go all the way back to 1979, when the Ayatollahs took over during the Iranian revolution, you'll remember the first thing that students did is they proceeded to take American hostages at the embassy and hold them for over 400 days.
00:01:59.000Then in 1983, Hezbollah, which was the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group, Hezbollah attacked the U.S. embassy.
00:02:07.000They attacked also the Marine Barracks in Lebanon.
00:02:11.000The total dead in those two attacks alone, 258.
00:02:17.000That's just in 1983, going all the way back.
00:02:20.000Then you move forward to 1988 and harassment of shipping in the waterways around Iran of American shipping led the United States in Operation Praying Mantis to sink the entire Iranian Navy.
00:02:34.000Then throughout the 1990s, Iran pursued a nuclear weapon.
00:02:39.000They were unsuccessful in actually obtaining one, but they were starting that pursuit at that time and they were spreading their terror tentacles all over the Middle East.
00:02:47.000They were building up their terror proxy groups all over the Middle East.
00:02:50.000The United States at that point had a dual containment policy toward Iran and Iraq because Iraq, of course, was run by these tyrant Saddam Hussein and Iran was being run by the Ayatollahs.
00:02:58.000And the basic idea was they hated one another.
00:03:00.000They'd engaged in a decade-long war in the 1980s, in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed.
00:03:07.000The United States' policy was tried to keep both of those contained.
00:03:12.000In 1996, the Khobar Towers bombing by the Iranian-supported Hezbollah in Saudi Arabia killed 19 Americans.
00:03:20.000In 2000, the bombing of the USS Cole off of Yemen by Al-Qaeda, supported largely by Iran, 17 killed.
00:03:28.000And then, of course, from 2003 to 2011, after the breakdown of the Iraqi government, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, Iranian-backed militias took over large swaths of Iraq, or at least resisted American rule of Iraq and killed somewhere between 600 and 1,100 American soldiers.
00:03:48.000And then, of course, this whole time, Iran was seeking nuclear weapons, spreading its terror tentacles to Lebanon, to Syria, to Gaza, which culminated on October 7th when, of course, Hamas, an Iranian-sponsored terror group, killed 1,200 Israeli citizens and took 250 hostage and prompted a seven-front war on Israel, which ended with Israel basically destroying many of the proxy arms of the Iranian government.
00:04:14.000All of that finally culminated in President Trump in 2025.
00:04:20.000You'll recall the 12-day war just last year when there was a direct attack by the Israelis on the Iranians following multiple rounds of missiles shot by Iran directly at Israel.
00:04:32.000Israel went in to try to take out their nuclear facilities as well as their ballistic missile facilities.
00:04:37.000And in 12 days, established air dominance, destroyed pretty much the entire air system, air defense system for Iran.
00:04:44.000And then at the very end, President Trump authorized Operation Midnight Hammer to strike the Fordo nuclear facility and take out their nuclear weapons.
00:04:52.000Why exactly did all of that happen again?
00:04:54.000Because Iran has been unendingly, unceasingly antagonistic toward the United States since 1979, as well as the allies of the United States, not limited, of course, to Israel, but also including Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain.
00:05:09.000And you can see that in what has been going on over the course of the first couple of days of this war, where Iran has fired off materiel at a wide variety of countries, pretty much every country in the Middle East, actually, because it turns out that Iran is a threat to the Middle East.
00:05:24.000This is a point that President Trump made.
00:05:27.000He made a speech yesterday morning, on Sunday morning, where he explained that Iran has waged war on civilization.
00:05:35.000We pray for the full recovery of the wounded and send our immense love and eternal gratitude to the families of the fallen.
00:05:44.000And sadly, there will likely be more before it ends.
00:05:51.000Likely be more, but we'll do everything possible where that won't be the case.
00:05:56.000But America will avenge their deaths and deliver the most punishing blow to the terrorists who have waged war against, basically, civilization.
00:06:07.000They have waged war against civilization itself.
00:06:13.000The president of the United States is not wrong about this.
00:06:20.000Step one basically has been achieved already.
00:06:22.000Really, in the first three days, and certainly by the end of this week, step one. will have been largely achieved.
00:06:27.000One, destroying the ability of the Iranian regime to pose an external threat, a threat to other countries and to American interests abroad, and to spread its terror tentacles into South America, into Latin America, into Europe.
00:06:49.000That was the very first thing that the United States, along with Israel, did.
00:06:53.000An extraordinary feat of intelligence and military might.
00:06:58.000The United States, apparently the CIA, working in coordination with the Israeli Air Force, found the place and time at which Ayatollah Khomeini was meeting with a bevy of his top generals, including the chief of staff of the IRGC.
00:07:12.000That's the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
00:07:14.000That's basically the Praetorian Guard for the regime.
00:07:17.000So there's the Iranian army, which is kind of a normal army.
00:07:19.000And then you have the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the terrorist apparatus.
00:07:22.000You'll remember that the head of the IRGC, the terror sponsor of the IRGC, Qasem Soleimani, was killed by President Trump at the very tail end of his first term in office.
00:07:33.000Well, this strike basically decapitated the top levels of the regime.
00:07:41.000Top members of the IRGC are being targeted.
00:07:44.000Top members of the Iranian government are being targeted, including former top members of the Iranian government.
00:07:49.000I don't know where Columbia University is going to go to get speakers anymore because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was killed in the first couple of days of this war.
00:07:55.000You'll remember the former Iranian president who had threatened to wipe Israel off the map and then welcome to Columbia University to speak.
00:08:01.000Well, unfortunately, Colombia is going to have to look to other speakers bureau other than the Tehran Speakers Bureau.
00:08:07.000Secondarily, after decapitating the regime or while doing so, destroying the forward capacity for Iran to make war, that is the other thing that the Trump administration is pursuing.
00:08:16.000And that means targeting not only its nuclear facilities and its possible future nuclear development, but also its ballistic missile facilities and its possibility of firing ballistic missiles capable of hitting a large part of the Middle East.
00:08:28.000One of the most amazing things, and we'll go through the operation as the show goes on.
00:08:32.000One of the most incredible things is the lack of full-scale capacity by Iran to retaliate en masse.
00:08:40.000Realistically speaking, what we are watching right now is one of the most competent military operations in all of human history, truly.
00:08:48.000Because Iran had literally thousands of missiles.
00:08:52.000It had hundreds of ballistic missiles.
00:08:54.000And in the opening salvo, the Israeli Air Force, the American Air Force, working jointly, destroyed a huge swath, up to 50% of all ballistic missile capacity in Iran.
00:09:06.000In fact, the air dominance in the Middle East by the Americans and the Israelis over Iran right now is so complete that it's very difficult for the Iranians to even fire up their ballistic missile launchers.
00:09:17.000It takes a moment for them to heat up.
00:09:26.000So destroying the Iranians' forward capacity to make war, that is a massive, massive feat.
00:09:30.000Now, again, that had really started in the aftermath of October 7th when the Israeli military took it to Hezbollah in Lebanon, took it to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and then during the 12-day war, took it to Iran directly.
00:09:44.000But remember, it's been a Yemeni, Iranian-backed Houthi terror group that has been harassing shipping in the Suez Canal.
00:09:52.000Destroying Iran's forward capacity will greatly move the entire region toward prosperity and peace.
00:10:00.000So we're going to get into everything that's currently going on on the ground.
00:10:03.000Plus, we're going to talk about what Iran is doing to try to counter the United States.
00:10:06.000The answer is they're counting on some very specific Americans.
00:10:10.000We'll get to all that in a moment first.
00:10:12.000If you're trying to protect yourself when it comes to your data, there's only one choice: ExpressVPN.
00:11:31.000My fans can use my special link and get four extra months of ExpressVPN at expressvpn.com/slash ben.
00:11:36.000That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-PN.com slash Ben for four extra months of service.
00:11:40.000President Trump announced Khomeini's death.
00:11:44.000Iran's formerly supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, is dead.
00:11:52.000This wretched and vile man had the blood of hundreds and even thousands of Americans on his hands and was responsible for the slaughter of countless thousands of innocent people all across many countries.
00:12:08.000Last night, all over Iran, the voices of the Iranian people could be heard cheering and celebrating in the streets when his death was announced.
00:12:20.000The entire military command is gone as well, and many of them want to surrender into saving their lives.
00:12:58.000The fact is the Iranians were apparently rapidly rescaling their ballistic missile capacity.
00:13:03.000Now, a lot of people talk about the Iranians getting a nuclear weapon.
00:13:05.000Obviously, that would have been disastrous, not just because Iran has made clear its intent to use nuclear weapons against the Jewish state, but also because once you have a nuclear weapon, as we now notice with North Korea, it is almost impossible to take forward action to stop the militants of a regime, particularly a regime as poisonous as the Iranian regime.
00:13:28.000And once you have a nuclear weapon, basically, you can now say to all of your terrorist groups, go to town, because any retaliation and you can threaten nuclear fire.
00:13:35.000This has been one of the big problems, for example, in the Russia-Ukraine war, is the fear that if we go too hard against Russia, Russia will fire nukes.
00:13:42.000The best you can hope for is a standstill, never a victory, because of the destruction of the air defense systems provided by Russia and China in the 12-day war.
00:13:54.000And that unique opportunity became even more unique after the mass protest began in December by the Iranian people against the regime.
00:14:02.000President Trump saw a window of opportunity.
00:14:05.000And again, I'm sort of astonished by folks who are arguing that the best policy when you see a window of opportunity is to sleep, is to go to sleep.
00:14:15.000One of the beautiful things about being an isolationist is that you always get the counterfactual on your side.
00:14:20.000You always get to say a military intervention went wrong.
00:14:22.000But it turns out there are lots of counterfactuals in which actual preemptive warming might have forsworn, might have stopped true genocidal intent.
00:14:35.000There's so many instances of this throughout history.
00:14:38.000Whether you're talking about the rise of the Russian revolutionaries in the aftermath of the fall of the Tsar in 1917, what would have happened if the West had had the stones enough to actually stop the rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia?
00:14:53.000Totally different map for an entire century, essentially.
00:14:59.000What would have happened if the West had had the strength to actually stop the rearmament of Hitler?
00:15:04.000What would have actually happened if the West had, for example, taken out Osama bin Laden in the aftermath of the USS Cole instead of jacking around?
00:15:15.000It turns out that coherent, solid action, we're not talking here gigantic wars.
00:15:22.000We are talking about operations like this one, targeted action can provide serious upside and limited downside.
00:15:32.000And that's what we are talking about right here.
00:15:34.000That is the counterfactual that we should be looking at right now.
00:15:37.000Turns out the only counterfactual is not Iraq or Vietnam.
00:15:41.000Sometimes there are other counterfactuals to examine as well.
00:15:45.000And that is what President Trump was saying yesterday.
00:15:47.000He said that the goal here is to ensure security for generations.
00:15:50.000That is indeed the burden of the United States.
00:15:53.000We're undertaking this massive operation not merely to ensure security for our own time and place, but for our children and their children, just as our ancestors have done for us many, many years ago.
00:16:09.000This is the duty and the burden of a free people.
00:16:14.000These actions are right and they are necessary to ensure that Americans will never have to face a radical, bloodthirsty terrorist regime armed with nuclear weapons and lots of threats.
00:16:28.000For almost 50 years, these wicked extremists have been attacking the United States while chanting the slogan, death to America or death to Israel or both.
00:16:40.000They are the world's number one state sponsor of terror.
00:16:44.000We are the world's greatest and most powerful nation, so we can do something about what they do.
00:16:52.000I mean, can't say it better than that.
00:16:53.000President of the United States is spot on again.
00:16:55.000What he is doing right now is the most courageous thing I have ever seen a president do.
00:17:01.000He is smartly recognizing opportunity when it arises, and he is taking strong steps to protect America's future and not only the future of our allies, but the future of the globe.
00:17:12.000Because let's also be real: want to talk counterfactuals?
00:17:14.000If the United States does nothing, after the president draws a red line, if Iran continues to rebuild its facilities, if Iran continues to act as the linkage, both in terms of oil and weaponry between China and Russia, if that happens, the chances that America's enemies go on the offensive are so much higher than when they look at America and realize, you don't screw around with the president of the United States.
00:17:36.000That was the point the president was making when he said to the IRGC: Listen, it's time for you guys to surrender or die.
00:17:44.000I once again urge the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian military, police to lay down your arms and receive full immunity or face certain death.
00:19:17.000With that said, if you look at President Trump's record of military interventionism, do you truly believe that this president is going to get sucked into a war involving hundreds of thousands of American troops on the ground?
00:19:34.000If there's one thing above all this president does not want, that is an endless war.
00:19:37.000Let's face it, Iran has been waging the endless war on the United States for some five decades, but the United States basically did very little for five decades.
00:21:03.000First of all, prevent the consolidation of a force to stop a people's revolution.
00:21:06.000So one of the big things that drove all of this, you'll recall if you own a calendar, is that at the end of December, mass protests broke out across Iran because Iran's economy has been totally shellacked by the Trump sanctions and also by the fact that, you know, they are an Islamist hellhole run by radical Shia clerics.
00:21:26.000And so because of that, the Iranian real was worthless.
00:21:29.000I mean, you're talking about wheelbarrow money, like a wheelbarrow filled with the Iranian real would not buy you a toilet paper roll.
00:21:36.000I mean, that's how bad it was over there.
00:21:38.000So people were out in the streets protesting the regime.
00:21:40.000And so one of the goals here is to prevent the consolidation of a force or reconsolidation of a force that would stop a people's uprising.
00:21:46.000And so what you are seeing militarily from both the American Air Force as well as the Israeli Air Force is strikes directed at IRGC facilities that would allow for consolidation points so that they could go out and shoot protesters in the street en masse again.
00:22:02.000And that, of course, involves step B, hitting the leadership over and over and over and over again, prevent that consolidation.
00:22:07.000And by the way, the Iranians are already admitting that it's been effective.
00:22:10.000The Iranian foreign minister went on national TV and basically said that they have lost control of large swaths of their own military.
00:22:19.000The foreign minister, Abbasar Akhi, here he was saying that the military is effectively independent and isolated.
00:22:25.000Here he was talking to Al Jazeera, which, of course, Al Jazeera is itself an Islamist outlet.
00:22:32.000What happened in Oman was not our choice.
00:22:35.000We have already told our army armed forces to be careful about the targets that they choose.
00:22:44.000As a matter of fact, our military units are now, in fact, independent and somehow isolated, and they are acting based on instructions, general instructions given to them in advance.
00:23:05.000That is a tacit admission that the entire line of communication with the top levels is gone because the top level is gone.
00:23:11.000As President Trump said, the people who he thought we would be negotiating with, those people are also dead.
00:23:16.000That is not him lamenting that somehow the wrong people were killed.
00:23:19.000That's him saying that three layers deep, the Iranian government is in serious trouble.
00:23:23.000And so basically, the IRGC has been relegated to a series of regional state-level actors at this point, meaning not federal and consolidated under the domain of a centralized commanding presence, but instead, it's basically a bunch of independent military forces roaming around.
00:23:40.000I mean, when they're admitting that and they are two days into the war, two and a half days into the war, that is a pretty shocking admission.
00:23:46.000And as Lindsey Graham, senator from South Carolina, said on NBC, It is not the job of the United States to pick the next Iranian government.
00:23:59.000We're not going to occupy the country.
00:24:01.000We're going to give the people of Iran a chance to do something they've never had before, chart their own destiny.
00:24:07.000We're going to take away from any future regime the ability, any future government, the ability to have a ballistic missile program, a nuclear program, or support terrorism.
00:24:17.000Well, that brings us to the current status of the operations.
00:24:20.000General Dan Raisenkane, he gave a presser a little bit earlier today with Pete Hagsett, the Secretary of War.
00:24:26.000And here's what he had to say about where we are right now.
00:24:29.000This operation was highly classified so that at H-hour, the enemy would see one thing, speed, surprise, and violence of action.
00:24:38.000The first movers were U.S. Cybercom and U.S. Spacecom, layering non-kinetic effects, disrupting and degrading and blinding Iran's ability to see, communicate, and respond.
00:24:51.000At H-hour, the beginning of major combat operations, 0-115 local Eastern Daylight Time, 9.45 local a.m. Tehran time, as dawn crept up across the Central Command AOR, the skies surged to life.
00:25:09.000More than 100 aircraft launched from land, sea, fighters, tankers, airborne early warning, electronic attack, bombers from the states and unmanned platforms, forming a single synchronized wave.
00:25:22.000This was a daylight strike based on a trigger event conducted by the Israeli defense forces, enabled by the U.S. intelligence community.
00:25:32.000The first shooters at sea were tomahawks unleashed by the United States Navy, closed in on Iranian naval forces and began to conduct strikes across the southern flank in Iran.
00:25:44.000On the ground, forces fired precision standoff weapons, measured, deliberate, precise, and lethal.
00:25:52.000This was a massive, overwhelming attack across all domains of warfare, striking more than a thousand targets in the first 24 hours.
00:26:02.000Now, obviously, we have seen some American casualties thus far.
00:26:06.000We have seen four Americans who were killed in a missile falling in Kuwait, shot by the Iranians.
00:26:11.000Of course, another four American soldiers who were injured in that fall.
00:26:15.000Obviously, our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the wounded and to the families of those killed in action.
00:26:23.000These are the heroes who are there to do the dirty work.
00:26:26.000And the attempt by some to turn the brave fighting men and women of the armed services into victims of some sort, like victims of America or victims of bad decision-making, or that's not what they are.
00:26:41.000They are heroes who are willing to do the hard things no one else is willing to do.
00:26:46.000And not only do they deserve, obviously, the full measure of our support, but they deserve the full measure of our respect and honor.
00:26:53.000Because they're doing something that I didn't do, that a huge percentage of Americans did not do.
00:26:57.000They're the ones who are doing the thing.
00:27:01.000Here's President Trump paying homage to them.
00:27:04.000But the only reason we enjoy the quality of life that we do and the freedom and security is we have done things that others are unable to do.
00:27:16.000But it's because of warriors who are willing to lay down their lives to do battle with our enemies.
00:27:24.000And they do battle better than anybody.
00:27:27.000An Iranian regime armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons would be a dire threat to every American.
00:27:36.000We cannot allow a nation that raises terrorist armies to possess such weapons.
00:27:42.000It would allow them to extort the world to their evil will.
00:28:23.000It also happens to be true that in terms of the military campaign that is currently being waged, if anyone had suggested that the United States would have established complete air dominance over Iran and taken out the entire top echelon of the Iranian military, as well as Ayatollah Khomeini, that the United States would have been completely dominant in terms of destroying pretty much all the ballistic missile launchers available, ballistic missile facilities, nuclear facilities, and that the total casualty list for the United States would be four dead and four wounded.
00:28:52.000That would have been an astonishing success of a military operation.
00:28:54.000Now, undoubtedly, this is going to be a longer operation.
00:28:57.000Certainly, I'd be shocked if more soldiers are not wounded or killed, because that's the nature of military operations.
00:29:20.000You can see these strikes on Iran all over the country, all over the country.
00:29:24.000The vast population of Iran tends to be in its west, not in its east, which is why you're seeing fewer attacks toward that portion of Iran.
00:29:32.000Now, the more important map in terms of what Iran is trying to do is where they're firing in retaliation.
00:29:37.000And the answer is pretty much everywhere.
00:29:39.000They're desperate, and you can see they're desperate.
00:29:40.000They're attacking Dubai, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Riyadh, Tel Aviv.
00:29:50.000They're basically trying desperately, desperately, desperately to get someone to tell the combined forces of the United States and Israel and its allies to stop.
00:30:09.000But Neil Ferguson, the historian, he has a great piece over at the free press today in which he says, contrary to the criticism already being aired on both the left and the right, Trump is not reverting to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's regime change playbook.
00:30:22.000Regime alteration is the practical consequence of the approach laid out in Trump's national security strategy published late last year.
00:30:29.000The strategy rules out the deployment of American ground forces other than special forces.
00:30:33.000It requires a short timeframe for military operations.
00:30:36.000It will disappoint those who want to fast-track Venezuela and Iran to democracy, but the lesson of Iraq has not been lost on Trump.
00:30:42.000That's why it misses the point to say Trump claims to be an isolationist and he's starting another forever war.
00:30:46.000One thing, says Neil Ferguson, I can confidently promise about the U.S.-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic, it will not last long.
00:31:17.000Now, one of the concerns here is about the munitions, obviously.
00:31:21.000The United States has a limited supply of certain munitions.
00:31:24.000The Wall Street Journal has a piece on this today.
00:31:27.000But the point they're making is that actually, again, when I say opportunity arrived, Iran's capacity was greatly diminished by the 12-day war last year, which means that the United States is having to expend less materiel, particularly when it comes to anti-patriots and FAADs, than it normally would have to do.
00:31:45.000The Wall Street Journal points out Iran's retaliation on Saturday has been more ragged than in the 12-day war when it fired more than 500 missiles and many more attack drones.
00:31:56.000Israel's announcement that Iran's supreme leader, Aytoh Ali Khomeini, was killed in an airstrike could also hasten an end to the conflict.
00:32:03.000So, again, all this is unfolding in real time.
00:32:07.000Iran, meanwhile, has announced a three-member transitional council.
00:32:10.000It turns out that their meetings are getting kind of small.
00:32:11.000No one wants to come to the in-person meetings because a bomb might fall on their head.
00:32:15.000So they've announced a formation, according to Al Jazeera, of a three-member transitional council to handle state duties following Ayatollah Khomeini's death.
00:32:23.000Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, member of a powerful constitutional watchdog, according to Al Jazeera, was appointed on Sunday to the temporary council.
00:32:30.000Two other members are President Masoud Pezeshkian, who you remember from his warm interview with Tucker Carlson, and Supreme Court Justice Chief Kholam Hossein Mosseni Ahey.
00:32:59.000They don't want to cry, uncle, so they're calling for mommy.
00:33:01.000They're hoping that mommy stops daddy from doing the thing.
00:33:03.000That's what's happening right now, which is why they have not just attacked Israel, right, which of course launched the joint attack with the United States.
00:33:12.000They attacked Saudi, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain, Oman, which was the negotiating center, Syria, and Cyprus.
00:33:22.000And on Cyprus, they're attacking not just the resources of the United States, they're attacking the resources of France, Italy, and the UK.
00:33:28.000What they are counting on is that the world will be stupid enough to take the side of the Iranian regime and say, no, this almost stop.
00:33:36.000Because, again, international law is written by the most isly of international institutions, a wretched hive of scum and villainy led by some of the worst people on earth, including the UN chief Antonio Gutierrez, who condemned the attack.
00:33:50.000The UN, which can't bring itself to condemn pretty much anything that Islamic terrorists and radicals do, they came out full scale and condemned this.
00:34:54.000So the Iranians are also counting on the Europeans, who are such pansies.
00:34:57.000I mean, honest to God, thank God for President Trump.
00:35:00.000Seriously, the only thing that has injected any spine in them at all is President Trump telling them that they need to man up when it comes to Ukraine.
00:35:08.000Because, I mean, the spineless codfish that is Kirstarmer.
00:35:12.000Mean that dude, that dude is a soggy, wet sponge of a human being, Kier Starmer.
00:35:19.000What a pathetic specimen he is, the prime minister of the UK.
00:35:22.000So, British resources are being attacked in the Mediterranean by the Iranians.
00:35:26.000And Starmer is like, We don't like that.
00:35:28.000We don't like that they're attacking us, but we also don't like that there's an attack taking place.
00:35:32.000But also, we had told the Americans they can't use our bases.
00:35:34.000But now we think that maybe the Americans can use our bases, but we'll yell at them a little while they do it, and we won't give them tea.
00:35:41.000We won't give them any tea, and there will be no crumpets.
00:35:43.000Here's the UK's pathetic Kir Starmer, who can't be out of office soon enough.
00:35:48.000I want to be very clear: we all remember the mistakes of Iraq, and we have learned those lessons.
00:35:58.000We were not involved in the initial strikes on Iran, and we will not join offensive action now.
00:36:07.000But Iran is pursuing a scorched earth strategy, so we are supporting the collective self-defense of our allies and our people in the region.
00:36:23.000So, we won't allow the United States to use our bases to strike at missile centers in Iran, but we'll allow them to shoot down stuff coming the other way.
00:36:30.000We won't hit the actual place they're firing from, which is in Iran.
00:36:33.000We'll just stand here and wait for it to be fired at us because that's what bravery requires.
00:36:41.000Oh, but don't worry, they're still the French.
00:36:43.000So, the French, you can count on them to be very French.
00:36:49.000Their tanks have four gears: three in reverse and one for forward motion in case they're attacked from the rear.
00:36:55.000Emmanuel Macron put out a statement: The outbreak of war between the United States, Israel, and Iran carries grave consequences for international peace and security.
00:37:03.000At this decisive moment, every measure is being taken to ensure the security of our national territory, our citizens, and our interests in the Middle East.
00:37:09.000France also stands ready to deploy the necessary resources to protect its closest partners should they request it.
00:37:14.000The ongoing escalation is dangerous for all.
00:37:18.000The Iranian regime must understand it now has no other option but to engage in good faith in negotiations to end its nuclear and ballistic program, as well as its regional destabilization activities.
00:37:26.000This is absolutely necessary for the security of all in the Middle East.
00:37:29.000So, in other words, the very last paragraph of that, he says, and then he adds, the Iranian people must also be able to freely build their future.
00:37:37.000The massacres committed by the Islamic regime disqualify it and demand the voice be returned to the people.
00:38:10.000Unbelievably enough, truly unbelievably enough, the people who are the most committed to the war here are the Arab countries in the Middle East.
00:38:32.000Okay, just recall back in history, back to the first Gulf War, you'll recall that in the first Gulf War, the strategy of Saddam Hussein to escape the wrath of the United States and its allies was to fire scud missiles at Israel.
00:38:45.000My wife was in Israel at the time when she was a small child.
00:38:48.000She remembers having to put on gas masks to await the missiles coming.
00:38:51.000And HW Bush told the Israelis, do not fire back, because if you fire back, then it might break up the coalition.
00:38:58.000The Saudis might say, hey, we're not going to fight alongside the Israelis in an anti-Saddam coalition.
00:39:05.000But that's not what's happening right now.
00:39:07.000What's happening right now is that an American-Israeli-led expedition to end the threat of Iran is being joined by the Arab countries.
00:39:17.000According to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, quote, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia condemns and denounces in strongest terms the blatant Iranian aggression and flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the UAE, Kingdom of Bahrain, state of Qatar, state of Kuwait, and Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
00:39:31.000The kingdom affirms its full solidarity with an unwavering support for the brotherly countries, its readiness to place all its capabilities at their disposal in support of any measures they may undertake, any measures.
00:39:42.000So if they decide to go offensive, they're behind it.
00:39:45.000So again, the strategy here was: what if they fire at the Saudis and the Saudis go to America and they yell at President Trump or whine to President Trump and he stops?
00:40:06.000Okay, so what is the final Iranian strategy in the end?
00:40:09.000The final Iranian strategy in the end is count on the American left and the horseshoe right to join and mirror the principles of the Iranians, which is why Ali Larijani, who is seen by many as the sort of temporary leader of Iran, is now taking to X to tweet, quote, Trump has betrayed America first to adopt Israel first.
00:40:38.000It's addressed at Americans, and particularly the American horseshoe right.
00:40:42.000He is hoping that Tucker Carlson and all of his ridiculous cohorts go to the president and claim that it's not America first who take out America's top enemy in the Middle East for the last five decades who've tried to assassinate the president.
00:40:55.000That's what, in the end, there's only one ally that the Iranian regime can count on, and it's the American left and the horseshoe right.
00:41:35.000Like, that's where we are now with Chenk Uyghur.
00:41:37.000Sure, he was a horrific human being who murdered tens of thousands of his own citizens and reduced them to poverty and spread terrorism all over the region against Arabs, Jews, and Christians alike.
00:41:57.000Meanwhile, again, they know that they can count on the New York Times, the New York Times obituary.
00:42:02.000The New York Times obituary for Ali Khomeini.
00:42:05.000Honestly, the obituaries for Scott Adams from these publications are so much harsher than the obituaries for, you know, like the mass murdering terror leader.
00:42:15.000Quote, with his spectacles, Palestinian khathiyah, long robes, and silver beard, Ayatollah Khomeini cast himself as a religious scholar as well as a writer and translator of works on Islam.
00:42:25.000He affected an avuncular and magnanimous aloofness, running the country from a perch above the jousting of daily politics.
00:43:01.000Ayatollah Khomeini cut a more avuncular figure in public and his perpetually scowling, but much more revered mentor.
00:43:07.000He was known to be fond of Persian poetry, classic Western novels, especially Victor Hugo's Lev Mizrab, as well as long walks on the beach.
00:43:47.000Okay, so I'm just going to point out again: the Ayatollah spread terrorism all over the world.
00:43:52.000The Ayatollah was not just an imminent threat to Israel.
00:43:55.000He's an imminent threat to Saudi Arabia, to Jordan, to Lebanon, to UAE.
00:44:02.000I mean, like, you know, I love that imminent threat now comes to mean that basically, unless everything has to be an episode of 24, that unless the Ayatollah has planted a bomb at the base of the Empire State Building and Kiefer Sutherland is going to charge in as five seconds to stop the detonation, there's no imminent threat.
00:44:22.000Adam Schiff, how this guy failed up into the Senate?
00:46:00.000Here's how the right, anytime the left responds to a person purportedly on the right by criticizing that person, the right immediately valorizes that person and tries to turn that person into a hero.
00:46:10.000So the left originally pointed out that Marjorie Taylor Greene's a moron because she's a moron, but also because she wasn't left-wing.
00:46:17.000And the right went, well, if they're calling her a moron, she must be a genius.
00:46:55.000I mean, it turns out the Iranian people want the Iranian regime to go away.
00:46:59.000It turns out that many people around the Middle East would like it to stop.
00:47:02.000It turns out that many Americans actually would like for the Iranian regime to stop being a threat to the United States and our citizens.
00:47:08.000Or maybe you're just Milo Yiannopoulos, another Tucker Carlson guest, an ambulatory psychotic, who put out a tweet in Arabic saying, Oh, Allah, preserve Ayatollah Khomeini.
00:47:17.000Oh, Allah, indeed, we place you in their throats and we seek refuge in you, refuge in you from their evils.
00:47:22.000Milo, who is a longtime flamboyantly gay man, is cosplaying right now as a newfound Christian while tweeting to Allah for the health of Ayatollah Khomeini.
00:47:36.000And of course, no horseshoe right would be complete without Nazi lover Nick Fuentes.
00:47:44.000Here he was calling for open resistance to President Trump.
00:47:48.000We need in 2026 for this administration to be shut the f down.
00:47:53.000What does this administration do other than cover up the Epstein files, embezzle money through government contracts, and bring us to war for Israel?
00:48:02.000This administration needs to be shut down immediately.
00:48:15.000Well, you know, if you wish to follow a movement led by people who are escapees from a psych ward and or closeted and not so closeted homosexuals, then I guess you could do that.
00:48:26.000I guess that could be, or perhaps these people are maybe worth ignoring.
00:49:06.000And of course, he was very upset with what was going on in Iran, presumably, which speaks to the fact that we really should not let people like this in our country, and we are idiots for having done so in the first place.
00:49:18.000But yes, obviously, when we talk about the spread of Islamic radicalism and terrorism, it turns out that Iran exporting its ideology all over the world has not been a boon for the globe.
00:49:29.000Joining me on the line is Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
00:49:32.000Senator Cruz, of course, is a big supporter of the president's, particularly when it comes to the current policy with regard to Iran.
00:49:38.000Senator Cruz, thanks so much for the time.
00:50:20.00090% of the funding from Hamas comes from Iran.
00:50:24.00090% of the funding of Hezbollah. comes from Iran.
00:50:27.00090% of the funding of the Houthis come from Iran.
00:50:31.000Over the last 47 years, the Iranian regime is responsible for murdering nearly 1,000 Americans.
00:50:39.000And so President Trump made a clear-eyed decision as commander-in-chief that this ongoing threat for decades, Iran has been actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons.
00:50:50.000I believe they were trying to acquire nuclear weapons because they intended to use nuclear weapons.
00:50:55.000Last year, the president acted decisively to take out Iran's nuclear weapons facilities, but this is now the next stage, which is removing the threat.
00:51:06.000In the opening minutes of this conflict, the Ayatollah lost his life, and we have seen systematically the senior military leadership of the Iranian regime removed.
00:51:16.000I think America is already safer today.
00:51:19.000And when we see a government in Iran that is not controlled by radical Islamists, that does not have as its guiding principle death to America, that will be a much better outcome for the people of Iran, for the Middle East, but most especially for the United States of America.
00:51:40.000Now, Senator Cruz, I've heard two chief criticisms that have been leveled against the operation thus far.
00:51:46.000One, I think, is absolutely nonsensical.
00:51:48.000As you say, we are 50 hours into a war and you're already hearing people scream forever war.
00:51:52.000I'm not sure what their definition of forever is, but it usually does not constitute what is three days into a major military operation that the president has suggested will last no longer than a month.
00:52:01.000And if current rates of victory as they are piling up continue on the battlefield, my guesses will be a lot shorter than that.
00:52:07.000What do you make of the criticism that we are about to engage in a forever war in the Middle East?
00:52:12.000Also, we should mention here that Iran has been engaged in a 50-year forever war with the United States.
00:52:31.000You and I have both engaged with Tucker Carlson, who I think is the loudest of the loudmouths, who is right now relentlessly attacking President Trump, vilifying President Trump.
00:52:44.000He has spent this entire past year, year plus of President Trump's second term attacking the president's foreign policy relentlessly.
00:52:53.000Now, he's too much of a coward to actually say President Trump's name, so he attacks the policy instead.
00:52:59.000But what is amazing is Tucker Carlson's foreign policy is identical to Barack Obama's and Kamala Harris.
00:53:07.000All three of them believe in weakness.
00:54:06.000Nicolas Maduro led a communist regime in Venezuela, oppressed his people, brought misery to his people, but was one of the biggest narco-traffickers in the world.
00:54:16.000He trafficked tons of deadly drugs into the United States that killed thousands and thousands of Americans.
00:54:22.000And Kamala Harris, just like Barack Obama, just like Tucker Carlson, all wanted to roll over and say we should continue to let Nicholas Maduro murder Americans.
00:54:33.000President Trump is not interested in that weakness or appeasement, so he sent in the Delta Force.
00:54:39.000He arrested Maduro, and Maduro will now die in a federal prison.
00:55:54.000I think the president is behaving as a strong and effective commander-in-chief, and that's exactly what he should be doing.
00:56:02.000Senator Cruz, I've said it's the most courageous political decision probably I've ever seen on foreign policy in my lifetime, what the president is doing right now.
00:56:10.000The left, of course, is opposing him wholeheartedly.
00:56:12.000It's amazing to watch so many of them lament the operation while simultaneously saying that they're not big fans of the Ayatollah.
00:56:19.000But, you know, this is really quite terrible.
00:56:21.000So, well, I think that in order to get to the Ayatollah is dead, you probably are going to have to actually do the kinds of things that President Trump is doing rather than doing as Barack Obama did and try to hand him pallets of cash and a promise that in 10 years he could go nuclear.
00:57:21.000The Biden-Harris administration, by the way, with the acquiescence, if not support, of just about every single Democrat in Congress, they flooded cash to the Ayatollah.
00:57:42.000There is a reason why most serious national security and foreign policy analysts who look at the Middle East describe Iran as the head of the snake because it is Iran that is spreading their malign poison.
00:57:56.000And to give a sense of the reach of it, one of the reasons we took out Maduro is Maduro opened up Venezuela to Iran and Hezbollah, to terror cells here in the Western Hemisphere.
00:58:08.000And tragically, we saw late Saturday night, early Sunday morning in Austin, the kind of risks we have.
00:58:14.000What appears to be a terrorist attack, it's still being investigated.
00:58:18.000But two people in Austin shot at a bar, 13 people wounded, two people killed, 13 people wounded by an immigrant from Senegal wearing a sweater that said property of Allah, wearing a shirt with an Iranian flag on it, with a Koran in his car.
00:58:35.000It certainly appears to be a terrorist act.
00:58:38.000And that threat, that's what President Trump is taking seriously.
00:58:43.000I spoke yesterday to Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, and they are going through all of the communications, all the social media.
00:58:50.000They're searching his residents, and they are on guard for more terrorism.
00:58:54.000By the way, I will say, it is particularly shocking that at a time when we know there's an enhanced risk for terrorist attack in the United States, the Democrats have continued to shut down the Department of Homeland Security, the department that is charged with stopping terrorist attacks.
00:59:12.000I assume we're going to vote again this week on funding the Department of Homeland Security.
00:59:16.000And my prediction is the Democrats' party line will say, no, we are not going to pay the salaries of the agents and officers charged with stopping terror attacks.
00:59:28.000Instead, we're going to lament the loss of the Ayatollah.
00:59:31.000That really is a sign of an ideology that has lost its way.
00:59:37.000So, Senator Cruz, the other big critique that's been leveled at the operation has been the sort of what comes after critique.
00:59:42.000And the president has made clear that what comes after is up to the Iranian people.
00:59:47.000I think that whenever you go into a conflict in which the top of the regime is decapitated, which is what's happening right now, no one knows sort of the answer as to what comes next.
00:59:55.000But I think one of the big points here is that whatever comes next is going to be better than the consolidated control of the worst regime on planet Earth.
01:00:02.000And even were things to devolve, unfortunately, into some sort of civil conflict inside of Iran, that would certainly hamper the Iranians' ability as a totality, as a government, to threaten surrounding actors with weapons, nuclear, biological, or otherwise.
01:00:20.000Well, look, that is a very reasonable question to ask, and it's a reasonable concern to have what comes next, because it is not going to be rosy and simple.
01:00:38.000If you go back and look at the 2016 presidential campaign, if you set Rand Paul to the side as having a fringe foreign policy view, of the 16 remaining Republicans on that stage, there were only two, Donald Trump and me, who opposed the Iraq war.
01:01:21.000And again, the terrorists took over and began killing Americans.
01:01:24.000My test for whether it is a good national security step or bad one is, does it protect Americans or does it put Americans in greater danger?
01:01:34.000Reason this is justified and different, I believe, from Iraq, different from Libya, is the Ayatollah was actively murdering Americans and trying to murder Americans each and every day.
01:01:44.000And he was using the resources of a nation state to do so.
01:01:48.000And that threat, I think, is intolerable.
01:01:51.000The objective, we just saw a Pentagon press briefing in which they focused on many of the military objectives, like taking out missiles, like taking out anti-aircraft weaponry.
01:03:15.000All righty, guys, coming up, we will be joined by Amit Segal from Israel to report on the situation there and what the goals of Israel are in this war.
01:03:22.000Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member.
01:03:24.000If you're not a member, become a member, use code Shapiro.
01:03:26.000Check out for two months free on all annual plans.
01:03:28.000Click that link in the description and join us.
01:03:30.000Legal sent this list of everything we're not allowed to do in season two.