The Ben Shapiro Show - September 16, 2026


Iran Just Tightened Its Grip on Global Oil

The 'Free Palestine' Stunt That Got Macklemore Fired

Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

192.32

Word count

3,856

Sentence count

266

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Transcript

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00:00:00.000 On the foreign policy front, Islam as a political program, obviously.
00:00:03.000 And whenever I say Islam, I'm not talking about individual Muslims who are eating an iftar dinner.
00:00:07.000 I'm talking about Islam as a broad spread political program and as applied broadly across the globe.
00:00:12.000 As Samuel Huntington, the author of The Clash of Civilization said, Islam has bloody borders, but also bloody innards because Muslims like to kill other Muslims in Muslim regimes.
00:00:21.000 I mean, that is just a way that it has worked, historically speaking.
00:00:23.000 But it is not just a threat.
00:00:25.000 Political Islam is also a failure.
00:00:27.000 It is also a failure.
00:00:28.000 Okay, let us be clear.
00:00:31.000 Islamic regimes all over the world rely on Western technologies and Western modes of thought for any success that they have.
00:00:38.000 Any.
00:00:39.000 Not some, any.
00:00:41.000 That is just a reality of the world.
00:00:45.000 Islam as a governing philosophy is bankrupt.
00:00:48.000 It does not work.
00:00:49.000 It does not work.
00:00:50.000 It is a failure.
00:00:52.000 The Nobel Prize winning writer V.S. Naipaul pointed this out in his books, Among the Believers and Beyond Belief, where he went and he traveled through Islamic regimes and he found failure after failure after failure.
00:01:03.000 And the failure was seen as part of the benefit of the bargain because it was a purer form of Islam.
00:01:10.000 And again, that would help explain why it is that Muslim regimes trail their competitors pretty much everywhere else on earth.
00:01:17.000 The only methods of Islamic governance that have worked have been copied from the West.
00:01:23.000 The only methods of technology in Islamic countries that work have been copied from the West.
00:01:29.000 No West, no oil.
00:01:30.000 No West, no defensive weaponry.
00:01:32.000 No West, no modern military.
00:01:34.000 No West, no banking.
00:01:35.000 That is just the reality.
00:01:37.000 This is why, when you see people simping for Sharia law abroad, it's the most ridiculous crap you ever saw.
00:01:42.000 The reason there are skyscrapers in UAE is because the West taught people how to build skyscrapers and then provided the plans and contracting.
00:01:52.000 This is all built on Western bases.
00:01:56.000 There's this bizarre idea that has traveled abroad in the anti American circles that places that have never seen the footprint of the West are somehow better off.
00:02:05.000 Well, that's weird because literally the places on earth that have never seen the footprint of the West, undiscovered tribes in.
00:02:12.000 Barely inhabited islands.
00:02:13.000 It turns out they're not building paradise.
00:02:14.000 They are living in primitive fashion.
00:02:17.000 The West is unique and the West has a better way of life and a better way of thought.
00:02:20.000 That is a reality.
00:02:21.000 Okay.
00:02:22.000 And this is being proved every day, not just by conflicts between Islamic radicals and the West, but also by the way that, that regimes fail in the Middle East themselves.
00:02:31.000 So a perfect example of this is what is happening right now in Saudi Arabia.
00:02:34.000 It's really astonishing, truly.
00:02:36.000 Okay.
00:02:36.000 So we should just point out at this point that over the past 25 years or so, The United States has sold well over $200 billion in defense equipment, training, and services to the Saudi regime.
00:02:51.000 Obama sold $115 billion in weaponry to the Saudis.
00:02:54.000 Trump I sold $110 billion.
00:02:57.000 Trump II sold $142 billion.
00:02:59.000 So they've been buying weaponry from us because, of course, they have lots of oil money.
00:03:02.000 We give them the money for the oil, and they use that money to buy American made weaponry.
00:03:07.000 They also get minor grants from anti terrorism training, and we spend billions of dollars to upkeep military bases on their soil to protect them.
00:03:14.000 The reason that there are military bases on Saudi soil is not because America is looking for forward projection, per se.
00:03:20.000 The Saudis won't even let us use the air bases for forward projection in the main.
00:03:24.000 The reality is that we put those bases on their soil originally to protect them against Saddam Hussein because they couldn't defend themselves.
00:03:30.000 Well, now it turns out the Saudis, who again have F 16s, have F 35s, have modern military weaponry, are getting their asses handed to them in Yemen by an Iranian terror group called the Houthis.
00:03:41.000 They've been embroiled in a war in Yemen in which the Yemeni regime was associated with the Saudis.
00:03:47.000 And with the UAE, the Saudis decided they didn't like having their lunch eaten by the UAE because, again, the UAE is significantly more Western friendly and open than the Saudi regime, which has always been attempting to triangulate with the Chinese, for example, and with the Iranians.
00:04:01.000 Well, it turns out in Yemen, the Iranians haven't been shy about supporting the Houthis, who are a bunch of ragtag terrorists who are being handed a bunch of weapons by Iran.
00:04:10.000 And so for the last 11 years, there's been a hot war in Yemen.
00:04:12.000 Now, the Houthis are not exactly a fearsome military power, or certainly wouldn't be if they were not being given technology by the Iranians via the Chinese.
00:04:22.000 Here, for example, is some of the Houthis.
00:04:24.000 Here's what they look like.
00:04:25.000 Does this look like a highly sophisticated military power here?
00:04:31.000 In case you can't see, this looks like a bunch of tribesmen with semi sophisticated military weaponry.
00:04:46.000 These are impoverished terrorists.
00:04:50.000 This is not a highly militarized.
00:04:54.000 Western style military at all.
00:04:56.000 It is a ragtag group of terrorists with things like RPGs and some machine guns, like AK 47s.
00:05:04.000 Does this look like a highly sophisticated military power?
00:05:07.000 Now, the Houthis have a slogan.
00:05:08.000 Not super catchy, but here it is.
00:05:10.000 Their slogan is God is the greatest, Allahu Akbar.
00:05:14.000 Death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews, and victory to Islam.
00:05:20.000 That's a little long.
00:05:21.000 It doesn't fit on a bumper sticker properly, but this is what they believe.
00:05:24.000 So, this group of global losers is, with Iranian backing and Chinese made weaponry, humiliating the Saudis, humiliating them.
00:05:32.000 So, over the course of the last couple of weeks, basically, this ragtag group of terrorists, which has staved off the incompetent Yemeni government and the less than competent Saudi military for literally 11 years, they started pressing westward toward the coastline of Yemen.
00:05:47.000 Why does that matter?
00:05:48.000 Well, because it turns out the coastline of Yemen is located along the Bab el Mandab Strait, which is a global choke point for shipping of oil.
00:05:56.000 Possibly more important than the Strait of Hormuz.
00:05:59.000 And they took over the whole place without the Saudis flying a single sortie from the F 16s that we sold them or the F 35s that we sold them.
00:06:08.000 An act of extraordinary incompetence.
00:06:11.000 Because it turns out these regimes are not good at governing.
00:06:11.000 Why?
00:06:14.000 They are really, really bad at it.
00:06:16.000 They are quite terrible at building military power, they are quite terrible at projecting military power, even against ragtag terrorists.
00:06:23.000 Again, this group of derelicts.
00:06:25.000 They look like homeless people pulled off the street and handed RPGs, took over the Bab el Mandab Strait.
00:06:31.000 So how did that happen precisely?
00:06:32.000 Well, CNN had the story.
00:06:34.000 Quote, the desperate pleas for air cover from Yemeni generals started coming mid-morning on Thursday.
00:06:39.000 An advance by the Iran-backed Houthis toward Yemen's strategic port city of Mocha was in full swing, and backup support from chief ally Saudi Arabia was nowhere in sight.
00:06:47.000 The Houthis committed everything they had, waves upon waves of fighters, along with their available ballistic missiles and weapons, a senior Yemeni source attached to their military forces told CNN.
00:06:55.000 The source that he contacted, CENTCOM, and was assured the United States was watching the situation closely and that Saudi air support was coming.
00:07:02.000 But the air support never came.
00:07:04.000 And then Mocha fell.
00:07:05.000 And then it turns out on Friday, the Houthis captured another key coastal asset called Param Island at the mouth of the Red Sea.
00:07:11.000 That island splits the Babel Mandib Strait in two and gives Tehran, because again, this is an Iranian bacteria group, de facto control over yet another key shipping route.
00:07:21.000 So the conflict in Yemen had basically been stagnating for some years now.
00:07:26.000 But because Tehran has been cut off in its attempts to attack Israel, because Tehran has been unsuccessful in securing the Strait of Hormuz, they're now trying to exert pressure on another pressure point, the Babel Mandib Strait.
00:07:37.000 Apparently, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke twice on Thursday with President Trump and urged him to strike the Houthis, and Trump was like, nah.
00:07:46.000 Apparently, the White House said the United States is focused on protecting our core national security interests, such as ensuring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, while empowering our regional partners to take the lead in managing and resolving regional security challenges.
00:07:57.000 We are in continuous dialogue with Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Yemen government regarding regional stability.
00:08:01.000 By the way, the Babel Mandub Strait is used mainly by Europe because the oil, just look at a map, the oil flowing up to Europe is moving through the Babel Mandub Strait, through the Red Sea, and through the Suez Canal.
00:08:12.000 Again, you can see the map here.
00:08:15.000 So, the Strait of Hormuz, which the United States has largely opened, the Strait of Hormuz is no longer under full Iranian control.
00:08:22.000 So, the Iranians and the Yemenis have been attempting to hit the east west crude oil pipeline that flows from the Persian Gulf toward the other side of Saudi Arabia into the Red Sea.
00:08:35.000 And so, they've been striking those pipelines to cut off Saudi oil supply.
00:08:39.000 And now they're doing the same by grabbing hold of the Bab el Mandab Strait.
00:08:43.000 To cut off Saudi oil supply and artificially increase the price of oil.
00:08:49.000 Right?
00:08:49.000 That is what is happening right now.
00:08:53.000 And you can see the outbound oil flow has been somewhat restored in Hormuz, not back to where it was before the war, but somewhat restored.
00:09:03.000 But the idea from Iran is what if we just exert pressure so that nobody can export any oil via this pipeline going the other way by bombing the pipeline or by closing off the Babel Mandib Strait?
00:09:14.000 Where are our allies?
00:09:14.000 Now, here's the question.
00:09:16.000 What is Saudi doing?
00:09:17.000 Why are they wildly incompetent?
00:09:19.000 Where are the Europeans?
00:09:20.000 This is their oil, too.
00:09:21.000 What do they do for a living, precisely?
00:09:24.000 Now, again, we should point out here this is a Muslim on Muslim fight.
00:09:28.000 You may have noticed that in this entire conversation, Israel has not come up because you know who actually is not affected by any of this, particularly Israel.
00:09:35.000 But the Saudis are incompetent militarily.
00:09:38.000 Pathetic.
00:09:39.000 They clearly don't even know how to use the weapons we sold and gave them.
00:09:42.000 Their air force was totally useless.
00:09:45.000 The Babel Mandem Strait was taken over by a bunch of terrorists with speedboats.
00:09:49.000 And what about that vaunted Saudi Pakistani Turkish NATO like defense pact?
00:09:52.000 Do you remember this?
00:09:53.000 A few weeks ago, they signed the Mecca Defense Alliance.
00:09:56.000 Right?
00:09:56.000 Saudi and Pakistan, who we love very much, according to the vice president, and Turkey, who again is warm with the Trump administration, they signed this mutual defense alliance.
00:10:04.000 Wouldn't it be handy to have Pakistan and Turkey help out?
00:10:06.000 Well, it turns out the Pakistanis and Turks are handing out free high fives.
00:10:10.000 It's the high five meme while Saudi Arabia drowns.
00:10:13.000 And now Mecca, the holiest city in Islam, Is under missile attack reportedly from the Houthis, which of course is a slap in the face to the Saudis because the Saudis see themselves as the guardian of the holy sites.
00:10:24.000 So, what are the Saudis doing now?
00:10:26.000 Well, after begging the Americans to get involved and after yelling at the Israelis for some years now about fighting Islamic terrorism, they are quietly and covertly begging the Israelis to help.
00:10:37.000 What does this say about Islam as a governing philosophy?
00:10:40.000 The answer is it fails.
00:10:42.000 Again, it fails.
00:10:44.000 Without the West, no oil.
00:10:46.000 Without the West, no defense mechanisms.
00:10:48.000 Without the West, no skyscrapers, no financial capacity.
00:10:50.000 Nothing.
00:10:52.000 That is a reality.
00:10:54.000 Now, that doesn't mean there aren't Islamic countries that are moving in the direction of more sophistication, that are moving to make alliance with the West.
00:11:01.000 The only kingdoms in the region that are actually full scale embracing the West, the UAE and Bahrain mostly, are actively being alienated by the Saudis, who again want to play this dumb game where they triangulate with the Turks, the Chinese, the Pakistanis, and the Iranians.
00:11:13.000 Genius level work there from the Saudi regime.
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00:12:36.000 Meanwhile, again, the Saudis couldn't even help us properly defend the bases we set up to help them in the 90s to protect them from Saddam Hussein.
00:12:45.000 So there are now photos from active service members showing damage at U.S. bases.
00:12:49.000 Here are images from an airplane at Prince Sultan Air Force Base in Saudi or destroyed trailers in Kuwait or building damage in Kuwait.
00:13:00.000 Now, again, is any of this catastrophic for America?
00:13:02.000 No.
00:13:02.000 I mean, you're looking at what are relatively minor damage photos.
00:13:06.000 Honestly, relatively minor.
00:13:08.000 When you're looking at the size of the assault that Iran has been leveling against Kuwait, Saudi, Bahrain, UAE, and all the rest.
00:13:15.000 But they are not capable of defending themselves.
00:13:19.000 They are not.
00:13:20.000 And now, the blowing up of that Saudi east west pipeline threatens the loss of 4% of global oil supply, according to Reuters.
00:13:27.000 Saudi Arabia will now run out of oil stocks for exports if it doesn't restart its major pipeline to the Red Sea within days, leading to a loss of up to 4% of global supply.
00:13:36.000 A further decline in Saudi flows will worsen the global supply crunch, which has already pushed global fuel prices to record highs.
00:13:42.000 Spurred inflation around the world and sent U.S. bond yields to the highest levels since the 2008 financial crisis.
00:13:47.000 By the way, this is just another reason why the president was right to go after Iran.
00:13:50.000 Because Iran, if it dominated the region, would be able to turn on and off the spigot at will.
00:13:55.000 They're doing it right now by striking pipelines and shutting off supply routes.
00:13:59.000 And it turns out that our friends in Saudi Arabia can't do bleep about it, or at least aren't capable of doing bleep about it.
00:14:07.000 This is why Iran needs to be the head of the snake, needs to be cut off.
00:14:13.000 And that is not a call for boots on the ground.
00:14:15.000 It is a call for the president to continue doing what he is doing, which is absolutely cratering the Iranian economy.
00:14:20.000 The president, for his part, says we continue to produce more exquisite and elite weapons than in any time in our history.
00:14:26.000 They're being delivered on a daily basis to our forces in the Middle East and beyond.
00:14:29.000 Our defense company factories are moving 24 7, while at the same time building, on average, four to five large scale brand new plants each.
00:14:35.000 A primary focus of this production has been Patriots, THAAD systems, Tomahawks, and other standard missile systems, of which we already have large numbers in stock.
00:14:45.000 So, right now, the Iran war, for all the talk about how the Iran war is wildly expensive, and again, you see headlines that sort of exaggerate the cost of the war.
00:14:52.000 They'll give you a stat without any context.
00:14:54.000 So, political will say the Iran war has cost taxpayers $38 billion.
00:14:57.000 Okay, let's just point out that that makes the overall Iran war about 0.51% of the total federal budget.
00:15:04.000 It's only about 3.6% of the annual defense budget.
00:15:08.000 So, again, these are not major numbers, at least in percentage terms.
00:15:12.000 None of that is to make light of the cost of oil, which, of course, is a major political issue.
00:15:16.000 It's why Iran is doing this.
00:15:16.000 Iran is doing this because they hope.
00:15:18.000 That by spiking the price of oil, we'll get a bunch of Democrats in power, and the Democrats will then surrender to the Iranians and we'll go back to status quo ante, except that Iran will clearly control all of the Strait of Hormuz as well as the Babel Mandib Strait and rebuild the Ring of Fire, the so called Ring of Fire, around Israel.
00:15:33.000 That is what Iran wants out of all of this.
00:15:35.000 President Trump is not allowing that to happen, which is just one reason why the Trump administration is now preparing a multi billion dollar sale of 2,000 pound bombs to Israel because Israel is the only ally in the region that is worth its salt, capable of defending itself and others.
00:15:49.000 It is why the Saudis are now begging for Israeli help.
00:15:53.000 That $2.8 billion package, which would be purchased with U.S. taxpayer dollars again, it's just a sponsorship program for the U.S. defense mechanism.
00:16:02.000 That's what U.S. aid is.
00:16:03.000 We give aid to Israel, Israel then spends all of that aid back on American defense products.
00:16:07.000 It includes 40,000 bombs that weigh 2,000 pounds each, including 20,000 MK 84s and 20,000 BLU 117s.
00:16:19.000 So the transaction is financed through foreign military financing.
00:16:24.000 Now, there are a bunch of people who are claiming that this is just terrible.
00:16:28.000 It's just, of course, Tucker Carlson, who spends virtually all day, every day, just thinking about Israel.
00:16:35.000 For an America First guy, it's pretty astonishing how little he thinks about America.
00:16:39.000 But he has a long, long, long post in which he essentially argues that we are transferring nuclear weaponry to Israel.
00:16:49.000 Israel is in need.
00:16:49.000 Israel already has nuclear weaponry.
00:16:52.000 He says this amounts to 40,000 tons of bombs.
00:16:54.000 For perspective, the largest American air raid of World War II was the Eighth Air Force's attack on Berlin in March of 1945.
00:17:00.000 Combined, the 2023 Allied aircraft involved dropped about 3,000 tons of bombs, which is 7.5% of what Trump is sending to Israel.
00:17:07.000 So, first of all, the bombs are not built the same.
00:17:10.000 The bombs that we have today, when we say a 2,000 pound bomb, it doesn't mean 2,000 pounds of explosive.
00:17:15.000 It's mostly steel.
00:17:16.000 But put that aside, this is for stockpiling.
00:17:20.000 That is the purpose.
00:17:21.000 President Trump understands that the Democratic Party, at some point in the future, is likely to cut off arms for Israel, which means we won't have an ally that can actually do anything in the region.
00:17:30.000 The Saudis aren't going to do bleep.
00:17:31.000 The Turks are not our allies.
00:17:33.000 Trump understands that, which is why this is happening in the first place.
00:17:37.000 And then, of course, Tucker Carlson suggests that the The government of Israel doesn't require 2,000 pound bombs, which is kind of astonishing because, again, the point of a 2,000 pound bomb is to crater a building.
00:17:48.000 Why would Israel need to crater buildings?
00:17:50.000 Maybe it's because Hamas built tunnels larger than the London Underground in the Gaza Strip.
00:17:50.000 I don't know.
00:17:57.000 And also because Israel does not wish to go house to house in one of the most heavily populated urban environments on planet Earth.
00:18:04.000 And so what they've been doing is evacuating places and then blowing up the buildings so fighters cannot take refuge in the buildings.
00:18:11.000 But again, bottom line is this.
00:18:13.000 In the region, if you were talking about American allies work their soul, you know, Tucker is traveling over to Saudi, traveling over to Qatar, traveling over to all these countries that literally cannot defend themselves and will not defend themselves and require continuous American defense.
00:18:27.000 But he is very, very much upset with the idea that Israel, which is now being called on, by the way, to not only fly alongside the United States against Iran, but now being called on by the Saudis to help defend against the Houthis, that somehow depriving them of weaponry is the answer.
00:18:43.000 Genius level stuff, as always, from people who stand for Abdul El Sayed and Vladimir Putin and the Chinese and every other nefarious regime and person on planet Earth.
00:18:51.000 What an amazing video you just watched.
00:18:53.000 Wasn't that amazing?
00:18:54.000 Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.
00:19:02.000 Every significant movement in history has started with protesting.
00:19:04.000 You're a traitor!
00:19:05.000 It's Uncle Tom!
00:19:06.000 This is our generation's civil rights!
00:19:07.000 I have no idea what the protest is about.
00:19:10.000 Bingo!
00:19:10.000 Given the current climate, should a figure as polarizing as slave sounders even be allowed on campus?
00:19:16.000 Oh, can you hear me okay?
00:19:17.000 Saunders is a close personal friend of Chancellor Friedman.
00:19:19.000 This is a decision I cannot fight.
00:19:21.000 Islam will conquer the West.
00:19:23.000 Asalaamu Alaikum.
00:19:25.000 Are we paying attention?
00:19:29.000 They've taken over the building.
00:19:31.000 They're downstairs and they've blocked the doors.
00:19:34.000 I seek forgiveness from Allah the Almighty.
00:19:38.000 We cannot run and hide.
00:19:40.000 Muhammad is the messenger of God.
00:19:44.000 There is no God but Allah.
00:19:46.000 What do you say?
00:19:48.000 We turn those SOBs into a fine red mist.
00:19:53.000 As we move, one man will cover while the other guys go.
00:19:56.000 They call that leap project.
00:19:57.000 Stretch them out and listen.
00:20:00.000 You need a course in safe weapons handling.