The Ben Shapiro Show - Trump's MASTERSTROKE: What Comes Next?!

00:00:00.000 Alrighty, folks, got a ton to get to on today's show.

00:00:03.000 The latest from the Trump administration, the latest from the Israeli government, the latest from the international situation regarding President Trump's brave, courageous strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities.

00:00:12.000 We'll discuss what comes next.

00:00:14.000 We're joined by a wide variety of guests ranging from Professor Victor Davis-Hansen to Caroline Glick and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office.

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00:00:51.000 Well, folks, President Trump's courageous decision to strike the Iranian nuclear facilities, to take them out completely, has been a masterstroke for him. 0.60

00:00:59.000 We're going to explain how it's reshaped American foreign policy.

00:01:02.000 What comes next?

00:01:03.000 So the President of the United States has been quite active on Truth Social over the course of the last 48 hours.

00:01:09.000 Late on Sunday, he posted, quote, monumental damage was done to all nuclear sites in Iran as shown by satellite images.

00:01:16.000 Obliteration is an accurate term.

00:01:18.000 The white structure shown is deeply embedded into the rock, with even its roof well below ground level and completely shielded from flame.

00:01:24.000 The biggest damage took place far below ground level bullseye.

00:01:27.000 He is responding, of course, to accusations that the use of the bunker busters, the 30,000-pound MOPs, these massive ordnance penetrators, that somehow that had only damaged the facility a little bit.

00:01:38.000 Now, the reality is that on the ground, the suggestion is that the facilities were either completely destroyed or that they were so heavily damaged that they are completely unusable.

00:01:49.000 Again, Top Gun Maverick had a setup where the American forces essentially hit a vent above a nuclear facility.

00:01:58.000 And it appears that's exactly what happened here.

00:01:59.000 It appears that somehow these B-2 bombers from 30,000 feet were hitting with massive ordnance penetrators an air vent that went directly down into the Fordo nuclear facility in Tehran.

00:02:13.000 Essentially, it was like destroying the Death Star.

00:02:15.000 I had said earlier last week that that was not exactly what it was going to be like.

00:02:19.000 All you had to do was actually just drop these massive ordnance penetrators on the site itself.

00:02:23.000 But it turns out that the Iranians made the cardinal mistake of actually constructing their nuclear facility along the same lines as the plans for the Death Star leaving the exhaust port. 0.85

00:02:34.000 George Lucas once made the statement that he had created the exhaust port in the Death Star as a warning not to do that.

00:02:41.000 And apparently the Iranians took it instead as a blueprint, which is actually quite hilarious. 1.00

00:02:45.000 In any case, those massive ordnance penetrators appear to have done extraordinary damage to the nuclear facilities over at Fordo, Natans, Isfahan.

00:02:54.000 All of the nuclear sites have basically been destroyed at this point, which means that we are coming close to the end of this conflict.

00:03:00.000 Israel has a list of targets.

00:03:02.000 That list of targets will likely be exhausted by the end of this week.

00:03:06.000 That list of targets includes some more military sites.

00:03:09.000 It includes missile production sites.

00:03:11.000 It includes missile launchers.

00:03:12.000 Because again, Israel went into this particular war with a couple of goals.

00:03:15.000 One was to obliterate the Iranian nuclear regime, and the other was to get rid of their ballistic missile capacity. 0.53

00:03:21.000 Last night, Iran only had the capacity to shoot one missile at the state of Israel.

00:03:25.000 They then posted some sort of meme online showing themselves firing hundreds of missiles because they're doing misinformation to their own population at this point.

00:03:34.000 The Israelis are going to end up achieving their war goals here. 0.98

00:03:38.000 And we'll get to what Iran does next in a few moments. 0.69

00:03:41.000 But President Trump then went on Truth Social and he put out a statement that freaked everybody out.

00:03:47.000 His statement was, quote, it's not politically correct to use the term regime change, but if the current Iranian regime is unable to make Iran great again, why wouldn't there be a regime change?

00:03:54.000 My God.

00:03:57.000 Again, President Trump, he's the best at this. 0.59

00:04:00.000 When it comes to the trolling, there is no one in history who has been a bigger Twitter troll or truth social troll than the current president of the United States.

00:04:08.000 Obviously, all of his opponents on the horseshoe theory left and the horseshoe theory right are taking this with absolute seriousness, that President Trump is going to unleash Iraq War too, as we'll talk about again a little bit later on in the show. 0.52

00:04:18.000 That's sheer nonsense.

00:04:19.000 What the president is saying there is the perfectly obvious, which is that the Iranian people should think about rising up and getting rid of their regime, which has been true for some 40 years. 1.00

00:04:27.000 The regime has never been weaker.

00:04:29.000 It might not be this weak again.

00:04:30.000 So if there's some sort of domestic political movement to get rid of the Ayatollahs, then perhaps now would be a good time for them to actually go ahead and do that. 0.99

00:04:37.000 He is certainly not calling for American troops on the ground in order to participate in regime change.

00:04:44.000 That's not what he is doing. 0.99

00:04:45.000 And anybody who's suggesting that is being, I think, quite stupid and deliberately stupid about what the president is saying right there. 1.00

00:04:51.000 I know there's some people on the right who want to be deliberately stupid and have been deliberately stupid about this entire conflict and American foreign policy in general. 1.00

00:04:58.000 However, the risk of President Trump, a man who ran in 2016 against the Iraq War, getting us into a long-lasting engagement on the ground after he sent B-2s some 37 hours in order to strike this nuclear facility and then come home. 0.99

00:05:17.000 All I can say is people are being deliberately obtuse.

00:05:19.000 And Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, appeared on Fox News yesterday and he said, the big message here from President Trump is it is a mistake not to take me at my word.

00:05:28.000 If I say that I'm trying to negotiate a deal with you, I'm trying to negotiate a deal with you.

00:05:31.000 And if you don't take the deal, and I threaten that if you don't take the deal, I'm going to bomb your nuclear facilities. 0.81

00:05:35.000 You can guess what I'm going to do? 0.99

00:05:36.000 Bomb your nuclear facilities. 0.98

00:05:37.000 This is absolutely true about President Trump.

00:05:40.000 I'm constantly amazed at people who cannot read Trump's signals.

00:05:44.000 They are not signals.

00:05:45.000 He just says it out loud.

00:05:46.000 He is by far the most transparent president in American history.

00:05:50.000 If you want to know what he's thinking, good news.

00:05:52.000 All you have to do is listen to the words coming out of his facehole.

00:05:55.000 That's it.

00:05:56.000 It's really not that difficult.

00:05:57.000 And what he said to Iran for 15 years was no nuclear program.

00:06:02.000 And then he said, if you want to make a deal where you give up your nuclear program, I'll leave you alone.

00:06:06.000 And then they said no, over and over and over.

00:06:09.000 And then the president said, well, there was a then to that if-then statement.

00:06:14.000 Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, who's been stalwart on this issue, here he was yesterday.

00:06:19.000 Are we now at war with Iran?

00:06:23.000 No, we're not.

00:06:23.000 This is not a war against Iran.

00:06:25.000 This is very simple.

00:06:27.000 You know, 67 days ago, the President of the United States sent the Iranians a letter and it said, you're not going to have nuclear weapons.

00:06:32.000 You're not going to have a militarized nuclear program.

00:06:36.000 Let's negotiate.

00:06:36.000 I want to do this diplomatically.

00:06:38.000 I want to do this peacefully.

00:06:40.000 They tried to play him along the way they've played every American president for the last 35 years.

00:06:45.000 And the president told them, if we don't get a deal, which is what we wanted, then I'll have to handle it differently.

00:06:50.000 And that's what he did last night.

00:06:52.000 He handled it differently.

00:06:52.000 But that was an Iranian choice.

00:06:54.000 We didn't make that choice.

00:06:55.000 They did.

00:06:55.000 By playing games with Donald Trump, they made a huge mistake.

00:06:58.000 And President Trump acted last night.

00:07:00.000 And I think the world today is safer and more stable than it was 24 hours ago.

00:07:05.000 And a bunch of these countries putting out statements condemning us privately, they all agree with us that this needed to be done.

00:07:10.000 They got to do what they got to do for their own public relations purposes.

00:07:15.000 But the only people in the world that are unhappy about what happened in Iran last night is the regime.

00:07:21.000 He is absolutely right about this.

00:07:22.000 You got to love the subtle hat tip to Saudi Arabia right there. 0.96

00:07:25.000 Saudi Arabia put out a statement saying that they were a little concerned about what happened.

00:07:28.000 They were having parties in Riyadh.

00:07:31.000 The notion that the Saudis, whose oil fields have been attacked by Iran, who have been arch enemies with the Iranians for decades, that the Saudis, of all people, are deeply disappointed that the United States, along with Israel, has obliterated the top levels of Iran's military, destroyed their ballistic missile program, and killed their nuclear weaponry program, that the Saudis are somehow crying, shedding real tears.

00:07:51.000 Those are some of the biggest crocodile tears I've ever seen coming out of Riyadh.

00:07:55.000 And as time moves on, it's going to become very clear that Saudi Arabia, of course, was very much in favor of all this.

00:08:00.000 So was Jordan.

00:08:01.000 So was Egypt. 0.98

00:08:02.000 So was Turkey. 0.95

00:08:04.000 So believe it or not, was Russia, which is doing nothing in order to help the Iranians at this point because Russia also doesn't want those nutjobs having a nuclear weapon. 0.94

00:08:12.000 That is not something that if Russia had wanted that, Russia would have facilitated a Russian nuclear bomb significantly more, even than they did.

00:08:19.000 They were helping Iran build nuclear facilities, but they certainly weren't smuggling a nuclear warhead into Iran or anything like that.

00:08:25.000 Meanwhile, the United Nations, of course, of course, has decided that the United States and Israel have done something very wrong.

00:08:31.000 So an organization which, as I've discussed, is the most Eisley of international politics, a wretched hive of scum and villainy, they've decided that they are very, very upset now with Iran for developing nuclear weapons or a massive ballistic missile program for firing ballistic missiles into Israeli civilian centers, for funding the creation of massive terrorist groups all around the region and terrorist sleeper cells all around the world.

00:08:53.000 No, what they're really upset about is when President Trump does the most targeted strike in American military history.

00:09:00.000 Literally the most targeted strike in American military history.

00:09:02.000 You're going to have to name me a more targeted strike than the one that President Trump did on Saturday night.

00:09:08.000 So there are some countries, of course, that have come out in favor.

00:09:11.000 Argentina's Javier Millay, who is the best.

00:09:13.000 President Javier Millay is fantastic.

00:09:17.000 He posted, quote, today is a great day for Western civilization.

00:09:21.000 The Australians, who are actually quite far to the left, even they came out in favor, quote, we support action the U.S. has taken to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, according to Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong.

00:09:33.000 But then the Australian government, led by the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who, of course, is a far leftist, called for de-escalation, dialogue, and diplomacy.

00:09:41.000 Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada reiterated President Trump's belief that, quote, Iran can never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.

00:09:50.000 Many of the more leftist leaders around the world were very upset.

00:09:53.000 The Chinese said, quote, the actions of the United States seriously violated the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law and have exacerbated tensions in the Middle East.

00:10:01.000 Yeah, I want to hear from China, a country that has destabilized international relations since the days of Chairman Mao, that has engaged in massive warfare across its borders, a country that right now is destabilizing everything from Africa to Asia to South America. 0.94

00:10:18.000 I want to hear from the Chinese.

00:10:19.000 Quote, China calls on the parties to the conflict, Israel in particular, to reach a ceasefire as soon as possible.

00:10:24.000 China's calling on Israel to reach a ceasefire.

00:10:26.000 You know what China could do? 0.90

00:10:27.000 They could actually just force Iran, presumably, to engage in a ceasefire here.

00:10:31.000 And by the way, that is quite likely to happen because the next move that Iran is talking about making, damages primarily, wait for it, the Chinese. 0.94

00:10:38.000 We'll get to that in just a moment.

00:10:42.000 So again, a wide variety of countries are supportive.

00:10:45.000 That would be Germany is quite supportive.

00:10:48.000 However, the UN was condemning.

00:10:51.000 Many of the leftist countries that opposed the United States were upset.

00:10:56.000 And so this led Danny Dunon, the ambassador to the United Nations from Israel, to rip into the UN and many of the countries saying that President Trump did something wrong.

00:11:06.000 He says, you're denouncing the U.S.?

00:11:07.000 You people?

00:11:08.000 Seriously?

00:11:10.000 Now, some come here to denounce the United States and Israel.

00:11:16.000 So let me ask you, where were you?

00:11:19.000 Where were you when Iran waste toward the bomb? 0.84

00:11:24.000 Where were you when it enriched uranium far beyond the point of civilian usage?

00:11:31.000 When it buried entire fortress beneath mountain to prepare for our extermination?

00:11:39.000 Where were you when Iran turned negotiation into theater and deceit into strategy? 0.81

00:11:48.000 You were silent.

00:11:50.000 You were complicit.

00:11:51.000 You were afraid.

00:11:53.000 You were bystanders.

00:11:55.000 Let the record show when the world stood at the edge of a nuclear disaster, America stepped forward.

00:12:03.000 Alrighty, coming up, we'll be joined by Caroline Glick out of the Prime Minister's office in Israel to get their take on what's going on.

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00:13:19.000 Also, in these uncertain times, Israel faces continued attacks as war with Iran continues.

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00:13:27.000 Israel launched Operation Rising Lion.

00:13:29.000 President Trump, of course, helped Israel target nuclear facilities deep inside Iran.

00:13:35.000 Israel is now bracing for a taliation that is endangering thousands of innocent lives. 1.00

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00:14:23.000 Joining us online is Caroline Glick.

00:14:25.000 Caroline is the International Affairs Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel.

00:14:28.000 Caroline, thanks so much for the time.

00:14:29.000 I really appreciate it.

00:14:30.000 Oh, it's great to be on your program, Ben.

00:14:32.000 Thanks for having me.

00:14:33.000 So first of all, let's discuss what it means to the state of Israel that President Trump decided to authorize the use of these massive ordnance penetrators on the Iranian nuclear facilities.

00:14:43.000 Obviously, an act of tremendous courage and bravery by the President of the United States to stand up for our ally, Israel, and also to finish off what he has called for decades a massive threat to the United States and the Iranian nuclear program.

00:14:55.000 Yeah, I think that it means a couple of things.

00:14:58.000 First of all, in relation to President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, I think that the American operation last night was a testament to the power of the United States military.

00:15:08.000 They are, as the President said, the only military that's capable of pulling that kind of thing off from the air.

00:15:13.000 The other thing that's important is that the partnership between these two leaders has just historic dimensions, both for the United States and for Israel and for the nations of this region and the larger world, because together these two men have changed history.

00:15:29.000 For 46 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has transformed the world for the worse. 1.00

00:15:36.000 If you just go to things like having to go through security checks before you go onto an airplane, to everything that we have to do to protect ourselves from terrorism, that's all because of Iran. 1.00

00:15:47.000 And it's very important to know that because for the first time we're seeing with this assault, really with Israel's larger war against Iran's proxy armies and now against Iran's nuclear installations and its ballistic missile installations, we're seeing that finally the war is being taken to where it emanates from, which is Iran.

00:16:05.000 And that has dimensions that are epic, that it has implications that are historic, not only for Israel and the Jewish people, but for humanity.

00:16:15.000 For Israel specifically, we've been carrying around this dread that we could be nuked by Iran for decades.

00:16:22.000 And now that weight has been taken off of our shoulders because of the brave, extraordinary leadership of Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump.

00:16:31.000 And one last word about that.

00:16:33.000 Prime Minister Netanyahu has been warning about the specter of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons for over 40 years.

00:16:41.000 And he has been leading the international campaign against Iran's effort to achieve nuclear, military nuclear capabilities for decades.

00:16:51.000 I was working for him for the first time in the 1990s, and he was talking about this with the Clinton administration and warning about it.

00:16:57.000 So now what we're seeing is really the fruition of decades of work and leadership on the part of Netanyahu.

00:17:04.000 And it's an extraordinary thing to behold what he's accomplished and to really to see how he personally has transformed Israel into a regional power and has transformed Israel's relationship with the United States into a strategic alliance of historic proportions.

00:17:22.000 As President Trump said, there's never been a partnership like this.

00:17:25.000 And Caroline, I think that partnership is so important to emphasize.

00:17:27.000 And there are people in the United States who have tried to make the claim that somehow President Trump was manipulated here, that President Trump was talked into this.

00:17:33.000 The fact is, President Trump has made clear since his very earliest days in politics that Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a disaster, not only for Israel, but for the region and for the world.

00:17:42.000 He was perfectly true to his word.

00:17:44.000 He's been absolutely consistent on this for literally decades.

00:17:47.000 And it's only the coordination between the president of the United States, the most pro-Israel president in the history of the United States, bar non with no competitors and no close competitors.

00:17:55.000 It is only his close coordination with Israel that made this sort of thing possible, the destruction of the Iranian nuclear threat. 0.65

00:18:02.000 Absolutely.

00:18:03.000 Absolutely.

00:18:03.000 I mean, President Trump himself, I mean, the White House put out all of his statements or so many of his statements against Iran acquiring nuclear weapons going back to 2011.

00:18:12.000 So yes, this has been his consistent policy and efforts, there have been such extraordinary efforts by Americans to try to undermine his legacy of statements of commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

00:18:25.000 You got to wonder what that was about.

00:18:27.000 But the president himself, people just listened to him.

00:18:29.000 If Iran had just listened to him, you know, they might have, they had 60 days to make a deal with this guy.

00:18:35.000 But I think maybe they were listening to messaging operations or something that made them think that they didn't have to worry about President Trump.

00:18:41.000 When Trump himself, if they had just listened to the president, they would have understood just how deadly serious he was about preventing them from acquiring nuclear weapons.

00:18:51.000 So, Caroline, let's talk about the actual effect of the strike on the nuclear facilities and Israel's continued operations.

00:18:57.000 So, obviously, Israel continues to fly air sorties over Iran.

00:19:00.000 Iran continues to fire missiles and barrage the missiles into Israel, sometimes striking civilian targets, obviously directed at civilian areas.

00:19:08.000 How long do you think this lasts?

00:19:09.000 What is the end goal here?

00:19:11.000 There's been talk about regime change.

00:19:12.000 Obviously, the prime minister has said whatever happens in Iran is up to the Iranian people.

00:19:16.000 That is not the chief goal of what Israel is attempting to do.

00:19:18.000 President Trump has said the same.

00:19:20.000 The goal here is the denuclearization of the Iranian regime.

00:19:23.000 This is a meticulous hit by the United States.

00:19:25.000 Israel continues to operate in an extraordinary environment.

00:19:28.000 And again, the IDF And the IAF, the Israeli Air Force, have done such an unbelievably extraordinary job, along with intelligence and Mossad, in this operation from the very get-go, something the President himself acknowledged.

00:19:39.000 It is an effort of historic proportions.

00:19:41.000 What's the end goal here?

00:19:42.000 For Israel, we have two goals.

00:19:43.000 One is to wipe out their military capabilities, and that's been largely accomplished, as President Trump and Defense Secretary Eggset said today and yesterday.

00:19:52.000 And Prime Minister Netanyahu also resonated that claim today in a news conference that's just ended here in Israel to the Israeli media.

00:20:01.000 And the other issue is Iran's ballistic missile capabilities.

00:20:06.000 And so that has been the second goal of Israel's operation. 0.85

00:20:10.000 We continue acting through our Air Force to achieve the goal of wiping out Iran's ballistic missile capabilities. 0.99

00:20:18.000 As you said, they continue to attack Israel with ballistic missiles.

00:20:21.000 We had two more volleys into Israel today that attacked civilian targets and caused damage.

00:20:26.000 Thankfully, nobody was killed today, but several were wounded.

00:20:30.000 So we have to wipe out that capability.

00:20:32.000 We've taken out a lot of their factories that make different components of their ballistic missiles.

00:20:36.000 We took out another one today in Mashhad, I think it was.

00:20:39.000 And we continue to act in that.

00:20:42.000 And the most urgent thing to protect our home front is not only to eliminate the missiles, whether in flight or before they, or better yet, before they're launched, but also to go after their launchers.

00:20:52.000 Because if they don't have any launchers, then they can't launch their missiles.

00:20:55.000 And so that's really been the primary goal right now of our aircraft has been hunting down those missile launchers and attacking them sometimes just before they launch a missile.

00:21:05.000 So that's really been our focus.

00:21:07.000 We want to just prevent that from happening.

00:21:09.000 When you look, if you look, there have been a lot of graphics out on American television showing the range of Iranian missiles and the location of U.S. military installations in the Middle East.

00:21:22.000 And of course, they're all in range, as is Israel. 0.71

00:21:24.000 And by the way, as are large swaths of Europe.

00:21:28.000 And so this just shows how important it was to eliminate the nuclear capabilities because we had that kind of missile capability and they were building a capability in terms of industrial capacity to build another 300 missiles a month.

00:21:42.000 So we have to take that out because whether with nuclear warheads or conventional warheads, that kind of thing for a country Israel's size, which is 175th Iran's size, is in fact an existential threat. 0.82

00:21:55.000 So, Caroline, obviously one of the big things that's on the table, remains on the table, which is the issue of the hostages in the Gaza Strip.

00:22:02.000 Hamas's main supporter throughout this conflict has been Iran, both directly and indirectly.

00:22:07.000 Iran, obviously, has been extraordinarily damaged in this entire effort.

00:22:11.000 The goal, which was to isolate Hamas, seems to be coming closer to fruition through the establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is a non-UN-run way of supplying the people of the Gaza Strip with the food and necessities that they require.

00:22:25.000 Hamas is so angry about this that they're shooting members of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to prevent the dissemination of that food.

00:22:31.000 How close do we think we are to the end of some sort of conflict in the Gaza Strip?

00:22:36.000 What does an end to that look like?

00:22:37.000 And then how does that turn into what everybody is hoping for, the culmination of President Trump's Middle Eastern legacy, the broadening of the Abraham Accords to countries, including Saudi Arabia, respectively?

00:22:47.000 So I think, first of all, to talk about Gaza, just as we have very clear goals for Iran, the ballistic missiles eliminating that capability and the nuclear capabilities eliminating those capabilities. 0.74

00:22:58.000 So also in Gaza, we have three very clear goals of this war.

00:23:02.000 The first one is to get all the hostages home.

00:23:04.000 And today we brought home the bodies of three more hostages.

00:23:06.000 We have 50 hostages.

00:23:08.000 20 are alive.

00:23:10.000 30 are either certainly dead or two are probably dead.

00:23:15.000 So between 22 or 20 are alive and between 30 and 32, I mean, 28 and 32 are deceased.

00:23:24.000 And we want to bring all of them home.

00:23:26.000 And I think today's operation just reinforces the fact that we're serious about doing that.

00:23:31.000 And then the other two are to eliminate Hamas as both a military organization and as a regime.

00:23:37.000 And the third one is to prevent Gaza from ever posing a threat to Israel's security in the future.

00:23:42.000 So there are two components of that.

00:23:44.000 So the issue of the Hamas regime in Gaza, the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, which you were citing, their work is extremely important in eliminating Hamas's grasp on power, political power, because Hamas has been funding both the rebuilding, constant rebuilding of its military forces that are being eliminated by the Israeli military by stealing the humanitarian aid that's been provided largely by the UN, but also by other international humanitarian organizations that kow-towed to Hamas.

00:24:14.000 So they've seized all of the aid trucks, and then they take most of it for themselves and for their terrorists and for their loyalists.

00:24:22.000 And then they gouge prices for the Gazans in terms of selling what's left of the aid to them in both open markets and black markets.

00:24:30.000 And so by taking, and that in turn finances their continued operations, both as a regime and as a terrorist army.

00:24:38.000 And so by taking away their ability to control the humanitarian aid and moving it to the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, which is not beholden to Hamas, Israel is able to remove Hamas's grasp on power.

00:24:51.000 And so that's been very, very important and very effective in the two and a half weeks that it's been up, or actually three weeks that it's been up and running.

00:24:59.000 And as to the military operations, so our combat forces continue to operate at just about full throttle in Gaza, even as we're operating in Gaza.

00:25:10.000 The Prime Minister said today in his press conference, just he's constantly authorizing new operations.

00:25:16.000 He did just now.

00:25:17.000 And so our ground forces on the ground in Gaza are working.

00:25:20.000 We've unfortunately lost several soldiers over the past couple of weeks of operations and a lot more wounded.

00:25:27.000 So we continue to pay the price of this war.

00:25:30.000 But we're absolutely determined to achieve the goals.

00:25:34.000 And regarding the long term, I think that that has to do with Trump's plan for Gaza to clear it out of all the ordinance, to allow the Gazans who want to leave this horrible war zone to go and to see how we rebuild in a different kind of regime there over time. 0.80

00:25:52.000 And that leads us, of course, to your last question, is about the prospects for peace in the Middle East between Israel and its neighbors.

00:25:58.000 And I think that they got a huge boost Over the past year and eight months, because of the fierce and extraordinary courage and success of Israel's military in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria, and in Iran, and in Yemen.

00:26:14.000 I think that the Arabs who may have been questioning whether we're capable of standing the test of time are more than convinced that we are and that we're going to bury anybody who stands against us, as we have over the past year and eight months.

00:26:27.000 And now that the President joined forces with Israel and with Prime Minister Netanyahu to take out the largest threat posed to the Arab world, to the Gulf states and beyond in Iran's nuclear program, I think that both Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump are standing very tall in the eyes of the leaders of the Arab world, 0.71

00:26:50.000 and that will have a profound impact on the prospects for peace in a positive way in the weeks and months going forward.

00:27:00.000 Caroline, I just want to conclude by asking a question or the answers, because obviously I have so many friends who are over there in Israel, which is, what is the feeling on the ground about President Trump, given what President Trump just did?

00:27:11.000 I mean, I know, obviously, before the election, if Israelis had a vote, and some Israelis are, in fact, American citizens and did vote, but if Israelis had a vote, then he would have won the election overwhelmingly.

00:27:22.000 What's the feeling on the ground there about President Trump given the historic move that he just made?

00:27:26.000 I don't remember whether his approval rating or his support rating ahead of the election was 80% or 85%, but it's probably much closer to 90, 95% after what he did yesterday.

00:27:38.000 There's an enormous amount of love in Israel for your president, for Donald Trump, and it's love that he's earned by his actions.

00:27:49.000 He did a tremendous thing, not only for the Jews of Israel, he did a tremendous thing, and for the people of Israel, he did a tremendous thing for the Jewish people.

00:27:58.000 I mean, I think that what we have been doing over the past 10 days in Iran is making it clear that the Jewish people will destroy anybody who tries to destroy us. 1.00

00:28:09.000 When we say never again, we mean it.

00:28:11.000 And when the United States stepped up and joined Israel in this operation yesterday under President Trump, the United States said, not only do we respect the fact that you're doing what you have to do, we're going to stand with you.

00:28:23.000 And we're proud to be your ally.

00:28:25.000 And that is something for all Jews in Israel and throughout the world just is an extraordinary boost.

00:28:33.000 It's an amazing thing to have a friend like that, to have a friend like the United States of America.

00:28:40.000 That's Caroline Glick.

00:28:41.000 She's the International Affairs Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel.

00:28:43.000 Caroline, thank you so much for your time.

00:28:46.000 And really, God bless President Trump and God bless Prime Minister Netanyahu for having done so much work to destroy the Iranian nuclear threat on behalf of all of civilization. 0.99

00:28:54.000 And thank you and God bless you, Ben, for everything that you do for the United States, for Israel, and for the cause of freedom more generally.

00:29:00.000 Thank you.

00:29:02.000 Coming up, we'll be joined by Jonathan Chanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies to talk about what happens at Next First.

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00:31:16.000 So now the question becomes, what is Iran going to do in response?

00:31:20.000 So Iran apparently has threatened the United States that they have sleeper cells in the United States. 0.55

00:31:25.000 According to the UK Independent, the United States has ramped up its monitoring of Iranian sleeper cells.

00:31:30.000 Following Saturday's strikes, which Trump claimed totally obliterated, Iran's nuclear sites at Fordo, Natans, and Isfahan, both White House and FBI officials have been on high alert for Iranian sleeper cells.

00:31:39.000 Those, of course, would be cells embedded in the United States by the Iranian government, terrorist cells, which suggest they might not be our friends.

00:31:47.000 I know for all those people who keep saying that Iran is, you know, they're friendly, they were seeking peace, there's nothing to suggest that they were enemies of the United States except for the thousands of dead and maimed American troops over the course of years, ranging from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq.

00:32:04.000 For all those people who are saying that, it's weird.

00:32:06.000 Like, I don't know a lot of other countries that have embedded actual terror cells in America and in Western soil.

00:32:13.000 I don't know like tons of countries that are doing that.

00:32:15.000 Iran, of course, is the leading state sponsor of terror around the world. 0.95

00:32:19.000 The idea that that group of people should have a nuclear weapon is, it boggles the mind.

00:32:25.000 What is the argument for?

00:32:26.000 What is the argument for we should let Iran go nuclear when they have terrorist cells they've been spending Decades embedding in the West. 0.93

00:32:31.000 Does that seem like a great idea to you?

00:32:33.000 Apparently, it seems like a great idea to some.

00:32:35.000 It's kind of astonishing.

00:32:37.000 Even before President Trump ordered U.S. involvement in the strikes, FBI Director Cash Patel increased efforts to surveil potential sleeper agents linked to Hezbollah. 0.66

00:32:45.000 This is yet another reason why leaving a wide open southern border is one of the dumbest things you could possibly do.

00:32:50.000 And Joe Biden did that for years on end, facilitating the entry of people who hate America and want American citizens dead. 0.63

00:32:56.000 This is why you have to have a closed border, another big win for President Trump.

00:32:59.000 But remember, the Iranian government has been sponsoring and subsidizing terrorism against Western citizens and Americans for a very, very long time.

00:33:08.000 In fact, contra some major pseudo-conservative commentators, quote, the Iranian government ordered an operative to assassinate Donald Trump before the 2024 election, Manhattan federal prosecutors said Friday.

00:33:18.000 This is the latest in a string of assassination plots directed at the former and future president in recent months.

00:33:23.000 This is according to Politico, November 8th, 2024.

00:33:26.000 Prosecutors charge Farhad Shakari with murder for hire and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

00:33:32.000 He is believed to be in Iran and remains at large, prosecutors said.

00:33:35.000 In addition to the plot to kill Trump, Shakeri and two other men, Carlisle Rivera and Jonathan Loadholt, were charged with a separate attempted murder for hire scheme targeting a U.S. citizen of Iranian origin who has publicly opposed the Iranian government.

00:33:47.000 And of course, people have been attacked on American soil.

00:33:49.000 There was a murder for hire plot that Iran was engaged in against former Trump official John Bolton.

00:33:55.000 There was the attack on Salman Rushdie.

00:33:58.000 That was a decades-long fatwa against the author of the Satanic Verses, who ended up being stabbed on American soil in the eye.

00:34:06.000 So Iran has a very long memory and a lot of terrorists all over the place. 0.97

00:34:09.000 The United States, of course, is going to be on high alert for this.

00:34:11.000 Those terror threats existed before.

00:34:13.000 Those terror alerts exist after.

00:34:15.000 The president of the United States has made quite clear that if the Iranians attempt something like this, that does put the life of Ayatollah Khomeini in danger.

00:34:21.000 The reports today suggest that he is hiding in a bunker, that he does not have access to the outside world, and that he is being hand-fed non-electronic messages because he is afraid of electronic surveillance at this point.

00:34:32.000 Meanwhile, the Iranians are threatening the closure of the Straits of Hormuz. 0.97

00:34:37.000 As I mentioned yesterday on our special episode of the show, this is presumably one of the dumbest things they could possibly do. 1.00

00:34:43.000 Seriously and unbelievably stupid thing. 1.00

00:34:45.000 First of all, it will spike the price of oil. 0.99

00:34:47.000 It'll spike the price of oil in kind of fairly short term, because the reality is that Middle Eastern oil supply, while it is important to global oil prices, that does not mean that the average price of oil across the globe is going to be the spot price in the United States.

00:35:03.000 So prices of oil in Asia are going to soar.

00:35:05.000 Prices in the United States will go up somewhat.

00:35:07.000 Okay, that's the actual way this works.

00:35:09.000 In the same way that when you have an oil price spike in the United States, the price of oil radically jumps in California and jumps somewhat in, say, Alabama.

00:35:17.000 That's true globally speaking as well.

00:35:18.000 When there's an oil spike in which the area that the oil is moving through goes to Asia, obviously it's going to affect Asia significantly more than it affects the United States.

00:35:28.000 It doesn't mean that it doesn't have any impact.

00:35:30.000 It does mean that in the mid to long term, it hurts the Asian countries, particularly China, which is the number one recipient of Iranian oil.

00:35:36.000 50% of all Iranian oil goes to China.

00:35:39.000 It affects the Chinese way worse than it affects anyone else. 0.98

00:35:43.000 This is a point that the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is making.

00:35:45.000 He's like, listen, if Iran wants to shut the Straits of Hormuz, maybe China should bomb their fleet.

00:35:50.000 Do you expect Iran to move to close the Strait of Hormuz to try to disrupt oil transportation across the world?

00:36:01.000 Well, I encourage the Chinese government in Beijing to call them about that because they heavily depend on the Straits of Hormuz for their oil.

00:36:07.000 If they do that, it'll be another terrible mistake.

00:36:09.000 It's economic suicide for them if they do it.

00:36:12.000 And we retain options to deal with that.

00:36:14.000 But other countries should be looking at that as well.

00:36:15.000 It would hurt other countries' economies a lot worse than ours.

00:36:18.000 It would be, I think, a massive escalation that would merit a response, not just by us, but from others.

00:36:24.000 So, look, they're going to say what they need to say.

00:36:28.000 You know, these are the things that need to happen for their own internal politics and so forth.

00:36:32.000 But in the end, we're going to judge them by the actions that they take moving forward.

00:36:37.000 We had three objectives.

00:36:39.000 We struck those three objectives with decisive force.

00:36:42.000 And that was the point of this mission.

00:36:44.000 And that's what we achieved.

00:36:45.000 What happens next will depend on what they do.

00:36:47.000 They want to negotiate.

00:36:48.000 We're ready to negotiate.

00:36:49.000 They want to get cute and do things that are dangerous.

00:36:52.000 We have responses available that are devastating.

00:36:55.000 Now, again, this is a major difference from the Obama era.

00:36:58.000 I'd just like to remind you that when Barack Obama was president, there was an actual picture of American sailors on their knees with their hands behind their head with the Iranians having picked them up in these waters.

00:37:10.000 Now, the idea is if you guys shut the Straits of Hormuz, well, maybe you'd like to see your ships at the bottom of the Straits of Hormuz.

00:37:18.000 I asked our sponsors over at Perplexity about the size of the Iranian Navy.

00:37:22.000 Quote, the Iranian Navy consists of more than 100 vessels, including 19 to 27 submarines.

00:37:28.000 It is ranked 37th globally, and it specializes in asymmetric warfare and coastal defense, particularly in the Straits of Hormuz.

00:37:37.000 However, the feasibility for Israel simply destroying the entire Navy in the Strait is significant.

00:37:45.000 Degraded Iranian air defenses allow the IAF aircraft to operate with reduced risk.

00:37:49.000 Real-time intelligence and precision munitions could target larger ships like frigates and submarines at port or in transit.

00:37:55.000 U.S. naval support could further constrain Iranian movements.

00:37:58.000 And by the way, the entire world has an interest in the Strait of Hormuz not being closed.

00:38:02.000 So if the Iranians choose to move in that direction, good luck to them. 1.00

00:38:05.000 One of the dumbest strategic decisions they could make at this point. 0.95

00:38:08.000 The problem for the Iranians is effectively they are boxed in. 0.99

00:38:10.000 If they decide to activate their proxy groups to attack American bases around the Middle East, President Trump will probably say to the Israelis, go ahead and kill Khomeini.

00:38:19.000 If they decide to shut the Straits of Hormuz, there's a good shot that their Navy ends up at the bottom of the Straits of Hormuz. 0.77

00:38:24.000 The best move for them at this point, given the fact they have nothing with which to negotiate anymore, the best possibility for them is to negotiate, actually, is to come forward to the United States and say, listen, our nuclear program is gone.

00:38:36.000 Leave us alone.

00:38:37.000 Weapons down.

00:38:38.000 That would be the smart thing for them to do.

00:38:40.000 All the way up to this point, they've not done the smart thing, so it'll be interesting to see what they do next.

00:38:44.000 But they don't have tons of options.

00:38:46.000 Now, again, that doesn't mean that they can't provide danger to human beings.

00:38:50.000 They certainly can participate in terrorist attacks designed to create fear and dissension.

00:38:55.000 They certainly could attack Americans in the Middle East at military bases, Although the idea that they're going to expend widespread ballistic missiles on American bases, I think wildly overestimates their capacity, given the fact that Israel has been systematically destroying all of their missile launchers for nine days at this point.

00:39:13.000 With that said, Iran is in horrifyingly bad position geopolitically.

00:39:17.000 Militarily, they have been devastated by both the Israelis and the American strikes.

00:39:21.000 Already coming up, Professor Victor Davis-Hansen joins us to put what President Trump did in historic context first.

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00:40:27.000 Joining us online is Jonathan Chandzer, Executive Director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former terror finance analyst at the U.S. Treasury Department.

00:40:34.000 Jonathan, thanks so much for taking the time.

00:40:35.000 Really appreciate it.

00:40:37.000 Pleasure.

00:40:37.000 Good to be with you.

00:40:39.000 So first of all, my understanding is that you were in Israel for a large part of this conflict, that you somehow got out.

00:40:43.000 So how exactly did you get out of Israel in the middle of all this?

00:40:46.000 Sure.

00:40:47.000 Well, we actually landed, our group landed.

00:40:49.000 We had 18 journalists.

00:40:50.000 They landed the day that the conflict began.

00:40:54.000 I actually was meeting with a defense, Ministry of Defense official, and the guy told me that it was a tense time, but Phoebe's son was getting married in a couple of days.

00:41:04.000 So conflict would be unlikely.

00:41:06.000 Well, sure enough, eight hours later, the sirens start going off.

00:41:09.000 And initially, we tried to see if there was a way out through the airport.

00:41:14.000 That was not happening because the airspace had been closed off.

00:41:18.000 So after about four days, as we started realizing that, you know, there was no way that we were going to have any programming with this group, we made our way to the Allenby Bridge at the border with Jordan, crossed over, and from there, we made our way to Greece.

00:41:33.000 But there was a lot of chaos, and a lot of people were saying that maybe Jordan wasn't the best place to get out.

00:41:40.000 Ultimately, I think it was the right choice, given that we had 18 people with us, and most of them wanted nothing to do with these ballistic missiles that were raining down on the country.

00:41:51.000 So now let's talk about what exactly happened over the course of the last couple of weeks, because it really is astonishing.

00:41:55.000 So you've obviously been following the conflict in Iran and Israel extraordinarily closely for a very long time.

00:42:01.000 October 7th was effectively an operation by an Iranian proxy.

00:42:05.000 Khizbollah was an Iranian proxy.

00:42:06.000 The Houthis are an Iranian proxy.

00:42:09.000 The Assad regime was working hand in glove with the Iranians. 1.00

00:42:12.000 If anyone had said on October 7th, 2023, that a year and a half later the Hamasniks would be essentially flat on their backs, Khizbalah would be so eviscerated that Assad would fall in Syria and Khizbollah would tell the Iranians, I'm sorry, guys, you're on your own, and that Israel would be flying open sorties for weeks on end above Iranian airspace. 0.88

00:42:31.000 Everyone would have thought you were nuts.

00:42:33.000 If you would have said that President Trump would have been re-elected and then he would have made what I think is the most courageous decision I've ever seen a president make in my lifetime.

00:42:40.000 I think that you'd have been hard pressed to find a lot of takers on those bets.

00:42:43.000 Oh, this was, I mean, absolutely not on my bingo card.

00:42:47.000 Everybody at work right now keeps telling me I need to stop talking about my bingo card because there was nothing on it for the last year and a half.

00:42:54.000 But yeah, when you look back at 10-7, you know, and Israel was flat on its back in complete shock and had to figure out how to start fighting back, first in Gaza, then in Lebanon, then had to start dealing with the Houthi missiles, had to deal with the Shiite militias out of Iraq and Syria.

00:43:11.000 And somehow they were able to neutralize all of these fronts.

00:43:15.000 But I do think that the big moment came with the Grim Beaper operation, as they call it.

00:43:22.000 That was a turning point in the war because that essentially knocked out the suppressing fire that Iran was going to have if and when it finally came time for the Israelis to take out the nuclear program. 0.78

00:43:35.000 That was always the fear.

00:43:36.000 Every scenario that I had ever heard over the last 15, 20 years was that if Israel had to go it alone and to take out the nuclear program, that it was going to be Hezbollah with its 150,000, 180,000 missiles and rockets and drones that were just going to hammer the Israelis while they were trying to get out of their own airspace.

00:43:56.000 Well, when that all went down back in October of last year, and then the Israelis took out the air defenses of the regime last year, I was thinking, this is it, folks. 0.97

00:44:07.000 And then you had the Biden administration pump the brakes.

00:44:09.000 The Biden administration essentially told the Israelis, you cannot go another step further.

00:44:14.000 Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

00:44:17.000 And they sat there knowing that Hezbollah was eviscerated, knowing that the air defenses were out.

00:44:23.000 And it was only until Donald Trump came in that I think the planning truly began for this operation.

00:44:30.000 And you heard it from the president last night after he made the announcement about these strikes in the three different nuclear sites across Iran, that the cooperation that he had with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, was second to none, that they worked closely all the way through.

00:44:48.000 Don't forget that the Israelis started attacking on day 61 after that 60-day deadline that the president had given the Iranians. 0.64

00:44:57.000 And then he waited.

00:44:58.000 He assessed what kind of danger there would be to the United States.

00:45:02.000 He wanted to assess, I think, how much the Israelis had knocked out over the previous nine days.

00:45:08.000 And it, I think, was a compelling case that it was time to go in, drop the hammer, and finish this thing off.

00:45:14.000 And I'll just say one last word.

00:45:16.000 It's not over, right?

00:45:18.000 I mean, the Islamic Republic is still looking to land some blows at the Israelis, maybe with the United States as well. 0.53

00:45:25.000 We're obviously hearing about the Strait of Hormuz being shut down.

00:45:29.000 This is a wounded animal here, and it is dangerous that we're dealing with this regime right now.

00:45:34.000 But when I look across the region, all the proxies, the power that this regime once had, I just can't see it surviving.

00:45:43.000 And one of the things that's so astonishing here: number one, President Trump, all the people who misinterpreted him on the left and on the right this whole way, so many people on the horseshoe theory left and the horseshoe theory right who are assuming that he was some sort of radical isolationist who thought that America's role in the world had to be brought to a close, that the end of the American empire was going to happen under President Trump rather than the restoration of American greatness on the world stage.

00:46:06.000 And President Trump has been absolutely 100% clear about his agenda with Iran since 2011 and before.

00:46:12.000 No Iranian nuclear weapon.

00:46:14.000 The idea that he was ever going to get us into an Iraq-style, full-scale occupation of Iran was fabulous nonsense. 0.91

00:46:19.000 The idea that this was going to somehow result in World War III was absolute fantasist garbage promoted by people with some form of ulterior agenda that I can't quite discern.

00:46:28.000 Because the fact of the matter is, there are no allies for Iran that are coming to the table. 0.87

00:46:32.000 China is not coming to the table. 0.94

00:46:33.000 Russia is not coming to the table. 0.55

00:46:35.000 Hezbollah is sitting there, defenestrated, crying to itself because it can't come to the table. 0.58

00:46:39.000 There's no one left for Iran to rely upon. 1.00

00:46:42.000 And this is why, as you say, the Iranian regime is in real trouble right now.

00:46:45.000 Now, that's not a goal of the war here.

00:46:47.000 The goal of the war for President Trump is not to get rid of the Ayatollahs or involve himself in regime change. 0.66

00:46:52.000 Whatever comes next is up to the Iranian people. 1.00

00:46:54.000 But President Trump made a promise.

00:46:55.000 He kept his promise.

00:46:56.000 And in doing so, he's shown, number one, unbelievable spine, not just to the left and to the media, but to people inside his own party who are lying that they controlled the movement that he built, who are lying about his agenda and what he does for a living and what his agenda was, and who are lying all the way through to their own audiences about what was likely to happen if he actually did it.

00:47:14.000 You know, I got to say, I agree 100% with everything that you just said.

00:47:18.000 But what really strikes me about all of this is the way in which the MAGA movement, Donald Trump's foreign policy, it's like a Rorschach test, right?

00:47:28.000 Everybody looks at him and they think that they know what it is that he is trying to achieve.

00:47:34.000 I mean, they project their own needs on this man.

00:47:36.000 And part of this has to do with the fact that there is not a Trump doctrine.

00:47:40.000 It's not spelled out.

00:47:41.000 It's not written anywhere what Donald Trump wants to do in the Middle East.

00:47:45.000 This has been, he has maintained maximum flexibility.

00:47:49.000 He has kept all of America's enemies off guard.

00:47:52.000 This is sort of the way that he operates.

00:47:54.000 It drives the left crazy.

00:47:56.000 And by the way, it's starting to drive the right crazy a little bit too as we watch this, as you call it, the horseshoe left and horseshoe right.

00:48:03.000 They're frustrated.

00:48:04.000 But I've got to say that this is remarkably consistent with what we saw in the previous administration.

00:48:09.000 He started it all by trying to push for the Abraham Accords, for a different kind of reality in the Middle East. 0.96

00:48:17.000 And I have to say that if he finishes this off with the Israelis in tandem with the Israelis, the Israelis come out looking stronger now than they ever have with the full backing of the United States. 0.57

00:48:28.000 I've got to say, it does feel like he has set the table now for the Saudis to come back and normalize with Israel.

00:48:36.000 And then once the Saudis do it, who knows what happens after that. 0.99

00:48:39.000 But this, I've got to say, it is more consistent with what Donald Trump did in his previous term than I think anybody has really acknowledged up until this point.

00:48:50.000 And Jonathan, I think that it helps transform President Trump from a person who clearly was a historic figure to a world historic figure, because what we are watching right now is the reshaping of an entire region of the world.

00:48:59.000 I mean, you mentioned the Middle East.

00:49:01.000 The fact is that Israel went from, as you say, prone on its back to a full-scale regional power.

00:49:05.000 Now, it probably already was, but the tiger had been poked, but it had never really awoken.

00:49:10.000 And as Victor Davis Hansen, another guest on the program recently, has said, you know, the sort of idea that you poke a tiger, a democratic tiger, and it gets up and it roars, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.

00:49:21.000 Israel is the only Western power in the Middle East.

00:49:23.000 And Israel flexing right now a country of 10 million people, 2 million of whom are Arabs and 2 million of whom are Haredim, ultra-Orthodox, is really an astonishing thing.

00:49:32.000 And what it means for the future of the region is that this region follows the strong horse.

00:49:36.000 If Israel is the strong horse, then it's almost impossible with American backing to see a situation in which the Saudis don't look to get into some sort of Abraham Accords arrangement with the Israelis as soon as some off-ramp can be found in the Gaza Strip. 0.82

00:49:49.000 And Hamas no longer has its chief sponsor behind it in the form of Iran.

00:49:53.000 So it looks like that's going to happen in the near future as well.

00:49:55.000 So there's that in the Middle East.

00:49:57.000 And then meanwhile, President Trump has sent a ringing message to the Chinese that if they try something in Taiwan, they don't know what's going to happen.

00:50:03.000 The Chinese, I think, three months ago, two months ago, probably thought if we go for Taiwan, there's at least a 60-40 shot that the United States does nothing, that the United States sits there, does a few economic sanctions and lets it go.

00:50:14.000 Now the Chinese can't be quite so sure because President Trump has made clear that if he makes a threat of use of force, there is no taco.

00:50:21.000 I mean, that threat of military force is quite real.

00:50:24.000 It is quite real.

00:50:25.000 And I do think that there is something astounding about what he's just done.

00:50:30.000 I think just by using the B2, by using the MOP, demonstrating the power that we have, I think was an astounding message.

00:50:38.000 And you see the crickets coming out of the Kremlin right now.

00:50:41.000 You see the crickets out of the CCP.

00:50:43.000 North Korea hasn't peaked. 0.92

00:50:45.000 So the whole crank construct seems to be collapsing, right?

00:50:48.000 It was a four-legged stool.

00:50:50.000 It looks like one of these legs has been kicked out.

00:50:53.000 Now, I got to say, we need to see this job finished.

00:50:57.000 And I do think that that's going to be crucial here.

00:50:59.000 The U.S. has played an enormous role, but now I do get a sense that it is up to the Israelis to finish this. 0.98

00:51:06.000 Look, the Israelis have some tough days ahead of them right now.

00:51:09.000 They are going to have to hunt down all of those missile launchers and missiles and all the weapons that the Iranians still have. 1.00

00:51:17.000 And they're going to have to knock them out because the regime is going to try to saturate Israel's airspace. 0.57

00:51:23.000 And they're going to try to do more damage on their way out.

00:51:26.000 This sort of feels like martyrdom, right?

00:51:28.000 And that is the ideology of this Shiite regime, this Islamic revolution.

00:51:33.000 And it doesn't look like they're ready to capitulate.

00:51:36.000 There's still a chance, but I do think that the Israelis may have some tough days ahead.

00:51:40.000 They're going to have to finish this.

00:51:43.000 And that, I think, is the number one thing right now for the United States and for Israel.

00:51:48.000 If Israel comes out with having defeated Iran with a little bit of American help, this is going to set the stage for what comes next around the region and perhaps even around the world. 0.92

00:52:00.000 So, Jonathan, final question for you.

00:52:02.000 Obviously, you've been watching presidents for a long time.

00:52:04.000 I've been watching presidents for a long time.

00:52:06.000 This was, you know, by all appearances, a really well-calibrated operation by the president of the United States over the course, you say, of decades of actual philosophy and consistency, but also over the course of months and weeks of planning.

00:52:21.000 It did take a tremendous amount of spine.

00:52:22.000 I've been saying that this president has the most solid spine of any president of my lifetime.

00:52:28.000 I don't think it's particularly close, actually.

00:52:30.000 In historic context, what does it mean that the president did what he did this weekend?

00:52:36.000 He's changed the arc of history here.

00:52:38.000 I mean, if this goes the way I think it's going to go, he has removed one of the worst malign actors in Middle East history. 1.00

00:52:48.000 It looks like he's neutered the Islamic Republic. 0.99

00:52:50.000 And you got to remember, this is a regime that's been around since 1979, terrorizing every country in the region.

00:52:57.000 This dark shadow of Iran has been cast over Lebanon and Iraq and Gaza and West Bank and Israel and Jordan and Egypt and on and on it goes. 0.93

00:53:07.000 And right now, the region is looking around and they have seen that their number one enemy, the number one destabilizing factor in the region, is flat on its back and gasping.

00:53:18.000 So again, this is unbelievable.

00:53:21.000 As you say, the spine showed by this president, especially in the face of these neo-isolationists who were pushing him and trying to nudge him in a different direction.

00:53:30.000 I love that he stood up to Tucker Carlson, or should I say Tucker Katarlson?

00:53:35.000 I am unbelievably grateful that he's done that because he's shown everybody literally what happens when you want to make America great again.

00:53:43.000 You've got to stand up for the right principles.

00:53:45.000 He's done that.

00:53:46.000 And I think the rest of the region sees it.

00:53:49.000 And this makes America the strong horse in the region again.

00:53:52.000 And I do think we've got better days ahead.

00:53:55.000 That's Jonathan Chanzer.

00:53:56.000 He's Executive Director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, former terror finance analyst at the U.S. Treasury Department.

00:54:01.000 Jonathan, thanks so much for the time and the analysis.

00:54:04.000 Anytime.

00:54:05.000 Meanwhile, the Republican support is, in fact, pouring in.

00:54:08.000 The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, over the weekend tweeted out: quote, the military operations in Iran should serve as a clear reminder to our adversaries and allies that President Trump means what he says.

00:54:18.000 Yes, the president gave Iran's leader every opportunity to make a deal.

00:54:21.000 Iran refused to commit to a nuclear disarmament agreement.

00:54:23.000 President Trump has been consistent and clear that a nuclear-armed Iran will not be tolerated. 0.98

00:54:28.000 That posture has now been enforced with strength, precision, and clarity.

00:54:31.000 The president's decisive action prevents the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, which chants death to America, from obtaining the most lethal weapon on the planet.

00:54:38.000 This is America first policy in action.

00:54:41.000 God bless our brave men and women in uniform, the most lethal fighting force on the planet.

00:54:44.000 As we pray for their safe return home, may God bless America.

00:54:47.000 By the way, they did safely return home.

00:54:48.000 The video is very cool.

00:54:49.000 You can see the B2s actually flying in to U.S. bases.

00:54:54.000 Amazing, amazing stuff.

00:54:56.000 Here's what the video actually looks like.

00:54:57.000 It is very cool.

00:54:58.000 Look at this thing.

00:55:00.000 Man, these B2 bombers, there's a reason that I bought my son models of the American B2 like years ago.

00:55:06.000 What a cool piece of machinery.

00:55:07.000 And for all those people who said that the B2 was not worth the cost, all I can say is that thing is absolutely badass.

00:55:14.000 That thing flew 37 straight hours.

00:55:17.000 It took off from America and went all the way to Iran and bombed a specific target the size of a washer and then came all the way back. 0.60

00:55:25.000 Unreal.

00:55:27.000 How good is our military?

00:55:28.000 Truly.

00:55:28.000 How unbelievable is the American military?

00:55:30.000 Truly astonishing.

00:55:31.000 Senator John Thune, who of course is the Senate majority leader, he also put out a statement, quote, the regime in Iran, which has committed itself to bringing death to America and wiping Israel off the map, has rejected all diplomatic pathways to peace.

00:55:42.000 The Mullah's misguided pursuit of nuclear weapons must be stopped.

00:55:45.000 As we take action tonight to ensure a nuclear weapon remains out of reach for Iran, I stand with President Trump and pray for the American troops and personnel in harm's way.

00:55:52.000 Senator Ted Cruz also put out a statement, quote, I commend our pilots and service members, our intelligence personnel, President Trump, and his national security staff on tonight's successful and critical operation.

00:56:00.000 The prospect of the Iranian regime acquiring nuclear weapons represents the most acute immediate threat to America and our allies. 0.95

00:56:06.000 When the Ayatollah chants death to America, he means it.

00:56:08.000 And the reason he is building nuclear weapons is because he intends to use them.

00:56:11.000 And again, using nuclear weapons does not necessarily mean blowing up a nuclear weapon in an American city, as you just point out here.

00:56:17.000 It also means using the nuclear weapon to shield all of your terrorist activities because it prevents serious action against your regime when you pursue the growth of terrorism all around the region and the world. 0.68

00:56:29.000 Senator Cruz continues, President Trump has consistently and unequivocally stated that those threats cannot be countered without dismantling the Iranian regime's enrichment capacity.

00:56:36.000 The president and his negotiators spent two months exploring whether the regime would agree to a negotiated settlement that met America's national security needs.

00:56:43.000 At the end of that period, Iranian regime officials declared that instead of agreeing to a deal, they would open a new enrichment facility and install more advanced centrifuges.

00:56:50.000 After that declaration, our Israeli allies launched a preemptive attack against the regime and its nuclear infrastructure, which was enormously successful, but could not disable the nuclear activities at Fordo, an underground enrichment bunker built into a mountain, which was legitimized by the catastrophic Obama-Iran nuclear deal. 0.54

00:57:04.000 As long as Iran was able to access and conduct activities at Fordo, they could still rush to build a nuclear arsenal. 0.92

00:57:09.000 Tonight's actions have gone far in foreclosing that possibility and countering the apocalyptic threat posed by an Iranian nuclear arsenal. 0.99

00:57:16.000 Senator John Fetterman, who of course is a Democrat and has been absolutely stalwart on this issue, astonishingly stalwart on this particular issue, clear-minded.

00:57:25.000 Again, I'm going to praise moral clarity from perhaps the only Democrat in the Senate to actually offer it.

00:57:30.000 And he's been absolutely fantastic on this issue for years at this point, in the face of tremendous opposition from his own party, who's been attempting to almost oust him from a Senate seat that he won because of this.

00:57:41.000 Quote, as I've long maintained, this was the correct move by the president.

00:57:43.000 Iran is the world's leading sponsor of terrorism and cannot have nuclear capabilities.

00:57:47.000 I'm grateful for and salute the finest military in the world.

00:57:51.000 Again, those who are clear-minded are actually spanning the aisle.

00:57:58.000 An ex-Biden aide named Jamie Metzel actually posted on social media, quote, the world will be a better place if Iran's nuclear bomb development capacities have been degraded or destroyed.

00:58:08.000 I am not a fan of many of Donald Trump's actions, but I will speak openly and honestly when he takes bold steps defending America's interests as he did tonight.

00:58:15.000 I served on the National Security Council under President Clinton.

00:58:17.000 I was Joe Biden's deputy staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

00:58:20.000 I voted for Kamala Harris.

00:58:22.000 I've been a vocal critic of many dangerous and undemocratic actions taken by President Trump, but I'm not a blind tribalist and am perfectly comfortable praising President Trump for bold and courageous actions in support of America's core national interests, as he took tonight.

00:58:35.000 Okay.

00:58:37.000 Meanwhile, Mark Levin, who has been a voice of absolute moral clarity and a peace-through strength advocate his entire career, here's what he had to say about President Trump's decision to strike the Fordo nuclear facilities.

00:58:50.000 You're looking at a historic figure.

00:58:52.000 Shouldn't we have a little faith in this man?

00:58:55.000 We have a lot of faith in this man.

00:58:57.000 Shouldn't we have a little faith in the United States military? 1.00

00:59:00.000 We just kicked their ass. 1.00

00:59:03.000 Obviously, Mark happens to be right about that. 0.99

00:59:06.000 Now, I think it is important here to point out what a seminal turning point this is for American foreign policy.

00:59:13.000 For years and years and years, we have been boxed into the idea that every war is the Iraq war.

00:59:18.000 So critics of President Trump of peace through strength, going all the way back to World War II, particularly on the left, but now on the Horseshoe Theory right as well, have suggested that people who advocate for American military action liken everything to the lead up to World War II, to Neville Chamberlain and Munich.

00:59:35.000 Okay, not everything is World War II, obviously.

00:59:37.000 Some things are different than other things.

00:59:39.000 But also, not every war is the Iraq war.

00:59:41.000 And you will notice that the vast bevy of people who keep complaining about President Trump's strike on the Iranian nuclear facilities keep comparing this to Iraq, which is crazy.

00:59:51.000 I'm sorry, it was always crazy.

00:59:53.000 These people who keep saying that a one-off strike on a nuclear facility, which is significantly more like killing Osama bin Laden or killing Qasem Soleimani or killing Anwar al-Aliki, that all of that is somehow akin to the Iraq War, a full-scale hundreds of thousands of troops ground invasion of a country in the Middle East, followed by a 20-year effort to rebuild the country and remold the government.

01:00:18.000 Honestly, I think you have to be empty-headed to make that comparison, but there is an Iraq war syndrome that has set in in the American body politic that suggests that every military action is like the Iraq War.

01:00:26.000 It's very much like the Vietnam War syndrome that set in after the end of the Vietnam War, when every military action was supposed to be the thing that America did in Vietnam.

01:00:35.000 And it took Ronald Reagan breaking the Soviet Union in order for that to end.

01:00:38.000 And it really took George H.W. Bush in the first Gulf War in order for that to end.

01:00:43.000 The lesson here is that victory is a possibility.

01:00:46.000 Victory can be achieved if the commitment is clear and if the goal is defined.

01:00:53.000 President Trump had a goal.

01:00:55.000 He defined that goal.

01:00:56.000 He made a commitment to that goal.

01:00:58.000 And then he pursued an action in pursuit of that goal.

01:01:02.000 The lesson of Vietnam and Iraq is not that military power or the threat of its use by the United States is bad, or even worse, that the United States itself is bad, which is an argument that, again, is being made all the time by the horseshoe theory left and the horseshoe theory right.

01:01:15.000 The same people who are suggesting that President Trump is wrong to bomb the nuclear facilities are people who suggest that the United States was wrong to use the A-bomb to end World War II or that America has been historically evil over the course of decades.

01:01:28.000 The Howard Zinn left and the Tucker Carlson right, they shake hands on this particular prospect, on this perspective.

01:01:35.000 That perspective is wrong.

01:01:37.000 It is not just wrong.

01:01:38.000 It is a nefariously bad perspective that damages America.

01:01:42.000 The world is better off for American power properly used.

01:01:46.000 Again, properly used.

01:01:47.000 We can misuse our power.

01:01:49.000 Anybody can misuse their power.

01:01:51.000 We're the most powerful country in the history of the world with the most powerful military in the history of the world.

01:01:55.000 But when you use your power properly, you can actually effectuate good things happening.

01:02:01.000 John Spencer, who of course teaches at the Urban Warfare Institute, he's the executive director of the Urban Warfare Institute, teaches at West Point as well.

01:02:09.000 He has a piece over at X.com talking about this.

01:02:12.000 Quote, we're hearing it again from the random comedian turned geopolitical analyst, the podcast influencer, the backseat foreign policy expert.

01:02:18.000 Remember Iraq, they say, forever war, as if that one phrase ends the conversation.

01:02:22.000 The uninformed reflex is to think of years of troop deployments, endless insurgencies, wasted lives, and strategic quagmires.

01:02:28.000 The instinct is understandable, but it risks misreading the moment we are in because Iran is not Iraq.

01:02:31.000 It is not Afghanistan.

01:02:32.000 And this is not the same war.

01:02:34.000 So first of all, he's being more charitable than I will be.

01:02:36.000 I do not think it is understandable.

01:02:37.000 President Trump is not George W. Bush.

01:02:40.000 He ran against George W. Bush's foreign policy.

01:02:43.000 President Trump has never engaged in a long-term nation building project, nor will he.

01:02:48.000 He defined this mission specifically.

01:02:50.000 I do not actually think that the quagmire folks are saying something understandable.

01:02:53.000 I think they are saying something dishonest.

01:02:55.000 I think they are lying to you.

01:02:57.000 In other words, this is not something that President Trump wants to sink us into.

01:03:02.000 As John Spencer says, Israel and the United States are not talking about regime change.

01:03:06.000 That is not the mission.

01:03:06.000 This is the point I was making at the beginning of the show.

01:03:08.000 When Trump says maybe there will be regime change in Iran, he means from the Iranian people. 0.98

01:03:12.000 That's the same thing that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said.

01:03:15.000 Do you think Netanyahu, from a country of 9.7 million people, 2 million of whom are Arabs and 2 million of whom are ultra-Orthodox, that that country, that tiny country, is going to deploy hundreds of thousands of troops to Iran to engage in nation building?

01:03:26.000 Do you think the United States is going to do that?

01:03:29.000 I saw a tweet the other night saying, you know, maybe there will be nation building when Israel decides they'll take in as many refugees from Iran as the United States and Europe.

01:03:38.000 So first of all, I have a great idea.

01:03:40.000 How about no refugees from Iran?

01:03:41.000 How about that?

01:03:41.000 How about everyone just stays in Iran?

01:03:42.000 And if they want to overthrow their regime, they overthrow their regime.

01:03:46.000 How about that?

01:03:47.000 That seems like the best possible solution.

01:03:49.000 And again, if they don't overthrow their regime, that's their prerogative.

01:03:53.000 That does not mean that you allow that regime to go nuclear, obviously.

01:03:57.000 John Spencer says, many invoke Iraq as a cautionary tale.

01:04:00.000 I was on the ground as an American soldier sent on missions to find weapons of mass destruction.

01:04:04.000 They were not there.

01:04:05.000 The United States invaded Iraq based on intelligence assessments that turned out to be catastrophically wrong.

01:04:09.000 There were no active WMD programs, yet that claim became the justification for war.

01:04:13.000 But the greatest failure came after Baghdad fell.

01:04:16.000 The mission shifted from regime removal to vague, open-ended nation building with no clear plan and no unified political strategy.

01:04:22.000 Then came one of the most damaging decisions in modern U.S. history.

01:04:25.000 The Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded the entire Iraqi military, sending hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers home without jobs, income, or direction.

01:04:32.000 At the same time, a sweeping debatification policy purged virtually every experienced civil servant from government, not for war crimes or corruption, but for their affiliation with the ruling party they had often joined just to survive professionally.

01:04:43.000 Those moves collapsed Iraq's governing institutions overnight and left a vacuum that was immediately filled by chaos, insurgency, and extremist groups.

01:04:49.000 The failure was not in the use of force, but in what came after, a rushed deconstruction of a functioning state with no viable plan to rebuild it.

01:04:57.000 This is not the case with Iran.

01:04:59.000 The IAEA Has hard data, not vague suspicion.

01:05:01.000 It has verified uranium enriched to 83.7%.

01:05:04.000 It has documented missing stockpiles and hidden facilities.

01:05:06.000 The only historical comparison is not Iraq in 2003, but Iraq in 1981, when Israel destroyed the Osirak reactor before Saddam could complete his program.

01:05:15.000 The world later saw that act for what it was, a necessary preemptive strike that likely prevented a future disaster.

01:05:20.000 The situation with Iran today is even more urgent.

01:05:23.000 The United States is not at war with Iran, but it did act forcefully and with purpose when the Iranian regime crossed every diplomatic and nuclear red line.

01:05:30.000 This is not a prelude to war.

01:05:31.000 It was a deliberate proportional military action to send a clear signal.

01:05:34.000 Iran's path to a nuclear bomb will not be tolerated, not diplomatically, not politically, not militarily. 0.85

01:05:39.000 This was not a hypothetical threat.

01:05:41.000 It was real, immediate, and accelerating.

01:05:45.000 John Spencer says, this all began with Iran's continued defiance of international nuclear agreements and its rapid acceleration toward a weapon.

01:05:52.000 Waiting did not reduce the threat.

01:05:53.000 It allowed it to harden.

01:05:54.000 Every day of delay gave Iran more time to disperse its programs, develop more advanced delivery systems, and raise the cost of future action. 0.61

01:06:01.000 So for those shouting, Iraq or Afghanistan from the sidelines, I hear you. 1.00

01:06:04.000 I fought in Iraq.

01:06:04.000 I've studied these wars my entire adult life, but you are applying the wrong history to the wrong context.

01:06:08.000 This is not a forever war.

01:06:09.000 It's not occupation.

01:06:10.000 It's not regime change.

01:06:12.000 This is preemption.

01:06:13.000 It is a decisive action to prevent the single most destabilizing development in the region, a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran. 0.98

01:06:20.000 That, of course, is exactly right.

01:06:21.000 So this all raises a question.

01:06:23.000 What exactly is the opposition?

01:06:25.000 What is the opposition here?

01:06:26.000 Truly.

01:06:27.000 What is the steel man case against?

01:06:29.000 So you can basically make three cases against.

01:06:32.000 One is constitutional.

01:06:34.000 One is pragmatic.

01:06:35.000 And the third is ideological.

01:06:37.000 I think there are a lot of people who are making the constitutional and pragmatic arguments who really secretly want to make the ideological argument and very often do.

01:06:44.000 The ideological argument is that America is bad, that when America involves itself in foreign policy, that we are doing something evil and immoral, that our enemies, our geopolitical opponents, never have their own philosophy or their own interests.

01:06:57.000 They are always, in every case, driven by American blowback.

01:07:01.000 That we do something, that's the only reason people are bad.

01:07:03.000 The only reason people in the world are bad is because America did a bad thing to them and then they get bad. 0.99

01:07:07.000 That, of course, is ignorant. 1.00

01:07:09.000 It is stupid. 1.00

01:07:10.000 It is wrong. 1.00

01:07:11.000 Civilizations have different interests.

01:07:12.000 Countries have different interests.

01:07:14.000 Those countries are driven by interests that are not always about America.

01:07:18.000 Iran pursued regional domination in spite of what America was doing, not because America was a threat to Iran.

01:07:24.000 Iran decided that it wanted to obliterate Israel, that it wanted to wipe Saudi, by the way, from the map, that it wanted to take control of Yemen, not because of America, because that is the Iranian goal. 0.76

01:07:35.000 Russia is invading Ukraine because that has been their long-standing policy, not because Ukraine was moving in a more pro-America direction.

01:07:43.000 Russia decided they wanted to invade Ukraine because it has been Russian policy since the 1990s to reunify with Ukraine or at least turn it into a proxy regime.

01:07:51.000 Countries have their own rationales.

01:07:54.000 That ideological case, again, a Howard's in America hating first case, has been adopted by many on the horseshoe theory, right?

01:08:02.000 And there are many people who are sort of masquerading as constitutionalists who are interested in the constitutionality of what Trump is doing or who are deeply worried about the pragmatic effects of this, who were not worried a few years ago when President Trump killed Qasem Soleimani and who didn't seem particularly worried five minutes ago before this all happened when Iran had terror cells throughout the West. 0.67

01:08:26.000 But now they're very, very worried.

01:08:28.000 So again, people's motivations are their own.

01:08:30.000 I think that people's motivations sometimes are clear from many of the statements they've made about American history and American foreign policy and whom they consider to be sources on these things.

01:08:40.000 However, let's steel man the case.

01:08:42.000 Okay, so Thomas Massey, the congressman from Kentucky, he put out a statement, quote, this is not constitutional.

01:08:50.000 Now, again, Thomas Massey is basically Ron Paul.

01:08:53.000 Ron Paul is a congressman from Texas, who, again, I agreed on on many things when it came to, for example, government spending and the expansion of the federal government.

01:09:00.000 And when it came to foreign policy, he was basically an anti-Israel isolationist.

01:09:04.000 Thomas Massey is the same thing, effectively speaking.

01:09:08.000 So Thomas Massey said it's not constitutional.

01:09:11.000 President Trump, of course, responded.

01:09:13.000 He said, Congressman Thomas Massey of Kentucky is not MAGA, even though he likes to say he is.

01:09:17.000 Actually, MAGA doesn't want him, doesn't know him, doesn't respect him.

01:09:20.000 He's a negative force who almost always votes no, no matter how good something may be.

01:09:23.000 He's a simple-minded grandstander who thinks it's good politics for Iran to have the highest level nuclear weapon while at the same time yelling death to America at every chance they get.

01:09:31.000 Iran has killed and maimed thousands of Americans, even took over the American embassy in Tehran under the Carter administration.

01:09:37.000 We had a spectacular military success yesterday, taking the bomb right out of their hands, and they would use it if they could.

01:09:42.000 But as usual, and despite all of the praise and accolades received, this lightweight congressman is against what was so brilliantly achieved last night in Iran.

01:09:48.000 Massey is weak, ineffective, and votes no on virtually everything put before him, Rand Paul Jr., no matter how good something may be.

01:09:54.000 He is disrespectful to our great military and all they stand for, not even acknowledging their brilliance and bravery in yesterday's attack, which was a total and complete win. 0.69

01:10:02.000 And then he continues to attack him, suggesting MAGA should drop this loser, Tom Massey, like the plague, and that he's going to put significant efforts into primarying Thomas Massey.

01:10:11.000 Of course, Massey is joined in his supposedly constitutional objections by Representative Rocana of California.

01:10:18.000 He says Trump struck around without any authorization of Congress.

01:10:22.000 We need to immediately return to D.C. and vote on Representative Thomas Massey and my war powers resolution to prevent America from being dragged into another endless Middle East war that is joined as well by AOC. 0.75

01:10:31.000 So first of all, let's talk about this constitutional point.

01:10:33.000 This idea that the War Powers Act somehow prevents the president of the United States from engaging in a one-off strike.

01:10:38.000 It's absolute sheer nonsense.

01:10:40.000 It is not true.

01:10:41.000 First of all, there is serious doubt as to whether the War Powers Act, the War Powers Resolution passed by Congress in 1973, is even constitutional.

01:10:48.000 It may, in fact, violate the Article II prerogatives of the President of the United States.

01:10:53.000 Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution says, quote, the president shall be commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States and of the militia of the several states.

01:11:01.000 So again, he is commander-in-chief.

01:11:03.000 Only Congress has the power to declare war under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11. But did we declare war against Iran? 0.82

01:11:10.000 Is there a war against Iran?

01:11:12.000 So first of all, one-off airstrikes do not mean a full-scale war against a country.

01:11:17.000 They don't.

01:11:18.000 If that's true, then we've been at war many, many, many, many times since World War II, all across the globe.

01:11:25.000 But that is not what war constitutes.

01:11:27.000 The Supreme Court has said so.

01:11:30.000 The war powers resolution requires, quote, in the absence of a declaration of war, the president report to Congress within 48 hours after introducing U.S. military forces into hostilities, which must end within 60 days unless Congress permits otherwise.

01:11:42.000 Now, there's only one problem.

01:11:44.000 Do you think the United States is engaging in 60 days of on-the-ground hostilities with Iran?

01:11:49.000 We barely engaged in 37 hours of hostilities with Iran.

01:11:53.000 Does this amount to a war powers resolution violation that is quote unquote unconstitutional?

01:11:59.000 Truly, like one-off airstrikes, done in the immediate interest of the United States.

01:12:04.000 And it was immediate because apparently the United States was coordinating with Israel to open the airspace so as to provide zero threat for the B-2 bombers we were flying in.

01:12:12.000 So it's an immediate opportunity.

01:12:13.000 President Trump took it, and now he's done.

01:12:16.000 That is what he has said. 0.82

01:12:18.000 As far as the notion that there is a violation of the War Powers Act right here, that is really, really silly.

01:12:25.000 According to the Congressional Research Services, presidents have taken a broader view of the commander-in-chief power to use military force abroad.

01:12:31.000 They have variously asserted sources of authority and other statutes that do not specifically cite the War Powers Resolution.

01:12:38.000 There are many times in the past that we have passed authorizations for use of military force.

01:12:43.000 The first AUMF was passed by Congress in 1798 during a quasi-war with France.

01:12:48.000 We did not declare war against Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1991.

01:12:52.000 We had an AUMF.

01:12:53.000 We had one in 2002 with regard to Iraq.

01:12:56.000 We had one, of course, with regard to Afghanistan.

01:12:59.000 In 2017, President Trump ordered missile strikes against Syria after a chemical warfare attack.

01:13:05.000 And that was, of course, felt permissible by the courts under that 2002 AUMF.

01:13:11.000 Biden also cited the AUMF in 2002.

01:13:15.000 And the same Article II power is asserted in taking military actions against Iran-backed militant groups in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and the Red Sea.

01:13:23.000 I don't remember many of these congressmen sounding off about all of this at the time.

01:13:27.000 So the constitutional objections here, effectively non-existent.

01:13:32.000 Okay, then there is the pragmatic perspective.

01:13:35.000 These are people who suggest that the blowback is going to be the real problem.

01:13:38.000 And here you have people ranging from Marjorie Taylor Greene, that great intellectual like from Georgia, quote, let us join together and pray for the safety of our U.S. troops and Americans in the Middle East, of course.

01:13:49.000 Let us pray we are not attacked by terrorists on our homeland after our border was opened for the past four years and over 2 million gotaways came in.

01:13:54.000 Of course, let us pray for peace.

01:13:56.000 But of course, the idea here is that if there is a terrorist attack, that is somehow President Trump's fault for getting rid of Iran's nuclear program.

01:14:02.000 Here is the problem.

01:14:03.000 Iran has been pursuing terror attacks, including, again, the attempted assassination of the current president of the United States for decades at this point.

01:14:11.000 They have planted terror cells all throughout the world.

01:14:14.000 If the idea is that DAP buys Iran impunity, Iran can now act with complete impunity all over the globe, pursue nuclear weapons willy-nilly, and that somehow that means you can't do anything about it, then what is the purpose of American foreign policy?

01:14:28.000 What is the purpose?

01:14:29.000 Again, I'm not saying there's no risk that attends to taking action.

01:14:33.000 I'm saying that the greater risk would be a nuclear-armed Iran with terrorist cells all across the West. 0.96

01:14:38.000 That's the bigger risk. 0.91

01:14:40.000 Ben Rhodes, the complete buffoon from the Obama administration and the architect of his absolute sheer garbage foreign policy, particularly with regard, again, Ben Rhodes, top foreign policy advisor to President Trump. 0.99

01:14:54.000 Ben Rhodes is a trash heap. 0.99

01:14:58.000 This guy, his nickname in the White House during the Obama years was Hamas. 0.99

01:15:02.000 I'm not even kidding.

01:15:03.000 He put out a statement, quote, Trump's message to the world.

01:15:05.000 If you have nukes like North Korea, I'll trade love letters with you. 1.00

01:15:07.000 If you don't, I'll pull out of agreements you're keeping and bomb you with during diplomacy.

01:15:10.000 Just devastating to nonproliferation.

01:15:12.000 I'm sorry that Ben Rhodes' fantasy world has been dissolved and destroyed, in which he and his magical agreement, that by the way, would have let Iran have a clear pathway to a nuclear bomb after 10 years. 0.64

01:15:22.000 That would be like this year, the pathway to the nuclear bomb would start.

01:15:26.000 That that got destroyed by President Trump in one airstrike.

01:15:29.000 I don't recall the Obama administration doing a good job with North Korea, do you?

01:15:33.000 I don't recall that the North Koreans acting wildly differently than they did under President Trump.

01:15:38.000 So those are the so-called pragmatists who some, I have to say, some seem to be hoping that something bad will happen to justify their opposition to the strike.

01:15:48.000 And here you have to include people like Representative Hakeem Jeffries.

01:15:52.000 Hakeem Jeffries put out a statement as well, quote, Donald Trump promised to bring peace to the Middle East.

01:15:57.000 He has failed to deliver on that promise. 1.00

01:15:58.000 What a scumbag. 1.00

01:15:59.000 Trump failed to deliver on that promise. 1.00

01:16:01.000 Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.

01:16:02.000 They've had an ongoing hot war with Israel for almost two years via proxies from seven different countries and Iran directly.

01:16:10.000 And Trump has failed to deliver on the promise?

01:16:12.000 Joe Biden created this.

01:16:13.000 Barack Obama created this.

01:16:15.000 Donald Trump ended this.

01:16:16.000 Hakeem Jeffrey says the risk of war has now dramatically increased.

01:16:19.000 I pray for the safety of our troops in the region who have been put in harm's way.

01:16:22.000 What do you mean the risk of war has dramatically increased?

01:16:24.000 The war has been ongoing since October 7th.

01:16:26.000 It was going on before that with all of these terrorist proxy groups all over the region and the world.

01:16:32.000 Jeffrey said, President Trump misled the country about his intentions, failed to seek congressional authorization for the use of military force.

01:16:38.000 Yeah, Joe Biden, I just have two words.

01:16:40.000 Where was Hakeem Jeffries complaining about Joe Biden's use of the AUMF of 2002 in order to pursue military strikes against a wide variety of Iranian-backed foes and risks American entanglement in a potentially disastrous war in the Middle East?

01:16:54.000 First, the Trump administration bears the heavy burden of explaining to the American people why this military action was undertaken.

01:16:59.000 He explained, they're pursuing a nuclear weapon.

01:17:01.000 We had good intelligence to suggest that.

01:17:02.000 The IAEA itself said they were pursuing a nuclear weapon effectively.

01:17:06.000 And Trump bombed them.

01:17:06.000 That's the end of it.

01:17:08.000 But again, this is the supposed pragmatic concern that is actually, in reality, something else.

01:17:14.000 It is, in fact, a latent and not so latent belief that America's foreign policy is inherently bad, that America is the nefarious actor in the world. 1.00

01:17:23.000 It's wrong and it's stupid. 0.99

01:17:26.000 One of the foremost articulators of this perspective would be Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas. 1.00

01:17:32.000 So fresh.

01:17:33.000 She's even fresher and facer, as I have said, than the venerable AOC, who's now an elder of the Democratic Party.

01:17:39.000 Jasmine Crockett put out a 20-minute, I know, we watched it so you didn't have to. 0.99

01:17:44.000 She put out a 20-minute Instagram post complaining about President Trump's military strike on Iran taking out their nuclear facilities.

01:17:51.000 Here is one of the great minds of our time.

01:17:54.000 This is the takedown.

01:17:58.000 Everything since he has stepped into office has done nothing other than put us in harm's way.

01:18:06.000 And there have been reporting about one of our special planes.

01:18:11.000 Our special plane.

01:18:11.000 How it recently left Louisiana and it had landed in D.C. And basically, if there is a nuclear war, the situation is that, well, he can be up in the air and sustain whatever.

01:18:27.000 This guy doesn't care about us.

01:18:30.000 And frankly, he should not be in our Oval Office when everything that he does is literally against everyone.

01:18:44.000 Not just those that opposed him, but those that actually support him as well.

01:18:50.000 I don't even know what she's talking about.

01:18:51.000 I don't even know what there is to take down there.

01:18:53.000 We sent our special planes.

01:18:55.000 You mean B2s? 1.00

01:18:56.000 Is that what you call it?

01:18:57.000 The special plane?

01:19:00.000 Yeah.

01:19:04.000 I don't even know what to take down.

01:19:06.000 Honestly, we were going to do a whole takedown segment.

01:19:07.000 I don't know what to take down.

01:19:08.000 She's not even speaking inarticulate sentences.

01:19:11.000 Jasmine Crockett, this lady is considered one of the chief influencers in the Democratic Party. 1.00

01:19:15.000 Let's listen to her continue.

01:19:16.000 I know.

01:19:17.000 We must.

01:19:17.000 We must soldier on.

01:19:19.000 So, first of all, if you're scared, that means that you truly understand the gravity of this situation.

01:19:26.000 Second of all, I'm going to say this.

01:19:30.000 We all need to be very cognizant and move in a way in which we literally have our heads on swivel because I personally believe that there are always people in this country that do not like us.

01:19:47.000 And we know that we were caught off guard with 9-11.

01:19:52.000 I don't know what is going to happen going forward, but I can tell you that it is very important for you to be very cognizant of your surroundings and to be very mindful of large gatherings.

01:20:06.000 Okay, so I'd just like to point out at this point, she's a backer of Joe Biden's open border policy.

01:20:11.000 If you like the idea of people who don't like our country and our country, you can blame Jasmine Crockett and people in her party.

01:20:17.000 She is forcefully opposing President Trump's plans to deport all of these folks who are here on visas who hate the country.

01:20:24.000 The same Democrats celebrating the release of Mahmoud Khalil, the Colombia protester slash riot inciter.

01:20:33.000 Those same people are the people who are complaining that now there's a terror threat in the United States.

01:20:36.000 But how did that terror threat get here?

01:20:38.000 What can we do about it?

01:20:39.000 And then we do something about it and they complain about it.

01:20:41.000 So maybe you should back Secretary of State Rubio in trying to deport the people who hate the country.

01:20:45.000 Maybe you should support ICE.

01:20:47.000 Maybe you should support the president of the United States in trying to target and remove all of the people who despise the country and want to kill Americans.

01:20:54.000 But no, no, of course not.

01:20:57.000 I'm not saying these things because I'm a Democrat.

01:20:59.000 I'm saying these things because I am a black woman in America who just happens to be educated enough to know what the law is.

01:21:07.000 And I can tell you that while some people want to disparage my credibility and act as if I don't know what I'm talking about, I can absolutely guarantee to you that if you Google war and authority and Constitution, you're going to see Congress.

01:21:28.000 And this thing that's like on my chest tells you that I am a member of Congress.

01:21:35.000 Wow.

01:21:35.000 So did you know that she's wearing a necklace that says that she's a member of Congress?

01:21:39.000 So that means that it's going to end up on her.

01:21:41.000 If this is what the Democrats have to offer is this incoherent nonsense and that is their comeback to the president engaging in a singular strike in terms of magnitude and effect.

01:21:55.000 Again, one of the most steadfast and clever moves I've seen a president make.

01:22:00.000 Good luck to the Democrats.

01:22:02.000 Good luck.

01:22:03.000 This is the best you've guys got.

01:22:05.000 I'm astonished.

01:22:06.000 Absolutely astonished.

01:22:08.000 Joining us online is Professor Victor Davis Hansen.

01:22:10.000 He is the Martin and Illy Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

01:22:13.000 He specializes in classics and military history.

01:22:15.000 Of course, he is also the author of many great books, including the seminal book, Carnage and Culture.

01:22:20.000 Professor Hanson, thanks so much for taking the time.

01:22:21.000 Really appreciate it.

01:22:22.000 Thank you for having me.

01:22:24.000 So let's begin with the obvious.

01:22:26.000 President Trump made what is, to me, one of the most audacious calls here I've ever seen a president make.

01:22:32.000 It took a tremendous intestinal fortitude for him to do what he did.

01:22:36.000 Obviously, him making the call in the face of not only domestic opposition on the left, but some domestic opposition on the right and international community that is completely spineless and useless when it comes to this sort of stuff is pretty amazing.

01:22:47.000 But I think that the biggest thing here is that President Trump declared a contained mission that he sought to enact in the very best of circumstances.

01:22:57.000 And it seems to me that he played this about as well as a human being could play this.

01:23:01.000 Yeah, I think he did.

01:23:02.000 I think it's very different than the 1991 bombing or the 2003 bombing or the misadventure in Libya than 2011.

01:23:09.000 Those were all prequels for continued operations to get Saddam out of Kuwait or to remove Saddam in the later Gulf War or to have regime change in Libya.

01:23:20.000 This was a confined, well-defined operation just to get rid of these nuclear facilities.

01:23:27.000 And so now it's up to the Iranians. 1.00

01:23:30.000 And by the way, it wasn't an easy operation.

01:23:32.000 And we know that the Middle East is the graveyard of administrations. 0.69

01:23:36.000 The failed rescue mission destroyed the Carter administration.

01:23:40.000 I think the failed withdrawal from Kabul destroyed the Biden administration.

01:23:46.000 It was 50% approval until then.

01:23:49.000 And we know what happened to the Bush administration.

01:23:52.000 So it took a lot of guts to order it.

01:23:54.000 It was a very difficult, complex operation.

01:23:57.000 And I don't think the critics, if you survey all of the critics, there's much to say.

01:24:02.000 I mean, the MAGA people are not going to go anywhere.

01:24:06.000 I mean, otherwise they'd agree with 85% of the Trump agenda.

01:24:10.000 Even Tucker Carlson said if it was true, and it is true, that Iran tried to kill Trump, he would support an attack on Iran.

01:24:19.000 So they're kind of incoherent.

01:24:22.000 And the left, they're squeaking a little bit about constitutionality and War Powers Act.

01:24:29.000 But these are the same people That destroyed Libya over five years. 0.98

01:24:33.000 And remember that Barack Obama, the last day he was in office on January 19th of 2017, he ordered B-2 bombers without congressional authorization to attack Libya.

01:24:45.000 So you just don't see any coherent logical opposition to what Trump did.

01:24:51.000 So let's talk about that for a minute, because I think that so much of this was based on a complete misconception of whatever the Trump doctrine is.

01:24:59.000 I'd said before that the Trump Doctrine is peace through strength, but you only utilize that where an American interest, a core American interest is at stake.

01:25:05.000 And President Trump had said for decades at this point that a core American interest was Iran not becoming nuclear.

01:25:10.000 He then proceeded to do what many American presidents have not done, give Israel the green light to go ahead and do what they needed to do in Iran.

01:25:17.000 They essentially cleared the entire airspace for the Americans before we even got there.

01:25:21.000 They did extraordinary work on the ground with Mossad.

01:25:24.000 They took out an enormous number of missile launchers.

01:25:25.000 They took out much of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, many of their nuclear scientists before we even arrived on the scene.

01:25:30.000 And meanwhile, President Trump sort of sat aside and allowed them to do that.

01:25:33.000 And he only came in and used the big American boot, the hammer, as he said, the midnight hammer, as the operation was called, when it was absolutely necessary.

01:25:41.000 As you say, I don't even understand the sort of right-wing response on the isolationist side, because I was told by many people, including people like Tucker Carlson, that World War III would erupt from this.

01:25:51.000 I never understood the logic of exactly how that would have to happen.

01:25:53.000 I mean, in order for that to happen, there has to be a chain of events, a cascade of events, requiring supporters of Iran to come to Iran's defenses.

01:26:00.000 And that did not seem like that was ever in the offing.

01:26:03.000 This seemed, again, almost a perfect utilization of the credible threat of force by the president.

01:26:09.000 Yeah, and what we would have expected is the terrorist tentacles to act, but Israel destroyed basically Hamas, and Hezbollah is neutered.

01:26:20.000 There is no Assad dynasty anymore.

01:26:22.000 They're completely gone.

01:26:23.000 There is no Russian presence in the Middle East.

01:26:26.000 They're gone.

01:26:27.000 The Houthis have cut a deal with us, and they don't want to really get into a war again.

01:26:32.000 So there are no Iranian defenses.

01:26:34.000 So it's very hard to envision any of these subordinate terrorist groups having the same type of clout that they had before Israel neutralized them.

01:26:43.000 And again, China and Russia aren't going to do anything.

01:26:46.000 Russia looks at this and says, you know, I don't mind disruption in the Middle East if it increases the price of oil.

01:26:52.000 And I got enough problems with Ukraine.

01:26:54.000 China looks like this.

01:26:55.000 Please, please calm down.

01:26:57.000 We get 50% of our oil from the Middle East and the Gulf of Hormone.

01:27:00.000 We don't want any of this trouble.

01:27:02.000 So for different reasons, they're not going to do anything.

01:27:06.000 Trump has really disrupted this Russia, China, Iranian Axis.

01:27:12.000 And I don't think anybody in the world, even the worst regimes, really wanted them to get a bomb because they're so untrustworthy and erratic.

01:27:19.000 I don't think countries like Turkey and Pakistan even felt comfortable. 0.79

01:27:22.000 So they're going to talk a lot.

01:27:24.000 They're going to criticize us.

01:27:25.000 They're going to talk about Israel.

01:27:27.000 But privately, a lot of people, especially in the Arab world, are going to be very happy as long as they think the damage was as extensive as first reported.

01:27:37.000 What they're most terrified is that we wounded Iran, we didn't finish it off, and they're going to be retaliated against.

01:27:44.000 So they're going to say all sorts of things publicly to try to pacify Iran until they're completely assured that they don't pose a threat to them. 0.78

01:27:52.000 So I'd like to discuss this from a couple of different angles as far as the future.

01:27:55.000 So one of the reasons I think it was very important for President Trump to do what he did is not just because he ends, presumably, the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon for the foreseeable future, but also because Joe Biden had destroyed America's credibility.

01:28:08.000 The pullout from Afghanistan led directly to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

01:28:12.000 His sort of half-hearted support for Ukraine, enough to keep them alive, but not enough to allow them to achieve a natural off-ramp or victory, meant that Russia continued to push forward.

01:28:20.000 And China was looking with greedy eyes at Taiwan.

01:28:23.000 And now after this, if you're China and you're looking at Taiwan, you don't know what to think about President Trump because the sort of idea that the American president was just going to sit by and do nothing in case of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

01:28:33.000 If America had a core interest in Iran not going nuclear, America certainly has a core interest in China not taking over Taiwan and depriving the world of the Taiwanese supply of the superconductors that are relevant to pretty much every American technology.

01:28:45.000 So China appears to really be backfooted both because of its disruption in the oil supply, but also because President Trump has, again, restored a level of American credibility that's been gone for basically 15, 20 years since the end of the Bush era.

01:28:59.000 Yeah, I think he's restored the same unpredictability, fluidity, volatility that convinced Vladimir Putin during the first administration to stay put for the first time since the Clinton administration.

01:29:11.000 And that was very important.

01:29:13.000 There's another thing.

01:29:14.000 Trump had all he had given them a 60-day deadline, but Israel sort of intervened and fulfilled that threat for him.

01:29:23.000 So there was all this talk in the United States about the tariffs and his own foreign policy, the taco talk.

01:29:29.000 Trump always chickens out.

01:29:30.000 That smear has kind of been laid to rest. 0.99

01:29:33.000 Nobody's going to resurrect it now because they'd look ridiculous.

01:29:35.000 So I think when he said, I'm going to give you one to 14 days, what he was really saying is the moment that'll give me a window to get all the assets in place.

01:29:45.000 I'll give 48 hours to see if Israel comes up with any miracle way to handle it. 0.99

01:29:50.000 They probably won't.

01:29:52.000 But then I'm going to act earlier because if he had waited the whole 14 days, each day he waited, it would give them more time to prepare or less surprise.

01:30:00.000 So he really did fulfill a threat, and that's going to silence both critics abroad and at home that said that he always chickens out, which he didn't do, but that was the narrative they were employing.

01:30:12.000 And Professor Hansen, one of the other aspects of this is the future of Iran.

01:30:15.000 So there's been a lot of talk, again, from sort of the horseshoe theory wing of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party that suggests that American intervention is always a negative, that this was going to cause the collapse of Iran, and that was somehow going to necessitate the occupation of Iran by hundreds of thousands of American troops.

01:30:30.000 Again, I think that is completely insane and specious.

01:30:33.000 I saw no evidence whatsoever that President Trump wanted that.

01:30:35.000 I see no evidence whatsoever that the Israelis are interested in somehow deploying hundreds of thousands of people to Iran in order to somehow manage a transition.

01:30:43.000 That seems, frankly, psychotic to me.

01:30:46.000 But it seems as though President Trump has said, listen, whatever happens in Iran next is going to be up to the Iranian people.

01:30:51.000 Netanyahu has said the same thing.

01:30:53.000 That is the proper solution.

01:30:54.000 What do you think happens in Iran next?

01:30:56.000 How interested should we be so long as they're non-nuclear?

01:31:00.000 It's going to be up to them.

01:31:02.000 We don't have a really, nobody has a good record when you bomb a country from the air or even invade, but even bombing them, whether it's hard for the people to rally around the people who are dropping bombs, even if they despise the regime.

01:31:17.000 And it doesn't work.

01:31:17.000 We got rid of Qaddafi.

01:31:19.000 We got something worse.

01:31:20.000 We got rid of by the air, mostly Milosevic, we got something somewhat better.

01:31:23.000 We got rid of Saddam by the air.

01:31:26.000 Maybe you could say now what's finally evolved after all that blood and treasure is better.

01:31:30.000 But it's not a clear-cut thing.

01:31:32.000 I think the biggest fear that the theocracy would have is coming from the military because they have taken out 20 or 25 of the top leaders that were most aligned with the theocracy.

01:31:44.000 And then they have a list of who's next in command.

01:31:47.000 If you're a military commander, you're saying to yourself, I've got to be on that list.

01:31:53.000 And the guys that are overseeing me and always discipline me are dead.

01:31:58.000 And they're dead because they stuck with the theocracy to the bitter end.

01:32:03.000 And we've got to explain to the Iranian people that we wasted a trillion dollars over a half century on all of this nuclear facility, all of these terrorist subordinates, all of these sanctions and embargoes we lost in revenue.

01:32:18.000 And it was all for nothing.

01:32:20.000 So there's going to be a lot of anger at the military.

01:32:22.000 And I think if you were logical, some of the military people would say, I'm not going to do this anymore, but we'll see.

01:32:29.000 And if there is going to be a regime change, I think it would be probably from inside the military rather than popular folk test on the street.

01:32:40.000 So Professor Hansen, the sort of biggest question here, I think, going forward is not just about America or China.

01:32:46.000 It's also about the future of the Middle East.

01:32:48.000 So clearly, the balance of power has shifted insanely in the Middle East. 0.61

01:32:51.000 If you had said after October 7th that within a year and a half, Israel would have destroyed Hezbollah utterly to the point where Syria fell, that Hamas would be not only backfooted, but essentially defenestrated, that Iran would be so clear of air defenses that Israeli pilots would be able to fly unhindered sorties above Iran for literally weeks at a time at this point, everyone would have thought you're nuts.

01:33:13.000 What it looks like in the Middle East is a new balance of power. 0.52

01:33:15.000 What does that mean for the Abraham Accords, the future of Israeli-Arab relations moving forward?

01:33:20.000 Because if the Middle East has shown one thing, it's that people really like a strong horse over there.

01:33:25.000 Yeah, I think all of the Gulf states, some of the North African countries, all of these countries realize that Israel's profile has increased and it's not directed at them.

01:33:38.000 The closest, the biggest argument they would have would be with Hamas, but Hamas is basically despised by the Palestinian Authority.

01:33:46.000 There is no real...

01:33:49.000 The Hezbollah people are despised by the Arab world.

01:33:53.000 Iran is despised. 0.82

01:33:55.000 The only problem Israel has is the same problem it had after the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War later, and then same thing they had on October 7th.

01:34:04.000 They get very successful, and then they suffer a little bit of overconfidence and get lax, and they get surprised in the Yom Kippur War 50 years later to the very day they were surprised on October 7th.

01:34:14.000 I don't think they're going to do it this time.

01:34:16.000 I think they're going to realize that even though they seem invincible now, now is the time to be very vigilant and to not get overconfident.

01:34:27.000 So, Professor Hansen, I mentioned earlier about Carnage and Culture, which I think, again, is a seminal work of history and also just general political thought.

01:34:35.000 And the main thesis of that book, of course, is that there are dictatorships that often appear as though they have an upper hand on democracies during times of war.

01:34:44.000 And it turns out, absolutely not, that citizen warrior cultures tend to rise up when they are stricken, and they tend to absolutely destroy their opposition.

01:34:53.000 And I think that what we've watched between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump here is an absolutely perfect example of what you're talking about in carnage and culture.

01:35:01.000 Again, you have a group of terrorists who pursues an evil attack on October 7th, and then you have terrorist groups joining in from all over the region, and Israel proceeds to destroy virtually all of them.

01:35:11.000 And then President Trump comes in and with essentially one night of airstrikes, defenestrates a 40-year nuclear program in Iran and puts the regime perhaps on its last legs.

01:35:20.000 I mean, the thesis in Carnage and Culture, again, was that democracies look weak from the outside, but once you push them, they get real tough real fast.

01:35:27.000 I couldn't imagine a better proof than the last couple of weeks.

01:35:31.000 Yeah, they have legitimacies because the people they voted for the regime or the power, the government that's in power.

01:35:39.000 And that's not true of these other regimes.

01:35:41.000 So they don't have any really legitimate, they don't have any consensus.

01:35:45.000 So Netanyahu has a war cabinet.

01:35:47.000 So he's getting all sorts of views.

01:35:48.000 Some of them are self-interested and probably nihilistic, but a lot of them give him ideas and they thrash it out.

01:35:54.000 Same with Trump.

01:35:55.000 And the side that creates technology, and that's because of Western rationalism and freedom, freedom of dissent, freedom of entrepreneurialism, free market capitalism, all of that freedom creates superior technology and it tends to evolve at a more rapid pace than the people who are parasitical on it.

01:36:15.000 I mean, Iran had all the westernized weapons it wanted, from nuclear materials to air defenses to ballistic missiles. 0.72

01:36:23.000 And they can be very deadly.

01:36:24.000 But if the West finally gets aroused and uses the full extent of the people who created the technology, they're much better at it.

01:36:33.000 So Iran can say that they had air defenses they imported and they did all of this, but they could never have created a B-2 bomber and sent it 6,000 miles away to send these 30,000-pound bombs down a hole the size of a kitchen table. 0.84

01:36:48.000 They just couldn't do it.

01:36:50.000 It's absolutely unbelievable.

01:36:51.000 Professor Victor Davis Hansen, thank you so much for your time and attention.

01:36:55.000 Really appreciate your analysis, as always.

01:36:58.000 Thank you for having me, Ben.

01:37:00.000 All righty, folks, we've reached the end of the show.

01:37:01.000 We'll be back here tomorrow with much more.

01:37:03.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

The Ben Shapiro Show - June 23, 2025

Trump's MASTERSTROKE: What Comes Next?!

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