Israel decapitates Iran and we go through the facts, and then we present it from a pro-American standpoint as well with a cautionary tale. Israel was able to infiltrate the inner circle of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and take out the entire Iranian military.
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00:01:40.000We were live streaming last night, and it's important in times like this, in situations that involve war and kinetic conflict, to report the facts and to stay calm, collected, with a lot of precision, not to get too excited, not to get involved in hyperbole or be very measured in your reporting.
00:02:00.000In fact, I believe you, the audience, that's why you keep on tuning in.
00:02:04.000Right now we are the number one conservative podcast in Apple News because we did a late-night stream all about the Israeli strikes on Iran.
00:02:12.000And you can count that this program will have a pro-civilization, pro-American view on all these things.
00:04:21.000Iran's air defenses appear to have been totally compromised, offering no resistance at all to Israeli airstrikes.
00:04:28.000And to the knowledge that we have right now, and again, this could change at any moment, it looks as if not a single Israeli aircraft has been shot down.
00:04:37.000Again, it's the fog of war, so we do not know yet, but we don't have any reports.
00:04:43.000Of any Israeli aircraft that has yet been taken down.
00:04:48.000Israel was apparently able to execute some stunning infiltrations, such as smuggling explosives directly into Iran in advance of the strike.
00:04:59.000Regardless of your opinion of Israel, even if you hate Israel to your core, you have to have remarkable respect for Mossad.
00:05:10.000And their military for what they were able to pull off here.
00:05:15.000Understand that Iran knew this was coming.
00:05:17.000And without getting into too many details, we knew this was coming.
00:05:21.000In fact, I was talking to Blake and Andrew and I'm like, guys, unless my sources are totally wrong, in about two hours, Iran is about to get lit up like a Christmas tree.
00:05:35.000A lot of other reporters I was talking to knew it was coming.
00:05:39.000And Iran still was infiltrated because it seems as if that Israel was able to infiltrate at such the highest levels of the Iranian government.
00:05:47.000They used the looming attack as a way to gather all of these senior Iranian officials together to then strike them.
00:05:58.000Remember, we moved out all diplomatic and non-essential staff.
00:06:02.000This was somewhat of a deception surprise attack, but this was the longest wind-up.
00:06:11.000And it does beg the question, is Iran a paper tiger?
00:06:16.000And we'll explore that later, which is, wait, I understand that Intel shows that they were close to a nuclear weapon, but there's a little bit of a contradiction here of if they really don't have any air defense systems, And they're this foolish and kind of a third world country.
00:06:33.000It really makes you wonder, like, how sophisticated of a threat this actually is.
00:06:42.000And they made, and you have to just say this, they made an incredibly ballsy move with a lot of chutzpah.
00:06:49.000Took a lot of chutzpah for them to do this.
00:06:52.000And we're going to find out in the next couple days and weeks and months the ramifications of that, especially from a pro-American standpoint, which I want to get into.
00:06:59.000But they also killed some of the nuclear scientists.
00:07:14.000Mohammed Mehdi Tarajanani, the physicist and president of the Islamic Azad University in Tehran.
00:07:21.000The Israeli operation was not just airstrikes.
00:07:24.000The Israeli Mossad Intelligence Service has operatives on the ground conducting covert sabotage operations on missile and air defense sites.
00:07:43.000And this is why no planes have been shot down, and Bibi Netanyahu and the Israeli government, they're basically having an all-you-can-eat buffet in Iran.
00:07:51.000They've had these targets basically in their tickler file for quite some time.
00:07:56.000They've had these targets, like, hey, here they are, all over Iran for quite some time.
00:08:01.000And they're like, why are we going to stop now?
00:08:04.000This is a dream for Israel in the sense where 562, which I think is a very important picture.
00:08:19.000Yes, some residential buildings were struck, but that's some pretty remarkable precision.
00:08:24.000This visual is something, and on podcasting, you just have to take pause and be like, that's as good and as sophisticated of a military that I think you'll ever see.
00:08:33.000So here you have, for those that you can't see it on podcasting, a high-rise residential building in Tehran where the neighbors above and the neighbors below, literally, they were able to, either through a drone or through a fighter jet, have a precision missile go to, what is that, like the 8th floor, but not the 9th floor, not the 7th floor, and they decided not to take down the entire building.
00:08:55.000And I do think that is a necessary picture where the stereotype and the prejudice against Israel is that, oh, they take down residential buildings just for fun and to go after civilians.
00:09:05.000I think that picture is a very important picture that I hope is included in the international narrative that Israel actually decided not to take down that entire residential building because that would have been a narrative collapse alongside an apartment collapse.
00:09:21.000Because if they would have taken down the entire building, first of all, innocent people would have unnecessarily died.
00:09:51.000And part of this also is that Israel's strategy here is they know that many of the everyday rank-and-file Persians hate the Iranian regime.
00:09:59.000They hate the Iranian regime, and they don't want to try to turn the Iranian people against Israel unnecessarily.
00:10:06.000They're trying to fight a war of liberation.
00:10:08.000A very risky war, and I want to just make sure that's very clear.
00:10:12.000In this fog of war, it's easily caught up in the overemphasis on the military action.
00:10:18.000We're going to talk about this from an American standpoint.
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00:11:28.000So that's a little bit of the analysis of the what has happened.
00:11:31.000Now I want to spend a little bit of time from an American standpoint and also from a conservative movement standpoint and kind of where the base stands.
00:11:44.000And currently, America has faced zero blowback or any consequences.
00:11:49.000And Israel's operation against Iran has been far more successful.
00:11:53.000As of right now, than anyone could have dreamed.
00:11:56.000No one could have dreamed that they're taking out the entire core of the Iranian military.
00:12:02.000Not to mention bombing after bombing of nuclear reactors and airports and military sites.
00:12:09.000And in some ways, for many people in this audience, and also for those of us that want to see civilization succeed, this is very satisfying to watch.
00:12:42.000And for those of us that are America first, but also are very sympathetic to Israel, this has always been our cautionary tale, which is that war...
00:12:52.000Military strikes are usually much murkier and complicated than it might seem on TV.
00:13:01.000Our generation especially, and the base of the Republican Party, we have never seen a triumphant, declarative military victory.
00:13:09.000And I hope everybody in the audience understands that.
00:13:12.000Everybody in MAGA that says, you know, keep the strikes going.
00:14:15.000And even from a pro-Israel standpoint, Israel does not benefit from long conflicts or long wars.
00:14:21.000The shorter the conflict, the better it has always been for Israel.
00:14:25.000That's why they prefer deceptive, immediate, and violent action.
00:14:31.000We as conservatives must be very morally clear as to what side we are on, but we must resist the siren song of displacing dictators in lands we do not understand and we have no business running.
00:14:46.000And I just want to have a cautionary tale because it can feel very good and seem very good, and it objectively can be good.
00:14:54.000When I see a picture of that apartment building, I kind of just have awe, and I'm like, man, I struggle to, like, install my TV.
00:15:04.000I need someone to help me set up the Wi-Fi.
00:15:07.000Like, Mikey, get in here, set up the Wi-Fi.
00:15:10.000I mean, what they do in the tech room is like the most impressive thing.
00:15:13.000They got guests, and they got Zoom, and they got different televisions, and they got audio stuff.
00:16:10.000They're going to go after Americans, they're going to go after Saudis, they're going to go after everybody imaginable, just to create a big mess and to try to draw the world into it.
00:16:19.000Because understand, the Iranian people are widely respected and not necessarily are always in sync with leadership.
00:16:27.000But if and when the people of Iran feel like Persia is being defaced and humiliated and disrespected, we don't know where that is going to go.
00:16:36.000And that's my final reason why I am always skeptical of military intervention.
00:16:42.000And when a lot of the sometimes warmongering wing gets too excited, you don't know, actually.
00:16:57.000But when you start saying things will guarantee happen, like in Libya, overthrowing the regime will be easy, and then everything after was a disaster.
00:17:05.000Some humility is necessary in these moments.
00:17:10.000Gentlemen, let's get real for a second.
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00:18:59.000This is Israel's And with that, we welcome Josh Hammer from Newsweek, great man and very clear thinker, host of The Josh Hammer Show, and author of Israel and Civilization.
00:19:13.000So Josh, I mean, I have to ask the kind of elephant in the room, how many paces, how many steps are you from a bomb shelter?
00:19:33.000So we immediately went down to the bombshell from the house where we were staying.
00:19:37.000We soon learned within minutes that the sirens were not due to incoming rocket fire.
00:19:42.000Instead, the IDF Home Command did sirens nationwide to essentially alert the people that There was the potential of imminent retaliation there.
00:19:52.000That, I think, was what the IDF was most concerned about.
00:19:54.000They were concerned about imminent, immediate retaliation.
00:19:57.000There's now been over 12 hours, actually far more than that, since that.
00:20:01.000And I think that the threat level has decreased.
00:20:04.000But to your very first question, Charlie, there's a bomb shelter probably 30 or 40 steps over there.
00:20:08.000So God forbid I can make a dashboard and I think I'll be okay.
00:20:11.000Well, yeah, and I hope everyone in the audience understands that that's now become normal life in Israel.
00:20:15.000And so you are outside right now, which is great.
00:21:50.000It feels like a hurricane-like condition right now.
00:21:52.000Again, I guess we're going to see what actual hurricane in the form of an Iranian retaliation actually comes here.
00:21:57.000But the thing about the Israeli people, Charlie, and holding aside the Arab Israelis, it's a little more complicated.
00:22:02.000But the thing about Jewish Israelis, which are still the vast majority of the Israeli people, there is full consensus as to the Iranian issue.
00:22:09.000There are a number of very, very divisive issues here in Israel.
00:22:12.000Bibi Netanyahu, the two-state solution versus one-state solution with the Palestinian Arabs, the issue of the Haredi ultra-Orthodox draft into the idea.
00:22:20.000There are a lot of very contentious issues here in the Israeli domestic political spectrum.
00:22:24.000But there's one very important point, I think, for your audience to know.
00:22:26.000It's that the Iran issue is not a contentious issue.
00:22:29.000I remember speaking back in 2016, during the 2016 presidential cycle, I spoke with a far-left member, a Jewish member of the Knesset, their legislature here.
00:22:36.000Charlie, dude was so far left, he was an actual Bernie Sanders supporter, I kid you not.
00:22:42.000Even this guy, who was a total peacenik on the Palestinians, a total liberal on all domestic issues, you name it there, even he was very sober and hawkish-minded on Iran, because there was an understanding here that Iran actually genuinely is the existential issue, and that if the IDF's mantra that never again means never again, if it means anything whatsoever, then Iran has to be dealt with at some point.
00:23:03.000It turns out that they dealt with it, or at least started to deal with it, while I happened to be visiting the country here.
00:23:07.000I'm now going to refer to you as our Israeli war correspondent.
00:23:10.000We're going to have you on as much as you.
00:23:30.000Look, everyone has to do what they can here.
00:23:32.000So, you know, not to get too deep in the weeds of Jewish law, but there is a well-known Jewish principle known as p 'chulach nefesh, which basically means that there's an overwhelming imperative to save a human life at all costs.
00:23:43.000And when human life has to be saved at the expense of desecrating the Jewish Sabbath or any other of the violation of Jewish law, it has to be done there.
00:23:51.000So, for example, Charlie, back home in Florida, where I pray, I pray to a local synagogue near the beach.
00:23:56.000There's a guy who has a walkie-talkie there because he's actually an emergency driver for Hatzalah, the emergency services there.
00:24:02.000So he's allowed to do that for reasons of Pukuach Nefesh.
00:24:04.000So similarly here in Israel, when there is an active threat of the world's leading state sponsor of Jihad, potentially launching God knows what kind of missiles, drones, or whatever we'll have here over the next 48, 72 hours, who the heck knows.
00:24:15.000Yes, I think people are going to interpret Pukuach Nefesh and take it into their own hands.
00:24:21.000It's just so – I have so many questions, but I hope people understand that even in the midst of all the terror, or It's just pretty amazing.
00:24:40.000What is your reaction, I should say, to the fact that Iran has not really responded yet?
00:24:45.000That we're coming on almost a 24-hour marker and...
00:24:52.000Why is that, and is it because that Israel is just having a feeding frenzy in the interior of Iran right now?
00:24:58.000So it's such a real-time, minute-by-minute situation that it's a little hard to keep up with everything.
00:25:02.000I did hear maybe about 30, 45 minutes ago that there were rocket sirens in northern Israel.
00:25:07.000I assume that is from Hezbollah in Lebanon, or at least the remnants of Hezbollah in Lebanon, because Hezbollah has been dealt such a crippling blow over the past year or so by Israel.
00:25:17.000But Iran, Charlie, and this is why Israel apparently felt that this was the time to actually launch this.
00:25:22.000That was literally decades in the making, was that they had done such an amazing job at crippling Iran's various proxies.
00:25:29.000Hezbollah, in particular, in Lebanon, with their massive 100,000-plus precision-guided missile arsenal, that was always the Iranian regime's sort of Damocles, hanging over the Israeli people here.
00:25:40.000It's right on the Israeli border up north there.
00:25:42.000And Israel knew that if they were to ever launch a serious operation against Iran, then Hezbollah would just rain down lots and lots of missiles on Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or all the population corridors there.
00:25:52.000Hezbollah has not been literally eliminated, but they, I mean, you know, 80, 90 percent, I mean, they are on really, really, really weak knees right now.
00:26:01.000And then inside of Iran itself, you look at just the sheer number of the top-ranking IRGC, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the general staffers that apparently have been killed over the past 12 to 18 hours there.
00:26:12.000I mean, Charlie, I think we're literally talking about a situation where the actual physical men who would literally call the shots are perhaps no longer with us.
00:26:45.000In a weird way, I actually almost feel safer if you're in Israel than if I were back home in the United States.
00:26:50.000I live in Florida, so Florida is kind of the exception to the rule.
00:26:53.000Florida is an incredibly safe place to be Jewish.
00:26:56.000It's an incredibly safe place, frankly, to be anyone.
00:26:58.000But I do think in a time like this about more exposure.
00:27:02.000Jewish communities, Israeli expatriate communities in blue jurisdictions.
00:27:06.000I think a lot about New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, places like that at this time there.
00:27:11.000Because those are the places where the local government is not necessarily going to be up to speed at protecting vulnerable, soft targets, synagogues, kosher restaurants, things like that at this time here.
00:27:20.000Living here, or not, I don't live here, but being here in Israel at this time here and having...
00:27:27.000I feel pretty good for the most part there.
00:27:32.000They have a lot of sleeper cells, a lot of lone wolf agents, a lot of people all throughout the West, a lot of these crazy radicals, the Mahmoud Khalils on the university campuses, a lot of folks who are pledging and vowing to take up not necessarily full-on jihad in an ISIS-style caliphate here in the Middle East, But just engaging in lone wolf style attacks, very similar to what the Marxists did in slaughtering, brutally assassinating the two Israeli diplomats in Washington two weeks ago.
00:27:56.000So that's the kind of soft lone wolf target that I'm actually most scared of at a time like this.
00:28:00.000I'm less scared about whatever is coming from Iran in kind of a paradoxical way, even though I'm right here kind of in the crosshairs of fire.
00:28:07.000Yeah, I mean, I literally put up on Twitter, I'll read it to the audience, which is, Biden let millions of people into America.
00:28:15.000Iran might activate some sleeper cells against Americans to stay armed.
00:28:19.000And I mean, that goes for all people, right?
00:28:21.000Is the Iranian sleeper cells into the interior of the United States.
00:28:25.000Can Israel win this without United States troops?
00:28:29.000So it totally depends how you define when.
00:28:32.000Charlie, it seems to me that Israel is not at least at this moment seeking to decapitate the head of the snake.
00:28:38.000It's a very, very fast time situation there.
00:28:40.000It seems to me like if they were going to take their shot at the Ayatollah at Khamenei, it probably would have happened in the wee hours of the morning.
00:28:48.000I'm just kind of playing a speculation game here.
00:28:51.000But the goal of this operation, so far as I understand it, is simply to neutralize the nuclear threat.
00:28:56.000And if that is the goal, if that is the goal, Then I think that Israel has already shown that it's fully capable of doing that.
00:29:02.000Just to take one example, I mean, they had a large, large number of Iran's nuclear facilities.
00:29:07.000Just to take one example, Natanz, which is maybe the most infamous of all of the Iranian uranium enrichment facilities.
00:29:13.000Natanz has been kind of front and center of all these can Israel strike Iran debates for the past 15, 20 years now.
00:29:19.000These debates have gone back a long time.
00:29:21.000Israel has, as by all accounts, according to the IAEA, the UN International Nuclear Watchdog, they call it, Natanz has been completely obliterated.
00:29:29.000There is no more Natanz nuclear facility.
00:29:31.000I mean, that is an astonishing, astonishing thing right there.
00:29:34.000So again, if the goal of the Israeli operation, Rising Line, I think is the name that the IDF is giving it, if the goal is to neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat, then I think they are fully capable of doing this on the run.
00:29:46.000There's not going to be a ground invasion or anything like that there.
00:29:58.000So the goal of this is tactical aerial strikes to neutralize a harrowing threat of the world's number one state sponsor of jihad, these fanatical Islamists who genuinely believe in 72 virgins in heaven and all that there.
00:30:10.000The goal is to decapitate their capacity to launch a nuclear strike on Israel, Europe, anywhere else.
00:30:16.000If they were to ever acquire, God forbid, intercontinental ballistic missile technology.
00:30:20.000And so far, they've been very successful.
00:30:22.000And I think, God willing, that they will continue to be very successful.
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00:31:39.000I can't imagine you're surprised by that, though, Josh.
00:31:42.000So, as someone who's in Israel and cares about Israel but is also an American, Walk me through your reaction to that and how you think this plays out politically.
00:31:50.000Yeah, Charlie, I don't think the U.S. really has to get involved.
00:31:53.000I have never once actually in my entire commentary career called for the U.S. to directly get involved in military or kinetic action against Iran because, frankly, it's not my stance.
00:32:01.000I thought that the first Trump-era maximum pressures economic campaign was very successful there.
00:32:07.000And then beyond economic pressure and placing crippling sanctions on the oil and natural gas exports to the Chinese Communist Party above all there, I've always thought that Israel could take the military end of the bargain and do a nice thing.
00:32:19.000All that essentially is needed from the United States is to cast the various vetoes at the UN National Security Council and things like that there.
00:32:28.000But, Charlie, I would suggest that another way to view it actually is this way.
00:32:33.000Iran obviously is an existential threat to Israel.
00:32:37.000It is a major threat to other countries, but it is a larger threat to Israel, and I think it would be sloppy analysis to try to needlessly conflate the degree of the threat to Israel to others there.
00:32:46.000It is a threat to the United States, but not the exact same threat.
00:32:50.000Iran definitely does have American blood on its hands for 46 years, going back to the hostage crisis that launched the regime and ended the Jimmy Carter presidency, going back to the 241 U.S. Marines slaughtered at the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, from Hezbollah, the top Iranian proxy, the 500 to 600 American soldiers killed by Qasem Soleimani supplied IEDs on the roadside of Al-Anbar and Fallujah during the Petraeus counterinsurgency, during the Bush administration, and on and on and on we go there.
00:33:16.000So I think another way of viewing this is as far In securing not just its own national interest, it happens to be an existential interest in this case there, but also then ultimately conducing to the enhanced and greater safety and security of the United States, of our European allies, and so forth and so forth.
00:33:36.000The United States, Charlie, today and for the foreseeable future, is a safer and more secure place because of what Israel is doing inside of Iran.
00:33:55.000But the key thing here is that when it comes to the Middle East, and this is kind of what you expect of an ally from a national Israelist foreign policy paradigm, the key thing is that Israel's national interest in this region is overwhelmingly Venn diagram-overlapped with the American region.
00:34:09.000The degrees may actually vary for sure.
00:34:11.000I will happily and readily conceive that there.
00:34:12.000But again, America is a safer and more secure place today from Israel simply doing this.
00:34:18.000In fact, America in many ways is benefiting, frankly, on the cheek, because we're not actually sending in any kind of troops.
00:34:23.000And no one is calling for that, by the way.
00:34:24.000No one is seriously, literally, I haven't found a single person who's actually calling for that there.
00:34:33.000I know that you are in a calamitous situation right now and we'll be praying for you and praying for your family and praying for the peace in Jerusalem.
00:34:44.000I want to just go a little bit deeper into the politics here.
00:34:47.000And we talked about the cautionary tale.
00:34:49.000These military operations are almost oversimplified in the media, and they kind of have an immediate crescendo and then some complication as one proceeds.
00:34:58.000I could tell you, though, that young MAGA especially, the more online you get, the more skepticism there is about America getting involved in this, in the quagmire, in the nonstop flow of military intervention in the Middle East.
00:35:16.000And the base will diverge from some orthodox opinions on Israel that you might hear on cable news or in the mainstream media, where the base might have diplomatic and sentimental support towards Israel, which, of course, I've demonstrated over a very long period of time, which the question is, though, how much money, how much funding are we getting involved, and to what extent does that lead towards?
00:35:42.000Because I could tell you right now, A primary concern from the MAGA base, it is a phrase I hear all the time, Charlie, this is just to get the war contractors wealthier.
00:35:52.000Charlie, this is just to get people that are in the permanent war machine more money.