The Charlie Kirk Show - THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 87 — Israel Strikes Iran: Live Reaction

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00:00:58.000 OK, everybody, it is Thursday.

00:01:00.000 We are going live and we are going quick because it is now official.

00:01:03.000 Israel has conducted a military strike in the middle of the night against Iran.

00:01:08.000 We were watching the situation very closely, privately.

00:01:10.000 We had sources that were telling us that this was imminent and it has now happened.

00:01:15.000 Israel has struck Iran.

00:01:17.000 These are the first images coming out of Tehran.

00:01:18.000 This is going to be your go-to news destination.

00:01:21.000 We're streaming live here on Real America's Voice.

00:01:23.000 Thank you, Parker and Rob, for this breaking news report.

00:01:27.000 We're also on Rumble.

00:01:28.000 This is the biggest story on the planet right now.

00:01:30.000 Israel has launched a preemptive strike against Iran.

00:01:33.000 And what is going to happen next, we will see.

00:01:36.000 We have with us Blake and also Jack Posobiec as we try to process this here in real time.

00:01:42.000 Jack, I'll go to you first.

00:01:44.000 Jack, you and I kind of saw this looming the last couple of days.

00:01:47.000 We will get to that.

00:01:51.000 But first, we want to just talk about the human cost and what that will entail here.

00:01:56.000 Jack, your reaction to this is we kind of saw this slow walking in our group chats these last couple of days.

00:02:03.000 Well, Charlie, that's right.

00:02:05.000 We're hearing, and again, we're still trying to figure out exactly what the scope is of this attack.

00:02:11.000 We're seeing the videos streaming in.

00:02:13.000 These are from the past couple of minutes here.

00:02:16.000 It does seem to be an airstrike, hearing information about jets breaking the sound barrier over northern Iraq as they sped towards Tehran.

00:02:27.000 This attack reportedly taking place there.

00:02:30.000 Of course, we're not sure whether or not other sites that have been Reportedly linked to Iran's nuclear program have been hit.

00:02:36.000 This does appear to be a fighter jet-based air strike rather than a missile strike.

00:02:44.000 Of course, it all remains to be seen in terms of, as you say, casualties and BDA.

00:02:50.000 So when I was a junior intel analyst, the first thing we're taught is BDA after any strike battle.

00:02:55.000 Damage assessment.

00:02:56.000 So what is the goal?

00:02:58.000 What was the effectiveness of the strike?

00:03:03.000 And is what was struck destroyed?

00:03:06.000 Is it capable?

00:03:07.000 Is it a certain percentage capable?

00:03:08.000 We'll see.

00:03:09.000 Now, of course, Iran knows this as well.

00:03:10.000 This is why most of their nuclear facilities and certainly the research facilities are placed underground.

00:03:16.000 And so very hard to be able to conduct any analysis directly of any underground structures, of course, just given the nature of what we have.

00:03:24.000 Plus the fact that it's the middle of the night in Iran, though I'm sure a lot of reports will be coming out as we go.

00:03:31.000 We're going to be continuing that up.

00:03:33.000 And of course, we're going to be continuing to look at coverage of a potential fallout or retaliatory strikes from Iran against Israel or perhaps U.S. targets within the region.

00:03:43.000 This, of course, is why the State Department was putting out that information regarding military personnel and evacuations, non-essentials being sent home, things like this over the past 24 to 48 hours, because the indications certainly were there.

00:03:58.000 President Trump, of course, posted and said a number of things today about how the U.S. would not be involved directly, that he was directing all of his administration to focus on diplomacy.

00:04:09.000 And we know, of course, that Whitcoff is still, as we know, at least as of before this took place, that there would be there would be meetings held this weekend.

00:04:20.000 I'm reading this report now here.

00:04:21.000 Initial reports of explosions at Natanz and Fordo in Iran.

00:04:25.000 So, yes, these are the main nuclear facilities of Iran that are separated.

00:04:31.000 Can we get maps?

00:04:33.000 So Natanz is very, very inland.

00:04:36.000 I hope people understand.

00:04:37.000 I mean, that is incredibly inland.

00:04:38.000 We saw this developing throughout the night.

00:04:41.000 Well, you know, their night, but our afternoon, we were like, this is happening, this is happening.

00:04:45.000 And it's amazing how many people who think they actually know what's going on are, like, super surprised on chats, like, what's happened?

00:04:51.000 Like, guys, the last couple hours, if you weren't paying attention, this is what was happening.

00:04:55.000 So walk us through the map, Blake.

00:04:57.000 Blake, why don't you do this?

00:04:58.000 We have the map of Iran on screen here, just the geography of the entire region.

00:05:03.000 This was a multi-hour flight from Israel to Iran.

00:05:06.000 Blake, this is a major operation.

00:05:08.000 Please, Blake, walk us through it.

00:05:11.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:05:12.000 So Iran's not as big as the United States, but it is a fairly large country.

00:05:16.000 I think if you overlaid it, I think it'd be about the size of maybe one quarter of the United States, maybe even one third of the continental United States.

00:05:24.000 So it's a large country, and it doesn't border Israel.

00:05:27.000 In fact, you have to fly over at least two additional countries to get there.

00:05:31.000 They probably flew over Jordan and Iraq.

00:05:35.000 And it's a long flight.

00:05:37.000 If you look at that map, you can see little kind of red cylinders, red pillars.

00:05:42.000 Those are their uranium enrichment plants.

00:05:45.000 So that's where they're taking uranium and they're running it through centrifuges to make it enriched uranium, which is what you would use for a nuclear weapon.

00:05:55.000 And so those are almost certainly the primary targets.

00:05:58.000 There are already reports of explosions there.

00:06:00.000 We will see if those are confirmed.

00:06:03.000 Maybe we'll actually get video of it eventually.

00:06:06.000 But those will be the places that you want to hit if your desire is to take out a nuclear program.

00:06:11.000 But they're in the mountains, I believe.

00:06:14.000 At least one or both facilities, they're built underground, so they're difficult to get to.

00:06:18.000 So there's been a lot of talk about how this would unfold because the U.S. has some very heavy, we call them bunker-busting munitions.

00:06:26.000 They're designed to pulverize very deep underground facilities.

00:06:31.000 Israel doesn't have access to those weapons, and we've been hesitant to supply them or give them any access to them.

00:06:38.000 And so if we're not involved in this, there's been talk that Israel may have to modify its plans and may have to strike it several times so they could strike it, see if there's any damage, do follow-up hits, and so on.

00:06:50.000 But these are difficult places to reach.

00:06:52.000 They would be flying several, probably about They're deep inside Iranian airspace.

00:07:01.000 They are presumably well defended, so we may learn maybe whether any planes were shot down or whether there's any attempt to shoot them down.

00:07:11.000 We're going to be seeing this all unfold very quickly.

00:07:15.000 This is breaking news all within the last 20 minutes.

00:07:18.000 And so, Jack, help everyone in the audience understand kind of the timeline here.

00:07:22.000 I mean, on Sunday there were supposed to be more talks.

00:07:26.000 Why did Israel strike even though there were more talks between the United States and Iran and kind of short-circuit that?

00:07:32.000 Please, I mean, Jack, tell us.

00:07:34.000 This is a little confusing to our audience.

00:07:36.000 Well, Charlie, as we've seen from President Trump, President Trump was very explicit on this.

00:07:42.000 And even back in April, when Prime Minister Netanyahu came to the White House and was really pushing for strikes on Iran to be conducted jointly between the United States and Israel, those strikes, of course, were rejected by President Trump.

00:08:01.000 That plan was rejected, and it was reported there were some other elements.

00:08:05.000 Of the administration, or at least the U.S. government writ large, that we're also working on planning those potential strikes.

00:08:13.000 This has been something that Israel has wanted for a long time, strikes on the nuclear program.

00:08:17.000 Obviously, they've been targeting their nuclear programs for a decade plus at this point, ever since they embarked on it in the first place.

00:08:25.000 Of course, this is all about uranium enrichment, and this has become sort of a jump ball between what you're seeing as the neocons and the I would say the anti-war crowd out there, one crowd pointing to saying, well, wait, there is no nuclear weapons program in Iran.

00:08:42.000 the neocons pointing to, well, there's this continued uranium enrichment, which could potentially be used for nuclear weapons, even if there isn't a nuclear weapons program.

00:08:52.000 And so this being the impetus for wanting to have a And of course, the political situation in Israel, obviously quite chaotic, given everything that's going on since the end of the ceasefire back in March between Israel and Gaza, the situation with the Hamas terrorists going on, the ongoing war there.

00:09:11.000 So a lot of chaos in their internal politics, as well, even a vote on potential early elections that took place just last night in the Knesset in Israel, which Netanyahu survived, but I believe by less than 10. So here's what I don't understand.

00:09:28.000 I'm not an expert, though.

00:09:31.000 We don't yet know where all the strikes are.

00:09:33.000 We are seeing here on BBC, so why are they striking Tehran?

00:09:38.000 On the map, there's no nuclear facilities in Tehran.

00:09:41.000 Am I mistaken here?

00:09:43.000 There's a research reactor there.

00:09:46.000 But striking the capital seems to be a major escalation.

00:09:51.000 Blake.

00:09:51.000 Yeah, I don't want to presume It could be that there are military facilities there they want to hit, so that could be elements of their military command structure.

00:10:01.000 Maybe that's where some of their like fighters are based or they're like air defenses.

00:10:06.000 So there's any number of reasons they could hit it because presumably they're banking on even if they want to strike the nuclear targets.

00:10:14.000 They're so...

00:10:28.000 And so I don't know what they would be aiming at, but there's any number of possible reasons they would go for it.

00:10:34.000 Okay, so this is happening live right now.

00:10:37.000 For those of you that are just tuning in, Israel has launched preemptive military strikes on the interior of Iran against nuclear reactors.

00:10:45.000 So, Jack, I want to throw this to you from an intel standpoint.

00:10:49.000 You can kind of see this building.

00:10:50.000 Yesterday you saw Tom Cotton.

00:10:52.000 And Lindsey Graham say, hey, you know, are they close to a bomb in Iran?

00:10:57.000 Are they close to a bomb in Iran?

00:10:59.000 The skeptics would say that, well, we've been hearing that for the last 30 years, that Iran is close to a nuclear weapon, close to a nuclear weapon.

00:11:06.000 So, Jack, as from an intel standpoint, was Iran close to a nuclear weapon?

00:11:10.000 Now, the question of is doesn't really mean anything.

00:11:14.000 So tell us, you know, what is really going on here, and can we trust the intel agencies?

00:11:21.000 Well, Charlie, this, of course, has been one of the most fractured debates that's gone on from the intel community and members of the U.S. political community, as well as the Israeli political community, as I mentioned before.

00:11:35.000 Prime Minister Netanyahu really pushing for these strikes, of course, for quite some time, years in many cases, and has directly targeted these facilities with a variety of cyber attacks and other attacks over the years.

00:11:47.000 The question comes down to, and the intel community's official assessment, everyone I've talked to in the intel community has always, and even from my time there, has said that Iran did not have an active.

00:11:59.000 Weapons of mass destruction program in the sense of having an actual nuclear weapons program.

00:12:08.000 But what they were doing was this uranium enrichment.

00:12:12.000 And then the question, of course, and even, by the way, even D&I Gabbard, who many people pointed to and say that obviously she's no hawk, even she pointed out that their uranium enrichment was much higher, at a much higher yield than anyone would need for only a fuel program.

00:12:29.000 We're only for nuclear energy.

00:12:30.000 and so a lot of the war hawks have been pointing to that saying look it's clear that they're going to do this in order to uh in order to try to ratchet up their their ability for um their ability for escalation and so one of the things though that people pointed to is say well iran Trump, of course, ended Obama's Iran deal, which was a total handoff to them back in 2018.

00:12:58.000 He ends this thing after the pallets of cash, and he had run on it, of course.

00:13:02.000 Back in 2016, the Obama deal.

00:13:06.000 And so after ending that deal, that's really when Iran pushed towards this enrichment to say, we are going to essentially kind of have a middle ground of saying, well, we're not restarting the program, but we are enriching this uranium, which of course puts them in a situation to say, well, they would potentially be able, if they chose, to use that in a weapon at any time.

00:13:28.000 That being said, though, You know, that's my distillation of the intel on both sides there.

00:13:34.000 That being said, we do know that Iran had been, it seems in good faith, conducting these negotiations with Steve Whitcoff, having meetings with him as appointed by President Trump.

00:13:45.000 We saw President Trump earlier today saying that he had directed all members of his administration to pursue negotiations and diplomatic measures.

00:14:03.000 And something where you've also seen in reports, I believe The Guardian had actually put out at one point that there was a potential for Russia to come in and be the guarantor of this program.

00:14:13.000 Russia, of course, being the country that finished the building of the Bushir nuclear power plant, which we had on the map a minute ago, that's there on the coast.

00:14:20.000 That is their completed nuclear power plant, the only one function.

00:14:24.000 And so this had been a potential triangulation, if you will, of the negotiations between Ukraine, Russia, Israel.

00:14:38.000 And Iran to say if the Russians were able to come in, this would be something that Obama's Iran deal had never considered, although it is kind of similar to one of the Syria deals prior to the Red Line back in 2013, where Russia came in and was the guarantor of Syria's chemical weapons.

00:14:56.000 China also played a small role in that.

00:14:57.000 And so there was really a lot of potential for talk regarding this.

00:15:02.000 Now, of course, it remains to be seen what will happen because we don't know what the fallout will be.

00:15:08.000 Both locally from, again, whether or not these facilities were destroyed.

00:15:12.000 I think there are a lot of questions as to whether or not Israel had the capability of actually being able to really take out the program, given the fact that they are underground.

00:15:20.000 Blake was mentioning that Israel doesn't have the bunker buster bombs that the U.S. has to be able to go after those underground facilities.

00:15:27.000 And then, of course, whether or not Iran decides to blame the United States or claim this as some kind of proxy attack and cancel the negotiation.

00:15:35.000 So a lot of that is going to be up in the air, just as the Israeli jets are up in the air right now over Iran.

00:15:46.000 Blake, on the ground, what is going on in Israel?

00:15:49.000 And do we know the breadth or the depth or the scale of these military strikes?

00:15:55.000 And walk our audience through exactly the technical side of what just happened, probably what's happening right now.

00:16:01.000 There are probably jets still right now, we know this certainly, in the air that are coming back from Israel.

00:16:07.000 And we kind of saw this happening real time in our group chats.

00:16:09.000 We're like, oh, there are sources that hear jets over Iraq.

00:16:13.000 I mean, we kind of had a little bit more of a heads up than that.

00:16:16.000 Blake, before you do that, everybody watching, I want to hear from you, freedomatcharliekirk.com.

00:16:20.000 Do you support Israel striking Iran preemptively?

00:16:24.000 I want to hear from you, freedomatcharliekirk.com.

00:16:27.000 We're very interested, freedomatcharliekirk.com.

00:16:30.000 Blake, your thoughts.

00:16:30.000 Okay, yeah.

00:16:32.000 So first of all, if you want the absolute breaking stuff, I'm monitoring...

00:16:36.000 israeli news sites uh the jerusalem post hearts those are going to be where you get any info from the israeli government the idf as quickly as possible also of course on x it was very funny how you know we were seeing on xo reports of planes flying reports of explosions and then i'm looking at the new york times i'm looking at cnn it takes them Are you kidding me?

00:17:00.000 And, you know, yeah, I think we were live before CNN even had a little, you know, thing up top.

00:17:04.000 But I want to read what's, Jerusalem Post has kind of a breaking, steadily updated thing where they're getting the info from the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces.

00:17:14.000 And so what they say is, first of all, there are warning sirens have been set off to get the public ready for a potential Iranian counterattack.

00:17:21.000 No ballistic missiles have been fired yet, but there are thousands of them.

00:17:25.000 According to the IDF, so this is their justification for action, they said that Iran had enough uranium to weaponize it to nuclear levels to make 15 nuclear weapons within days.

00:17:36.000 This is what the IDF says.

00:17:38.000 In recent days, they say, Iran developed a plan with Hezbollah and Hamas and other proxies to destroy the state of Israel, potentially including attempts to attack via all borders including Egypt and Jordan.

00:17:53.000 The IDF says this was, quote, a point of no return.

00:17:58.000 Benjamin Netanyahu has entered the security cabinet.

00:18:01.000 They're having some high-stakes meeting of the cabinet.

00:18:04.000 This might be answering your question about why they would hit Tehran.

00:18:08.000 IDF targets include commanders, bases, as well as nuclear sites, though the main goal is the nuclear sites.

00:18:16.000 The IDF claims they believe Iran was taken by surprise and was attacked in places they did not expect.

00:18:23.000 That would potentially answer the question of why they would do it now, rather than waiting through the weekend.

00:18:28.000 There might be an element that they had already given up on the process, but they didn't want to tip their hand that they had given up by waiting for negotiations over the weekend to fail.

00:18:41.000 Jerusalem Post continues here.

00:18:43.000 Israel has had strong coordination with the U.S., but Israeli military officials refuse to say whether America was pre-updated or fully coordinated into the current attack.

00:18:56.000 And that's all the relevant info we have now, and they're constantly adding to this.

00:19:01.000 So I think this is statements that are coming from an IDF person as we speak, and it's middle of the night there.

00:19:08.000 So, this is all unfolding in life.

00:19:11.000 Help me understand, though.

00:19:12.000 Blake, help me understand this.

00:19:14.000 Negotiations were going on.

00:19:15.000 This is the Just the News headline.

00:19:16.000 This is not Charlie Kirk's opinion.

00:19:18.000 This is Just the News from John Solomon.

00:19:21.000 Just the News headline is this, which is, Israel launches attack on Iran in defiance of Trump's urgings.

00:19:27.000 So, help me understand.

00:19:29.000 It seems like negotiations were going on.

00:19:31.000 Do we even know enough about that?

00:19:34.000 So, basically, fill in the blanks here.

00:19:37.000 So I believe Trump had said there was some sort of deadline to make a deal, I think a few months ago.

00:19:44.000 And that deadline was right around now, or maybe it even just passed.

00:19:47.000 But Trump has always been...

00:19:52.000 He'll always say, Iran can't have a nuclear weapon.

00:19:55.000 He is not willing to allow that to happen.

00:19:57.000 but he's Trump the dealmaker.

00:19:59.000 He's always going around saying, I am...

00:20:03.000 I'm ready to make a deal.

00:20:04.000 I'm hopeful for making a deal.

00:20:06.000 And we saw it just today.

00:20:07.000 He's saying, I'm committed to reaching a diplomatic resolution of this.

00:20:12.000 Now, him saying it today, there's a couple possible interpretations.

00:20:17.000 One is he genuinely was still seeking that deal and was trying to message, please make the deal before something happens.

00:20:25.000 Or there's the possibility...

00:20:35.000 And we've seen several attempts to communicate that just before the strikes happened.

00:20:41.000 I believe Axios, I think, was reporting that there was communication.

00:20:46.000 Someone in the White House, I think Witkoff, said the White House has disassociated itself from any Israeli attempt.

00:20:54.000 They might know about it, but they're not.

00:20:57.000 We're cooperating with it.

00:20:58.000 So whether that's true or not, I think we're certainly going to see the U.S. government claim that we were not involved in this because obviously once this has happened, our biggest concern is our American troops in Iraq, in Kuwait, in Saudi Arabia, in whatever bases we have in the Middle East, are they going to be in danger of being hit?

00:21:21.000 And so what does the retaliation then look like?

00:21:25.000 We got Tyler Boyer in the chair, which I actually want to ask the political question to Tyler next, because I'm also, this is going to schism MAGA terribly online.

00:21:33.000 I mean, you are going to see, I don't want to say a MAGA civil war, but it's going to be a MAGA online food fight, the likes of which is going to be very, very hard to navigate.

00:21:43.000 We saw this coming, but apparently that was not...

00:21:47.000 And that's fine.

00:21:48.000 Maybe there's stuff that we don't know.

00:21:49.000 But Jack, how could Iran respond? 0.98

00:21:52.000 And what do you have to say, Jack, to this idea that there might be Iranian sleeper cells in America that Joe Biden allowed in the country?

00:22:01.000 We had 10 million people come into the country.

00:22:03.000 Are there Iranian sleeper cells right now in America that then could be activated by the mullahs? 0.76

00:22:09.000 Well, Charlie, of course, the answer is yes, that could Iran have gotten sleeper cells in the United States?

00:22:14.000 I think that's increasingly likely and and almost certainly they have operatives within the United States.

00:22:21.000 Also, Iran is famous for.

00:22:39.000 Look, we just saw the Ukrainians launch this huge kamikaze-style drone attack deep within Russian territory. 0.91

00:22:47.000 It would be very easy for Iran to do something like that or to have smuggled such types of things across the U.S. border in the Biden years where there was no operational control of vast swaths of the U.S. border other than by the cartels. 0.59

00:23:00.000 So it would be it would be very simple for them to just pay the cartels to allow them to do such a thing.

00:23:05.000 When it comes to direct retaliation, though, I think more than likely at this point, unless unless more information comes in at this point, it seems as though their retaliation will be.

00:23:26.000 They certainly can.

00:23:27.000 They have the capability to do so.

00:23:28.000 They have a robust ballistic missile program.

00:23:31.000 They have two, by the way, two militaries in Iran, the nominal Iranian forces, the regulars, as well as the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

00:23:41.000 Those are the forces that are directly Subordinated to the Ayatollah.

00:23:47.000 So there's the Ayatollah's forces and the country's forces.

00:23:50.000 It's a little bit different than we do in the United States, as it would be.

00:23:55.000 But certainly they have ballistic missile capability, and I would expect that that is what they use, again, in strikes on Israel. 0.97

00:24:02.000 Obviously, we'll see, you know, I think Israeli Air Force bases, potentially whatever bases were used to conduct this strike, would probably be the most likely attacks.

00:24:10.000 So, Tyler, let's talk.

00:24:12.000 I mean, we're monitoring the situation in real time.

00:24:14.000 Actually, let me just check one of my sources here.

00:24:16.000 Okay, this is one of my sources who has...

00:24:19.000 Jack, how right were my sources today?

00:24:21.000 Charlie, you...

00:24:26.000 Down to the exact minutes.

00:24:29.000 So, you guys can watch all the chattering people on TV, but we have good sources here. 0.99

00:24:33.000 This seems to be like an all-out attack and possibly the start of another regional war.

00:24:39.000 That is what I am—that's what—again, you guys can say that's not true, but this is from very, very good intel.

00:24:47.000 I mean, I'm seeing here that Jerusalem Post just continues to update, and they say there are mixed reports of a possibility that Israel has targeted Iran's chief of staff.

00:24:57.000 That would be presumably—I think I've got his name here—General Mohammed Bagheri.

00:25:04.000 General Mohammed Bagheri, chief of staff, that would be the— Basically the top general, you know, like Milley was chief of staff under Biden.

00:25:11.000 I can't remember who our chief of staff is right now.

00:25:14.000 But, like, top general.

00:25:16.000 So if you're trying to decapitate the top of their military, you've moved beyond just a limited strike on their nuclear sites, and you are attempting to hobble their entire military apparatus.

00:25:28.000 We need to confirm that.

00:25:30.000 We don't know that for sure.

00:25:31.000 This is a report.

00:25:32.000 Mixed reports from Jerusalem Post, so they're presumably drawing on Israeli sources what the IDF is saying.

00:25:39.000 Not confirmed.

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00:26:36.000 The world is turning to gold.

00:26:38.000 Shouldn't you be looking into doing that too?

00:26:43.000 If there's going to be, let's just say from the get-go, we're in a fog of war situation.

00:26:48.000 We're receiving this information as much as anybody else.

00:26:52.000 People know people know who Charlie is.

00:26:54.000 People know who I am.

00:26:55.000 People know who we know.

00:26:56.000 But that being said, everyone is in the fog of war on this situation.

00:27:00.000 So just caveat everything.

00:27:02.000 And we'll do our best.

00:27:03.000 We'll do our level best.

00:27:04.000 And if there's anything that we put out that ends up being being corrected, we'll certainly make sure to be able to update that as well.

00:27:11.000 So we're drinking from the fire hose just as much as everybody else trying to make sense of this out there.

00:27:15.000 So, yeah, the senior Israeli official said high probability that Iran's chief of staff was eliminated.

00:27:20.000 And that Israel began this attack with direct elimination of many IRGC commanders.

00:27:25.000 This is not just a targeted attack against nuclear facilities based on what we are reading.

00:27:30.000 This seems like Israel that is calling the bluff against Iran. 0.71

00:27:34.000 And the question is, guys, is this going to drag America into a war against Iran?

00:27:41.000 Who wants to take that one? 0.86

00:27:42.000 And that's the real question.

00:27:44.000 I mean, I think the debate's already started.

00:27:46.000 It's pretty much a wildfire on X, which is, you know, if there's one thing, if you could probably sum up President Trump's campaign from 2024, it was that electing me is going to prevent World War III.

00:28:00.000 Is that fair to say with the conversation with Kamala?

00:28:05.000 And so this was one of the biggest promises, if not the biggest promise of the campaign, is with me, you get less war.

00:28:12.000 I'm an anti-war president. 0.86

00:28:13.000 I'm a guy that makes sure that conflict does not happen across the world.

00:28:19.000 I'm looking for the best and most reasonable deal to make.

00:28:23.000 I'm the deal guy.

00:28:24.000 And, you know, right now we kind of went into this week going, well, if President Trump isn't strong enough with the rioters in L.A. That's going to be problematic.

00:28:35.000 If President Trump is not strong enough on the border, we've known this all throughout and provides any kind of amnesty to illegals and to the anti-American protesters that we've seen in California, that's going to be a problem.

00:28:49.000 But war with Iran, I would argue, is going to spin out into something here that's much bigger than what I think we even are realizing right now.

00:29:02.000 But they're going to try to blame Trump for war, regardless of how hard he fights against it.

00:29:14.000 So this is multi-regional is what it looks like.

00:29:18.000 Speaker Johnson yesterday announced he's actually going to be addressing the Israeli Knesset on June 22nd.

00:29:25.000 So let me ask the audience.

00:29:28.000 Ten days from now.

00:29:29.000 Email us, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:29:31.000 If it's true, if it's true, and if it's true that Israel is striking Iran more than just nuclear facilities and they're going after chief of staff, according to Amir Safardi, who's very, very well respected and is very well sourced, he says, quote, high probability that Iran's chief of staff was eliminated.

00:29:52.000 Iran began this attack with the direct elimination of many IRGC commanders.

00:29:58.000 So if it is more than just targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, does that change your level of support?

00:30:07.000 Email us, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:30:08.000 Breaking news from Reuters.

00:30:10.000 Iran's leadership holds top security meeting senior Iranian official to Reuters.

00:30:15.000 They are planning an all-out response.

00:30:17.000 And now I have the second person that is predicting this is going to be a regional war.

00:30:22.000 Quote, Bagheri is second in command after Kwamele.

00:30:27.000 And it's very possible that the Israel attacks took him out tonight.

00:30:32.000 Man, holding a meeting.

00:30:34.000 I hope they're holding it via Zoom, because I feel like I always read about these meetings getting blown up.

00:30:40.000 But, yeah, yeah, so second-in-command under, and, like, they're saying second-in-command under the Supreme Leader, who is a religious cleric.

00:30:47.000 He's not a military commander.

00:30:49.000 And just because we've repeated it, IRGC is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

00:30:59.000 So just so we are clear, taking out Bajeri would be the equivalent of assassinating J.D. Vance and Susie Wiles together. 0.91

00:31:10.000 That's essentially how the Iranian government works, to the best of our understanding.

00:31:16.000 That would be the combined lethality.

00:31:20.000 So the IDF spokesperson has just said, quote, the IDF launched a preemptive strike to damage the Iranian nuclear program.

00:31:27.000 Dozens of Air Force aircraft recently completed the opening strike.

00:31:31.000 Opening strike.

00:31:32.000 The public must obey the home front commands.

00:31:35.000 Iran has been a threat for quite some time. 1.00

00:31:39.000 And it looks like they went after more than just nuclear facilities.

00:31:43.000 So how do we think the Trump...

00:31:54.000 There's going to be hell to pay if this was done in defiance of Trump.

00:32:01.000 Well, that's the question, right?

00:32:02.000 We're seeing that.

00:32:03.000 That's he came out very publicly today and said negotiations, negotiations, negotiations.

00:32:10.000 And so.

00:32:28.000 by the way, all of Israel, and the entire stability of the region, not to mention what it would do to the fallout of oil prices?

00:32:36.000 Here we are at the beginning of summer, folks, beginning of summer, and we've got a war kicking off.

00:32:41.000 In the Middle East, which has, and if these indications are true, has all the hallmarks of something that could incite a wider regional war.

00:32:51.000 What do you think that's going to do to gas prices, to supplies, to everything else as we look at the very beginning of the summer?

00:32:58.000 Certainly, this is not what, and yeah, Israeli media is, now again, Israeli media.

00:33:07.000 Is saying that this was coordinated with the United States.

00:33:10.000 I'm going to wait to hear from our own presidents of the United States when it comes to something like that.

00:33:17.000 But of course, that is what they're putting out right now.

00:33:20.000 Again, we just saw President Trump a few hours ago say negotiations.

00:33:25.000 And of course, there was a lot of reporting.

00:33:28.000 Yeah, that's true.

00:33:29.000 They're just getting this as but it could be a translation thing.

00:33:34.000 So this is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who says the following.

00:33:37.000 Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran.

00:33:40.000 We are not involved in the strikes against Iran, and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.

00:33:46.000 Israel advised us that they believed this was necessary for its self-defense.

00:33:49.000 President Trump and the administration taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact All being said, that is a very, very neutral statement from Marco Rubio.

00:34:04.000 That was not a supportive statement at all, by the way.

00:34:07.000 That was, in fact, what he's attempting to do here is put distance.

00:34:11.000 So what he's trying to do is put distance between the United States.

00:34:14.000 Look, the United States has 40,000 to 50,000 troops in the Middle East writ large.

00:34:20.000 So yes, of course, we have combat troops and a variety of troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria.

00:34:27.000 But of course, we have troops all over.

00:34:29.000 The Persian Gulf.

00:34:31.000 Of course, DOD calls it the Arabian Gulf, but I'm not in uniform right now, so I'm going to say Persian Gulf, because that's what most people know.

00:34:37.000 And a variety, a variety of targets right across the Gulf.

00:34:42.000 When you're talking about Qatar, when you're talking about our troops in Bahrain, our troops in Jordan, our troops in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, just all over the place, all over the place, not to mention, I believe the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, the carrier battle group is there, and the Truman is there.

00:34:59.000 Certainly within the region as well.

00:35:00.000 Plus, we know that back in April during these, the Houthi strikes, when all that was going on, there were B2 bombers that were flown to Diego Garcia.

00:35:11.000 Now, that's not within range of Iran.

00:35:12.000 But of course, there were a lot of people saying that those bombers could potentially be used if a wider regional war were to break out.

00:35:19.000 And well, we could be looking at the very beginning of a wider regional war right now.

00:35:25.000 And you got to believe with that response.

00:35:27.000 Yeah, Tyler, go ahead.

00:35:28.000 I was just going to say that response from Marco Rubio.

00:35:31.000 I mean, Marco Rubio historically has not been a person to shy away from, you know, over the course of his long career from Neo Connie type, you know, excitement.

00:35:41.000 It's happened in the past with him.

00:35:43.000 And so for him to come out and, you know, obviously he's a changed man.

00:35:47.000 He's a lot of a different guy today than he was then.

00:35:50.000 But for him to come out and make that very clear statement, I think is reassuring for a lot of Trump supporters who are listening to this.

00:35:57.000 And I hope that that's the case for most that are watching this, is that the president has made a commitment.

00:36:03.000 And I don't think they would come out that rapidly, that fast, with that statement if that wasn't true.

00:36:08.000 Sorry, Charlie.

00:36:10.000 No, it's fine.

00:36:11.000 I want everyone to email us, freedomatcharliekirk.com.

00:36:15.000 So here's the sequence that I'm most afraid of.

00:36:17.000 Let me walk you through it.

00:36:18.000 Israel strikes.

00:36:19.000 Iran retaliates big time. 0.62

00:36:21.000 There is a regional war.

00:36:22.000 The U.S. is then pressured to send more aid to Israel.

00:36:26.000 MAGA will likely resist sending more aid to Israel based on the emails that I'm getting right now.

00:36:32.000 And I want to hear from you guys, freedomatcharliekirk.com.

00:36:35.000 By the way, there are initial reports, it's fog of war, that a high-rise apartment, a Initial reports of missiles launched by Iran towards Israel.

00:36:49.000 So the question is, do you guys support sending U.S. money and military aid to Israel?

00:36:54.000 Email us, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:36:55.000 We're getting thousands of emails.

00:36:57.000 I want to read them.

00:36:58.000 I want to analyze what you're thinking in real time here.

00:37:01.000 And do you believe that this was an act of self-defense by Israel or an offensive position?

00:37:08.000 Again, the emails are so largely overwhelmingly against the Israel doing this.

00:37:14.000 I'd say it's probably a 99 to 1. But email us, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:37:19.000 Jack, your thoughts?

00:37:20.000 Well, Charlie, we did the same thing with emails earlier.

00:37:23.000 For human events, and it was a similar ratio.

00:37:27.000 There were a lot of people calling for saying, why is this something that should be done now when we're in the midst of negotiations?

00:37:35.000 Why not trust President Trump?

00:37:38.000 Why not trust the work that Steve Witkoff is doing and try to find a way where certainly we know that President Trump has been committed to peace?

00:37:48.000 This obviously is not the path towards peace.

00:37:51.000 This is the path towards a wider regional war.

00:37:55.000 And of course, hearing whether or not it's true that there were strikes in some of these other regions, whether it be Yemen on the Houthis who are Iran's proxy force there or other areas.

00:38:09.000 The goal, of course, would be to incite a wider regional war or perhaps provoke a unified response from the Arab countries against the non- 1.00

00:38:30.000 And so the question is, of course, I think on everyone's mind, how large will Iran's retaliations be?

00:38:40.000 And quite frankly, how far are these strikes going to go?

00:38:44.000 Is this the first round, or is this the opening salvo of strikes?

00:38:48.000 And if it's simply this and we can all go to bed, perhaps that's one thing.

00:38:54.000 But I don't think that's how it's going to be.

00:38:56.000 I just saw an interesting point.

00:38:58.000 Also, Tyler, I think, Tyler, there's going to be some major protests and riots in the country coming up in the next couple of days.

00:39:09.000 And one interesting comment that just came through from a person I really trust just said, hey, please don't forget, we just saw the statement from Marco Rubio.

00:39:19.000 That's fantastic.

00:39:22.000 Don't forget that Kamala Harris could be president right now. 0.98

00:39:24.000 Imagine a world in which this...

00:39:29.000 Or does this happen much faster, much earlier, which I think it probably would have.

00:39:34.000 Something of this nature is probably, they're probably a little bit bummed actually that Trump got elected because they were wanting to strike much more quickly.

00:39:43.000 And again, depending upon where you're at on the spectrum with that, but I'm just so grateful that Kamala Harris is a president right now. 0.90

00:39:50.000 Can you imagine the amount of instability?

00:39:53.000 That we would have across the world.

00:39:55.000 And she would be like, so Iran is this big country.

00:40:00.000 Oh, can you imagine?

00:40:01.000 In the Middle East.

00:40:02.000 Cute.

00:40:03.000 And they have a nuclear program.

00:40:07.000 A nuclear program is what enriches uranium to make...

00:40:15.000 And yeah, you'd want to die the whole time.

00:40:18.000 The whole time.

00:40:18.000 She'd be in front of Congress right now trying to talk down to Speaker Johnson.

00:40:22.000 It would just be a terrible, terrible situation.

00:40:25.000 And to Charlie's point, there's going to be protests.

00:40:27.000 There's going to be backlash.

00:40:28.000 And the Democrats are in a really bad, precarious position right now because they've been the antagonizers of war across the world.

00:40:36.000 And so you're not going to have prominent Democrats coming out and doing it the same way that they did to Bush.

00:40:43.000 That it's not going to be the same recourse that they will have with members of Congress.

00:40:50.000 So it's going to be really interesting politically how this is going to play out.

00:40:53.000 That's why I think it's so important for MAGA to stay firmly on the side of opposing war.

00:40:59.000 And I think that that's probably majority of expectations from Republicans.

00:41:04.000 Probably 80-20, I would guess.

00:41:06.000 75-25.

00:41:07.000 Somewhere in there.

00:41:09.000 So the politics of this are quite interesting.

00:41:12.000 I'm trying to understand the situation on the ground.

00:41:16.000 So Iran has declared a nationwide state of emergency.

00:41:19.000 Netanyahu says, quote, this operation will continue for as many days as it takes.

00:41:24.000 There are multiple reports of residential buildings that are being collapsed, multiple residential buildings in Tehran on fire or collapsing after Israeli airstrikes on Iran's capital.

00:41:43.000 So this is just the beginning.

00:41:44.000 But help me understand, Jack, if this is just going after nuclear reactors or nuclear weapons, are they striking the apartment buildings because maybe there were generals there?

00:41:54.000 This seems a lot broader than just a targeted strike against Iranian nuclear reactors.

00:41:59.000 Well, Charlie, that's possible.

00:42:02.000 Also, another possibility could be, and I think you see this quite a bit in Ukraine, where they may have been conducting attacks and potentially targeting command structures, command and control structures within Tehran.

00:42:19.000 Of course, that's where Iranian leadership is.

00:42:21.000 And the reason that you're seeing these hits on Apartment buildings and residential buildings rather than on command and control centers of the higher leadership.

00:42:31.000 This is what happens potentially when you see missiles that are shot down, when you see interceptors, when you see debris, when you see these various types of munitions, you get blowback.

00:42:43.000 And so that blowback ends up hitting the, you know, might hit the tower, but not take it out, conduct debris.

00:42:50.000 That's where you're hitting civilians on and getting that collateral damage.

00:42:55.000 Unfortunately, as the parlance is, the civilians do become that damage if it is one of those situations where there's a missile shoot down from Iranian air defense missiles or potentially if a missile malfunctioned.

00:43:15.000 But of course, as you say, if there were a general or some high-level official, some cleric inside, then that was being targeted if they were the second-in-command.

00:43:25.000 Potentially, although the question is, would they really be living in a civilian high-rise like that?

00:43:30.000 And so a lot of this is going to shake out.

00:43:33.000 We're still in the fog of war, but this is war.

00:43:36.000 This is what war is like.

00:43:38.000 Wars are never, they never go the way you think they're going to go.

00:43:42.000 Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face and the enemy gets a vote.

00:43:48.000 The enemy gets a vote.

00:43:49.000 And so this has always been the nature of warfare from the very early days.

00:43:54.000 And so we will see.

00:43:56.000 We will see what happens.

00:43:58.000 Are they able to ratchet up the escalatory ladder before Iran can respond with significant attacks? 0.97

00:44:05.000 The ballistic missiles?

00:44:06.000 Will Israel be able to shoot down ballistic missiles with the Golden Dome?

00:44:11.000 What do Iran's allies do?

00:44:13.000 What does Russia do?

00:44:14.000 What does China do? 0.60

00:44:17.000 Will American forces in the region face retaliatory measures?

00:44:22.000 Again, all of this really coming into question here as we determine the initial battle damage assessments from what we're being told, at least, is the opening salvo of strikes.

00:44:34.000 Okay, let's go to cut 519.

00:44:37.000 This is the official statement from the IDF 519.

00:44:40.000 For years, the Iranian regime has called for the destruction of the state of Israel.

00:44:45.000 Planning and advancing concrete military plans to do so.

00:44:49.000 Over the past few months, intelligence has shown that Iran is closer than ever to obtaining a nuclear weapon.

00:44:56.000 This morning, the IDF began preemptive and precise strikes targeting the Iranian nuclear program in order to prevent the Iranian regime's ability to build a nuclear bomb in the immediate time frame.

00:45:10.000 We have no choice.

00:45:12.000 We are operating against an imminent and existential threat.

00:45:16.000 We cannot allow the Iranian regime to obtain a nuclear weapon that would be a danger to Israel and the entire world. 0.96

00:45:25.000 This operation is for our right to exist here, for our future and for our children's future.

00:45:31.000 The State of Israel has the right and the obligation to operate in order to protect its people and will continue to do so.

00:45:40.000 The IDF conducted significant preparations for this operation.

00:45:44.000 We are well prepared, both in defense and offense, to defend ourselves.

00:45:49.000 The IDF will continue to defend the state of Israel.

00:45:53.000 So, Blake, I want to throw this to you.

00:45:55.000 Blake, is it, and I'm not even taking a side here, is it self-defense to strike another country that is threatening you?

00:46:03.000 Is that in the rules of war, in the kind of way that we look at?

00:46:08.000 The doctrine of self-defense is striking another sovereign country self-defense.

00:46:14.000 I mean, the frustrating answer is it depends.

00:46:18.000 If like an attack is imminent, I think there's general agreement.

00:46:21.000 Like if you know with certainty an enemy is about to attack you, then striking in advance is...

00:46:28.000 I think most people would concede that it's acceptable, it's just, it's probably the right move. 0.73

00:46:37.000 The line, of course, is when do you actually know that sort of thing?

00:46:40.000 And when are you actually just sort of recklessly provoking wars with anyone you perceive as a threat?

00:46:47.000 Or if you're elevating threats in your own mind and creating them where they wouldn't necessarily exist otherwise.

00:46:53.000 And I think...

00:47:00.000 I think in 1992 or 1993 is the first time Netanyahu, I think he was just a member of the Knesset then, he said Iran was three to five years away from getting a nuclear weapon.

00:47:10.000 And then about three years later, he said they're one to two years away from a nuclear weapon.

00:47:15.000 And then he said, you know, they're six months to a year.

00:47:17.000 He was saying that around the time of the Iraq war.

00:47:20.000 He was saying that during Obama's administration.

00:47:21.000 He was saying that during Trump's first administration.

00:47:23.000 We have literally been here.

00:47:25.000 I'm hearing about Iran's being close to a nuclear weapon as long as I have been alive. 0.84

00:47:31.000 And I'm not 20. I'm over 30 here.

00:47:36.000 And so they've been pushing this a long time, and that's going to color any claims like, oh, this time we're dead serious.

00:47:43.000 They were about to build a nuclear bomb.

00:47:47.000 I just remember in 2013, so much stuff.

00:47:50.000 Oh, they're a few months away from having a nuclear bomb.

00:47:53.000 And then even if they do, that doesn't equate to them actually using a nuclear bomb.

00:47:58.000 So you'd have to go on to that level too.

00:48:00.000 Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

00:48:02.000 They're an Islamic country with an Islamic government.

00:48:05.000 And that actually hasn't led to nuclear war.

00:48:07.000 North Korea is an extremely loopy country.

00:48:10.000 They have nuclear weapons.

00:48:11.000 That is scary.

00:48:12.000 I don't like that at all.

00:48:14.000 But it hasn't led to a nuclear war.

00:48:16.000 And so that's going to color how people react to this.

00:48:22.000 I want to flag because we have a few of these donations.

00:48:25.000 Marisha91 said, everyone agrees that war is bad.

00:48:27.000 No one agrees on when war is necessary.

00:48:29.000 I've got to disagree with that one.

00:48:31.000 I'm not sure Lindsey Graham agrees that war is bad.

00:48:34.000 I think some people think war is fun.

00:48:36.000 War is exciting. 1.00

00:48:37.000 War gives them that tingle down their leg.

00:48:39.000 You have to remember, there's some people that explicitly go into politics because of war.

00:48:44.000 that they love war so much that they go in.

00:48:47.000 And again, there's some really great people who serve in our military who become...

00:48:54.000 They've lived it.

00:48:55.000 It's been part of it.

00:48:56.000 That's why they go in is to use what they've learned to be helpful.

00:49:00.000 And there's others that go in and that have made significant sums of money from the concept of war.

00:49:07.000 And there's lots of people who love it.

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00:50:04.000 And so, I guess the question is, Jack, the escalatory response here, what could Iran do if they go all out to try to respond to Israel? 0.53

00:50:15.000 and will they loop the United States or Saudi Arabia into that?

00:50:18.000 Well, yeah, Charlie, like I said, in any...

00:50:23.000 military scenario, your assessment, you want to usually create two most likely and most dangerous.

00:50:27.000 So I said earlier that the most likely course of action will be strikes on Israel's military strikes on their We'll see if Israel is able to counter that.

00:50:45.000 And now, as we're learning more about these strikes on Iranian leadership, well, I'm sure that Iran's generals and the leaders of the IRGC, as well as Somalas, they're probably going to be calling for strikes on Israeli leadership as well, I would say, including the Knesset building itself, where Speaker Johnson is supposed to be speaking himself in just 10 days.

00:51:08.000 That, again, depends on the level of this opening salvo and whether or not there are more waves of strikes planned.

00:51:17.000 Fighters traveling Mach 2 would take about two hours, excuse me, 45 minutes to reach Tehran from Tel Aviv.

00:51:27.000 45 minutes to an hour between salvo so we'll know pretty soon here since the first round of strikes is about one hour ago if there's another round of strikes taking place tonight we'll know that pretty soon it should be occurring and so If if they want to go further than that, of course, hitting Israeli energy infrastructure, hitting Israeli civilian targets, as well as potentially even threatening holy sites, of course, all could be on the table.

00:51:55.000 Most dangerous scenario, of course, could be the the shutdown.

00:52:03.000 I know people say it all the time, but just to explain it, that's a critical choke point.

00:52:08.000 It is the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

00:52:10.000 It is a very narrow strip of water through which 20% of the entire world's oil supply flows through on a daily basis.

00:52:21.000 And so putting mines in the Strait of Hormuz or putting out these picket ships from the fast attack boats, from the IRGC and the IRGC Navy.

00:52:32.000 Could all be potential threats to that civilian merchant shipping and to those supertankers traveling through this trade of Hormuz.

00:52:39.000 This would, of course, roil energy markets and be used to be able to essentially hold hostage the entire world's economy.

00:52:47.000 So let me ask.

00:52:48.000 So, Blake, do you think that the Iranian mullahs get stronger or weaker?

00:52:52.000 So, Blake, do you think the Iranian mullahs get stronger or weaker? 0.99

00:52:55.000 With an attack like this, this can actually consolidate bad guys'hold on a country.

00:53:01.000 Look, the West hates us.

00:53:02.000 They're attacking us.

00:53:03.000 I know it's hard to tell, but I can actually see a scenario where the bad government gets more.

00:53:08.000 More popular here.

00:53:09.000 What do you think?

00:53:10.000 Yeah, definitely.

00:53:11.000 I think in the context of the situation, unless like incredibly strong proof is offered that they that as the IDF claims they were about to assemble nuclear weapons and launch an attack, which.

00:53:25.000 I it sounds it's a very strong sounding claim to me that you could see in the Jerusalem Post.

00:53:31.000 They were claiming that they were planning to build about a dozen nuclear weapons.

00:53:35.000 They would be able to assemble them quickly.

00:53:36.000 And they were planning an attack on Israel, including via the Egyptian and Jordanian border.

00:53:42.000 They were essentially claiming a like pan Middle Eastern plot to attack Israel, like a six day war type scenario when, you know, the overall situation is, you know, They've basically stayed out of this one.

00:53:58.000 I'm really interested in what the basis of that claim is.

00:54:02.000 And so what you have is they were in negotiations with the United States.

00:54:06.000 Obviously, relations are bad.

00:54:07.000 We've had some missile exchanges back and forth.

00:54:11.000 There's certainly room to claim this was already a very low-level war, especially when you take into account that Hamas is to some extent a proxy.

00:54:20.000 Hezbollah is definitely a proxy of Iran.

00:54:22.000 There's already a lot of conflict between the two.

00:54:25.000 They'll certainly be able to claim we did not take this radical step and we were still in negotiations with the United States.

00:54:32.000 And combined with the fact that their population already doesn't like Israel that much, the wider Middle East doesn't like Israel that much, I think this is going to not be great for their reputation.

00:54:44.000 I imagine Israel's calculation was this is dangerous enough.

00:54:47.000 We don't really care about our reputation on this one.

00:54:50.000 That is going to be their attitude on it.

00:54:52.000 Now, how this unfolds from here, I get scared by the fact that our ability to control what happens here is very limited.

00:55:02.000 Essentially, Iran has the chance to decide how they want to respond and how much they want us involved.

00:55:10.000 Right now, I think our attitude here, you know, you, Charlie, Tyler, Jack, our attitude is we don't want war.

00:55:17.000 And I think most of MAGA is saying the same thing.

00:55:19.000 We don't want a war.

00:55:21.000 We don't want this war to involve us.

00:55:23.000 That's easy for us to say now.

00:55:25.000 But Iran has thousands of ballistic missiles.

00:55:27.000 Now, maybe they shoot all of them at Israel, but maybe they lob them at a bunch of bases and in two days there are 200 dead U.S. troops who got blown to smithereens by an Iranian response. 0.64

00:55:39.000 What do we do then?

00:55:41.000 Truthfully, what do we do then?

00:55:43.000 Like, people are going to be outraged and hundreds of U.S. troops are dead.

00:55:46.000 What do we do?

00:55:48.000 And the thing is, is Iran might decide to do that because they might make the calculation.

00:55:54.000 America lost in Afghanistan.

00:55:56.000 America is very indebted.

00:55:59.000 America is overstretched.

00:56:01.000 What if you want to dare America to try to deploy 100,000 troops into Iran?

00:56:06.000 And if people don't visualize this, you might think, okay, we whacked Saddam.

00:56:10.000 That was pretty easy.

00:56:11.000 Iraq is a flat country.

00:56:13.000 It's just a bunch of people along two rivers in this relatively flat desert.

00:56:18.000 Iran is three times the size of Iraq.

00:56:20.000 It has three times as many people as Iraq did when we invaded it.

00:56:23.000 It's heavily mountainous.

00:56:25.000 It's heavily spread out.

00:56:27.000 It has spent way more time preparing for a war against the United States.

00:56:32.000 By which I mean, Iraq was this sort of play army. 0.96

00:56:37.000 like they were trying to pretend to be America.

00:56:38.000 So they had tanks and they had dudes with machine guns and they had fighter jets, Iran actually, like, is more self-aware that they are outmatched by the United States.

00:56:55.000 So, for example, they have a navy, but it's like all little motorboats that you can put little suicide bombers on, and you try to sail them up to a boat and blow it up.

00:57:02.000 They have a ton of drones.

00:57:04.000 They have a ton of stuff that is designed for a weak country fighting against a strong country.

00:57:12.000 And yeah, We can drop a ton of bombs on Tehran. 0.56

00:57:15.000 We can drop a ton of bombs on any other place.

00:57:18.000 Not as many because we gave a bunch of them to Ukraine.

00:57:21.000 But I don't know that we actually have the ability to just take 100,000 U.S. troops, 200,000 U.S. troops and try to occupy Iran in some regime change war.

00:57:32.000 And I think Iran might realize that and think, make my day. 1.00

00:57:36.000 America, we're going to try to get you sucked into this because we hate you and we're going to And if they decide to do that, I don't know if we at this point have the power to stop them.

00:57:49.000 If they kill hundreds of U.S. troops, I don't know that there will be the political will to say we have to stay out of this one.

00:57:55.000 People will want revenge.

00:57:57.000 We have John Solomon.

00:57:58.000 Okay, John is here.

00:57:59.000 John from JustTheNews.com.

00:58:01.000 John, you have an article that's going viral right now saying that Israel defied Trump's urges.

00:58:06.000 Please tell us about the reporting, John Solomon, and what led to this incredible historic event of Israel's strike against Iran.

00:58:15.000 Some breaking news just a few minutes ago.

00:58:17.000 Marco Rubio telling Iran, do not attack our troops in the Middle East or anywhere.

00:58:22.000 Because we did not join Israel in this attack.

00:58:25.000 Israel acted alone. 0.84

00:58:27.000 That is Marco Rubio's statement just put out about three minutes ago.

00:58:31.000 There's a news alert on Just the News.

00:58:33.000 Yeah, listen, I think the Trump administration wanted more time to try to get an Iran deal in place.

00:58:39.000 They believe that Iran is a little further from having a nuclear weapon than Israel's assessment.

00:58:45.000 Not far different.

00:58:46.000 Months in the US assessment, weeks in the Israel assessment.

00:58:51.000 And Israel had some urgency, believing that there might have been another sort of proxy attack in the wings with Lebanon.

00:58:58.000 I think the president said, hey, you feel like you got to protect yourself?

00:59:01.000 Protect yourself.

00:59:02.000 But we're not sanctioning this.

00:59:04.000 This is your action, not ours.

00:59:06.000 And Bibi went ahead and did it. 0.87

00:59:08.000 So we'll see how that plays out.

00:59:10.000 There are four things going on right now.

00:59:12.000 The president has a cabinet meeting going on right now, even as Marco Rubio issued that statement.

00:59:19.000 The FBI is mobilizing all of its counterterrorism experts to make sure that no Hezbollah cells.

00:59:25.000 We know we have lots of Hezbollah cells on our soil here in America. 1.00

00:59:29.000 We know some.

00:59:30.000 We don't know some because of what came in during the Biden years.

00:59:32.000 There will be a full alert for all counterterrorism outfits in the country to be looking for any suspicious activity that would suggest that Iran has given some signal to its sleeper cells here to attack on U.S. things.

00:59:47.000 All military personnel have been on alert for two days already in the Middle East, but they'll be watching for all signs that Iran tries to drag, as you said, drag U.S. into this attack by attacking our troops. 0.57

00:59:59.000 All of that is ongoing as we speak right now.

01:00:03.000 But it is true that Trump didn't want this attack tonight.

01:00:06.000 He told Netanyahu, if you got to do it because you feel like you have an imminent threat, you do it, but you do it on your own and you have to deal with it, what the consequences are.

01:00:15.000 So we're watching things really closely.

01:00:17.000 I think, Mark, the Rubio statement is very important.

01:00:19.000 It's a very strong statement.

01:00:21.000 It's very seldom that the U.S. has said, hey, Israel's on their own on this one.

01:00:24.000 But that's what Rubio just said.

01:00:26.000 Well, so, John, how does that then manifest from military aid missiles?

01:00:30.000 Because if Israel is going to get into a regional or a kinetic war, then at what, I mean, Because I can tell you right now, our audience is so against what Israel is doing right now, just looking at the emails.

01:00:44.000 Does this mean that the U.S. aid to Israel is over?

01:00:49.000 I don't think so yet.

01:00:50.000 Listen, Donald Trump has still been a strong supporter of Israel.

01:00:53.000 Donald Trump has fresh in his mind atrocities that Iran allowed and funded and caused to happen on October 7th, which was their 9/11. 0.92

01:01:01.000 I think the president will I think we will continue to support them in the short term.

01:01:08.000 That's the guidance I got earlier today.

01:01:11.000 The Trump White House knew this was going for two days, so there's been no surprise about it.

01:01:15.000 It really comes down to how does Iran react in the next several days?

01:01:21.000 Does it try to drag another Western or American ally into this, attack Saudi Arabia, attack Iraq, attack our troops and some of our forward-leaning bases in the Middle East?

01:01:31.000 That will have one calculation.

01:01:33.000 I think Iran is pretty smart to know that they don't want to poke the bear unless they're ready for a real war. 0.96

01:01:39.000 Keep in mind that some of Iran's military protection has been diverted to Russia.

01:01:43.000 So it doesn't have as full a complement as it would have had two years ago before the Ukraine war began sucking up resources from Russia.

01:01:52.000 So that's another piece that goes into the calculus.

01:01:56.000 My guess is this is a four or five day operation between both sides.

01:01:59.000 Then there'll be a truce.

01:02:01.000 And then America will go back to the bargaining table and say, "Let's not have another one of these. 1.00

01:02:06.000 Let's get this done." Now, if Israel hits successfully a major nuclear site and Iran is really upset and they actually caused damage and set the program back, Iran might want to prolong it. 0.75

01:02:17.000 But we'll wait and see.

01:02:18.000 A lot needs to be sorted out.

01:02:20.000 There's always propaganda in the early moments of the war.

01:02:22.000 some of Israel's statements tonight.

01:02:24.000 We just don't know if they're true, right?

01:02:26.000 We don't know if there We don't know if there's been some acceleration.

01:02:30.000 We do know one thing.

01:02:31.000 About two hours ago, the UN Atomic Weapons Agency said that Iran is more out of compliance than it's been in a long time on its nuclear obligations.

01:02:41.000 That is something that comes from a body that's more generally sympathetic to Iran.

01:02:47.000 It is a warning sign that Iran might be moving ahead with a nuclear weapon. 0.83

01:02:51.000 But I think the US is going to let Israel fight this on its own. 0.85

01:02:57.000 Okay, so a question here, John.

01:03:01.000 So the Iranian jets are now airborne, heading towards Israel, it looks like, according to reports.

01:03:08.000 And so this will likely escalate in the coming days.

01:03:14.000 How do you see this as far as the MAGA movement?

01:03:17.000 What do you think the sentiment is amongst the rank and file politically?

01:03:21.000 Because that kind of very...

01:03:35.000 John?

01:03:36.000 Yeah, listen, I think the MAGA movement is going to take its cues from President Trump.

01:03:41.000 They trust President Trump.

01:03:42.000 He has created a far more stable world just in the first four or five months.

01:03:46.000 They'll be looking for cues for the president.

01:03:49.000 Marco Rubio's statement is the first cue.

01:03:51.000 Iran, we didn't do this.

01:03:53.000 This is your beef with Israel. 0.78

01:03:55.000 You take it up with them.

01:03:56.000 Now, if Iran tries to drag us in, American sentiment and the MAGA movement will move very quickly. 0.58

01:04:01.000 And Donald Trump, as he has shown previously, when he took out Soleimani in 2020, won't hesitate to use military might.

01:04:09.000 And we could harm Iran pretty heavily, pretty quickly. 0.98

01:04:13.000 I know a ground war is not of anyone's interest.

01:04:16.000 But our air superiority over Iran would be significant. 0.83

01:04:21.000 Their drones wouldn't work on us because we don't have a significant forward-leaning location where they can deploy their drones.

01:04:28.000 We could put some big hurt on it.

01:04:30.000 I think Iran knows that.

01:04:32.000 How this plays out, I think it's about a seven or eight day war.

01:04:35.000 I think Iran and Israel will fight it out until they get tired for a while and then they'll take a pause and assess the damage. 0.96

01:04:42.000 Donald Trump's moment to get people to the bargaining table and see if we can resume negotiations.

01:04:47.000 Okay, let's play Bibi Netanyahu's statement.

01:04:49.000 Cut 523, please.

01:04:52.000 Moments ago, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel's very survival. 0.99

01:05:03.000 This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.

01:05:09.000 For decades, the tyrants of Tehran have brazenly, openly called for Israel's destruction.

01:05:16.000 They've backed up their genocidal rhetoric with a program to develop nuclear weapons.

01:05:21.000 In recent years, Iran has produced enough highly enriched uranium for nine atom bombs.

01:05:28.000 Nine.

01:05:29.000 In recent months, Iran has taken steps that it has never taken before.

01:05:35.000 Steps to weaponize this enriched uranium.

01:05:38.000 And if not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time.

01:05:43.000 It could be a year.

01:05:44.000 It could be within a few months, less than a year.

01:05:47.000 This is a clear and present danger to Israel's very survival. 0.99

01:05:52.000 So, John, the counterargument that people will say is that we've been hearing that for the last 20 to 30 years.

01:05:58.000 John?

01:05:59.000 Yeah, that's true.

01:06:01.000 I've certainly heard it for the last 10 or 15 years.

01:06:04.000 And then there was a pause with the 2016 Obama.

01:06:07.000 Deal, though Iran did continue to work behind the scenes.

01:06:10.000 I will tell you this.

01:06:11.000 I've always taken the grain of salt that Iran's getting really close to a nuclear weapon.

01:06:15.000 But in the last eight months, both people who are very liberal and have been very supportive and tolerant of Iran have told me they have really accelerated.

01:06:26.000 We're seeing a level of behavior we haven't seen.

01:06:29.000 That was really the message today in the UN.

01:06:32.000 Atomic weapons statement that came out, which I think surprised Iran.

01:06:36.000 They didn't think that was coming.

01:06:38.000 The Trump intelligence people believe that there has been an acceleration.

01:06:41.000 That's why they moved more aggressively into negotiations.

01:06:45.000 Remember, Donald Trump wasn't that interested in Iran negotiations during the election.

01:06:50.000 But he saw the intelligence when he came in, and he made a calculated decision that's in the world's interest to try to negotiate.

01:06:57.000 I do think there's been an acceleration based on the 360-degree I don't know.

01:07:32.000 The Trump administration will take for the first few days until things sort itself out.

01:07:35.000 Jack, do you have a question for John here?

01:07:37.000 Jack Posobiec here on Real America's Voice.

01:07:40.000 Jack.

01:07:40.000 Going back to John's question regarding the sleeper cells, I would like to hear more about what we know about potential sleeper cells that came in under Biden.

01:07:52.000 Oh, yeah.

01:07:53.000 That is a really, really big concern.

01:07:56.000 Inside the FBI, inside the larger Intelligence Committee.

01:07:59.000 There were some here already.

01:08:01.000 We thwarted an attack in 2011 and 12 against the Saudi Arabia ambassador, Abu al-Jabbar.

01:08:09.000 But we barely caught that.

01:08:11.000 We got lucky on that one.

01:08:12.000 And the open border allowed so many people to come in.

01:08:16.000 You saw all those passports that Ben shows on air all the time.

01:08:19.000 A lot of them were Iranian.

01:08:21.000 There is grave concern that there are far more than we know of.

01:08:25.000 The FBI, since the moment Kash Patel got in, has put a big press in to get all the identities of anyone they think could be Even remotely associated with radicals.

01:08:35.000 But three months isn't enough to undo the damage of four years of Joe Biden.

01:08:39.000 So that is the gravest concern.

01:08:41.000 And, you know, we deal with some of these lone actors and even Al Qaeda is the rookie leagues of terrorism compared to Hezbollah. 0.86

01:08:49.000 Hezbollah are the best of the best.

01:08:51.000 And they probably sent their best sleeper cells to America. 0.90

01:08:54.000 So it is something that we're all going to have to be on alert.

01:08:56.000 Hopefully, Iran will take Donald Trump at his word that We don't support it. 1.00

01:09:02.000 We still want a negotiation.

01:09:03.000 And if you poke this bear, you're going to regret it.

01:09:06.000 According to CNN, the entire Iranian general staff, including the head of all military, several senior Iranian nuclear scientists, all eliminated tonight, Intel suggests.

01:09:18.000 That was their targets.

01:09:20.000 I can tell you from talking to Israel in the last couple hours that this was more than just a nuclear strike.

01:09:27.000 This was a decapitation strike against their military, particularly the Republican Guard leadership.

01:09:33.000 So they're achieving more than just a preemptive nuclear strike.

01:09:36.000 They're trying to wipe out the military control and command capabilities Yeah, and so Iran is a big country and a proud country, John.

01:09:45.000 I want to play this here, actually.

01:09:46.000 Let's play Cut 526.

01:09:48.000 This is CNN's reporting.

01:09:50.000 First, Caitlin, something I just heard from a senior Israeli official who says that according to Israeli assessments, There are very high chances that the entire Iranian general staff, including the head of the Iranian general staff of the Iranian military and several senior Iranian nuclear scientists, were all eliminated in the Israeli strikes tonight.

01:10:15.000 So here's where our audience is a little confused, John.

01:10:18.000 It was told to be a nuclear issue.

01:10:21.000 If it was just about taking out nuclear reactors, then...

01:10:29.000 So help us understand that.

01:10:31.000 As I said, these early statements that Israel give often has a little bit of propaganda.

01:10:36.000 It often has a little bit of misdirection.

01:10:39.000 Listen, I'm not unconvinced that when the president said he had sent Whitcoff back as an ambassador that it wasn't a head fake to make the Iranians think they had more time because the Iranians were, even though Donald Trump signaled for two days.

01:10:53.000 I can tell you from what I've heard on the ground and from our own intel before I got on air here, the Iranians were caught a little flat-footed, even though they were being told.

01:11:01.000 So it's possible that Wyckoff and the idea that he was coming back to the region might have lulled them into some complacency.

01:11:08.000 They were caught a little bit flat-footed.

01:11:10.000 They could have all been at a meeting preparing, thinking they had another day before Israel.

01:11:14.000 What's our war plan?

01:11:15.000 And Israel could have sniped them tonight. 0.91

01:11:17.000 That is what happens when war gets started, right?

01:11:20.000 All rules are set aside.

01:11:22.000 I know for certain from talking to my Israeli sources that beyond the nuclear reactor targeting, there was the decapitation strategy to get some of the Iranian National Guard and those generals that were most capable in the nuclear warfare to be knocked out tonight if they could get.

01:11:40.000 John, please tell the audience how people can support Just the News, some of your reporting, and what are you keeping your eye on most closely in the coming hours and days?

01:11:49.000 FBI response is going to be number one.

01:11:51.000 Are they concerned?

01:11:52.000 Do they begin to issue terrorism warning on our site?

01:11:54.000 Do we wake up tomorrow morning to any news that U.S. troops have been engaged by Iran overseas?

01:12:00.000 I'm hoping not.

01:12:02.000 I think the Trump administration right now has some level of confidence that won't happen.

01:12:05.000 But those are wild cards that change this dynamic very quickly for the United States.

01:12:10.000 Everybody can keep up with us at JustTheNews.com and Jay Solomon reports on all social media, including Truth.

01:12:15.000 Thank you so much, John.

01:12:16.000 Really appreciate it.

01:12:17.000 Thank you.

01:12:18.000 Great to be with you guys.

01:12:19.000 Alright, Blake, Jack, catch us up.

01:12:21.000 What are we reading?

01:12:22.000 What are we seeing?

01:12:24.000 Nothing too immediately breaking now.

01:12:26.000 I mean, it's just the standard stuff.

01:12:28.000 You have the narratives of obviously the possibility that the general staff is getting taken out.

01:12:37.000 I really don't want to underplay that.

01:12:41.000 That would be a huge escalation.

01:12:43.000 You see, there's always this dance.

01:12:45.000 Some people have said this could be a big nothing burger because, of course, we've had exchanges with Iran in the past.

01:12:51.000 We took out, what was his name, the Revolutionary Guard commander that we blew up.

01:13:00.000 Soleimani.

01:13:00.000 And then after that, they kind of buzzed our bases.

01:13:05.000 And then there was some stuff where Iran shot a few missiles at Israel's way.

01:13:10.000 They've done it twice.

01:13:13.000 So we have these like, You're hitting stuff that wasn't hit before.

01:13:24.000 It's not going to invite the same scale of response as before, I believe.

01:13:31.000 Charlie Kirk here.

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01:14:37.000 So, Blake, talk about this here.

01:14:42.000 Residential buildings targeted in Tehran.

01:14:46.000 Top Democrat on U.S. Armed Services Committee condemns Israel's reckless escalation.

01:14:52.000 Israel believes that the chief of Iranians' nuclear scientists and program in IDF was killed.

01:14:59.000 So, Blake, is it fair to say this is beyond just a strike on nuclear facilities?

01:15:04.000 Yeah, very clearly it's beyond that.

01:15:06.000 We're blowing up buildings in Tehran. 0.99

01:15:10.000 That is not their nuclear program.

01:15:12.000 Their nuclear program is these enrichment facilities that are in the mountains of Iran.

01:15:16.000 They're underground.

01:15:17.000 They're hard to hit.

01:15:18.000 You're not going to be seeing a lot of footage of those getting hit because they're not where a bunch of people are.

01:15:22.000 But when you see them hitting buildings in Tehran, that's them going after Iranian officials, Iranian generals, Iranian military command and control.

01:15:35.000 You know, if they're preparing for a normal war, that they're worried about the conventional response of the Iranian forces.

01:15:41.000 So this is not merely a strike on their nuclear program.

01:15:45.000 It's the opening volley of what could be an extended air war, and I shudder to say it's potentially some sort of ground war.

01:15:53.000 Like, they don't have a land border with Israel, but they have a land border with Iraq.

01:15:57.000 That's a country where we have soldiers. 0.75

01:15:59.000 There's a lot of room for this to escalate.

01:16:02.000 And a big thing to know about wars is once they begin, they evolve in directions that nobody can predict and you can't necessarily expect and you definitely can't control.

01:16:15.000 To put this into perspective, Charlie and Blake, the Democrats right now are more concerned about Senator Padilla right now than they are anything having to do with...

01:16:26.000 Yeah, Hakeem Jeffries did a post about...

01:16:29.000 Yeah, like after this had begun, just, oh yeah, I'm talking about this other thing.

01:16:33.000 No, they are completely focused.

01:16:36.000 They're completely trying to obfuscate any kind of responsibility on either side of this major, major world changing, like to your point, world changing issue.

01:16:47.000 I mean, this is going to be a historical moment probably for how.

01:16:53.000 We talked a little bit in the chat about Russia, what Russia's response is going to look like in the midst of war with Ukraine.

01:17:00.000 It's going to be a very interesting moment that happens now where things have to move.

01:17:04.000 Dominoes have to fall.

01:17:05.000 And the Democrats, the best they can do, the best they can muster up, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, all of their most recent posts within the last hour, last few hours, have been about Alex Padilla.

01:17:20.000 And him, you know, rightfully getting thrown to the ground.

01:17:25.000 So this is how unserious the Democrat Party is.

01:17:27.000 And this is part of the reason why the Democrats are losing so much ground with the American people is that we're watching, you know, really serious things happen right now.

01:17:36.000 And you have really serious players at the table like, you know.

01:17:39.000 Former Senator Marco Rubio, who's now Secretary of State, who's been doing an incredible job.

01:17:45.000 He's getting extremely high approval ratings.

01:17:47.000 Some of the highest that we've seen out of administrative members for the last three presidents.

01:17:53.000 And we can't even get the Democrats to come out of their hole to give their response.

01:17:59.000 And they clearly don't have one.

01:18:02.000 And that's bad for America because what the Democrats are doing is they're posturing the So, you know, the answer, John Solomon was just talking about what happens tomorrow.

01:18:14.000 You were talking about what happens tomorrow when Americans die. 0.59

01:18:18.000 And that's where the big boys actually have to make a decision on what do we do as an American people?

01:18:23.000 What are the decisions that we have to make?

01:18:24.000 What's the listening that we have to do to people?

01:18:26.000 And you have half of Americans represented, effectively half of Americans, slightly less this last election, represented by Democrats.

01:18:36.000 Who have nothing to say.

01:18:38.000 And they are torn ideologically within their own party in defending Jewish people and going after the Jewish people and their identity that revolves around Israel.

01:18:54.000 So we're in a really interesting time right now where we are going to be...

01:19:18.000 which is that a lot of people have had a lot of negative things to say about Congress because of their lack of ability to pass basic cuts.

01:19:27.000 And now we have a real conflict on our hands.

01:19:30.000 And the Trump administration being able to show up and handle this correctly and appropriately and be a true world leader, especially in the shadows of a really devolving Democrat Party, is, I think, a really great opportunity for Republicans.

01:19:45.000 But this is an opportunity for us to unify.

01:19:49.000 Talk about things.

01:19:51.000 Come together behind closed doors.

01:19:53.000 Figure out things before you go out and start spouting off stuff because the Democrats are positioning themselves to have a unified message.

01:20:00.000 That's why they're not saying anything.

01:20:01.000 That's why their last posts are about Padilla.

01:20:04.000 That's going to be a very interesting thing, what they come out with.

01:20:07.000 And it may not be very smart.

01:20:09.000 It could be a very haphazard type of move that they make.

01:20:15.000 I mean, Chuck Schumer is clearly not on his game.

01:20:19.000 Jeffries, again, 37 minutes ago, 38 minutes, 40 minutes ago, he's posting about Padilla in the middle of all this.

01:20:25.000 You can't be a serious future speaker of the House.

01:20:29.000 No one can look at that and say you're serious.

01:20:33.000 Guys, I was just going to throw in.

01:20:35.000 I know I said this earlier, but I'm going to say it again.

01:20:38.000 There's going to be hell to pay between President Trump and B.B. Netanyahu.

01:20:43.000 If Netanyahu did this in defiance of what Trump asked him to do.

01:20:49.000 This, of course, as we know, has been a huge crux of their relationship.

01:20:54.000 They've gotten into it before, going back to 2020, even going back to the Soleimani strike.

01:20:59.000 And, of course, we know that a regional war is the very last It's the very last thing that he asked for.

01:21:11.000 It's the very last thing that he wants right now.

01:21:13.000 And so this idea that President Trump would be totally okay with this after spending all day saying negotiations only, the question is, what did he say to Netanyahu?

01:21:25.000 When did he say it?

01:21:27.000 And of course, what's he going to come back and, and respond?

01:21:31.000 And of course, of course, if Israel does, and I'll And if Iran does retaliate by raining missiles down on Israel, then will the U.S. be drawn in?

01:21:48.000 And that's the bigger question here.

01:21:49.000 Will the U.S., again, the 40,000 to 50,000 U.S. military personnel, the carrier strike groups, the Red Sea, the Strait of Hormuz, the bombers down in Diego Garcia, all the rest of this, are they going to be sucked in?

01:22:02.000 Is the United States about to be sucked into yet another war in the Middle East?

01:22:07.000 Because that's exactly the opposite of what I campaigned for, what President Trump campaigned for back in Pennsylvania and Michigan and Wisconsin.

01:22:15.000 And I was with him at all of those states.

01:22:17.000 And I don't think the people of those rallies were campaigning for a wider regional war in the Middle East.

01:22:24.000 Yeah.

01:22:24.000 And I mean, we have right here.

01:22:26.000 This is just changes sent this over.

01:22:28.000 According to Washington Post, U.S. defense official says Israel's attack is likely to provoke a strong Iranian response and then Israel will likely ask the United States to help counter Iran's response.

01:22:40.000 And that is where this is going to become a real challenge.

01:22:45.000 Frankly, is like, OK, it's easy to say we oppose war now, but this Iran really has a huge amount of control over where this goes. 0.94

01:22:57.000 And they can decide.

01:22:58.000 We want this to be a big thing that we suck America into. 0.98

01:23:01.000 I think that would be kind of suicidal of them, but they are radical.

01:23:05.000 And another thing is, once you start big wars, countries can behave irrationally.

01:23:09.000 They can decide to expand things.

01:23:11.000 I mean, if you want to draw on historical examples, everyone's endlessly thinking about World War II.

01:23:16.000 Like, in World War II...

01:23:21.000 We didn't declare war on him.

01:23:23.000 He declared war on us.

01:23:24.000 And that was a highly irrational thing to do.

01:23:27.000 But wars make people behave irrationally.

01:23:30.000 That is one reason you should be very, very careful about starting them.

01:23:34.000 Jack, does Trump's recent relationship with Putin change the calculus of this entire thing?

01:23:42.000 Well, I think there's going to be a lot of questions.

01:23:44.000 And I would certainly I'll say right now, I certainly hope that the United States is coordinating on all fronts.

01:23:51.000 Obviously, Iran.

01:24:05.000 Again, we know this is what the Russians have been asking for. 0.88

01:24:08.000 Lavrov has said so many times in all of these meetings and his head in his meeting with Secretary Rubio as well, that what they're looking for is a wider negotiation with the United States on all fronts, not just Europe, not just And this had been potentially an area where the Russians could be partners with the United States.

01:24:32.000 Russia does not, has never said they wanted Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

01:24:37.000 Iran having a nuclear weapon is an issue for Russia even more than it's an issue for the United States, because if there's regional instability in the Middle East, that's right in Russia's backyard.

01:24:48.000 They have borders throughout that region.

01:24:51.000 That's a key part of Central Asia.

01:24:54.000 Again, Russia has a massive land empire, so they've got borders from Europe to Central Asia to the Middle East, all the way out to China and Mongolia in their Far East, and even, of course, touching Japan in a sense.

01:25:06.000 And so this Strategic calculus between the United States and Russia could be absolutely critical right now between Trump and Putin.

01:25:16.000 And if Trump and Putin, I'm sure President Trump, by the way, is talking to a variety of world leaders tonight.

01:25:22.000 We know the White House has convened this cabinet meeting.

01:25:24.000 We know that the Situation Room has been active all day at the White House.

01:25:29.000 So I'm sure that President Trump has been in communication with many world leaders.

01:25:32.000 And I would expect to be speaking with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and many others this very night.

01:25:37.000 I think it's going to be very interesting.

01:25:40.000 Some people, there are some speculation that the Ukraine-Russia conflict that's going on right now, it plays at a huge...

01:26:07.000 based off of this whole thing which also is a dynamic of the outcomes from these strikes that are happening which is Maybe there's some immediate positives that come from that because of the concern that I think so many of us had about that.

01:26:23.000 Democrats will shout and scream and say, oh my gosh, now we are giving too much power again to Russia and everything else.

01:26:29.000 It's going to be a very interesting outcome.

01:26:31.000 But I do think a net positive of this is perhaps it does close that window.

01:26:35.000 Perhaps it does bring Russia to the table. 0.82

01:26:38.000 Perhaps it does bring some working together to ensure that there is peace in the Middle East.

01:26:44.000 Who knows?

01:26:45.000 You know, guys, and I'll say this as well, you know, for for anyone who's sort of in that we've talked about this before, that's sort of like elder millennial band or just millennials in general, the Gen Y's out there.

01:27:00.000 So speaking to them as opposed to the the the Gen Z's and I know Gen Alphas and others who are watching.

01:27:07.000 I hear my Gen Alpha son in the other room right now, by the way, that.

01:27:15.000 And certainly it reminds me of the era of going into Iraq.

01:27:19.000 And I just wanted to I wanted to ask you guys if that, you know, my memories of that are so clear.

01:27:25.000 And I remember all of the things that we were told all that this is going to make the world safer.

01:27:30.000 This is gonna be good for America. 0.73

01:27:32.000 This is gonna be helpful.

01:27:33.000 We're shutting down a weapons of mass destruction program.

01:27:36.000 And it's like.

01:27:37.000 It's like I've seen this movie before, and I feel a lot of those same arguments and a lot of those same emotions of the time, but at the same time is that, you know, we've got social media now, we've got this immediate rapid response from X, and you sort of, you remember that even if you think that the war is a good idea going into it, it sort of gives you this overarching look where you have the ability to think.

01:28:06.000 You know, secondary effects, tertiary effects, those could potentially be far worse and far wider reaching than anything that came before.

01:28:16.000 And how do we know about this?

01:28:17.000 Well, we have the history of the Iraq war and the history of the global war on terror, the recent history, even with the fall of Kabul that we can point to and say, yeah, this went really, really wrong, even though we thought these were great ideas going into it.

01:28:30.000 I just for for Tyler and Blake, I didn't know if you guys had had any reflections or if it if it Yeah, well, my thought is, if I think about how it feels different from then, I mean, certainly the right is totally different.

01:28:47.000 The right was in a very raw, raw mood.

01:28:49.000 And we should acknowledge, I guess I should say not everyone was.

01:28:52.000 There were people on the right.

01:28:55.000 Pat Buchanan was one of them.

01:28:56.000 There were others who said, This is not what conservatism is about.

01:29:02.000 This is not what putting America first is about.

01:29:05.000 This is a huge blunder.

01:29:08.000 People warned about that.

01:29:09.000 We should remember that.

01:29:14.000 Our blood was up over 9-11, and I think it's taken a long time for us to come around to this, but I think there's now a pretty widespread acknowledgement that Because of 9-11, because of the national tragedy we suffered, that we made a big mistake.

01:29:33.000 We got ourselves involved in conflicts that had no clear objective, that had no clear end point, that were hugely expensive, and that produced no real long-term good for the United States.

01:29:45.000 In fact, if you really want to go back, you could say a lot of the enduring problems America has right now that we're trying to solve with Trump Go back to that post-9-11 period and us making the wrong decisions.

01:29:55.000 We had a blank check.

01:29:58.000 Bush could have done anything he wanted after 9-11.

01:30:01.000 He could have said, this happened because we had an open border and we need to fix that or the country's doomed.

01:30:08.000 Or this happened because we're dependent on foreign countries.

01:30:11.000 We need to make sure all of our manufacturing is in the United States.

01:30:14.000 Instead, he invaded a foreign country and he shot the deficit up super high.

01:30:19.000 And we're still dealing with both of those things.

01:30:23.000 Totally different country.

01:30:24.000 What I remember is that America, it felt like we were invincible.

01:30:29.000 It felt like we could do just about anything.

01:30:32.000 And we were overconfident.

01:30:33.000 And so I definitely feel different now.

01:30:36.000 We are a nation that is far more aware of our limitations, to be honest.

01:30:42.000 Okay, guys, here we are.

01:30:44.000 Can you hear me okay?

01:30:45.000 Everyone good?

01:30:45.000 Yes, we can hear you, Charlie.

01:30:46.000 Can you hear me?

01:30:47.000 Great, great, great, great.

01:30:48.000 Okay, so it looks like the second round of attack is happening.

01:30:50.000 Everybody, hello, if you are just tuning in.

01:30:53.000 It looks like it is escalating even further.

01:30:56.000 Israel has decided to strike Iran preemptively.

01:31:00.000 This is one of the largest preemptive strikes that we have seen between any two sovereign countries in quite some time.

01:31:06.000 And this has huge American domestic political implications.

01:31:10.000 I'm going to make a prediction right now.

01:31:14.000 these kind of no kings protests that we're seeing this weekend.

01:31:17.000 They're gonna be hijacked by all the pro-Hamas stuff.

01:31:19.000 We're gonna have all intersectionality back in the streets.

01:31:22.000 Iran State TV says, quote, unconfirmed reports say that Israel has much That is from Iranian state TV.

01:31:34.000 And so this is now going to have major American domestic implications, questions of should we continue to finance Israel?

01:31:43.000 Should we continue to sell armaments?

01:31:45.000 And as you very well know, I'm very pro-Israel on this show.

01:31:48.000 I'm just simply interpreting the political dynamics here.

01:31:52.000 And I could tell you right now that the audience, you guys, We must support the United States.

01:32:12.000 With information and with resources.

01:32:16.000 So the question is also, I think fundamentally at its core, how does the America First foreign policy doctrine and foreign policy agenda, let's just say, stay consistent with this?

01:32:35.000 This right now is going to cause, I think, a major schism in the MAGA online community.

01:32:40.000 We're not seeing that yet, though, right, Tyler?

01:32:42.000 I mean, I'm seeing it a little bit in my XFeed, but Tyler, it seems, you know, I don't want to say over.

01:32:49.000 It's somewhat unified, but what are we seeing so far in the right-wing community?

01:32:54.000 It's still early.

01:32:55.000 I mean, it's still early, but so far, I mean, we were talking about this because things are happening very rapidly in real time.

01:33:02.000 And we know war is such a hotly debated topic, particularly in kind of the new right, what we call it, like the MAGA movement.

01:33:10.000 I like the new right we talk about all the time, which is very anti-war. 0.88

01:33:14.000 So you have a lot of millennials who voted in record numbers for Donald Trump this last election, who were kind of raised under that anti-Bush.

01:33:24.000 Remember Liz Cheney, the Bushes all endorsed against President Trump basically twice in a row.

01:33:31.000 And they lost.

01:33:32.000 They lost big time because the right has shifted so far into the anti-war space.

01:33:38.000 So this is a huge deal.

01:33:39.000 But yeah, I think right now you're seeing a lot of people really happy with the response from President Trump's team, from Marco Rubio, his statement they put out there.

01:33:48.000 I think that was a brilliant thing to do to make sure that that statement is out there.

01:33:53.000 But I think what's coming, like you said, Charlie, is that there's going to be...

01:34:11.000 It's going to get hijacked by the well-funded groups that are out there on the left, by C4s, political action committees, big nonprofit groups, C3s, that are all so pro-Hamas, they're all so pro-anti-Israel, that they're all so pro-Israel. 0.72

01:34:29.000 And so I think your guess is great.

01:34:34.000 It's a lot of great intuition is that we're going to see a lot of that.

01:34:37.000 And I don't think Americans are going to love that.

01:34:39.000 And I think it's actually going to push people more to the side of Israel, because I think the scariest thing here is, is that we, you know, it starts this debate of being...

01:34:56.000 People will start running with that narrative.

01:34:58.000 And I think that that's probably really negative for the MAGA movement.

01:35:01.000 I think the MAGA movement needs to focus on, hey, we have all these really crazy pro-Hamas actors that are on the streets that are burning stuff down.

01:35:11.000 And that's not good for America.

01:35:12.000 That's here.

01:35:13.000 That's here right now.

01:35:15.000 And so I think that's really smart, Charlie, to look at that.

01:35:17.000 So, Jack, help me understand this.

01:35:19.000 If we knew the attack on Iran was coming, how were these generals so exposed?

01:35:23.000 I mean, we're still kind of being told that Iran was taken by surprise, that Iran didn't see this coming.

01:35:30.000 Help me understand that, because this was the longest wind-up of an attack that we've seen.

01:35:36.000 In fact, you and I knew this was happening, like, hours as it was developing.

01:35:40.000 Jack Posobiec.

01:35:40.000 Yeah.

01:35:41.000 And Charlie, even you and I spoke this morning very early and heard that it was a strong possibility.

01:35:49.000 We both took to Twitter X and were posting messaging about it.

01:35:54.000 And people were saying, why are Jack and Charlie posting about?

01:35:58.000 And Iran, you know, strikes on Iran at, you know, 7 a.m. and 8 a.m. when no one's talking about that.

01:36:04.000 And then as the day went further, people started to realize what was going on.

01:36:09.000 And then, yeah, we got that confirmation.

01:36:12.000 Charlie, this remains to be seen exactly.

01:36:14.000 What went down here?

01:36:16.000 So there could very well have been potentially operatives on the ground, Mossad operatives on the ground in Tehran that knew about safe houses, that knew about these types of locations, that new sites that they would be taking into.

01:36:30.000 There are some reports that Israel may have So it's possible that even if the generals were moved to a safe house or were in concert with moving, if their forces had been penetrated by Israeli intelligence, then they could have been able to find out exactly where they were to conduct these strikes.

01:36:48.000 Again, I'm not saying that's exactly what happened, but it may not be that they were taken by surprise.

01:36:54.000 It may be very well that Israel conducted a large scale intelligence or just even deception operation to make it seem as if they didn't know what the locations of these generals and leaders were.

01:37:04.000 But in fact, they did know after all, there's there's lots of ways that this can be done.

01:37:09.000 And again, this is why some of those indications were given when they were given.

01:37:14.000 The question, of course, really, I think for a lot of people is what's the what's the scale of this?

01:37:18.000 And how is this going to be returned?

01:37:21.000 But but yes, it can be done as we're seeing.

01:37:23.000 OK, so look.

01:37:29.000 Blake, you're kind of a military historian.

01:37:32.000 How do these things usually end between Israel?

01:37:34.000 Israel does very well in short wars and short conflicts.

01:37:38.000 Blake, your thoughts?

01:37:39.000 Well, what's so different about this one is Israel, I mean, they have a lot of wars, but their wars that are big ones are against their neighbors.

01:37:47.000 So they have a very strong track record in wars they beat.

01:37:52.000 Egypt in several wars.

01:37:54.000 They beat Syria in some wars.

01:37:57.000 The Six-Day War was them versus Egypt, Jordan, Syria.

01:38:00.000 Those are all countries that border them.

01:38:02.000 You can have a conventional land war with them. 1.00

01:38:05.000 With Iran, Iran is far away. 1.00

01:38:08.000 Iran is very big. 0.97

01:38:09.000 So you can kind of have back-and-forth bombing.

01:38:12.000 Obviously, Israel has the technology to do that.

01:38:14.000 They just did this.

01:38:16.000 It's, like, they don't have the Air Force to, like, strategically bomb Iran into, like, total submission. 0.60

01:38:23.000 They can kind of bomb them as much as they want, but they don't have unlimited munitions.

01:38:28.000 We don't even have unlimited munitions.

01:38:30.000 I mean, Iran is, I believe it's a bigger country than Ukraine.

01:38:33.000 It has many more people than Ukraine.

01:38:35.000 And you can see, like, we see the limitations of how far munitions can go in that country.

01:38:40.000 Now imagine you don't have a land border with that country, and it's even bigger, and it's more mountainous.

01:38:44.000 We don't actually have a great model for this kind of conflict for them.

01:38:48.000 Israel is a country that's fought its immediate neighbors in conventional wars.

01:38:51.000 It's fought counterinsurgencies in Gaza, in the West Bank, and in Lebanon.

01:38:57.000 But this isn't a conflict that we have a model for how it's going to go.

01:39:04.000 And so I can't easily say how it's going to unfold.

01:39:08.000 And that's why I say like we have to be ready for it.

01:39:17.000 And I feel like we have to hope that they don't want this to be a big one.

01:39:21.000 But it's possible that we may have set them off so much they decide to escalate.

01:39:27.000 I cannot understand.

01:39:29.000 First of all, this is a credit to Israel.

01:39:30.000 I just got to be honest.

01:39:31.000 Can we put this up on screen, the pictures I just sent?

01:39:34.000 These are the Iranian generals, Iranian commanders.

01:39:36.000 So I, in America— Okay?

01:39:46.000 It's, again, must be a credit to Israel here.

01:39:48.000 How is it that these four lunatics that work, just as a side note, for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who are now all dead and eliminated, when they woke up, did they really not take precautions to protect their military leaders?

01:40:02.000 I cannot understand this.

01:40:06.000 Like, I just...

01:40:07.000 It is...

01:40:09.000 Blake, can you help me process this?

01:40:11.000 Like, we all knew this was coming.

01:40:16.000 Was it just the bombs were so powerful or missiles were so powerful they penetrated any bunkers they might have been in?

01:40:22.000 Help me understand how these four guys, who knew this was like the longest wind-up ever.

01:40:28.000 We're gonna do it.

01:40:29.000 We're gonna do it.

01:40:30.000 Oh, we're doing it, and then it still is.

01:40:33.000 There was no deception involved here.

01:40:37.000 It must be that the idea was that Israel was able to get within their networks and inside their networks.

01:40:43.000 Maybe Iran thought negotiations were coming Sunday, but even they could see the writing on the wall of what Israel was doing, and they could tell they had no intelligence network of when Israeli airplanes took off from Israel.

01:40:55.000 Anyway, Blake, help me understand this.

01:40:58.000 It's perplexing to me.

01:41:00.000 I mean, it's not an easy one to answer, to be honest.

01:41:03.000 I guess the most boring take is they were able to hit them with this forewarning because perhaps Israel has the intelligence to say, we know that when there is a war that's going to break out, actually this is their safe house. 0.65

01:41:18.000 This is where they're actually supposed to go when they worry that Israel is going to launch some sort of strike on them.

01:41:23.000 It could be an answer like that.

01:41:26.000 Israel's intelligence service has always been a lot more effective than ours.

01:41:30.000 The CIA has a long legacy of extremely embarrassing failures.

01:41:35.000 Mossad has a history of successfully assassinating its enemies in foreign countries.

01:41:41.000 They've done it in Egypt.

01:41:42.000 They've done it in the United Arab Emirates.

01:41:44.000 They've done it in Lebanon. 0.58

01:41:46.000 They have done it, apparently, in Iran.

01:41:49.000 We may not know anytime soon exactly how they pulled it off, but they...

01:41:56.000 Now, how they were caught off guard by the strikes themselves?

01:42:01.000 I don't know.

01:42:02.000 It seems like we knew it was coming.

01:42:05.000 X knew it was coming.

01:42:07.000 At some point, let's go to the most rural, remote part of Persia in a bunker. 0.99

01:42:13.000 At some point, you're like, okay.

01:42:16.000 Then still, it's either cockiness or humorous or pride.

01:42:21.000 I would just say the beeper.

01:42:24.000 This attack they were able to conduct just a few months ago was very significant in terms of their intel operations and shows a high degree of capability.

01:42:31.000 So I wouldn't put anything past them.

01:42:34.000 So this is the final thought here.

01:42:35.000 Israel has attacked at least six military bases around Tehran, including Parshin, residential homes at two highly secure complexes for military commanders, and multiple residential buildings around Tehran, what appears to be target assassinations according to four senior Iranian officials.

01:42:51.000 But again, I want to hear your thoughts.

01:42:53.000 Are you supportive or not?

01:42:54.000 And look, I am pro-Israel here.

01:42:57.000 And of course, I'm America first, first and foremost.

01:43:00.000 I'm very worried that this could escalate into a war that could then draw America in.

01:43:04.000 But Israel's a sovereign country.

01:43:06.000 They made a decision.

01:43:07.000 President Trump says, look.

01:43:08.000 This is what you wanted.

01:43:09.000 Knock yourself out.

01:43:10.000 They did it without American support, American help.

01:43:12.000 I am afraid of what this could escalate towards.

01:43:14.000 We're going to keep a close eye on it.

01:43:15.000 We'll be broadcasting live tomorrow.

01:43:17.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

01:43:18.000 Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - June 13, 2025

THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 87 — Israel Strikes Iran: Live Reaction

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