The Michael Knowles Show - February 28, 2026


U.S. Bombs Iran： Michael Knowles INSTANT REACTION


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

156.58485

Word count

1,208

Sentence count

100

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The United States has launched a major attack on Iran. This targeting not just some periphery sites but the very center of government. The explicit goal of the strike is regime change in Iran, not merely the setting back of a nuclear program or other weapons programs. This is the real deal.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:30.200 The United States has launched a major attack on Iran.
00:00:34.620 This targeting not just some periphery sites,
00:00:38.040 but the very center of government.
00:00:40.440 The explicit goal of the strike is regime change in Iran,
00:00:45.160 not merely the setting back of a nuclear program
00:00:48.600 or other weapons programs.
00:00:50.260 This is the real deal.
00:00:52.180 No one is particularly surprised by this,
00:00:54.840 especially after the strike on Venezuela,
00:00:57.060 because in the lead-up to Venezuela,
00:01:00.180 you saw this huge, gradual buildup of military assets in the region.
00:01:04.200 You saw the extension from the White House
00:01:06.300 of all sorts of diplomatic olive branches.
00:01:09.320 Maduro refused the olive branches.
00:01:11.620 Then the U.S. went in and took him out.
00:01:13.580 So you saw the same thing building up here.
00:01:15.120 A few weeks ago, people were waiting for the United States
00:01:17.440 to launch a strike on Iran.
00:01:18.640 But I remember I was on with Hugh Hewitt,
00:01:20.620 and we agreed, no, probably we were seeing the same playbook play out,
00:01:25.260 which is there was going to be this buildup of military assets.
00:01:28.120 There were going to be more diplomatic olive branches.
00:01:30.240 And then when that was not going to work,
00:01:32.920 Trump was going to strike.
00:01:34.500 Here is the political issue for the White House.
00:01:37.320 Iran is not Venezuela.
00:01:41.140 Iran is not Venezuela.
00:01:43.320 Iran is not Afghanistan. 0.82
00:01:46.240 Iran is not Iraq, 1.00
00:01:47.780 though there are way more parallels with Iraq.
00:01:51.640 Iran is a real country with a real solid regime.
00:01:56.160 And so changing out that regime
00:01:59.060 is going to be a little bit more difficult.
00:02:02.040 Obviously, there are a lot of people who are elated by the strike on Iran. 0.96
00:02:06.480 Iran, notably the Iranian-Americans 0.61
00:02:09.080 whose families fled from Iran after the revolution in 1979,
00:02:14.160 but also plenty of the Iranian people
00:02:16.500 who have been waiting for some kind of regime change.
00:02:20.800 And the only way that regime change was going to come about
00:02:22.860 was very likely with regional strikes from Israel
00:02:26.440 and ultimately with strikes from the global empire,
00:02:29.560 which is the United States.
00:02:31.520 So what does it all mean?
00:02:35.440 We have intervened in Iran before.
00:02:38.160 We've intervened in Iran a number of times.
00:02:39.860 The clearest example would be 1953
00:02:42.000 when the CIA and MI6 out of the UK
00:02:44.960 helped lead a coup
00:02:46.660 that threw out Mossadegh the Socialist
00:02:49.100 and consolidated the power of the Shah of Iran.
00:02:52.760 Now it looks like the Shah's son, 1.00
00:02:54.440 the Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi,
00:02:56.080 is going to try to unify the Iranian people
00:02:58.220 and bring some political stability to Iran
00:03:01.680 if the regime is actually displaced.
00:03:04.520 However, all of that remains a little bit dubious
00:03:08.160 because let's not forget,
00:03:09.240 after the CIA coup in 1953,
00:03:11.680 the Islamic Revolution happened in 1979.
00:03:14.220 So the pro-Western U.S.-backed regime
00:03:17.760 only lasted for about 26 years.
00:03:20.100 The mullahs, the ayatollah, the Islamic regime,
00:03:23.220 has now lasted almost double that.
00:03:25.460 So I'm a little skeptical of regime change in Iran.
00:03:32.460 The reason that this strike was launched now
00:03:35.140 was the opportunity.
00:03:38.320 And this creates a little bit of a problem
00:03:41.620 for the argument for war
00:03:43.320 because we were told, what, just weeks ago
00:03:47.420 that the United States had totally wiped out
00:03:50.640 Iran's nuclear program,
00:03:52.800 just obliterated it in the strikes on Fordow
00:03:55.040 and the other nuclear sites.
00:03:56.660 So if the argument for war right now
00:03:59.200 is that Iran was on the brink of a nuclear weapon,
00:04:01.880 it creates a little tension
00:04:03.520 with the arguments we were making about Fordow
00:04:05.400 just weeks ago.
00:04:06.280 Really, I think, the reason the U.S. struck now
00:04:09.340 is we had the opportunity.
00:04:11.400 Iran is weak economically.
00:04:12.920 The regime is weak in terms of popular support.
00:04:15.040 The regime in Iran just slaughtered
00:04:17.240 tens of thousands of people
00:04:18.480 and is extremely unpopular.
00:04:20.460 So this was the opportunity to do it.
00:04:21.960 President Trump laid that out.
00:04:22.920 He said that if the Iranian people want their freedom,
00:04:27.280 this is their last chance probably for generations.
00:04:29.900 So, where does this leave President Trump?
00:04:34.060 A lot of people care a lot more
00:04:35.280 about the Trump administration in the United States
00:04:37.100 than they do about anything happening in Iran.
00:04:38.920 What's amazing is, with this strike,
00:04:43.460 President Trump has put himself
00:04:45.820 in a very similar position to George Bush in Iraq.
00:04:49.440 It was the same justification for going to war. 0.95
00:04:52.420 Same justification was weapons of mass destruction
00:04:54.780 that pose an imminent threat to America.
00:04:56.520 America, and it was backed up
00:04:59.360 by the same ideological justification,
00:05:01.480 which is that the people want freedom.
00:05:04.040 So, what's so amazing is,
00:05:06.140 President Trump launched
00:05:07.380 his political presidential career in 2015,
00:05:11.900 in many ways running against the Bushes
00:05:13.960 and against the stupid wars
00:05:14.980 and against all of that.
00:05:15.640 Now, President Trump is putting himself
00:05:21.080 in a similar position to Bush.
00:05:23.780 However, I guess his argument is,
00:05:26.640 we're going to do it well.
00:05:28.760 So, initially it was,
00:05:30.240 Bush had the wrong idea.
00:05:32.240 Now the argument would be,
00:05:33.940 Bush might have had the right idea,
00:05:35.420 but he did it poorly.
00:05:36.520 And the one thing I've got to say
00:05:37.780 with Trump on foreign policy is,
00:05:39.480 don't bet against Trump on foreign policy.
00:05:42.260 He has the best record on foreign policy
00:05:44.400 of any president in my lifetime,
00:05:45.600 including George H.W. Bush.
00:05:47.080 But this is a much higher risk.
00:05:49.460 Because by putting himself
00:05:50.620 in the same position as George W. Bush,
00:05:52.540 President Trump will either
00:05:54.520 wind up with the legacy
00:05:56.720 that George W. Bush had,
00:05:57.900 which is to say,
00:05:58.600 not a great one,
00:05:59.480 in his own party or in the other party.
00:06:01.920 Or, President Trump could correct
00:06:04.020 the errors of a quarter century ago.
00:06:06.420 President Trump could reinvigorate
00:06:08.660 a muscular U.S. foreign policy
00:06:10.420 that corrects the entire Bush era.
00:06:12.560 All of which is to say,
00:06:13.980 the stakes are very, very, very high.
00:06:17.340 This is not just dropping the Moab.
00:06:18.740 This is not just taking out
00:06:19.720 a dictator in Latin America.
00:06:21.420 The stakes are as high as can be
00:06:23.680 for foreign policy.
00:06:25.240 This is going to be a longer operation.
00:06:27.760 There's going to be a lot more
00:06:28.740 negative images already.
00:06:30.180 There's the school that was struck in Iran,
00:06:32.120 death toll reportedly around 53.
00:06:34.820 The stakes are much, much higher.
00:06:36.740 President Trump is taking a risk
00:06:38.680 with his entire foreign policy
00:06:41.660 and potentially his entire
00:06:43.080 presidential legacy.
00:06:45.080 More on that when I'm back
00:06:46.940 in the studio on Monday.
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