The Tucker Carlson Show - Tucker Carlson Responds to Israel’s War on Iran

00:00:00.400 So whenever something big happens, particularly something really big like a war that will change world history,

00:00:07.720 the first four questions you have to ask are these.

00:00:11.240 One, why did this happen?

00:00:14.500 Two, what was the point of it?

00:00:18.140 Three, where does it go from here?

00:00:20.720 And four, how do we respond?

00:00:23.460 So let's assess the war in Iran now ongoing in its second day and try to answer those four questions.

00:00:31.120 First, why did this happen?

00:00:33.500 Now, in this case, there's a really simple answer.

00:00:35.560 This happened because Israel wanted it to happen.

00:00:38.980 This is Israel's war.

00:00:41.280 This is not the United States' war.

00:00:43.180 This war is not being waged on behalf of American national security objectives to make the United States safer or richer.

00:00:49.640 This war is not actually even about weapons mass destruction, nukes, chem-bio.

00:00:55.100 No, this war is waged purely because Israel wanted it to be waged.

00:01:00.660 Now, why say that out loud this early in the conflict?

00:01:03.980 Isn't that dispiriting for, say, American troops fighting this war?

00:01:07.160 Yes, it is.

00:01:08.560 And we thought a lot about whether it was wise or decent even to say something like that out loud

00:01:13.980 and have decided that it is for the following reason.

00:01:16.980 First, because the truth is always the only basis for wise decision-making.

00:01:23.920 When you lie to yourself or you lie to your people, you not only commit, well, a kind of moral crime by lying,

00:01:30.360 but you also tend to hurt yourself.

00:01:36.380 Hubris is the product of lies, for example.

00:01:39.320 You can get way over your skis if you're not honest with yourself and the people around you

00:01:42.880 about what's happening and why it's happening.

00:01:46.980 But long-term, that is also true.

00:01:49.260 In other words, it's important to say why this war is happening because 50 years from now, people may not know.

00:01:56.700 Your grandkids may learn that this war started because the Ayatollah showed up in Miami

00:02:02.220 and started machine-gunning people in a shopping mall, and so we responded.

00:02:05.040 There was a kind of Iranian Pearl Harbor.

00:02:06.880 You don't know what the future will believe about the present.

00:02:11.040 You don't know how history will be written.

00:02:13.400 And if you're skeptical of that, if you're asking yourself, well, how could historians, popular historians,

00:02:18.900 how could future culture so misunderstand something so big?

00:02:21.660 How could people lie about something so obvious, so giant?

00:02:26.400 Well, history is your guide.

00:02:29.260 A lot of the big events we think we understand, including wars, from the past and not-so-distant past,

00:02:36.080 are completely distorted in our memories.

00:02:39.680 In other words, that's not actually what happened at all.

00:02:42.340 And the truth is, if enough people lie about something at a high enough volume,

00:02:48.720 and they do it for long enough, loudly enough, while threatening anyone who refuses to lie about it,

00:02:55.060 over time, their lies become conventional wisdom.

00:03:00.820 Everyone believes them.

00:03:03.000 There is something about repeating a lie over and over and over again

00:03:08.400 that's almost like a spell or an incantation.

00:03:11.600 It's almost a form of witchcraft.

00:03:14.240 It assumes reality or a version of reality, an ersatz reality, a fake reality,

00:03:22.020 but reality nevertheless.

00:03:24.660 And if you're interested at all in history, going back thousands of years or even more recently,

00:03:28.880 you know that the understandings of certain events that you grew up hearing about

00:03:34.260 probably totally inverted.

00:03:35.720 The opposite is true, but you didn't know that until you dug a little deeper,

00:03:39.320 or in some cases a lot deeper, to find out because they have been distorted in the retelling.

00:03:44.960 And because they have been, because a lot of our most basic assumptions are based on untruths,

00:03:49.540 we wind up getting into the same messes again and again.

00:03:53.060 So it's just important to tell the truth about this now in the early stages.

00:03:57.200 This is, by the way, widely known.

00:04:00.740 This is not a conspiracy theory.

00:04:02.420 Everyone's saying it out loud now because it's true.

00:04:04.940 The United States committed troops to this conflict

00:04:09.640 because the prime minister of Israel, not Israel's a nation,

00:04:13.560 but the guy who runs it, Benjamin Netanyahu, BB, demanded it.

00:04:17.040 Seven trips to the White House over the last year.

00:04:19.740 And the point of those trips never varied.

00:04:22.920 The United States needs to commit to regime change in Iran.

00:04:28.020 We need the U.S. military to overthrow the government of Iran.

00:04:32.360 And BB himself has basically said that,

00:04:35.060 that it wasn't that we thought Iran was going to get nukes this week,

00:04:40.120 and that's why we did this.

00:04:41.560 Nobody's even saying that now.

00:04:43.180 They will be in the future when our memories get a little dimmer

00:04:45.460 and they can manipulate us more.

00:04:46.540 But right now they're admitting, no, actually they were not on the verge of getting nukes.

00:04:49.800 BB himself said, you can pull up the video,

00:04:51.720 I've been dreaming about this for 40 years and we've finally done it.

00:04:55.680 So this is the culmination of a long-time plan of strategy.

00:05:03.160 And actually, if you look at it backwards and try to assess recent events,

00:05:06.960 even in this country and American political life over the past several years,

00:05:11.180 certainly over the past six or eight months,

00:05:14.440 you can see that a lot of what was happening here

00:05:17.020 was preparation for where we are right now.

00:05:20.440 In other words, people who wanted war in Iran were softening up the public for it,

00:05:25.760 were manipulating the U.S. government in order to affect it,

00:05:30.220 and were doing their very best to silence anyone who doubted its wisdom.

00:05:35.840 A lot of the things we have seen in the recent past are, and now it's very obvious,

00:05:45.660 they were all designed to get us to where we are now, war with Iran on behalf of Israel.

00:05:50.760 Now, just a caveat at the outset, just because the prime minister of Israel wanted a regime-change war

00:05:56.860 with Iran does not mean, in any sense, that it was a wise idea for Israel.

00:06:01.400 It certainly wasn't a good idea for the United States.

00:06:03.020 No one really disputes that.

00:06:05.220 But was it a good idea for the country or for the prime minister who advocated for it?

00:06:08.800 No, probably not, actually.

00:06:11.320 Just because we want something doesn't mean it's good for us.

00:06:13.900 Sometimes when we get what we want most, we're destroyed by it.

00:06:18.660 Hope that doesn't happen to Israel, of course, or anybody.

00:06:22.100 But it could.

00:06:24.800 So when you get to the truth of things and you see who's pushing for them,

00:06:28.400 that doesn't mean that person understands his own best interest or his country's own best interest.

00:06:34.620 Often they don't.

00:06:35.980 Often we don't.

00:06:37.820 But it doesn't change the fact that we got here because Israel lobbied for it.

00:06:43.100 And virtually everyone in the U.S. government, certainly in the Pentagon, understood the risks.

00:06:50.340 The risks were obvious from day one.

00:06:52.560 First, if you knock off a government, we have a long history of doing that.

00:06:55.980 It's not that hard.

00:06:58.280 The individual bravery of the U.S. military personnel, the soldiers who do it,

00:07:04.820 is laudable, impressive, amazing sometimes.

00:07:08.060 But that is, we have learned, the easy part.

00:07:11.000 But killing Saddam, okay, amazing.

00:07:14.140 What comes next?

00:07:15.020 Et cetera, et cetera.

00:07:15.840 This is all very, very well known.

00:07:17.420 And it was very well known 48 hours ago that there was no real plan to replace the government

00:07:25.140 we were hoping to topple.

00:07:27.440 At which point, what?

00:07:29.540 Well, now you have a country, Iran, the size of Western Europe,

00:07:33.440 with 92 million people, a country that's, you know, only a little over half Persian,

00:07:38.860 that has its own internal divisions and dynamics and rivalries.

00:07:43.220 You have that country potentially breaking apart.

00:07:46.620 And what does that mean?

00:07:48.420 Well, I mean, hard to see that as a good thing for the rest of the world.

00:07:53.080 And on so many levels, which we pray don't become more obvious, but they're even now becoming

00:07:59.300 obvious, that could be a true, true disaster.

00:08:03.200 So why would we want that?

00:08:04.060 Well, of course, we wouldn't want that.

00:08:05.700 The only country that seems to want that are the only leader.

00:08:08.780 To be fair, once again, not speaking for every Israeli any more than Joe Biden or Donald Trump

00:08:14.940 or anybody else who runs this country speaks for every American, of course.

00:08:17.960 But Benjamin Netanyahu wanted that.

00:08:20.480 He thought that was his mission, but more than his mission, maybe his destiny.

00:08:25.780 He suggested that in his remarks today.

00:08:28.900 And that's why.

00:08:31.460 But nobody in the U.S. government who I ever talked to or heard quoted on TV

00:08:36.020 seemed to believe that this was primarily in America's interest.

00:08:41.420 There might be ancillary benefits.

00:08:42.760 I mean, you hear these analyses of how, you know, the world is changing and it went from

00:08:48.340 being unipolar to multipolar.

00:08:51.080 All true.

00:08:52.820 And the United States ran the world uncontested from the summer of 1991 until, I don't know,

00:08:57.500 pick a date, pretty recently, the rise of China.

00:08:59.920 And all of a sudden you have multipoles.

00:09:02.600 You have more than one great power vying for control of the world and its trade routes and

00:09:09.040 its resources, et cetera, et cetera, and that somehow knocking off the government of Iran

00:09:14.840 would be good for us in that complex chess game.

00:09:18.960 And that's a real argument, I guess.

00:09:21.760 These things are kind of hard to understand.

00:09:24.260 And any wise person looks at the world and says, OK, there's no stopping the rise of China.

00:09:30.340 Their manufacturing capacity, their economic power is really the world's largest real economy,

00:09:37.340 is not going to end tomorrow.

00:09:40.200 So there has to be a way to strike a kind of power sharing agreement with China, with

00:09:46.840 the East.

00:09:47.900 The United States doesn't rule the world uncontested and for the foreseeable future is

00:09:52.680 probably not going to.

00:09:54.120 So how do we live in some semblance of peace and preserve our own interests?

00:09:58.720 And again, you enter into some informal power sharing agreement with the other great power

00:10:04.060 or powers probably can't stop that process.

00:10:09.780 It's probably too late to stop China from controlling the East at this point.

00:10:14.900 Killing the Ayatollah is probably not going to do it.

00:10:16.760 So there's probably a better way to do this.

00:10:17.960 But anyway, there are people who disagree.

00:10:20.580 And if we do this, it'll be better for us long term.

00:10:23.500 And at least you have to give them credit for trying to think of a way in which this

00:10:28.080 might benefit the United States.

00:10:31.160 But most people who assess this knew nothing whatsoever to do with us.

00:10:37.780 This is Israel's war.

00:10:41.060 That's what it is.

00:10:42.140 It's not an attack.

00:10:43.300 It's not an attack on Israel, by the way.

00:10:44.820 It's hardly anti-Semitism or Jew hatred.

00:10:46.940 It's just it's a fact.

00:10:47.960 Head of state came to our country.

00:10:50.060 A head of a state of 9 million people came to a country of 350 million people and demanded

00:10:55.240 that we help them or, in effect, do it ourselves, topple the regime in Tehran.

00:11:02.140 Now, how did they get the leverage to do this?

00:11:03.600 That's a complicated question.

00:11:05.760 And it's something really worth thinking about.

00:11:07.860 But how did this tiny country with no resources and 9 million people convince the world's great

00:11:12.580 superpower with the greatest military in history to do its bidding in a way that was going

00:11:17.100 to hurt it?

00:11:18.600 Hmm.

00:11:20.060 Well, again, many layers to that question.

00:11:22.400 But the most obvious and immediate answer is because Bibi told the president of the United

00:11:29.600 States, you can join me or not, but I'm going.

00:11:33.640 And the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said this in a call to congressional leaders yesterday.

00:11:38.060 He said Israel said they were going.

00:11:40.100 And at that point, you really only have two choices.

00:11:42.900 You can get on board and try and help or contain Israel's war.

00:11:52.440 That's part of the calculation here.

00:11:54.240 Israel's going.

00:11:55.000 Let's try and keep this within bounds.

00:11:58.540 Let's try to be a moderating force on this adventure, whatever it turns out to be.

00:12:02.280 Or you can tell Israel no.

00:12:06.440 And they'll just do it.

00:12:09.060 And if they did it, that would not protect us because there are hundreds of thousands of

00:12:15.260 Americans in the Middle East, both in uniform and out, civilians and military personnel.

00:12:22.460 And they're also the world's most important oil projects, oil, energy infrastructure, oil and

00:12:28.780 gas, which has more than any other factor determining effect on the global economy.

00:12:34.340 So everybody needs their oil and gas, period.

00:12:37.100 You can't change that.

00:12:38.520 Sorry.

00:12:38.820 And so if that infrastructure is damaged or destroyed, it affects all of us, all of us,

00:12:45.960 everybody but us.

00:12:48.060 So you can't just let Israel go and do this.

00:12:52.120 Now, of course, there's a third potential theoretical option, which you say to Israel, which is a

00:12:57.460 client state, which we pay for, whose creation we made possible.

00:13:01.700 You say, no, we're not doing that.

00:13:04.580 I get it.

00:13:05.660 You don't like the Ayatollah.

00:13:07.580 You don't like Iran.

00:13:09.660 But this is bad for us.

00:13:11.200 And we're not going to let you do this.

00:13:12.540 And if you do it, we're going to, I don't know what, cut off aid, something.

00:13:16.840 We can apply the pressure that is inherently ours to apply since we're paying for all of

00:13:21.740 this.

00:13:23.160 But that was not even on the table.

00:13:24.940 That's never been on the table.

00:13:26.320 No one has ever in the last 63 years considered doing that.

00:13:30.760 Really, the last president to do that was John F. Kennedy in 1962, and he got in a, not

00:13:37.580 as famous as it should be, dispute with the founding prime minister of Israel, then the

00:13:41.560 prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, over Israel's nuclear program at Demona.

00:13:46.800 And then President Kennedy said, no, I don't believe in nuclear proliferation.

00:13:51.800 This is one of the pillars of my administration, and you can't keep testing, and I'm demanding

00:13:59.520 inspections.

00:14:01.360 And of course, he was not able to make good on those promises because he was killed in

00:14:06.700 November of 1963, and the person who took his place as vice president, Lyndon Johnson, gave

00:14:11.920 a green light to the Israeli nuclear program.

00:14:13.880 So that was the last time an American president said no, a hard no, to Israel, tried to restrain

00:14:20.200 its core ambitions.

00:14:21.780 Not like, you know, be nice to the Palestinians in the West Bank, but no, you can't have nukes,

00:14:26.480 or no, you can't, I don't know, bomb Lebanon, or whatever.

00:14:30.680 That was the last time.

00:14:31.280 So that's not, for some reason, even on the table.

00:14:35.100 So the choice was, do you go along with what Israel's doing, try to constrain it, or do

00:14:39.820 you just sit back and then inevitably get drawn into it?

00:14:43.200 So the truth is, and this is hard to say, as a proud American and as someone who wants

00:14:50.360 the United States to remain powerful in the world, a force for decency and order in the

00:14:57.080 world, but above all wants America to remain prosperous and peaceful at home.

00:15:01.280 in the country that we actually live in, it's hard to say this.

00:15:05.020 But the United States didn't make the decision here.

00:15:09.420 Benjamin Netanyahu did.

00:15:11.800 And again, it's important to say that, not to discourage anybody or make anybody feel

00:15:16.260 despondent or hopeless.

00:15:17.920 There's no reason for hopelessness at this point.

00:15:20.320 But in order that it doesn't happen again, tell the truth so people can learn, hopefully

00:15:26.700 improve and grow, but tell the truth no matter what.

00:15:33.060 So then the question becomes, we know why it started, because Israel wanted it and demanded

00:15:38.340 the U.S. military in order to do it.

00:15:40.720 Why would Israel want this?

00:15:43.540 We've already established that this may or may not be a good idea for Israel, but why would

00:15:47.920 they want it?

00:15:48.520 What was their thinking here?

00:15:50.140 If it was really about the threat of Iran building and deploying a nuclear weapon or a nuclear-tipped

00:16:00.740 ICBM aimed at Miami and New York, as Mark Levin told his poor listeners the other day, none of

00:16:07.920 that's true, but if it was really about that, how could this threat have lasted for 40 years?

00:16:16.180 How could, as Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday, how could Iran's nuclear program been on the

00:16:23.040 very verge, the cusp of building and deploying a nuclear weapon for 40 years?

00:16:28.540 Well, of course it wasn't.

00:16:30.560 What we can argue about Iran's aims with nuclear weapons, they probably wanted one.

00:16:36.060 Who wouldn't want one?

00:16:36.940 Look at what happens to countries that don't have one.

00:16:39.600 Everyone wants a nuclear weapon.

00:16:41.560 But were they actually about to get one?

00:16:43.980 No.

00:16:45.440 So what was the point?

00:16:46.600 What is the point of this from Israel's perspective?

00:16:48.660 Well, the point is regional hegemony.

00:16:51.120 Super simple.

00:16:53.560 Israel has been around for almost 80 years.

00:16:56.720 Israel has nuclear weapons.

00:16:58.300 Israel's got a pretty robust tech economy.

00:17:01.080 But above all, Israel has big ambitions.

00:17:03.240 And by the way, it's not an attack on Israel, which growing country doesn't have greater ambitions

00:17:10.660 and which megalomaniacal leader of said country, and there are many of those around the world,

00:17:16.480 by the way, wouldn't want regional hegemony.

00:17:19.380 Regional hegemony means you get to control your region.

00:17:21.300 Israel wants to be able to determine, roughly speaking, what happens in its region.

00:17:28.820 And it doesn't want constraints on its own behavior.

00:17:32.260 In the same way, again, trying to be as generous and universally minded as possible here in this analysis,

00:17:38.080 because it's true, who wouldn't want that?

00:17:41.660 Do we want that?

00:17:42.300 Of course we do.

00:17:43.520 We're not, you know, we put up with a lot for Mexico and Canada,

00:17:46.140 but if they all of a sudden started constraining our actual ambitions,

00:17:50.260 we'd do something about it.

00:17:52.480 I think, or the old America would have.

00:17:54.940 A normal country would.

00:17:56.560 And Israel wants to control the Middle East.

00:17:59.600 And they're the only announced nuclear power in the Middle East.

00:18:02.720 Are they the only actual nuclear power in the Middle East?

00:18:04.960 You could debate that.

00:18:08.700 People can guess.

00:18:10.000 But they're the only country we know for certain has a big nuclear arsenal.

00:18:12.960 So they want to be unrivaled in their power in their region.

00:18:19.820 Again, this is not a conspiracy theory or something weird to want.

00:18:22.920 It's what every country wants.

00:18:24.900 And they want it.

00:18:25.860 And Bibi wants it.

00:18:26.700 And he sees himself as a figure out of history,

00:18:29.460 not simply as a prime minister who's, you know, fighting to keep his job, which he also is.

00:18:34.960 But as a great man, as a modern Moses or whatever, as a figure.

00:18:42.360 And men like that, men of destiny, change the calculation for their nation forever.

00:18:49.720 They don't take small steps.

00:18:50.580 They take big steps.

00:18:51.300 They think big.

00:18:52.000 He thinks big to his credit or detriment.

00:18:54.440 But it's a fact.

00:18:55.140 And so this war is an effort, not simply in addition to everything else.

00:19:03.860 No, no.

00:19:04.160 It is exclusively an effort on the part of Israel to achieve regional hegemony, total control.

00:19:12.280 So what does that mean exactly?

00:19:13.760 Well, it means you have to sweep away your enemies.

00:19:15.640 And in the case of Iran, Iran was an enemy of Israel, by the way.

00:19:19.820 And Iran was also funding insurgencies and militant groups in the region to kind of picket Israel and hassle Israel, kill Israelis.

00:19:29.160 That's all true.

00:19:30.840 Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran funded, absolutely.

00:19:33.100 Houthis, Iran funded, absolutely.

00:19:34.520 Iran was doing that.

00:19:35.240 That's true.

00:19:36.540 And Israel didn't like it.

00:19:37.720 Why would they?

00:19:40.120 But it's also true that, and this is not to make excuses for anybody, but these are all dynamics.

00:19:46.200 You know, one country does one thing, another country does another thing.

00:19:48.300 I mean, like a marriage.

00:19:50.480 No party's wholly responsible for what went wrong or what went well.

00:19:54.900 This is a relationship.

00:19:57.300 And people act against each other, with each other, but always on each other.

00:20:02.460 Each action provokes a reaction.

00:20:04.160 And so this history goes back a long way, and historians can untangle it.

00:20:07.820 A few honest ones left.

00:20:09.480 But if you want to control the Middle East and you're Israel, you have to decapitate Iran.

00:20:16.620 You don't have to rebuild it.

00:20:18.340 You probably don't even want to.

00:20:19.820 It's too big.

00:20:20.680 It has too much mineral wealth.

00:20:22.640 It has too much energy.

00:20:24.460 That huge gas field they share with Qatar, et cetera, et cetera.

00:20:27.880 You probably just want to decapitate it and make it helpless.

00:20:31.480 You want to turn it into a hellscape because it's better for you, because you can dominate

00:20:38.360 a hellscape.

00:20:40.980 Now, that may cause massive downstream problems for everybody else.

00:20:44.160 You could have like a refugee crisis in Europe.

00:20:46.440 Well, oh, that already happened when Israel destabilized Syria.

00:20:49.580 You could have this open bleeding wound.

00:20:53.240 Oh, that already happened when Israel destabilized Lebanon, when Israel pushed the United States

00:20:58.800 to kill Gaddafi in Libya.

00:21:00.740 This is an ongoing thing.

00:21:02.720 Iran's just the biggest and the final.

00:21:04.640 So, getting rid of the Iranian government had one purpose, to give Israel the ability to

00:21:14.560 do exactly what it wants in the Middle East without getting hassled.

00:21:18.400 And what it wants, among other things, is territorial expansion.

00:21:21.880 Small country.

00:21:23.080 They want parts of Libya, rather, excuse me.

00:21:25.900 They want parts of Syria, parts of Lebanon.

00:21:28.880 They're an expansionist power, like most powers, actually.

00:21:32.880 Let's demystify this.

00:21:34.640 It's not about the Jews.

00:21:36.560 It's about a nation state that is growing and trying to exert its power.

00:21:43.240 It's that simple.

00:21:44.680 You can take all the spooky stuff out and just see it in terms of conventional geopolitics,

00:21:49.780 and it makes total sense.

00:21:52.520 And part of the reason we can't see this clearly is because we've been so propagandized in the

00:21:57.460 United States to see every contest between nations as a moral contest.

00:22:02.420 In which we somehow have to pick a side, and somebody's Churchill, and somebody's Neville

00:22:07.160 Chamberlain, and somebody's Hitler, and this absurd template, which narrows our vision and

00:22:12.540 prevents us from seeing that this is just what's always happened, which is a contest between

00:22:16.640 powers for primacy.

00:22:17.600 But there's another, actually two other components, two other speed bumps on the way to regional

00:22:26.540 dominance for Israel.

00:22:28.740 The first is something called the GCC.

00:22:31.500 The GCC is an informal alliance, maybe a little more formal as of today, but it's the six Gulf

00:22:37.700 monarchies.

00:22:38.280 It's the energy-producing Gulf states.

00:22:40.640 And those would be Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, and Saudi.

00:22:49.120 And these are some of the biggest, most important energy producers in the world.

00:22:52.480 They're all Sunni Arab states.

00:22:55.420 They're all rich, and all of a sudden, they are all now internationally, or some of them

00:23:01.580 are internationally influential because they are the site of global diplomacy.

00:23:07.020 They are filling the void left by Switzerland, which not to get too boring about it, but basically

00:23:11.560 took sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and is therefore kind of not really a place where

00:23:18.860 people can negotiate in good faith.

00:23:20.840 They are, in effect, controlled by the EU and NATO.

00:23:24.540 They would never admit that, the Swiss, but they are.

00:23:26.600 They give up their banking secrecy.

00:23:28.120 They're basically not non-aligned anymore.

00:23:31.940 But some of these Gulf states are as close to non-aligned as you can possibly get.

00:23:36.200 Certainly, Qatar is.

00:23:37.780 And all of a sudden, every conflict around the world is being negotiated in Qatar, or most

00:23:44.320 recently in Oman.

00:23:45.540 And so they have a kind of moral authority on the global stage, right?

00:23:52.340 They have very effective diplomacy.

00:23:54.060 People like them.

00:23:55.100 People also go there on vacation.

00:23:56.860 They have the best airlines in the world.

00:23:58.900 They are the obvious regional travel hub for the globe.

00:24:02.740 They're literally where East meets West.

00:24:05.300 So if you're flying from New York to Delhi, you're going to stop in Dubai.

00:24:10.040 And they have government-subsidized airlines that are absolutely fantastic.

00:24:13.060 So people have a familiarity, a firsthand familiarity with these countries, which were

00:24:18.280 mysteries to most Westerners 25 years ago.

00:24:21.060 When 9-11 happened, it was the first time I went to the Gulf, most Americans have never

00:24:26.140 been there, unless you were in the oil business or something.

00:24:28.180 You've never been there.

00:24:28.800 And so you could imagine that it was all belly dancers and camels and slavery or whatever

00:24:32.940 you thought.

00:24:33.480 But all of a sudden, every other rich person in America has been to Dubai, because they're

00:24:39.660 all traveling somewhere.

00:24:40.420 They're going in safari in Africa.

00:24:41.680 So people, it's been demystified to the West, and people like it.

00:24:46.480 These are societies with problems, of course, but they're also orderly and clean and elaborately

00:24:54.300 polite and welcoming to outsiders and rich and kind of a little less gaudy than you would

00:25:00.280 expect.

00:25:01.580 They're actually some of the most functional societies in the world.

00:25:04.580 And people like them, despite a lot of propaganda.

00:25:07.920 And by the way, despite some complications, there are plenty of things about the Gulf states

00:25:11.940 that Westerners won't like, or some things anyway, and certainly parts of their foreign

00:25:17.900 policy that make you wonder.

00:25:20.740 But these are not North Korea.

00:25:22.400 They're the opposite.

00:25:22.980 These are actually very civilized countries.

00:25:26.720 And they're not all on board with Israel's programs, because they've got populations

00:25:33.000 that disagree with how Israel has treated the Palestinians.

00:25:36.060 In the case of Saudi Arabia, they have Mecca and Medina, the two holiest places in Islam.

00:25:40.880 Every Muslim can is required to go to Saudi Arabia on the hajj to go visit Mecca.

00:25:47.420 So these are countries with inherent power in the Islamic world, growing power globally,

00:25:56.800 and resources.

00:25:59.000 And so they can't be ignored.

00:26:01.360 And if they were ever to get together, if these six countries were ever to form, say,

00:26:05.260 like a real military alliance, they would be a massive threat to Israel.

00:26:10.540 So Israel has spent decades fomenting dissent between them, of course.

00:26:16.960 And that's not necessarily just an attack on Israel.

00:26:19.960 I mean, as anyone can tell you, we spend time in the Middle East.

00:26:22.920 The Arabs, many great qualities, but love to fight with each other.

00:26:25.920 It's like their favorite hobby.

00:26:28.460 More than camel racing.

00:26:29.720 Like, it's very easy to get Arab nations bickering and fighting.

00:26:33.800 And the distrust goes back a long time, and it's impenetrable to the outsider.

00:26:37.300 But if you were trying to divide six countries from each other, it's not that hard.

00:26:41.220 And the Israelis have worked really, really hard to do that.

00:26:44.600 But the truth is, if you really want control of the Middle East, you kind of have to degrade,

00:26:50.820 if not destroy, the Gulf states.

00:26:53.120 And so the Israelis knew, and the Americans knew as well, maybe not quite as realistic an assessment,

00:26:59.900 but they had some sense, the Israelis definitely knew, that if you start lobbying missiles into Iran,

00:27:07.900 and if you start killing the leadership of Iran, and if you were to, say, kill the head of state

00:27:12.740 slash religious leader of one branch of Islam, the Ayatollah,

00:27:18.660 if you were to do that, it would provoke a military response that would hurt the Gulf badly.

00:27:27.020 And that it would, in some countries, like Bahrain, site of the Fifth Fleet,

00:27:33.460 you could potentially stoke, like, a true revolution, because that country is almost, I think, half Shiite.

00:27:43.560 So you could cause massive chaos in the Gulf, if you were to do this.

00:27:48.480 Now, that wasn't a risk from the Israeli standpoint.

00:27:50.960 That was the point.

00:27:53.140 That was the point.

00:27:55.260 They wanted to diminish the Gulf, and in two days, they have.

00:27:59.660 And I think anyone who likes decency and order and cleanliness is hoping that the Gulf will recover.

00:28:05.960 The Gulf is not a threat to us.

00:28:07.740 We have military bases in these countries.

00:28:09.360 These are some of our closest allies.

00:28:10.680 All of them are closer allies than Israel, by far.

00:28:15.120 They're our friends, but they've been really hurt.

00:28:19.720 And in a place like Dubai, which is basically part of a country, it's an emirate within the United Arab Emirates,

00:28:26.600 but it's also a luxury brand, basically.

00:28:30.060 People go to Dubai because it's beautiful and rich and clean, and above all, because it's safe and orderly.

00:28:36.180 It's got the busiest airport in the world.

00:28:38.000 You start seeing video on Instagram of smoke in the Dubai airport, and you're like, I think I'm going to Cabo this year.

00:28:45.900 Oh, sorry, drug cartels.

00:28:47.340 Whatever.

00:28:48.520 Maybe you go to Sedona this year.

00:28:51.160 It really, really hurts these countries, and Israel wanted to hurt these countries.

00:28:54.340 That's the point.

00:28:55.340 Wanted to hurt these countries.

00:28:57.320 Wanted to sow chaos and disorder because they are rivals of Israel.

00:29:01.020 So it's probably not, hasn't been reported, but it's a fact that last night in Qatar and Saudi Arabia,

00:29:08.960 authorities arrested Mossad agents planning on committing bombings in those countries.

00:29:13.940 Now, that's weird.

00:29:15.760 It doesn't make any sense.

00:29:17.560 Why would the Israelis be committing bombings in two Gulf countries, which are also being attacked by Iran?

00:29:26.060 Aren't they on the same side?

00:29:28.280 No.

00:29:29.920 No.

00:29:31.200 Israel wants to hurt Iran and Qatar and UAE and Saudi and Bahrain and Oman and Kuwait.

00:29:40.740 And they've succeeded.

00:29:41.780 And the third thing you would have to do if you wanted true control over the region, which, as we've established, Israel wants and shouldn't be attacked for wanting.

00:29:54.820 It's a natural thing to want.

00:29:57.460 But the final thing you'd have to do is get the U.S. out of the Middle East.

00:30:00.660 Since 1948, the United States, from Harry Truman until present, U.S. presidents, and as noted with diminishing success, but have tried to constrain or shape Israel's policies, its foreign policy.

00:30:16.040 And we have a right to do that because we're the most powerful country in the world, have been since 1945, and also because we pay for it.

00:30:23.480 You know, Israel couldn't exist without us right now.

00:30:26.900 And we give them the defense umbrella.

00:30:29.000 We defend them in their wars.

00:30:32.200 And so why would you want the United States out?

00:30:35.140 Well, because the United States, while not doing a very good job of constraining Israel, has been issuing requests, in any case, to Israel for a long time.

00:30:46.060 And that's very annoying.

00:30:47.640 Imagine if we were getting the same kind of communiques from, I don't know, Ottawa.

00:30:52.680 And they were like, you can't do this, you can't do that.

00:30:54.920 We'd say, buzz off at a certain point.

00:30:56.560 Back off, Canada.

00:30:57.200 We're doing what we want.

00:30:58.020 We're a great power.

00:30:59.000 So you have to get the United States out.

00:31:02.380 And this war is designed to do it.

00:31:07.320 Because the Israelis, who are very well aware of domestic American politics, know that there is no appetite whatsoever for casualties among the American public, that this war did not have anything approaching majority support.

00:31:21.440 In fact, it had small minority support.

00:31:23.820 And that's shrunk, even in 36 hours.

00:31:26.820 And that this would cause a political crisis in the United States, and that it would most critically convince our Arab allies in the region, meaning really the Gulf states and Jordan, poor Jordan, wonderful country.

00:31:43.200 It would convince them that the United States, because the second you hit Iran, and the Persians are not stupid at all, you know that they're going to hit American bases in those countries, which they have, except I'm not.

00:31:58.300 But in the other six, they have, and you know those countries are not going to be defended by the United States.

00:32:06.820 And they haven't been very well.

00:32:12.140 Some of these countries are on fire right now, and they feel completely vulnerable.

00:32:17.820 And they are low and not letting loose with any operational secret that you can't find on the Internet.

00:32:23.820 They're running low on missile defense.

00:32:26.360 And so a country like Saudi or UAE or Qatar, Bahrain or Kuwait, I mean, they're all right on the Gulf directly across from Iran.

00:32:34.220 Iran, they live on their energy production, and that's being damaged, and no one's protecting them.

00:32:43.820 A Saudi Aramco facility went up last night, Saudi Aramco being the, you know, longtime joint U.S.-Saudi energy production company, biggest oil company in the world.

00:32:53.280 And part of it's on fire today.

00:32:56.560 The Iranians said they didn't do it.

00:32:58.040 Why would they say they didn't do it?

00:32:59.740 Possible Israel did it.

00:33:01.800 Why wouldn't they?

00:33:04.220 Because if you think about it, scaring our other allies in the region, letting them know that they can get attacked and the U.S. will not defend you.

00:33:14.840 You put up with all this crap for decades because you've got American troops on your soil and your population doesn't like it, but you do it anyway.

00:33:20.760 Because you've been told if there was ever a problem, the U.S. will come rescue you.

00:33:24.320 Well, guess what we just learned?

00:33:25.560 The U.S. is not coming to rescue you.

00:33:28.040 There are hundreds of thousands of Americans, civilians, caught in the Middle East.

00:33:33.860 It can't get out.

00:33:37.900 And the governments of those countries are panicked and they're enraged.

00:33:43.560 And the message to them is the U.S. is not a reliable partner.

00:33:47.740 What's the point of this partnership?

00:33:48.960 What's the point of allowing you to have an air base in my country if when missiles come raining down or drones attack our airport, our international airport?

00:33:57.600 You're not going to do anything about it.

00:33:59.140 That's how they feel.

00:34:00.020 And you can understand why they do.

00:34:01.680 So what's the message to them?

00:34:03.000 There's no upside in dealing with the United States.

00:34:07.320 There's no upside in foreign investment in the United States.

00:34:12.340 You go to any of these countries, you just go to the airport, go to a restaurant.

00:34:15.160 Who do you run to?

00:34:15.780 American businessmen.

00:34:18.120 And some of them have good ideas.

00:34:19.140 Some of them have ideas that are so stupid that they couldn't sell them in Silicon Valley.

00:34:22.700 They couldn't go to VCs in the United States and raise the money.

00:34:25.460 So they go to the Gulf.

00:34:27.220 And it's not that the Gulf Arabs are dumb.

00:34:30.780 In some sense, they're doing this because they see the United States as their only real ally.

00:34:36.520 And so they're investing in American business ventures.

00:34:39.320 A lot.

00:34:41.880 Hundreds of billions of dollars.

00:34:44.320 And part of that is economic calculation.

00:34:46.180 They think these companies are going to grow and they're going to make money.

00:34:48.200 Part of it is friendship.

00:34:50.260 You're our ally.

00:34:51.380 And have been all these years since the British left.

00:34:54.760 What do they think now?

00:34:56.320 Well, they don't feel that way quite as much.

00:34:58.100 Because for them, this is very serious.

00:35:01.540 I mean, these countries don't grow their own food.

00:35:04.880 So if you close the airport and the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea are closed, in effect, where do you get your food?

00:35:15.000 That's a real issue.

00:35:15.960 These are countries that are supplied by, in some cases, desal, desalinization plants.

00:35:22.320 Pulling seawater through a membrane and then piping it to the urban centers.

00:35:29.200 What happens if those pipes get blown up?

00:35:33.020 You have no water.

00:35:34.080 There's millions and millions of people.

00:35:35.260 So you can see, without getting too into it, just how vulnerable these countries, our strongest allies in the region, now feel.

00:35:42.600 And how their calculation about the United States in the region has changed dramatically.

00:35:48.380 The British lost their influence in the Middle East in 1956 in what is known as the Suez Crisis.

00:35:55.160 It was a crisis that was so complex, it's hard even to understand it now, 70 years later.

00:36:02.020 But the net effect was, the UK was not able to restore order in the region.

00:36:09.380 They had less power than people thought they did.

00:36:12.100 And that was it.

00:36:13.720 That was the true end of Britain's empire.

00:36:18.800 It was certainly the end of its control over the Middle East.

00:36:20.640 That's what this is.

00:36:22.340 And it's on purpose.

00:36:24.040 They did this, the Israelis want us out, and they did this on purpose.

00:36:28.420 And then as a last sort of footnote, there's another big loser in this war, in Israel's war.

00:36:36.820 And this was obvious years ago.

00:36:40.540 And that's Europe.

00:36:42.420 Europe?

00:36:43.460 Who cares about Europe?

00:36:45.960 Well, the neocons care about Europe for reasons that are not entirely clear.

00:36:49.860 But you often hear the neocons, the war hawks, chills for Israel, whatever you call them.

00:36:57.880 But people who supported what we're seeing now.

00:37:01.080 And they're mad at the Shiites and the Ayatollah and the Arabs and, you know, of course, got it.

00:37:07.360 But if you listen carefully, there is a deep hostility, hatred, in fact, toward Western Europe.

00:37:14.300 Now, where does that come from?

00:37:15.340 Someone should think deeply about this because it's had a big effect.

00:37:19.160 Over the past 80 years.

00:37:21.620 It doesn't even matter where it comes from.

00:37:23.900 They hate Western Europe.

00:37:26.640 And maybe the biggest loser of all right now is Western Europe.

00:37:30.620 So, last night, Qatar shut down its LNG exports.

00:37:37.720 LNG is liquefied natural gas.

00:37:39.880 Without getting boring about it, LNG is essential to the global economy.

00:37:45.160 It's essential to Asia.

00:37:46.600 South Korea subsists on Qatari LNG exports.

00:37:51.460 China is a huge consumer of them.

00:37:54.000 And Western Europe, Britain.

00:37:56.120 40% of homes in Britain are powered by Qatari LNG.

00:38:01.820 Lots of reasons for this.

00:38:02.860 We blew up the Nord Stream pipeline as one of them.

00:38:04.660 But it doesn't matter.

00:38:05.980 That's the truth.

00:38:06.720 So, when you shut off natural gas from Qatar, and it's now shut down.

00:38:13.580 It's 20% of the world's total supply is shut down.

00:38:16.840 Well, you have all kinds of effects on that.

00:38:19.980 It crushes markets.

00:38:21.680 It hikes inflation.

00:38:23.360 It can wreak havoc on the global economy.

00:38:25.320 Say a prayer that it doesn't.

00:38:26.500 But it could.

00:38:27.700 But the first thing that it does is totally shafts Europe.

00:38:30.220 And then here's the second order effect, refugee crises.

00:38:34.820 Let's say that this operation achieves its only real stated aim, which is to decapitate the government of Iran.

00:38:43.080 It doesn't seem to have happened yet.

00:38:44.520 I mean, who knows what's actually going on.

00:38:46.360 But the Ayatollah was killed.

00:38:48.720 Government's still sending missiles, so someone's making decisions.

00:38:53.100 But let's say, over the course of however long this takes, chaos becomes the state of play in Iran.

00:39:01.980 The thing just falls apart.

00:39:03.120 Just chaos.

00:39:03.680 Just a huge, chaotic country with no one in charge.

00:39:06.280 Lots of different ethnic groups and religious splinter groups fighting with each other, heavily armed.

00:39:12.660 And the normal things start to break down, like food distribution and water.

00:39:17.460 Schools.

00:39:18.800 What do you have?

00:39:19.700 Well, you have what we've had in Lebanon and Syria.

00:39:23.700 Really, every country that Israel has destabilized on purpose, you have a refugee crisis.

00:39:29.780 And where do they go?

00:39:31.240 Well, of course, a lot will come here.

00:39:33.140 Of course.

00:39:34.980 But a lot will go to Europe.

00:39:36.580 Just as Syrians flooded into Europe 10 or 12 years ago.

00:39:41.720 In the aftermath of that conflict, which was, underneath it all, fomented by Israel in order to destabilize its neighbor in order to increase its own authority in the region.

00:39:52.340 That's a fact.

00:39:54.480 So if you think Europe's in bad shape now, oh boy, give it a year.

00:39:58.900 So it's Europe, the United States, and the Gulf states.

00:40:05.640 Those are the losers.

00:40:07.440 And if you're trying to ascertain motive, which is hard, and you probably should pull back from that most of the time.

00:40:13.500 But if you're trying to understand why this is happening, why would you want that?

00:40:17.180 Look at the effects.

00:40:17.980 Don't look at the ideology they're telling you about or whatever motive they're claiming they have or that you have.

00:40:25.800 Shut up, Shiite!

00:40:27.420 Okay.

00:40:28.560 Look at the effects.

00:40:30.200 The point of the system is what it does.

00:40:32.880 And what does this system, what does this war do?

00:40:37.420 Hurts the Gulf states.

00:40:40.360 Crushes the Western Europeans.

00:40:43.300 And it hurts the United States.

00:40:45.480 That's the point.

00:40:47.980 And if you doubt that, if you doubt that that's actually what's going on,

00:40:55.080 this is a long-time Israeli politician, leader, Naftali Bennett, explaining Israel's next step.

00:41:06.660 Here's where they're going next.

00:41:07.980 Watch.

00:41:08.980 A new Turkish threat is emerging.

00:41:11.980 I want to be very clear.

00:41:13.800 Turkey and Qatar have gained influence in Syria,

00:41:16.920 are seeking influence elsewhere and everywhere throughout the region.

00:41:21.140 And from here, I warn.

00:41:24.280 Turkey is the new Iran.

00:41:32.020 Erdogan is sophisticated, dangerous, and he seeks to encircle Israel.

00:41:37.640 We can't close our eyes again.

00:41:42.860 He's sophisticated and dangerous.

00:41:45.440 It's hardly an endorsement of Erdogan, the Turkish leader, hardly an endorsement of him to say when Bennett says he's dangerous,

00:42:00.540 what he really means is he's sovereign.

00:42:03.700 We can't tell him what to do.

00:42:06.800 We don't fully control him.

00:42:08.600 We can influence him.

00:42:09.600 And it's clear that Israel and Turkey did have some kind of relationship in the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in Syria last year, just a guess.

00:42:20.980 But the real problem with Turkey is that it can't be controlled.

00:42:26.120 So it is, therefore, a threat to Israel.

00:42:28.680 And again, not attacking Israel.

00:42:29.980 That's true.

00:42:31.180 That is true.

00:42:32.320 In the same sense that when we have hostile leaders in big countries in our hemisphere, it really bothers us.

00:42:38.020 And sometimes we kill them.

00:42:40.400 Regime change them.

00:42:41.520 And we make up this whole, no, it's really important.

00:42:44.060 The people of country X need to be free.

00:42:46.040 But really, we need to be unconstrained because we're a great power.

00:42:49.260 That's what it is.

00:42:51.560 It's important to say this, not to allege some sort of dark conspiracy by the Israelis, but to explain that it's not unusual at all.

00:42:59.460 It's the most usual thing in the world.

00:43:01.560 What's unusual is to live in a country that is so controlled, whose media environment is so precisely constructed to keep you from knowing anything that matters, from seeing the most obvious things, and that it has been constructed, it's not a conspiracy theory, over the course of many, many years to keep you from not knowing.

00:43:27.740 Barry Weiss may run CNN.

00:43:32.700 Whoever thought that would happen?

00:43:35.600 Okay, now.

00:43:36.700 But the point of these moves in the media is to control the way things are described so you can't see things clearly and to muddy the conversation with anti-Semitism, the Nazis.

00:43:51.140 No, no, this is classic great power competition, and we just can't see it because we have been so thoroughly propagandized we think that this is some sort of effort to liberate somebody.

00:44:04.260 It's not.

00:44:04.720 But then the question becomes, like, what is our role in this?

00:44:11.180 So now that we know, and by the way, it's perilous that we know, and one of the reasons I almost didn't do this, not that I'm, like, saying anything that isn't obvious.

00:44:19.680 It's all very obvious.

00:44:20.580 But to say it out loud does not make things more stable.

00:44:27.000 In other words, once you have a war going on and everybody knows that it's not being waged on behalf of the people who are dying in it or the families they leave behind, then, you know, things can, things don't get more stable.

00:44:40.380 So, and no one wants to add to the present instability, but I just think it's important to know the truth and to know what our leaders have planned because, as you already know, they lie, and they have no scruples at all.

00:44:52.900 And there are very few people in Washington who have fewer scruples than Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

00:44:58.220 I hate to say that.

00:44:59.460 Know him well.

00:45:00.020 But this clip from the yesterday, from a Sunday show, which apparently still exists, yesterday, really tells you a lot about how they're thinking and about where they'd like to take us next.

00:45:13.000 So this is Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas yesterday.

00:45:16.560 Good morning, Margaret.

00:45:17.500 The president of the United States warned the American public that there could be casualties, American casualties.

00:45:24.320 Does that mean the U.S. is putting boots on the ground?

00:45:26.600 No, Margaret.

00:45:29.060 The president has been clear that what we should expect to see is an extended air and naval campaign that's designed not only to continue to set back Iran's nuclear ambitions,

00:45:39.440 but most importantly, to destroy its vast missile arsenal.

00:45:44.460 Many more missiles in the United States and Israel have air defenses combined, as well as the missile launchers and its missile manufacturing capability.

00:45:52.540 Now, obviously, one risk of that kind of campaign is that an aircraft could be shot down and the president would never leave a pilot behind.

00:46:00.120 So no doubt we have combat search and rescue assets in the region that are prepared to go in and extract any downed pilot.

00:46:06.760 But barring that kind of unusual circumstance, Margaret, the president has no plan for any kind of large scale ground force inside of Iran.

00:46:14.360 The president has no plan for any sort of large scale ground force, large scale ground force in Iran.

00:46:22.820 Oh, really?

00:46:23.680 So a small scale ground force.

00:46:24.940 Is that what you're saying?

00:46:25.460 Well, that is what he's saying.

00:46:26.920 And the secretary of war was just interviewed moments ago and pressed on this a little bit.

00:46:31.380 And he said, it's possible because, of course, it's possible.

00:46:35.140 By the way, you shouldn't even attack people for telling the truth ever.

00:46:37.980 However, you should attack people who try to prevent you from telling the truth.

00:46:41.740 And what the secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, just said is, of course, obviously true and was always true.

00:46:46.640 There's not one person who understands a situation like this, kinetic war, who thinks you can affect regime change from the air.

00:46:56.140 But no one's ever thought that.

00:46:57.960 No one thinks that now.

00:46:59.140 So if you're sincere about changing the leadership of a country, it by definition requires you to get in there.

00:47:06.300 Well, of course, not you, but some young guy, some younger man fighting for freedom to get in there and risk his life to do it.

00:47:13.420 You need troops, ground troops, boots on the ground or whatever dumb euphemism they're using for putting young Americans in the path of potential death.

00:47:22.740 And so, of course, that's always been the plan.

00:47:27.060 And shame on the rest of us for not just saying that out loud.

00:47:30.080 Shame on the rest of us for being so cowed by their relentless incantations, whatever they are.

00:47:35.060 No ground troops.

00:47:36.500 The point is not regime change.

00:47:38.580 It's to stop their nuclear program.

00:47:41.200 Some of us understood.

00:47:42.160 Charlie Kirk understood back in June.

00:47:45.040 That was a lie.

00:47:46.820 The point wasn't Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.

00:47:50.460 Nobody wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

00:47:51.940 Why does Israel have a nuclear weapon?

00:47:53.380 Why does France have a nuclear weapon?

00:47:54.580 Nobody wants nuclear weapons, okay?

00:47:59.280 Nobody thinks that Iran should have a nuclear weapon outside of Iran.

00:48:07.060 But no honest person believed in June, and now those people have been vindicated, that this was about stopping them from getting a nuclear weapon.

00:48:14.120 It was regime change, and regime change requires ground troops.

00:48:16.880 And therefore, if you're serious about it, you're going to get ground troops.

00:48:20.460 The only group left out of this calculation was the American public, who probably had no idea and probably still don't have any idea that that would even be a remote consideration given everything that's going on in this country right now.

00:48:31.980 And given the tiny percentage, relatively speaking, of Americans who wanted this, who voted for it, who support it, the leaders of both parties support it, Chuck Schubert supports it more fervently than Trump.

00:48:43.700 MSNBC just did a long segment on this, which I watched, about this war, and it's the fault of the Gulf states.

00:48:52.680 It's the Gulf states, yeah, it's Qatar again.

00:48:54.980 Barely even mentioned Israel.

00:48:56.380 Well, they're all on the same page.

00:48:58.600 They're all neocons.

00:48:59.520 When it comes right down to it, they all support this.

00:49:04.760 But the public doesn't support it, and it's terrible for the United States.

00:49:09.140 And by the way, if you think it's a good idea for the U.S. to get out of the Middle East, which it might be, by the way, that's not a crazy desire.

00:49:14.640 This is not the way to do it.

00:49:16.940 Humiliated with American dead, that's not the way to get out of the Middle East.

00:49:20.800 But that's how Israel wants us out of the Middle East.

00:49:22.800 You won't come back.

00:49:25.140 They can pivot to their new partner, China.

00:49:28.180 And Israel can provide the tech.

00:49:30.560 They will even up the match against the Chinese tech that Pakistan used in their last confrontation scared China.

00:49:38.400 They realize, we need better tech.

00:49:40.960 China's like, oh, yeah, we've got the better tech.

00:49:43.060 So it's a natural alliance, and there are other reasons it's a natural alliance.

00:49:46.140 But Israel's moving on to India, and the United States is, if Israel gets its way, going to be humiliated and weaker, mourning its dead, and very resistant to getting involved in Middle East politics ever again.

00:50:02.840 You want to annihilate every last child in Gaza?

00:50:05.180 Go ahead.

00:50:06.340 You want to kick the Palestinians, the Christians, out of the West Bank and fill it full of people from Brooklyn?

00:50:11.960 Go ahead.

00:50:12.340 We're not going to do anything about it.

00:50:14.100 That's the goal right there.

00:50:16.140 So along the way to that happening, Americans are going to die.

00:50:28.820 The Department of War has said that, has confirmed that there are four Americans who've died.

00:50:33.660 That's what they've said.

00:50:34.780 They have not done their normal briefings.

00:50:36.700 They haven't told us any information as of Monday afternoon, which is what it is right now.

00:50:42.220 They have not told us more.

00:50:43.140 But it's pretty clear that, tragically, more have died.

00:50:48.860 And I think that's upsetting to people in the administration.

00:50:52.240 I don't think that they make these decisions lightly.

00:50:54.500 And I think a lot of the commanders who sent those young men into this war had ambivalent feelings about it.

00:51:01.540 I mean, they did, for sure.

00:51:02.400 So it's not attacking anyone who gave the order, because, again, they're employees giving orders.

00:51:09.340 But the people who advocated for this, their attitudes about the death of young Americans, really the best Americans that we have, on behalf of a foreign power that really has contempt for us.

00:51:24.280 I mean, is there any other world leader who has more contempt for the United States than Benjamin Netanyahu?

00:51:30.900 No.

00:51:32.120 No.

00:51:33.760 There just isn't.

00:51:35.020 There's pure contempt for the United States.

00:51:37.600 And these people died for him?

00:51:39.140 If you're commenting on this, if you're trying to understand it from afar, you've got to grieve over that.

00:51:46.060 It's so unfair.

00:51:47.700 It's so wrong.

00:51:50.360 And yet the people who've advocated for this don't seem to care at all.

00:51:56.460 Here is someone who's been advocating for a war against Iran.

00:51:59.180 I'm not going to go to motive and accuse him of being paid to advocate for it.

00:52:04.360 Be interesting to know.

00:52:06.100 But Frank Gaffney, who's been around Washington forever and nonprofits and think tanks.

00:52:13.300 There's no place on the planet where less thinking takes place than a think tank.

00:52:17.760 But they're basically lobbying organizations with tax-exempt status.

00:52:21.820 And he has been lobbying for a war with Iran.

00:52:25.960 Well, I don't know, since I started shaving, probably.

00:52:29.180 But here he is yesterday on the possibility of Americans dying.

00:52:33.580 This isn't going to be over tomorrow.

00:52:35.240 I pray it will be.

00:52:36.200 But I don't think we should expect that.

00:52:38.200 Will we take more casualties?

00:52:39.740 I mourn the loss of three American servicemen as much as anybody.

00:52:43.420 But this is essentially cost-free to us at this point.

00:52:48.060 Will there be more losses?

00:52:49.220 You saw Rabbi Willicki talking about them in Israel.

00:52:51.860 Of course there will.

00:52:53.240 Should we be operating on any basis other than this is likely to be

00:52:57.660 a slog, a hard slog.

00:53:01.560 But the fight is incalculably important because if we do, in fact, render a decisive defeat

00:53:09.700 of Sharia supremacism in Iran, it will help us with all of the other places.

00:53:14.400 So I want to put that up there not because Frank Gaffney is the worst person in Washington

00:53:18.540 or because that's the most insane thing anyone's said in the last 24 hours, but because it's

00:53:22.760 so perfectly representative.

00:53:24.420 So first there's the sort of pro forma nod to we really, we're mourning, we're praying,

00:53:29.800 I mourn for the deaths.

00:53:31.320 When in fact what you're seeing in America right now from people like Frank Gaffney is

00:53:36.140 a total disrespect for death, a refusal to be reverent in the face of death, which is

00:53:42.180 always and everywhere a sign of a refusal to be reverent in the face of life.

00:53:46.420 If you can't appreciate death, if you don't bow before it in silence knowing that you don't

00:53:50.300 fully understand what it is, but that it's bigger than you, if you refuse to do that and

00:53:54.440 instead, I'm so glad he's dead, no matter who it is, if another human being has died and

00:54:00.920 you don't pause and acknowledge that you didn't create that life because you can't because

00:54:06.000 you're not God, and that there is something mysterious about death, something bigger than

00:54:11.800 you, if you don't, you are dangerous.

00:54:13.740 Even animals do that.

00:54:17.080 You ever bring your dog to the vet and the dog doesn't want to go in?

00:54:19.380 Why?

00:54:19.800 Because the dog can smell death.

00:54:22.020 And the dog is afraid of death.

00:54:23.280 The dog is in awe of death, as we should all be.

00:54:26.460 But almost no one in Washington feels that way about death.

00:54:30.200 Just cremate him and throw him away like he never existed.

00:54:34.460 Functional countries mourn their dead.

00:54:36.500 They bury them and they visit them.

00:54:38.940 Why?

00:54:41.040 Because functional countries understand that they're not in charge of life because they

00:54:48.260 don't have that power.

00:54:49.980 And people who forget that are seized by something called hubris, which is

00:54:53.260 always the beginning of the end for people and civilizations.

00:54:57.960 And so, oh, yeah, so three died.

00:55:00.320 We mourn their deal.

00:55:01.140 We're saying prayers.

00:55:02.320 Really?

00:55:02.760 What kind of prayers?

00:55:03.400 Have you said a prayer?

00:55:04.980 Do you know their names?

00:55:05.800 Oh, their names aren't public.

00:55:07.580 That might get us thinking about it too much.

00:55:10.500 But despite, or maybe because of, and you just heard Gaffney say this, not being mean, not

00:55:15.600 being unfair, he said this is essentially cost-free for us.

00:55:18.980 Really?

00:55:20.620 Three Americans just died for Bibi in a war that nobody wants?

00:55:24.240 In a war designed to hurt the United States?

00:55:27.320 And that's cost-free?

00:55:28.620 Three, and it's a lot more than three.

00:55:31.100 And I say that with real sadness.

00:55:35.260 It's that attitude that got us here.

00:55:37.220 But it won't stay that way.

00:55:42.340 It's already changing.

00:55:43.660 The thing that people need to remember is that war accelerates trends in progress.

00:55:47.820 Nothing accelerates change like violence.

00:55:52.100 And that's true for big, broad social changes, women in the workforce that happened after World

00:55:56.000 War II, integration after World War II.

00:55:58.700 I mean, good and bad, right?

00:55:59.480 But things change fast once people start dying, not just because of demographic changes, because

00:56:07.320 a lot of people die, and you need others to move into their jobs, and they're abroad,

00:56:10.280 so the women, no, it's more than that.

00:56:14.080 A different spirit descends on a society in war, and lots of things happen.

00:56:19.360 People become way less free.

00:56:22.160 That's the greatest lie of all, embedded in neocon theology.

00:56:27.340 We're killing these people so we can be free.

00:56:29.100 Oh, right, no.

00:56:31.320 Find a war in which people in the homeland became more free.

00:56:35.760 Oh, no, it's always the opposite.

00:56:38.420 The second Britain went to war, what did the British government do?

00:56:43.280 Interned their opposition, their domestic opposition, with their families, with their

00:56:48.020 wives, for the duration of the war, for years.

00:56:52.120 That was in Britain, which was, at least we thought, a pretty free country.

00:56:57.080 They gave us the Magna Carta.

00:57:00.000 Yeah.

00:57:00.840 So, no, countries don't become more free.

00:57:02.860 They become much less free during war.

00:57:04.720 A spirit of violence descends.

00:57:09.100 And people change fast, and calculations change.

00:57:12.300 Political calculations change really fast.

00:57:14.140 Social trends change really fast.

00:57:15.520 And people's attitudes change.

00:57:16.780 And part of it is not political or temporal.

00:57:20.320 It's spiritual.

00:57:22.740 You can feel on people the bloodlust, the hate, and it accelerates.

00:57:29.340 And that explains what you're watching right now, which is the rage of the neocons, which

00:57:35.660 doesn't make sense.

00:57:36.680 That doesn't make any sense.

00:57:37.680 They've been advocating for years that the U.S. government, on behalf of Israel, kill

00:57:44.380 the Ayatollah Khamenei.

00:57:46.660 They've been saying that for years.

00:57:48.720 I've been in this 35 years, and I've heard that every single year.

00:57:51.820 They got it yesterday.

00:57:55.600 Khamenei got killed.

00:57:57.400 Okay.

00:57:57.980 You got what you wanted.

00:57:58.840 It's Christmas morning.

00:57:59.800 You just opened the present.

00:58:00.980 Why are you mad?

00:58:02.280 They're angrier than ever.

00:58:04.500 This is the key to their psychology, and it's a spiritual principle.

00:58:12.840 Bloodlust is never sated, just like any other kind of lust.

00:58:16.120 It's never sated.

00:58:17.240 Nothing is ever enough.

00:58:18.780 You taste it on your tongue, and you want more.

00:58:20.780 It's like eating candy.

00:58:21.780 It doesn't satisfy you.

00:58:23.080 You're always hungrier for more.

00:58:26.380 And killing is the same.

00:58:28.500 Always.

00:58:30.280 But there's a specific psychology at work here.

00:58:34.500 And it's a graceless, anti-human psychology that has no room for forgiveness

00:58:40.180 or good sportsmanship or decency.

00:58:42.780 The second people like this win, they want to kill the people they've vanquished.

00:58:50.180 So imagine this were, I don't know, a tennis match.

00:58:54.080 And you win.

00:58:55.940 If you're a sort of normal Western person, you walk up to the net,

00:58:59.440 and you say, good game.

00:59:01.820 Trying to display what your father beat into your head as a child,

00:59:04.240 which is good sportsmanship, which is grace in victory.

00:59:09.280 Don't lord it over them.

00:59:11.860 Don't hurt them.

00:59:13.520 You already won.

00:59:15.460 Be graceful.

00:59:17.500 What you see in the advocates of this war in the neokines is the opposite.

00:59:23.460 You beat someone in a tennis match, you leap across the net

00:59:25.820 and beat them to death with your racket.

00:59:27.160 That's what you're seeing now.

00:59:29.120 And so you're seeing this crazed, hysterical, in fact, effort to purge anyone

00:59:36.080 in the conservative movement or MAGA, whatever those are,

00:59:41.120 to purge anyone who had any doubt about the wisdom of this war.

00:59:47.340 And not just to purge them, but to discredit them.

00:59:49.220 You're an Islamist.

00:59:50.340 A lot of these people are like sincere Christians, right?

00:59:53.760 Who opposed unreligious grounds.

00:59:55.420 You're an Islamist.

00:59:56.620 You're taking money.

00:59:58.260 And of course, it's all projection.

01:00:01.440 You accuse people of what you're actually doing yourself, of course.

01:00:05.620 But it's more than that.

01:00:07.900 It's bloodlust.

01:00:09.080 They shouldn't just be silenced and deplatformed and prevented from speaking

01:00:13.460 at this or that conference or from having a podcast, but they should be interned.

01:00:17.700 They should be arrested.

01:00:20.180 How long before it's they should be killed?

01:00:22.720 Not long.

01:00:23.840 That's how quickly these things are moving.

01:00:26.220 Because a spirit has been unleashed.

01:00:30.600 And violence does this every time.

01:00:32.500 A spirit of violence and hate has been unleashed.

01:00:36.020 And my personal advice, having thought a lot about this, is don't feed it.

01:00:44.640 This is demonic influence, clearly.

01:00:47.060 This is not rational, of course.

01:00:49.340 Why would you be angrier when you win?

01:00:52.240 Why would you be madder when you got what you wanted?

01:00:56.200 That tells you this is not in the realm of normal human desire.

01:01:02.920 You wouldn't be.

01:01:03.840 And these people feed, evil itself feeds on hate.

01:01:12.260 They project hate, but they also intend, consciously or not, to inspire hate.

01:01:20.540 Because hate makes them stronger.

01:01:23.300 And this happens not just in this country, not just in 2026.

01:01:27.720 It happens every single time.

01:01:30.320 War brings people like that to the fore, and it makes them more powerful.

01:01:35.920 And that's why you're seeing, as you have for the last several years, an increase in true radicalism in this country.

01:01:43.680 And by radicalism, I mean we hate these people because of how they were born, and we want to hurt them or kill them.

01:01:50.600 That's, I think, all would agree, actual radicalism.

01:01:54.520 That's not, hey, what happened to the USS Liberty?

01:01:57.760 That's not radicalism.

01:01:59.200 That's like an honest question.

01:02:01.380 And the answer, of course, is Israel targeted it on purpose because we were in their way, just like they're doing now.

01:02:06.900 That's not radicalism.

01:02:07.940 Radicalism is, hey, let's kill people who we don't like.

01:02:12.380 And you're seeing a massive increase in that.

01:02:15.060 In this country, in Israel, would Ben-Gavir or Smotrich, would they even have been conceivable 20 years ago?

01:02:21.880 Of course not.

01:02:23.760 No one like that had power in Israel 20 years ago.

01:02:27.260 I was there.

01:02:29.100 It was nothing like that.

01:02:31.000 Well, it's nothing like it was because war has unleashed this, and it's empowered people.

01:02:36.620 We have figures like that in this country, several of them who have actual power, not in government yet, thank heaven, but certainly on its periphery and certainly influencing government.

01:02:47.480 Yes, they do.

01:02:48.140 More power than ever.

01:02:48.880 And it's also true, by the way, in Iran.

01:02:52.440 And one of the reasons it's going to be difficult to get out of is because this war has already, a day and a half in, radicalized the leadership, to the extent it still exists, in Iran.

01:03:05.060 Oh, but weren't they so radical already?

01:03:06.440 Well, yeah, some were.

01:03:07.480 Some weren't.

01:03:08.400 A huge country.

01:03:09.840 Lots of divisions and differences within it.

01:03:12.420 Very complicated country.

01:03:14.300 Anyone who tries to learn anything about Iran or deals with Iranians will tell you, if he's being honest, ooh, complicated.

01:03:19.340 Hard to understand.

01:03:21.560 So, yeah, there were radical factions, and there were less radical factions.

01:03:24.440 And now, of course, maybe you could have predicted this if you're planning to kill the Pope of Shia Islam.

01:03:32.540 The radical elements are more powerful than they were because the gates of hell have been opened.

01:03:39.200 That's the truth.

01:03:40.360 And the people who did this knew they would be.

01:03:42.080 And so, in a moment like this, chaos and violence being its hallmarks, in a moment like this, only the worst people benefit.

01:03:50.900 And that's true of every conflict like this, every single time.

01:03:55.160 If chaos breaks out any place, what's the first effect?

01:04:00.320 The police, the military, they'll melt away.

01:04:02.380 There's no civil authority.

01:04:04.440 There's no legitimate authority.

01:04:05.920 Who's in charge?

01:04:08.040 Hmm.

01:04:08.420 Drunk 15-year-olds with automatic weapons.

01:04:11.520 They're in charge.

01:04:12.200 They make all the life-or-death decisions.

01:04:15.080 That happens in governments as well as intersections.

01:04:19.620 That's just a constant fact.

01:04:21.860 That's why you build civilization, is to protect the weak and to make sure that drunk 15-year-olds with automatic weapons don't have all the power.

01:04:31.140 That's the whole point of it.

01:04:32.900 But now they do, once again.

01:04:34.200 So, how do we respond to this?

01:04:40.720 I could, because this is only 36 hours in and because you don't want to make things sound worse than they really are, you know, we could go through all the many, many risks, some of which are becoming even clearer than they were.

01:04:55.360 You don't want to go through them all.

01:04:56.640 But clearly, the United States is not going to benefit from staying longer in Iran.

01:05:04.800 And sorry, Tom Cotton, putting troops on the ground, boots on the ground, whatever you call it.

01:05:09.860 Committing young American men to go die in Iran is not in our interest at all.

01:05:16.140 And it would cause not simply heartbreak in the families of those killed, but it would cause potentially real turmoil here domestically and render already fragile social fabric.

01:05:27.320 So, where do you go from here?

01:05:31.300 Well, get out right away.

01:05:35.460 It's just that simple.

01:05:37.520 Of course, it's also incredibly complicated.

01:05:40.140 But the first step is deciding that we're leaving.

01:05:45.460 You know, it's only been less than two days, but it's pretty clear that we're not going to gain anything more.

01:05:50.980 And how do we know that?

01:05:51.720 Because no one has explained what we're there to gain.

01:05:55.700 No one has described the mission.

01:05:57.360 Ask anybody, what's the point of that?

01:05:58.500 How do we know when we've won?

01:06:00.680 And some of us spent 20 years asking, what are we doing in Afghanistan?

01:06:03.500 Shut up.

01:06:04.000 Are you pro-Taliban?

01:06:05.220 No.

01:06:06.220 But I would like to know when we've won.

01:06:07.820 Sorry, you can't know that.

01:06:08.760 It's classified.

01:06:09.340 Okay.

01:06:10.260 But now is the time to be totally honest.

01:06:13.080 We're not going to get anything more than we've already gotten, assuming we've gotten anything, by staying.

01:06:17.500 And the longer we stay, the greater the risk.

01:06:19.980 What are the risks?

01:06:22.480 Oh, well.

01:06:24.540 Here are just two that you should be paying attention to.

01:06:27.740 One is that Israel gets really hurt.

01:06:30.940 And in case you think this is a long video attacking Israel for Nazi reasons or anti-Semitic reasons, it's not.

01:06:37.640 It's merely an effort to try and think through what's good for the United States.

01:06:40.240 But also, as someone who wishes Israel no harm, to think through clearly what's going to be terrible for Israel.

01:06:44.920 And one thing that would be terrible for Israel is getting hit with a hypersonic missile, which, as of right now, Iran has not yet fired.

01:06:52.400 And they may never.

01:06:54.020 But let's say they did.

01:06:56.420 What would Israel, which is a country the size of Maryland, how would it respond?

01:07:00.740 How could it respond?

01:07:01.700 Well, it might respond with nuclear weapons, which it has and which it has threatened to use before and which it has implied it might use many times.

01:07:12.220 One of the reasons you can't let Israel go alone is they imply, like, hey, don't make us go crazy and do something wild.

01:07:18.020 And that would include the use of nuclear weapons.

01:07:20.580 Not saying it's going to happen, God forbid, but it could.

01:07:24.360 And if Israel was legitimately threatened, not performatively threatened, but actually threatened, like with a hypersonic missile into downtown Jerusalem, then, yeah, it might.

01:07:35.940 And in that case, who knows, because nuclear weapons have not been used since August 1945, but a number of countries have them, including Pakistan and possibly others.

01:07:45.940 And so it could get there.

01:07:47.720 And you'd hate to be in a spot where you were relying once again, as we did in June, on Iranian restraint.

01:07:56.880 Relying on the Iranians to, you know, call your air base in Qatar before hitting it and giving you a warning.

01:08:03.120 You hate to say that.

01:08:04.440 But if you find yourself in a place where you're relying on the restraint of a country you have described as morally diseased, a terrorist nation, a Nazi country, as they're telling you on Fox, if you're relying on their reasonable behavior, you may have exposed yourself a little bit.

01:08:21.860 So if this continues, you could see potentially things going really crazy.

01:08:26.720 And of course, the craziest of all would be a nuclear exchange.

01:08:29.280 And that could happen.

01:08:30.160 That's not off the table.

01:08:31.060 Ask anybody who's dealing with this or thinking about it.

01:08:34.860 Doesn't mean it's going to.

01:08:35.640 Again, God forbid.

01:08:36.560 But it could.

01:08:37.500 And the possibility, even that it could, is terrifying.

01:08:42.560 That's number one.

01:08:43.340 Number two is Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem, which was built on, apparently built on the site of the Second Temple.

01:08:52.480 If you've been to Jerusalem, there's a big gold dome, a whole complex, and that is one of the holiest sites in Islam.

01:09:03.340 Not an expert on Islam, despite many accusations, but it is.

01:09:10.960 It appears to be co-equal in Islam, from what I can tell, with Mecca and Medina.

01:09:16.700 It's a huge deal.

01:09:17.520 And since 1967, it's been under the control, the military control of Israel.

01:09:22.480 It's actually controlled legally by Jordan.

01:09:25.200 But it's a holy place for every Muslim, about two billion of them.

01:09:30.040 And there are people, Orthodox Jews in Israel, not all, some, and some evangelical Christians in Texas, not all, but some, who would like to see it blown up and replaced by this Third Temple.

01:09:43.700 And I'm not going to get into the theology of it, which is deranged and demonic, actually.

01:09:49.060 But it's a fact that people want this.

01:09:51.260 And that is the beginning of, really, of the end for the world as we know it, because that would set off looking for religious conflict.

01:10:00.900 Killing the Ayatollah didn't get you there?

01:10:03.100 Okay.

01:10:03.820 Blow up the mosque.

01:10:04.740 And then you will be there.

01:10:05.780 And that's not good for anyone.

01:10:07.900 It's certainly not good for the United States.

01:10:09.460 And if this continues, there are already people in Israel, at least one well-known rabbi, is calling for a false flag against that mosque.

01:10:16.620 Just blow it up and blame the Iranians.

01:10:18.920 And the truth is, whether the Iranians blow it up intentionally or unlikely, but let's just say, or by mistake, or there's a false flag by Israel, it blames Iran.

01:10:26.280 It doesn't matter if it blows up, that's not a solvable problem.

01:10:31.560 That's the end of everything that we know.

01:10:33.980 And that's an enduring generational, thousand-year-as-long-as-the-world-lasts religious conflict that no one wants to be a part of.

01:10:41.600 Only the craziest, darkest people want any part of that at all.

01:10:46.020 That's the opposite of what we want.

01:10:47.940 And that could happen.

01:10:49.140 So the point is, once things start getting crazy, they can potentially, indeed, they tend to get really crazy.

01:10:56.040 And so stop the craziness.

01:10:57.420 So how would we affect that to the extent that we can at this point?

01:11:00.420 Declare victory and go home.

01:11:02.420 Or pull back.

01:11:04.660 It's hard to negotiate with the Iranians.

01:11:06.860 They've turned down our offer three times.

01:11:08.880 Yeah, true.

01:11:10.640 Iran has decided to the extent they decide anything.

01:11:14.160 Who knows who's actually making the decisions?

01:11:16.500 Clearly they're being made by compartments.

01:11:20.100 Or it seems that way.

01:11:22.060 But to the extent that the Iranian government can respond as a cohesive whole, they have responded, no, we're not negotiating with you.

01:11:29.640 Okay, she can't negotiate with them.

01:11:31.140 We're stopping.

01:11:33.040 Defensive measures only.

01:11:34.140 We don't want this.

01:11:35.380 The global economy is at stake.

01:11:37.320 The global order is at stake.

01:11:40.060 American lives are at stake.

01:11:42.900 American prestige is certainly on the line.

01:11:45.180 Our ability to control anything beyond our borders or maybe even within them.

01:11:49.140 We're out.

01:11:51.140 We killed the Ayatollah.

01:11:52.460 We came.

01:11:53.360 We did it.

01:11:53.900 We're going home.

01:11:55.500 At this point, that would be a wise decision.

01:11:58.780 And it was very clear from the outset, whatever revisionism people want to add to the story, but it was very clear that Donald Trump did not want an extended war in Iran.

01:12:12.060 Certainly didn't want a protracted boots on the ground war.

01:12:14.900 Certainly doesn't want the kind of war that Tom Cotton wants, obviously.

01:12:17.800 And we are on the way to getting that really quickly into a lot of suffering.

01:12:23.580 So declare victory.

01:12:24.920 Get out.

01:12:25.440 That would be move one.

01:12:27.520 Second, at some point, the United States has to get Bibi under control.

01:12:31.880 Sorry, it's not anti-Semitism.

01:12:34.020 This is a head of state whose decisions are getting Americans killed and affecting the history of the world and the fortunes of literally the fortunes, but also the future of the United States.

01:12:45.440 At some point, very soon, the United States has to say to the government of Israel, you are not in charge.

01:12:56.680 And no president, as noted, since John F. Kennedy has been willing to say that, but no administration has paid a higher cost for going along than the current administration.

01:13:07.820 And it's tragic when you think about it.

01:13:09.300 And, of course, it's not simply the administration, the president, and everyone who works for him.

01:13:14.640 It's the country and the people who voted for this president in the hope that he would improve their lives.

01:13:20.440 And none of that will be possible if this continues.

01:13:23.520 And the fault, of course, is with anyone who went along with Bibi's demands or threats or whatever.

01:13:30.080 But it's their fault for going along with this.

01:13:33.600 But the root cause is Bibi and his ambitions.

01:13:37.040 And so somebody immediately needs to say no.

01:13:41.420 Third thing that we need to do is protect Americans abroad.

01:13:45.220 Hundreds of thousands of Americans live in the Middle East.

01:13:47.500 A lot of them are stuck in the Gulf right now without getting too specific about it.

01:13:50.800 But Americans who live or work there, of course, Americans in uniform at our military bases, which are getting hammered, not just in the Gulf, but in Iraq and Jordan and other places, getting hammered, dying.

01:13:59.960 But Americans who work in the embassies, who are there on vacation, kids on spring break, who are stuck in the Abu Dhabi or Dubai airports, there are a lot of those right now.

01:14:12.280 And they can't get out.

01:14:13.180 And to its great shame, the State Department did not order an evacuation of even embassy employees before these strikes because they didn't want to give away when the strikes were.

01:14:24.360 Maybe they didn't know.

01:14:25.200 But all of us who are watching carefully knew something was likely to happen, and the State Department did not encourage these people to leave, and they didn't help them leave.

01:14:33.640 And as noted, hundreds of thousands of Americans are still stuck there, and in some places they can't get out.

01:14:41.520 And without making it sound more dire than it really is, just point out that it actually could be dire.

01:14:45.700 These are countries that are highly dependent on imports for food and water, and if you close the sea routes out and close the airports, they're pretty stuck.

01:14:57.760 So right now, you're seeing Americans try to get into Oman, the one Gulf country not under attack from Iran, and fly out.

01:15:07.080 You're seeing people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get out.

01:15:10.440 What you're not seeing, as of right now, anyway, is the U.S. State Department make an effort to prioritize Americans.

01:15:17.460 So it's possible in Doha, for example, that Poles, Polish citizens, will be assisted by their government in getting out of the Gulf before Americans are assisted by their government.

01:15:28.480 There's no excuse for that at all.

01:15:30.240 The point of the U.S. government is to serve Americans.

01:15:34.420 The point of U.S. diplomats is to serve the country they represent and to serve Americans in need abroad.

01:15:42.520 And this has been degrading for a long time, a long time.

01:15:46.380 If you've ever gone to an embassy in Mexico because you got arrested for something, you know what I'm talking about.

01:15:51.440 But the point is, when a war breaks out, started by your country, you have an expectation of help from that government when it breaks out, and they haven't received it, and it's outrageous.

01:16:02.720 And the fact that the U.S. government moved apparently a THAAD battery or some kind of anti-missile defense from Saudi, where it would protect critical infrastructure and Americans, or a lot of Americans in Saudi, to Israel, not only shaft Saudi, a critical partner in the world, a much more important partner than Israel has ever been or ever will be, it shafts Saudi.

01:16:30.940 But it shafts Americans.

01:16:34.120 How many energy employees, American energy employees, live in Saudi?

01:16:40.320 There's a direct flight to Houston from Riyadh.

01:16:42.260 Like, what is this?

01:16:44.540 Underneath it all, at its core, is the obligation of the U.S. government to serve the people it represents, who pay for it, in whose name all these things happen.

01:16:53.120 And they've completely lost sight of that.

01:16:55.900 And that gets to a deeper and more taboo problem, which is a real problem, and whose fruits we're seeing now, which is, there are a bunch of people in the U.S. government who do not put the United States before the interests of Israel.

01:17:09.260 Period.

01:17:10.100 And you saw that very clearly with Mike Huckabee.

01:17:12.080 We interviewed him last week in Tel Aviv.

01:17:15.100 And there was no sense at all that he represents the United States or has any interest in what happens to the United States.

01:17:21.680 At all.

01:17:22.480 His party is in defending Israel.

01:17:25.900 Now, Huckabee, thank heaven, is not Jewish.

01:17:28.740 He's like some kind of, who knows what his religion is, but he's not Jewish.

01:17:31.700 So you can't, you know, it's not anti-Semitic to say that.

01:17:33.580 It's just a fact.

01:17:35.740 Mike Huckabee's loyalty is to Israel over the United States.

01:17:39.440 But he's hardly alone in that.

01:17:41.240 How could there possibly be, in 2026, a dual citizen, sharing citizenship with any other country, including Israel, but not limited to Israel, any country?

01:17:52.160 How could there be any dual citizen at a high level of government?

01:17:56.520 You can't serve two masters.

01:17:58.880 You can't be loyal to two countries simultaneously.

01:18:01.660 This is why we're against polygamy in the West, right?

01:18:05.340 Right?

01:18:07.640 But we allow it.

01:18:09.120 Why?

01:18:09.400 Because no one wants to be called names if they oppose it.

01:18:12.600 And it's not just dual citizenship.

01:18:14.940 It's a confusion about whose behalf we're working on.

01:18:19.680 And in some cases, it's unintentional.

01:18:21.560 No one has spelled out the rules.

01:18:24.660 It's not malign.

01:18:27.500 It's just dumb.

01:18:28.460 No one has had the brass to say, hey, you work for the U.S. government.

01:18:32.640 Every decision you make has to put at the top of the queue American citizens.

01:18:36.720 Is this good for my nation or not?

01:18:39.400 No one ever gets that lecture.

01:18:41.440 There's no culture of that.

01:18:42.920 And it's not under this administration.

01:18:44.240 It's every administration in my lifetime.

01:18:48.020 Certainly since 9-11.

01:18:49.140 We need to have a government that has, as its stated goal, the protection of American citizens, period.

01:19:02.680 And if other nations benefit from that, great.

01:19:05.780 We're not against anybody.

01:19:07.240 But the point has to be America and serving America's interests.

01:19:11.200 And if an idea sounds good, but it's going to hurt the United States, we're against it.

01:19:16.300 That's our official position as a country.

01:19:18.460 And if you work for the government and you don't share that view, you can't work for the government.

01:19:22.100 And you certainly can't serve in a foreign military.

01:19:25.740 What are we even doing?

01:19:28.820 That's so real.

01:19:30.700 All these people in public life have served in the Israeli military, but not the U.S. military.

01:19:34.760 That's fine.

01:19:36.180 But you can't have influence over my country at that point.

01:19:39.600 You served in a foreign military and not in ours.

01:19:41.560 And no one has wanted to talk about this, but it's been going on a long time.

01:19:46.640 Bill Clinton famously said when he got out of office during his speech,

01:19:49.000 I wish I'd served in the IDF.

01:19:51.620 Really?

01:19:52.820 He dodged the draft.

01:19:54.320 It's not a defense of the Vietnam War, which was idiotic.

01:19:58.720 But it's a clear statement of priorities.

01:20:00.340 I would serve in a foreign country's military before my own?

01:20:03.120 Well, you can't be in my leadership then.

01:20:05.640 Sorry.

01:20:06.580 You're not a loyal American.

01:20:07.900 How are we defining loyal?

01:20:09.580 Like putting on a uniform?

01:20:11.560 Putting on a uniform of a foreign military and showing up in the U.S. Congress,

01:20:15.700 waving a foreign flag in the U.S. Congress, those are totally disqualifying acts.

01:20:22.020 And the fact that we've lost the capacity to see that

01:20:24.280 says that we're all been under some kind of spell.

01:20:27.240 Hopefully it breaks now because you can't continue with the system that we have.

01:20:31.100 It's not an attack on anybody.

01:20:33.640 It's the standard that Israel would apply to itself or any sovereign country

01:20:37.060 would apply to itself.

01:20:38.320 You have to be for us or you can't work here.

01:20:41.560 And we very much don't have that.

01:20:48.520 Most upsettingly, really,

01:20:51.340 is the possibility of what might happen here.

01:20:54.760 And that's the next thing we need to do is brace for a lot of domestic change.

01:20:59.120 As I said, the spirit of violence, of hate, of killing has been unleashed.

01:21:05.380 And you see it in people.

01:21:06.540 If you read online commentary, you certainly see it in evidence there.

01:21:10.480 People are angry.

01:21:12.360 They taste blood on their tongue.

01:21:14.180 And they want to kill.

01:21:15.900 You don't want that here.

01:21:17.080 You don't want that in your country.

01:21:18.120 That defeats the whole point.

01:21:19.000 The only reason we have a military is to ensure peace and prosperity in the United States.

01:21:23.600 That's it.

01:21:24.880 And if military action increases poverty and violence in your country, which it always does,

01:21:30.460 it's bad.

01:21:31.300 So you are seeing now a concerted effort by people acting on behalf of Benjamin Netanyahu,

01:21:41.440 some technically American citizens, to foment religious conflict here.

01:21:46.480 Hate the Muslims!

01:21:47.940 I'm not sure what I think about Israel, but we have the same enemies.

01:21:51.860 Now, the only enemies we have are enemies of the United States.

01:21:58.800 And we know who our enemies are by what they do to us, how they treat us, what they demand

01:22:02.540 of us.

01:22:03.060 And by that measure, Israel's not an ally.

01:22:06.380 And I don't know who these Muslims you're talking about are.

01:22:08.940 If you're against mass immigration, of course.

01:22:12.620 How do we get mass immigration?

01:22:14.020 Does anyone know?

01:22:15.380 We got it after, we got mass Muslim immigration after 9-11.

01:22:20.240 And the people who pushed it, because I was here, and I remember it very well, are the

01:22:25.020 very same people, in some cases literally the same people, who are now screaming about

01:22:30.300 how Islam is our enemy.

01:22:31.540 It's not an endorsement of Islam at all.

01:22:33.760 As a Christian, I don't endorse Islam.

01:22:36.080 But I hate lying, because it's never accidental.

01:22:39.300 It's always in the service of some darker end.

01:22:41.320 And in this case, it's in the service of the darkest of all ends, which is to divide

01:22:45.900 this country against itself along religious lines.

01:22:48.540 And yet, people are standing up and saying something they never would have said 20 years

01:22:52.460 ago.

01:22:53.280 Hate all Muslims.

01:22:54.180 How is that better than hate all Jews?

01:22:57.240 I'll pause while you explain.

01:22:59.380 And of course, they can't explain, because it is in no sense better than I hate all Jews.

01:23:04.400 It's the same thing.

01:23:06.440 And I hate all Christians for that matter.

01:23:08.420 But you are seeing a concerted effort to do that.

01:23:13.480 And you will almost certainly see, as we have seen before, acts of violence that may or may

01:23:19.860 not be organic, designed to move public opinion strongly in one direction to benefit people

01:23:26.800 outside our country.

01:23:28.160 It's just a fact.

01:23:29.140 And if you think that's not a fact, if that's a conspiracy theory, if that's an anti-Semitic

01:23:34.640 conspiracy theory, oh, are you alleging a false flag?

01:23:37.560 Oh, yeah.

01:23:39.320 They've been documented at length.

01:23:42.340 But there is a way to end this argument.

01:23:45.220 We don't need to debate this.

01:23:47.820 We can declassify it.

01:23:50.200 We can declassify it.

01:23:50.880 We can know the truth.

01:23:52.320 We can let, as Justice Brandeis said, sunlight in, which we'll disinfect.

01:23:57.060 Why don't we do that?

01:23:58.520 And we'll start with the Kennedy assassination 63 years ago.

01:24:01.500 Those documents have not been declassified.

01:24:03.480 Why is that?

01:24:05.220 Why are there thousands of Kennedy assassination-related documents that have not been declassified?

01:24:09.480 That's a fact.

01:24:10.720 Despite an executive order last January, acts of Congress over 63 years.

01:24:16.520 I don't know.

01:24:17.600 We're just speculating now.

01:24:18.820 Let's find out.

01:24:19.500 Why are there millions of 9-11 documents still classified?

01:24:24.740 And the same people who call you a nut for speculating as to why they might be classified

01:24:28.800 demand they remain classified.

01:24:30.020 There's no justification for it.

01:24:32.280 Secrecy abets evil.

01:24:34.180 That's the point of it.

01:24:35.540 There's no national security consideration at play in the Kennedy documents, the 9-11 documents.

01:24:40.060 I call BS on that.

01:24:41.060 You're lying.

01:24:42.580 So let's end it.

01:24:43.780 And by the way, if you wanted hate and ethnic strife and conspiracy theories, if you wanted

01:24:50.160 to make Americans distrust and dislike each other, if you wanted to eliminate all confidence

01:24:54.260 in government, if you wanted no authority to have legitimacy in a country, you would make

01:25:01.740 everything secret.

01:25:02.480 So everyone had to speculate as to what was actually going on.

01:25:06.120 You would create a nation of conspiracy mongers.

01:25:10.580 That's the effect of classifying over a billion federal documents.

01:25:16.080 You end democracy.

01:25:17.560 Of course, you can't really meaningfully participate in a government if you don't know what it's

01:25:21.120 doing.

01:25:21.880 Right?

01:25:22.360 I mean, there's no democracy with a billion classified documents.

01:25:26.320 It's gone.

01:25:27.060 It's an oligarchy.

01:25:29.100 And you would make the population suspicious.

01:25:33.520 You would make them distrust each other.

01:25:35.720 You would sow division, which is what you always do when you want to dominate and control

01:25:39.700 anybody.

01:25:40.840 You divide them from each other.

01:25:44.960 And of course, you would hide your own crimes.

01:25:48.120 But there's a way to end that.

01:25:49.880 So, Kennedy assassination, 9-11.

01:25:56.040 But let's start with the purported assassination attempts on Donald Trump.

01:26:02.900 Now, why are those significant?

01:26:04.120 Because yesterday, the President of the United States said, I did this.

01:26:08.100 And by this, I mean killed the head of state of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini.

01:26:14.400 He tried to kill me twice, but I got him first.

01:26:16.440 It's almost a verbatim quote from the President, who thinks that.

01:26:19.700 He's been told that.

01:26:20.480 Get it.

01:26:23.280 What do we know about that?

01:26:25.220 Where did that intelligence come from that proved that the government of Iran, run by

01:26:30.680 the Ayatollah, this religious leader, tried to assassinate the President of the United

01:26:36.780 States twice?

01:26:37.420 Do we know where that came from?

01:26:38.420 Oh, it came from Israel.

01:26:39.900 That's where that intel came from.

01:26:41.400 Well, let's see it.

01:26:43.080 Why not?

01:26:43.660 At this point, he's dead.

01:26:45.760 Why can't we see that?

01:26:46.920 Oh, sources and methods, tough.

01:26:49.480 We went to war over this.

01:26:51.300 Americans are dead because of this.

01:26:54.200 You can't hide behind that anymore.

01:26:57.200 Show us.

01:26:59.000 And maybe we'll find that there's really good intel.

01:27:01.660 And it just absolutely shows that the government of Iran, run by the Ayatollah, tried to assassinate

01:27:05.480 the President of the United States.

01:27:07.400 That might have been a good reason for war right there.

01:27:12.260 But maybe it doesn't show that.

01:27:13.600 Because this country has certainly been manipulated a lot by Israeli intelligence and other foreign countries' intelligence, but certainly

01:27:21.420 by Israeli intelligence.

01:27:22.340 That's why we thought there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

01:27:25.820 Saddam Hussein was paying the families of suicide bombers in Israel, which is bad.

01:27:30.420 Not endorsing that.

01:27:32.000 Israel wanted him out.

01:27:33.080 Get it.

01:27:34.920 Why did we do that?

01:27:36.380 Because Israeli intelligence told us that he was working on chem bioweapons and a nuke.

01:27:41.860 Totally false.

01:27:42.640 We got that from Israeli intelligence.

01:27:44.700 So at that point, the track record suggests, hey, and no offense to Ted Cruz or all the other

01:27:49.820 dumbos who are always saying, no, we get all this actionable intelligence.

01:27:52.360 It's so important.

01:27:53.180 We need them so desperately.

01:27:54.440 Really, let's evaluate the quality of that intelligence.

01:27:57.860 And what percentage is true?

01:27:59.200 What percentage is sincerely mistaken?

01:28:01.040 And what percentage is designed to manipulate us into military action on their behalf?

01:28:05.800 It'd be interesting to know.

01:28:07.260 And until we do know, the rest of us are going to just speculate.

01:28:10.060 And some of us will put brakes on our own imaginations and try not to be too dark about it, trying

01:28:15.560 to imagine evil where there's no evidence for it.

01:28:18.020 But others will let their imaginations go.

01:28:21.340 And you can see why.

01:28:22.980 Does that bring the country closer together?

01:28:24.660 No, it makes people hate each other.

01:28:26.200 So the next person who talks about anti-Semitism, the rising tide of anti-Semitism, fair.

01:28:32.480 It's real.

01:28:33.240 It's bad.

01:28:33.940 Totally bad.

01:28:35.060 How do we fix it?

01:28:36.300 We'll declassify the 9-11 files.

01:28:38.960 And then all those people on the internet are like, oh, the dancing Israelis, they did it.

01:28:42.100 Israel had foreknowledge of 9-11.

01:28:43.920 There were text messages sent to Israel.

01:28:46.420 Warning of 9-11.

01:28:47.340 All true, by the way.

01:28:49.040 What does that add up to?

01:28:50.020 Maybe nothing.

01:28:50.640 I don't know.

01:28:51.700 They won't declassify the files.

01:28:52.980 They lie about it.

01:28:53.760 Why?

01:28:56.260 Just tell the truth.

01:28:58.100 And by the way, if there are ugly truths involved in the dump of documents, people can generally

01:29:03.720 handle it.

01:29:04.920 What they can't handle is being lied to generationally and then attacked for trying to figure out

01:29:10.980 what the omissions amount to, which is exactly where we are now.

01:29:17.180 And so they're telling us today that there are going to be attacks in the United States

01:29:21.180 by Iranian sleeper cells.

01:29:22.360 Maybe.

01:29:23.000 Sounds plausible.

01:29:25.320 They blew up our base in Bahrain.

01:29:27.980 They hit the air base outside Doha.

01:29:30.080 Okay.

01:29:30.500 I mean, I believe it.

01:29:33.520 But if those things actually do happen in the United States, we're going to need to believe it.

01:29:37.760 If there is any real doubt, if there is a sense that actually maybe the FBI manufactured this,

01:29:44.520 they're not telling us everything.

01:29:46.880 If we have the same feeling about whatever those attacks, pray they don't happen, but

01:29:51.260 about whatever those attacks turn out to be, as we had about, say, January 6th or Charlie

01:29:56.600 Kirk's assassination, can you imagine a more divisive thing to happen to this country?

01:30:02.280 If you really wanted to bring America low, that's what you would do.

01:30:06.700 So it's actually essential that the government has the trust of the governed.

01:30:10.920 Absolutely essential.

01:30:12.180 Not just morally, but operationally.

01:30:13.960 It won't work without it.

01:30:14.920 And the only way to do that is to tell the truth and to call out people who lie, scream

01:30:24.040 at you, call you names.

01:30:25.220 We're going to intern you, throw you in jail.

01:30:27.480 All right.

01:30:27.840 But first to classify the 9-11 files, and then we can all calm down.

01:30:31.720 How's that?

01:30:33.300 That's not just a provocation.

01:30:34.380 That's sincere.

01:30:37.140 The next thing we need to do is get foreign lobbies under control.

01:30:41.700 And it's not just AIPAC.

01:30:42.820 It's not just Israel.

01:30:44.380 It's a lot of them.

01:30:45.820 It's a lot of them.

01:30:47.440 And the downside to mass immigration, of course, is that you can import other people's conflicts

01:30:52.580 and ancient ethnic rivalries into your own country and then be destroyed by them.

01:30:57.060 And this was well known at the turn of the century when the United States had its last

01:31:03.100 biggest, second biggest wave of mass immigration, people fleeing Eastern Europe mostly.

01:31:08.460 And the sense strongly was this can work.

01:31:11.500 We can use them for their labor.

01:31:14.140 Actually, the population hated it, to be totally honest.

01:31:16.180 It's always hated it, but no one cares what they think.

01:31:18.700 But a more evolved and selfless and wiser class of leaders at the time thought to themselves,

01:31:25.940 this can work.

01:31:27.860 We're feeding our factories with the labor we need, but we could also get a lot of trouble.

01:31:32.660 So let's invent this concept called the melting pot where everyone is welcome.

01:31:37.540 We'll put a little plaque on the Statue of Liberty kind of explaining this idea, but everyone

01:31:42.140 has to kind of share in a common culture and common values.

01:31:45.100 You leave your ancient grudges behind and it doesn't matter.

01:31:48.720 We're kind of like if your ancestors killed my ancestors, we're not going to kill each

01:31:52.520 other.

01:31:53.100 And that's the only way it's going to work.

01:31:54.060 And they were absolutely right.

01:31:54.900 And we've abandoned that, of course.

01:31:55.940 And it was intentional.

01:31:56.760 It was an effort to divide the country against itself in order to dominate it and lead to

01:32:00.220 events like today.

01:32:01.280 But it's accelerating to a point where the country won't hang together unless we get

01:32:08.440 this under control.

01:32:09.380 And people don't seem aware of this, or maybe they are, but are pretending it's not happening.

01:32:13.980 But in the last two conflicts, today being one, Venezuela on January 3rd being the other,

01:32:20.100 but you could pick a bunch more.

01:32:21.720 Or you had really active lobbies of exiles from those countries lobbying the U.S. government

01:32:29.020 and its military to overthrow the dictatorship they left because they're mad.

01:32:34.840 And that's not a good reason for the U.S. government to act.

01:32:37.520 Like people who've been here for a while or were born here as ancestors fought in the

01:32:40.620 Civil War or founded the country, they have a say too.

01:32:43.260 And they don't want anything to do with that.

01:32:45.820 They built this country, actually.

01:32:47.600 And they have a right to say no.

01:32:49.720 You know, if you're mad, go back and fight for that country's freedom.

01:32:54.360 But now you're an American.

01:32:56.180 But we've gotten to a point where, well, here's CNN from yesterday.

01:33:01.120 Watch this.

01:33:01.920 The largest Iranian populations outside of the Middle East.

01:33:04.840 You see the gathering there behind her.

01:33:07.100 Julia, how is the Iranian community responding?

01:33:11.080 Well, this gathering has only grown, Jessica, over the past few hours, excuse me, since we've

01:33:16.880 gotten here, it has amassed a large number of people and the celebration is striking.

01:33:24.000 So the Persians in L.A. are really psyched.

01:33:28.360 And by the way, if you ever run into Persians in L.A., great people, Muslims, Jews, probably

01:33:34.000 a few Christians, but great people, hilarious, interesting, super successful, fun to be with,

01:33:40.040 really one of the most entertaining, enriching immigrant groups, just to be honest, having

01:33:46.220 dealt with them a lot.

01:33:47.160 They're great.

01:33:48.120 Handsome people, too.

01:33:49.460 Smart.

01:33:49.720 However, their anger at the Ayatollah should play precisely no role in what our military

01:34:00.020 does.

01:34:00.640 It's just not relevant at all.

01:34:03.880 Making this specific group of voters happy because they were thrown out of a country or

01:34:11.900 their parents were thrown out of a country.

01:34:13.300 I mean, that is, talk about wag the dog.

01:34:15.060 And that's not Israel.

01:34:17.400 In this case, it's the Persians of L.A. on the west side of L.A. or it could be the

01:34:22.400 Cubans of South Florida, another awesome group, great people.

01:34:26.300 Lindsey Graham said yesterday, next stop, deranged by hubris.

01:34:30.960 Iran has gone so well, we're going to overthrow the Cuban government.

01:34:33.440 Next.

01:34:34.040 Cuba Libre.

01:34:34.440 Okay, now, after 65 years.

01:34:38.180 But the point is, Lindsey Graham was worked into a frenzy by the very awesome, super nice,

01:34:46.480 productive, smart, attractive, everything great about them, Cuban lobby in South Florida,

01:34:52.980 very conservative, Christian, they're great, love them.

01:34:55.900 They can't have control of America's foreign policy.

01:34:58.300 No ethnic group can have control of American foreign policy, whether it's the Venezuelans.

01:35:04.380 How many South Asian immigrants are in this country now?

01:35:06.920 No one even knows.

01:35:07.900 A ton.

01:35:09.740 Talk about a region riven by ethnic strife.

01:35:12.760 Ever been there?

01:35:14.840 I mean, there's obviously Pakistan and Bangladesh and India, but then even within India.

01:35:21.080 Libraries of books have been written about this.

01:35:22.720 If you were to import those conflicts into your country, you'd be Canada.

01:35:25.960 Where there's like a Bengali killing a Punjabi in a high-profile assassination, no one who

01:35:32.360 was actually born in Canada understands.

01:35:33.980 It's a nightmare.

01:35:35.780 It's not an attack on the Bengali's Punjabis or anyone else.

01:35:40.760 It's just a very obvious point that these are functional countries, the Anglosphere.

01:35:48.780 They were created by Anglo-Saxon immigrants with a certain system, and they work.

01:35:53.680 And everyone wants to move here because they work.

01:35:56.560 And the fastest way to keep them from working is to import the bad habits or centuries-old

01:36:02.220 grudges of the homeland.

01:36:04.220 So come here.

01:36:05.200 Bring your ambition, your kindness, your decency, your commitment to the American project.

01:36:10.000 But don't bring your lobbying efforts to get us to go to war with anyone, not Iran, Cuba,

01:36:15.740 Venezuela, Venezuela, anybody, because if we allow this to continue, in 10 years, we will be fighting a war in Somalia on behalf of the Somali state of Minnesota or Portland, Maine, or whatever.

01:36:28.340 If you import this stuff here, this country will fall apart.

01:36:31.200 And here's the last point, which I think needs to be made, is that this is a spiritual war.

01:36:43.500 And you hear that thrown around.

01:36:46.420 It's been thrown around for the last, I don't know, five or six years as people are paying attention, have begun to realize there's no rational explanation for a lot of things that we're seeing.

01:36:54.780 Transgenderism or the love of abortion for its own sake, like, well, what's that?

01:36:59.800 Well, obviously, it's human sacrifice, like the Mayans and the Incas and the Canaanites and every other civilization.

01:37:05.200 It's human sacrifice.

01:37:06.080 You kill a human being to appease the gods and to get power for yourself.

01:37:10.500 Like, it's the oldest religious ritual there is, and we're just seeing its modern manifestation of it.

01:37:16.200 So people are more familiar with this term spiritual war, but its manifestations are not always so obvious.

01:37:28.560 But if you look back at various points in history, two things become really clear.

01:37:35.060 One, underneath it all, it's aimed at Christians.

01:37:39.300 It's aimed at sincere Christians.

01:37:41.300 They are always the main victims.

01:37:44.980 Everyone lies about it.

01:37:46.560 No, the Bolshevik Revolution really wasn't about Christianity.

01:37:49.420 Really?

01:37:50.380 The French Revolution really wasn't about Christianity.

01:37:52.420 Why were they beheading nuns?

01:37:55.100 Spanish Civil War, same thing.

01:37:59.480 The Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 lasted four and a half months.

01:38:04.480 What's the first thing they did?

01:38:05.380 Execute all the Christians, the clergy, of course.

01:38:09.820 So the spiritual war can have a little finer point on it.

01:38:14.980 So it's Jesus who's like the center of this, actually.

01:38:19.280 Prove me wrong.

01:38:21.120 Ask an Armenian.

01:38:23.120 So, okay, what do you do with that information?

01:38:27.040 Well, first, just know it.

01:38:28.300 If we go to war in Iraq on false pretenses and the group that suffers more than any other group, disproportionately more than any group by far, turns out to be the Christians who weren't really raising arms against anybody, that kind of proves the point.

01:38:44.360 If Syria goes upside down and the first people to get genocided are the Christians, if Christians in Bethlehem can't actually drive the 12 miles or whatever it is to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem because who knows why?

01:39:01.360 They're the target, of course.

01:39:04.760 Why is Western Europe being destroyed?

01:39:06.780 Why do you think?

01:39:08.160 Because that's where Rome moved, obviously.

01:39:11.260 Because it's the seat of Christian civilization.

01:39:14.180 Of course.

01:39:15.220 Of course.

01:39:15.760 So that's what's actually happening, and one of the things that you need in order to understand that and to fight against it is strong, consistent spiritual leadership.

01:39:28.420 Not military leadership.

01:39:29.340 You need that in another realm, but in the spiritual realm, you need strong spiritual leadership.

01:39:34.040 And you'll notice when that leadership becomes completely corrupted, like truly corrupted, when the leaders of Christianity or parts of Christianity in the United States are not simply like wrong or flawed or off-base, that's all of us, but are actively trying to lead people in the wrong direction.

01:39:55.180 When Paula White, who's like some crazed, totally discredited televangelist who commands her followers in church to give her money or they're not going to be saved or something, is like female Jimmy Swaggart.

01:40:13.760 When she's the head of the White House faith office, literally, then you know there has been a concerted attempt to corrupt your spiritual leaders so that you won't know what's going on.

01:40:29.040 You see that with Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist preacher.

01:40:33.000 And one of the ways this happens is subtle and not obvious to a lot of American Christians, but that's the endorsement of violence.

01:40:43.760 Franklin Graham, who's the son of a great man, of course, one of the most, Billy Graham was his dad, advisor to many presidents, great evangelist, probably the greatest evangelist this country's ever produced.

01:40:52.940 Franklin Graham is his son, a kind of evangelist and sort of a aid worker of sorts who flies around the world, you know, playing, giving food to people, but considered a Christian leader in the United States.

01:41:06.760 Franklin Graham gave a sermon, if you could call it that, at the Pentagon, I think, over Christmas, in which he described the Christian God, and I'm quoting now, as a God of war.

01:41:19.180 We follow a God of war.

01:41:24.220 And we don't, actually.

01:41:26.720 Not a God of physical war.

01:41:28.400 Not a God of dropping bombs on kids.

01:41:30.880 That's not the Christian God.

01:41:33.160 That's not Jesus.

01:41:34.280 And there is no place in the Gospels that suggests that.

01:41:37.640 In fact, there's a lot that suggests just the opposite.

01:41:39.680 And so if you find yourself in a position where, as a Christian, trying to figure out the right position to take, or the right spirit to have, the right approach, what do I do?

01:41:51.780 And you find yourself listening to a Christian leader who is endorsing violence against innocence, you know, without attacking the guy personally, you're not hearing the Christian message.

01:42:02.460 That's not the Gospel.

01:42:04.160 That's the opposite of the Gospel.

01:42:07.380 And yet it's everywhere.

01:42:08.620 The acceptance in the United States by Christian leaders of violence against innocence should be shocking to our ears, but we have spent so many decades listening to it that it seems normal.

01:42:22.900 And it's not normal.

01:42:25.000 It's a deception, and it will lead to people's destruction.

01:42:28.740 Not just the people being bombed, but the people calling for the bombings.

01:42:31.180 And then, of course, there are examples like John Hagee, one of the most prominent evangelical pastors in the United States, head of Christians United for Israel, sort of the face of Christian Zionism.

01:42:45.040 Politically active, a huge proponent of the war we're currently in, and he is even now considered a Christian leader.

01:42:54.520 Here's John Hagee, in case you're not familiar with him.

01:42:56.180 What you do to Israel, America, God will do to us.

01:43:02.460 The day we stop blessing Israel will be the day God stops blessing the United States of America.

01:43:09.620 The U.S. Congress must quit arguing every year over whether or not we should send military assistance to Israel.

01:43:18.620 We must continue to provide Israel with the specific capabilities and intelligence support they need to target and destroy these savages once and for all.

01:43:30.380 We should sink any Iranian naval boats that threaten international shipping.

01:43:36.800 If you don't really fully understand what I've just said, let me say it to you in plain Texas speech.

01:43:43.700 America should roll up its sleeve and knock the living daylights out of Tehran for what they have done to Israel.

01:43:56.500 That's not Frank Gaffney.

01:43:57.960 That's a Christian preacher.

01:43:59.440 That's a man who tells you he is proclaiming the gospel, demanding that the U.S. government sink Iranian boats and kill these savages.

01:44:09.300 That is not Christianity, and it is a deception.

01:44:13.960 It's a heresy, and it is the path to total destruction, not simply of our bodies, but of our souls.

01:44:22.060 We had a reading in church yesterday, which I'm going to try to get through without getting emotional,

01:44:25.260 that provides, I think, a different path and the right path.

01:44:31.760 This was written in the 19th century by John Henry Newman.

01:44:34.720 This was the Peace Collect.

01:44:37.840 It was the Collect for the Day in our church yesterday.

01:44:39.120 My wife wrote it out for me, and I just want to read this on the way out because I think this is the truth.

01:44:43.860 Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn, but the sword of righteousness, no strength known, but the strength of love.

01:44:53.260 So mightily spread abroad your spirit, so mightily spread abroad your spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace as children of one.

01:45:03.860 Father to whom be dominion and glory now and forever.

01:45:07.560 Amen.

01:45:07.960 John Henry Newman, who was both a Protestant and a Catholic priest.

01:45:15.700 That is the truth right there.

01:45:20.720 No sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness.

01:45:24.340 God bless this country.

01:45:25.580 Pray for it every day, and we'll be back.

01:45:28.400 Thank you.

The Tucker Carlson Show - March 02, 2026

Tucker Carlson Responds to Israel’s War on Iran

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