00:01:06.820Hello everybody and a very warm welcome to our very special live update on the situation in Iran.
00:01:17.460We are super excited, if it's an appropriate word, to bring this to you because we have literally two of the very best guests in the world to discuss this.
00:01:26.060We have the amazing American investigative journalist, repeated former guest of Trigonometry, of course, Richard Minneter, who's written a number of bestsellers,
00:01:35.620including about terrorism, losing bin Laden, mastermind and leading from behind.
00:01:41.240And in addition to that, he's based in Washington, D.C., from which he can bring us all the inside scoops.
00:01:46.060And in addition to that, we, of course, have Eamon Dean, another former guest of the show, who is a former Al-Qaeda member, became an MI6 double agent.
00:01:54.680And he is now the co-host of the Conflicted podcast with Thomas Small, another of our former guests, which covers the various conflicts in the Middle East.
00:02:02.980And he's coming to us live from Dubai, where he's literally got fighter jets zooming past him behind him.
00:02:08.640So welcome to you both, gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining us.
00:02:12.260We really, first and foremost, just want to find out, Richard, tell us first and first of all, what has happened in the last two days?
00:02:20.240Well, the it is the largest series of air sorties that Israel has ever conducted and one of the largest in U.S. history as well.
00:02:29.160So we're looking at, in the last 48 hours, something approaching 2,000 separate sorties, looking at Israel and the United States combined.
00:02:41.260This air operation is one of the largest in human history.
00:02:45.220The number of targets on the ground destroyed, they're still doing battle damage assessments, but is immense.
00:02:52.800It is interesting what they're not striking.
00:02:55.820They're not striking water, power, and other things for the most part, except where those power facilities enable launching of long-range missiles.
00:03:07.360The most interesting thing to have happened, which suggests that this will be a much longer conflict than necessary,
00:03:15.060than might be strictly necessary if you think about it, in terms of the 12-day war that was waged earlier this, late last year,
00:03:22.460or you look at the Gulf War, for example, the shock and awe campaign of the Gulf War,
00:03:28.620is that the Ayatollah Khomeini, before he died, apparently issued standing orders to individual military units.