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00:02:17.460All right, Senator. So let's talk about the big news here. And look, the president made it very clear over the Easter weekend. There was a hardcore deadline and that deadline was closing in quickly. It was going to be Tuesday night. The president, I said on Piers Morgan's show today, he's not going to flinch like you need to listen to him. It's very clear he's not going to flinch. And it was also very clear what he was demanding.
00:02:42.780If you want to get a deal done, you've got to open up the Strait of Hormuz.
00:02:46.260That is exactly now what Iran is saying they're going to do, at least for hopefully the next two weeks, while they try to figure this thing out.
00:02:52.540But that's the reason why the president said pause to major military action.
00:02:57.880Well, I've got to say, Ben, you and I also said that exact same thing on Monday's verdict.
00:03:02.860And so I'm sitting here wondering, why, Ben, do you hurt me?
00:10:34.960Oil prices plunge and stocks surge after the ceasefire deal.
00:10:42.720And here's what Iran, or Iran, the New York Times posted.
00:10:47.220Oil prices tumbled and stocks in Asia surged on Tuesday as investors breathed a sigh of relief after the United States and Iran reached a last-minute ceasefire agreement.
00:10:56.080Temporarily avoiding a worst-case scenario, President Trump following through on his pledge to wipe out Iran.
00:11:47.000That is a step in the right direction.
00:11:48.760And I will say the Iranian military, what President Trump said in his Truth Social is exactly right.
00:11:54.980Many of the military objectives have been accomplished.
00:11:57.680The military has been degraded almost out of existence.
00:12:01.500It's one of the reasons the Iranian statement about, you know, our very powerful military will stop striking.
00:12:07.780Yeah, there's virtually no military left.
00:12:10.260It's like four guys with a slingshot sitting on the back of a camel.
00:12:13.840So it's – but they're very powerful military.
00:12:17.120What they do have is some mines and some speedboats with dynamites that have the potential of sinking potentially oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
00:12:28.260By the way, the way it was described to me by a guy in the military when he was trying to explain to me, like, again, it's coming from a military mindset.
00:12:35.620He said, Ben, this is what Americans need to understand.
00:12:38.500He said, and please explain this wherever you can.
00:13:04.160They can do things that are basic, as you just described it,
00:13:07.140like blowing a hole in the side of an oil tanker
00:13:09.180and having a massive, you know, economic as well as environmental issue in the Strait of Hormuz.
00:13:14.620And so the point he was making was this idea that, I mean, he went back to al-Qaeda and ISIS.
00:13:22.240You can do a lot of damage with very basic things.
00:13:26.100Car bombs are a great example with fertilizer, ammonia, you know, the very basics, as he described it.
00:13:31.760He said the good news is we've decimated the military in Iran.
00:13:36.400We have not decimated, as he described it, the terrorist aspect of Iran, because all you need is a couple crazy guys with very little resources and you can do something on a terrorist scale.
00:13:46.540And we've seen that all over the world.
00:15:38.520There was a whole era where if you're taking, you know, cotton from a plantation in the south
00:15:45.180and you're going to the Caribbean or you're going to England,
00:15:51.540you might encounter pirates who would come along with cannons and board you
00:15:55.580and potentially kill everyone on board and steal your cargo.
00:15:59.080and piracy it's not entirely gone away but it's mostly gone away and it's mostly gone away
00:16:05.680due to the United States and and one of the things that happened post-World War II
00:16:10.620is the United States took a responsibility of ensuring navigation of the open seas and it
00:16:17.500wasn't we didn't have to do that but it but it produced uh more than a half century of global
00:16:23.860trade and commerce where where people could you could put a shipping container from the United
00:16:28.400States to England, from the United States to Asia, and the odds of it being robbed on the high seas
00:16:34.960were pretty low. They weren't zero, but they were pretty low, and it produced, you know, when the
00:16:40.960Roman Empire was at its height, the world saw something called the Pax Romana, the peace of
00:16:46.360the Romans, because the Roman Empire prevented threats. Well, we had for some time been going
00:16:54.740through what's called the Pax Americana, which is the peace that the Americans have brought by
00:16:58.920allowing global shipment and trade. The Strait of Hormuz is a much more constricted place because
00:17:04.140it's just it's going around where you don't have much space. And if you're going through the Suez
00:17:07.800Canal, you got to pass through there. And it's a narrow passage, which means, look, if Iran wanted
00:17:16.280to try to shut off transit across the Atlantic Ocean, that's a really big body of water. That's
00:17:21.520not easy to do. The Strait of Hormuz is not that big, and so it is a natural choke point where a
00:17:29.080terrorist can focus. It's interesting, Iran is promising to open it up, so we'll see what that
00:17:35.740means. But there are also reports of Iran continuing to fire ballistic missiles, so we'll see if the
00:17:42.580ceasefire even lasts 24 hours. Every missile Iran fires, I think, decreases the chance of the ceasefire
00:17:50.420maintaining. Yeah, no, you're right. I want to ask you another question. I got a lot of questions
00:17:54.920to ask you tonight, Senator, because they're questions I keep getting asked, and I want your
00:17:58.140take on them. I was asked this question by Piers Morgan, and he said, Ben, what is your definition
00:18:04.380of success in Iran? My answer was, look, I think the media has changed it to the only thing that
00:18:13.920is acceptable to not be considered a failure is if the regime falls and there's this massive
00:18:19.020moment in Iran where the people win. I said my definition of success is taking away the threat
00:18:27.900of Iran being a nuclear power and being able to kill innocent men, women, and children and
00:18:32.460Americans. That is my definition of success. Now, a bonus, right, a moral victory above that would be
00:18:38.380if you truly saw regime change and the fall of the leadership in Iran right now. I'm not so
00:18:46.100obsessed with that point i think the people ran they got to decide for themselves but for me it
00:18:51.420was all about the nuclear capabilities and making sure they could do no harm to us and and to
00:18:56.820innocent people also i think in the middle east around the world that includes israel what is
00:19:01.820your definition of success here because the media is trying to say a this is a quagmire quagmire
00:19:07.180by the way if you ask ai for example they'll say it's years into a war if it's stagnant or you're
00:19:12.240not making gains, not four weeks in, five weeks in, or six weeks in. That's absurd. But the media
00:19:17.440keeps wanting to use the word we're in a quagmire already. I think that's an absurd lie. And now
00:19:22.280they're saying the only way this could be a success for Trump is the way I described it.
00:19:25.920They described it, which is the regime falls and that's it. Well, look, there was a very
00:19:31.540interesting story, a long story in the New York Times today about the inside decision-making in
00:19:37.440the Trump administration behind the decision to go to war with Iran. And it describes the tick-tock
00:19:45.040up to it right up until the point on Air Force One on Friday where Trump gave the go order. And
00:19:51.100I was with President Trump on Air Force One at the time he gave the order. I did not know he had
00:19:56.440given that order, but he was asking me and the others on Air Force One what we thought, should
00:20:00.420he do so? And it turns out on that flight is where he actually gave the go order. And it describes
00:20:05.400that there was a vigorous debate within the administration, that J.D. Vance, the vice
00:20:09.900president, was the most vocal opponent of striking Iran, and there was a vigorous back and forth among
00:20:16.840the cabinet. And it described four different steps of the military engagement. Number one,
00:20:24.480decapitating the Iranian regime, taking out the Ayatollah and the senior military leadership.
00:20:29.720Number two, destroying their ballistic missiles, their drones, their ability to wage war.
00:20:36.080Number three, incentivizing the Iranian people to rise up and revolt.
00:20:41.720And number four, seeing a new government, seeing regime change in Iran.
00:20:46.840And there was considerable debate, according to the Times, and I got to say, just reading the account, I don't know that it's exactly accurate, but it read in a way that was very plausible.
00:20:58.820There was considerable agreement that steps one and two were very accomplishable, very achievable, and likely achievable in fairly short order.
00:21:06.520And there was considerable debate about whether steps three and four, a popular uprising and replacing the regime with another regime, whether those were achievable.
00:21:17.520I can tell you what the Trump administration has articulated.
00:21:21.200It has articulated its goal was number two.
00:21:23.640number two is what it's described as goal which is taking out iran's ability to wage war
00:21:28.720yep and in particular it's described look iran that there's no indication i've seen no evidence
00:21:36.360that iran had nuclear weapons or was close to getting nuclear weapons that they were trying
00:21:41.360last summer and president trump launched bunker busters and took out their nuclear weapons
00:21:47.140research facilities including in fordo in the basement of a mountain that did had devastating
00:21:52.640effect. So the reason this military attack was launched was not to stop an imminent
00:26:27.680and I think it's an important one to answer.
00:26:30.340Democrats and the media really seem to be trying to figure out some way,
00:26:34.380even if there's success with this Iranian policy of Trump,
00:26:37.740that they can stick it to Donald Trump.
00:26:39.480And now the new thing over the last 24, 48 hours, Ben, Donald Trump is advocating for committing war crimes by blowing up bridges potentially in Iran and power plants in Iran.
00:26:51.020Let's talk about the war crimes aspect of this and deal with what Americans need to know about this new line by the left, because they care more about Donald Trump being in trouble than actually taking out a murderous regime in Iran.
00:27:05.240that's true and i will say one of the sad things it used to be the case for a long long time that
00:27:10.860that politics ended at the water's edge in other words that that republicans and democrats battle
00:27:17.320here at home over all sorts of issues but when it comes to military conflict abroad when it comes
00:27:21.940to defending america that that the two sides refrain from partisan attack i gotta say that
00:27:28.280is not the case anymore the instant president trump launched this attack democrats began
00:27:34.540savaging him. You know, we had a classified briefing shortly after the beginning of this
00:27:39.740attack, where you had the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint
00:27:43.760Chiefs, the head of the CIA, kind of all the top national security apparatus in the Trump
00:27:47.560administration. Yeah. And all 100 senators attended that, and they were laying out what
00:27:55.500was happening. And look, I'm not going to say anything that was said by the briefers in the
00:27:59.900classified briefing, but I can tell you, other than John Fetterman, who's been very positive
00:28:04.760on what he said publicly about the conflict with Iran, every single Democrat senator in the room
00:28:11.520was highly, highly skeptical, was attacking what happened, was opposing what happened,
00:28:17.160was started on day one with, we are against standing up to Iran. And I sat there and just
00:28:25.800kind of shook my head i was saddened by that and so one of their talking points when when president
00:28:31.000trump said he was going to take out power plants and bridges and why did he say power plants and
00:28:35.260bridges by the way look the biggest thing to take out for iran is their oil production facility
00:28:40.260karg island which is the key to it's where they export virtually all their oil from
00:28:44.380yep karg island if we really wanted to cripple iran and and and put them into the stone age
00:28:50.580we'd take out their their oil facilities we'd bomb the hell out of karg island
00:28:54.980and iran's economy would just be screwed for a decade instantly yeah instantly by the way people
00:29:02.360need to understand that like if you just wanted to decimate them economically that is how you
00:29:06.320would do it and it would not be that hard so trump very deliberately has not done that the reason he
00:29:13.320said power plants and bridges is because they're critically important to the economy you take out
00:29:18.720the power plants the electricity turns off the military is crippled but also the economy is
00:29:23.580crippled the basic all of banking all of communication lights literally at night people
00:29:28.040start lighting candles because there's no longer the light switches don't work um and bridges are
00:29:33.540essential for transportation both military and commercial transportation across the country
00:29:39.580i think the reason he picked those two is they're enormous lever points and and his hope is that it
00:29:46.660would cause the collapse of this regime, I believe. But also it means if there were a new
00:29:52.800government in Iran, the oil facilities would still be there so they have the ability to generate
00:29:58.520billions in revenue pretty quickly. And that billions, if the United States military took
00:30:04.220out the power infrastructure, if you had billions in oil revenue coming in, you could rebuild. It
00:30:09.700wouldn't be immediate. But having the revenue stream makes rebuilding much more possible than
00:30:15.040And if you take out the oil infrastructure, the revenue stream is much further down the road and it's much harder to turn around.
00:30:23.580But I will say we're getting a lot of pompous Democrats and pompous news reporters, although I repeat myself, on TV saying taking out civilian power plants is a war crime.
00:30:38.160Well, let me read to you from the Pentagon's Law of War manual.
00:30:43.540So the Pentagon has a manual on the law of war. Here's what it says, quote, electric power stations are generally recognized to be of sufficient importance to a state's capacity to meet its wartime needs of communication, transport, and industry, so as usually to qualify as military objectives during armed conflicts.
00:31:06.680uh and and and by the way the the broader section which i will read from you this this is in uh
00:31:14.460section 5.6.8.5 examples of military objectives economic objects associated with military
00:31:22.360operations and it says before what i just read economic objects associated with military
00:31:27.540operations or with war supporting or war sustaining industries have been regarded
00:31:32.580as military objectives uh that is incredibly inconvenient for all of the trump haters in
00:31:42.980the democrat party or in the media who want to scream war crime war crime war crime because
00:31:47.560there's no doubt the power generation is integral uh to the war fighting ability of iran and and
00:31:53.800and and listen i will say the fact that pakistan stepped in it actually goes to what we said on
00:32:00.800Monday's podcast, which is Trump's threat with any ordinary and rational leader would be incredibly
00:32:08.200effective. If you actually had a leader that gave a damn about their people, that gave a damn about
00:32:13.020their economy, that threat would be, holy cow, we can't let that happen. The risk factor is the very
00:32:19.880real possibility that the Ayatollah and the Mullahs just don't care, that they're willing to see that
00:32:24.800kind of devastation to their country i will say pakistan pakistan is is i've long described
00:32:32.740pakistan as as a problematic ally they are an ally yeah but there are challenges in pakistan
00:32:39.200i actually put pakistan that's a very diplomatic way of putting that yes but you know what they
00:32:44.060they're an ally rather than a friend but there are real challenges we work with pakistan there
00:32:48.360are a lot of bad people or enemies of america that are within pakistan but we work with the
00:32:52.620government of pakistan and i think the the prime minister of pakistan stepped up and said hey look
00:32:59.080you guys in iran don't don't go down this road and and end up crippling don't go back to the
00:33:06.020dark ages and and and this goes back to where where pakistan may have some credibility with
00:33:12.400iran i don't know if pakistan provided iran something of an off-ramp that that's a good
00:33:18.200interpretation or if iran's just seizing on this to delay that's another interpretation that is
00:33:23.000possible but i do think pakistan stepping forward and saying let's have a two-week ceasefire
00:33:29.780is an example of a more normal country and a leader who presumably cares about his people
00:33:38.100at least to a significant extent stepping forward to iran and saying come on guys don't