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Jan. 7, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Media’s Not-So-Secret Iran Agenda | Ep. 926

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Time	Text
	The media continue to lose their minds over Trump's killing of Soleimani.
	The U.S.
	takes protective steps to prevent further Iranian aggression.
	And John Bolton signals he could testify in the Senate impeachment trial.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	This show is brought to you by ExpressVPN.
	Your data is your business.
	Protect it at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
	All right.
	Well, latest breaking developments in the whole saga between the United States and Iran, which, of course, was kicked into high gear last week after Iranian backed militias burned the U.S.
	embassy.
	I'm amazed how every news story now begins with the killing of Soleimani.
	Kassem Soleimani, the head of the terror wing of the Iranian government.
	I'm just shocked, really, that the media begin every single story with Soleimani's killing as though nothing happened before, as though this was the beginning of time, as though Trump spoke and then there was light.
	That is not the way any of this worked.
	Even last week, What precipitated the actual killing of Soleimani was the fact that Iranian-backed militias were attacking a U.S.
	embassy in Baghdad and trying to burn it down and kill people inside.
	That is what precipitated this entire crisis.
	And there had been months of such precipitous action by the Iranians.
	Attacks on Saudi oil facilities.
	Attacks on shipping in the Straits of Hormuz.
	Attacks on an American drone.
	Iranian militias attacking U.S.-backed forces in Iraq.
	All this had been going on, not just for months, but for years.
	Like, literally for years.
	And yet, every single story seems to begin with the killing of Soleimani, as though Trump just woke up one morning and was like, you know what?
	You know what feels good?
	You know what I'd love to do today?
	I'm just gonna kill a guy.
	Like, just boom.
	Right through the brain.
	None of that happened.
	Okay, Trump.
	Was he actually convinced to do this over a period of months, according to New York Times reporting, by members of his cabinet, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo?
	This was not ill thought out.
	It is not as though the Trump administration just did this on a moment's notice.
	In fact, how could you even come up with such a killing on a moment's notice?
	The answer is, you don't.
	They must have been tracking Soleimani for quite a long time.
	And yet, every media story begins with Trump killing Soleimani.
	Why?
	Because this is supposed to lead to the narrative that it's Trump who's the true aggressor.
	And that is the Democrat media narrative today.
	That the Trump administration is doing unprecedented, terrible things.
	What is the latest unprecedented, terrible thing?
	Well, apparently the Trump administration is now blocking Iran's top diplomat from addressing the UN Security Council.
	That'd be Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
	Zarif came out, like, just a few days ago and suggested that President Trump ought to be assassinated, that he ought to die.
	Okay, the Iranian government placed an $80 million bounty on Trump's head.
	So, Trump's saying, yeah, you're not coming here, and you're not coming to U.S.
	soil, and you're not going to this organization that we pay for called the U.N., and you're just gonna jabber there about how terrible we are?
	You can stick it.
	You can stick it, buddy.
	Good for Trump.
	Now, Zarif is like, wow, that's a violation of international law!
	It's fun to watch the Iranians suddenly realize that international law violations are a bad thing.
	After literally decades of violating international law, after the worst sorts of human rights violations ranging from terror attacks in Lebanon, to attacks on Israel, to attacks in Syria, to backing the Assad regime, which has killed half a million people, to attacks in Yemen, to attacks in Iraq, Suddenly the Iranians crying foul when it comes to, oh, you won't let our ambassador visit New York?
	The ambassador who recently was talking up the possibility of murdering your president?
	Wow, violations of international law aplenty here!
	According to foreignpolicy.com, the Trump administration is barring Iran's top diplomat from entering the United States this week to address the UN Security Council about the U.S.
	assassination of Iran's top military official in Baghdad, violating the terms of a 1947 headquarters agreement ...requiring Washington to permit foreign officials into the country to conduct UN business, according to three diplomatic sources.
	Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif requested a visa a few weeks ago to enter the United States to attend a January 9th Security Council meeting on the importance of upholding the UN Charter.
	So the meeting was about the importance of upholding the UN Charter.
	Meanwhile, he was mourning, and planning apparently, for the attacks on the U.S.
	Embassy in Baghdad.
	This is someone who cares deeply about international law.
	Probably we should take them super seriously.
	The Thursday meeting was to provide Tehran's top diplomat with his first opportunity to directly address the world community, since U.S.
	President Donald Trump ordered the January 3rd drone strike that killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, a top Iraqi militia leader, among others.
	I'm enjoying the way that the press, again, characterized Soleimani, who was a terrorist.
	A top Iraqi militia leader?
	He's an Iranian government official.
	How exactly would he be an Iraqi militia leader?
	Only if he was a terrorist who was backing non-governmental violent groups, which is the definition of a terrorist in this context.
	It's just wild.
	Okay, but the way that the media characterized this stuff, how could Trump, how could Trump do this?
	It's just... How could he, how could he block This terrible person, Javad Zarif, from visiting the UN.
	I mean, without Javad Zarif propagating his propaganda, how would we know what propaganda he was going to use?
	How would we know?
	It's just so awful.
	It's just so awful.
	It's the media's takes on all of this that are awful.
	Javad Zarif, for his part, is tweeting out about how terrible all of this is.
	After suggesting that the Trump administration is a clown administration, and also suggesting that the United States is a quote-unquote rogue regime, Javad Zarif then tweeted out this morning, Wait, wait, adventurism?
	So you're telling me the adventurism is Trump killing your terror leader, not you guys using hundreds of billions of dollars in order to support terrorism around the globe against a bunch of sovereign states and their citizens.
	No, the real adventurism is killing a terrorist.
	Got it.
	He says, tomorrow we'll host Tehran Dialogue Forum and discuss ways of achieving regional security, including Hormuz Peace Endeavor.
	Hashtag hope.
	Because when I think hope, I think Javad Zarif and the Iranian regime.
	He says, denying me a visa in violation of 1947 UNHQ agreement pales in comparison to Pompeo's threat to starve Iranians.
	Threat to starve Iranians?
	You mean economic sanctions placed against a foreign government?
	Anytime the foreign government wishes to adhere to the rules of warfare and the rules of international conflict, then those sanctions go away?
	That's Pompeo threatening to starve Iranians?
	Trump's bluster about cultural heritage, a war crime?
	No, bluster is not a war crime.
	Actually blowing things up that are culturally important for purposes of hurting a culture, that's a war crime.
	Threatening to do so?
	Not so much of a war crime.
	Hashtag economic terrorism.
	Economic terrorism.
	By that he means that we won't do business with Iran.
	And cowardly assassination.
	But what are they really afraid of?
	Truth!
	Yes, I'm sure that Trump is sitting around really afraid of Javad Zarif's truth.
	Alternatively, they don't wish to provide a forum for you to spew your garbage.
	For you to spew your garbage.
	I'll get to more of the latest developments with regard to Iran in just one second.
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	Okay.
	Other stuff that happened yesterday.
	It was a very busy day surrounding Iranian developments.
	There was this giant screw-up Really by the Trump administration in which a US military letter announcing that troops would be repositioned within Iraq in advance of a potential pullout was circulated.
	And it was unclear where this letter came from, who it was sent to, and why it ended up in the media.
	Some members of the media immediately ran with this letter.
	And when they ran with the letter, Everybody sort of assumed that the letter was real, but suddenly Trump had reversed himself, that the United States killed Soleimani, and then we were immediately going to withdraw from Iraq because the Iraqi parliament had passed a non-binding resolution with barely a quorum present in order to get the United States to pull out of Iraq.
	That was never going to happen, but somehow there was this letter that was circulating.
	And the media got a hold of it, and without verifying it with the Pentagon, without attempting to lock down exactly where this came from or who it was directed to, they simply ran with it.
	And this caused A fair bit of heartburn yesterday.
	According to Huffington Post, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper disputed a U.S.
	military letter announcing that troops would be repositioned within Iraq in advance of a potential pullout.
	Esper claims he didn't know where the letter came from and that it was, quote, inconsistent with where we are right now.
	He said there's been no decision whatsoever to leave Iraq, responding to that letter.
	The letter was a mistake, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley told reporters.
	The letter was written by Marine Brigadier General William H. Seeley III and was addressed to an Iraqi defense official.
	Seeley wrote, quote, In due deference to the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq, and as requested by the Iraqi Parliament and the Prime Minister, CGTF-OIR will be repositioning forces over the course of the coming days and weeks to prepare for onward movement.
	That would be referring to the U.S.-led International Task Force to fight the Islamic State.
	Coalition forces are required to take certain measures to ensure that movement out of Iraq is conducted in a safe and efficient manner.
	The letter was unsigned.
	U.S.
	officials did confirm its authenticity and said that it had been sent and received by the Iraqis.
	There was no timeline in the letter, so it was unclear completely as to what exactly this letter meant.
	Normally, in the Middle East, when no timeline is actually locked down, that means there is no timeline present, meaning that if you say, I'm gonna do X someday, that means it's never going to happen.
	The letter was written the day after Iraq's parliament passed a resolution calling on Prime Minister Adel Abdumati to revoke Iraq's invitation to host U.S.
	troops, which have helped the country retake control over territory lost to ISIS in 2014.
	Right now, the United States has about 5,000 troops in Iraq.
	The non-binding resolution had the support from Shiite lawmakers but no support whatsoever from Sunni and Kurdish members of parliament who boycotted the special session and the vote did not legally require the withdrawal of troops because the parliamentary vote would have had to trigger a meeting by the country's cabinet and right now there is no cabinet because they just have an acting prime minister.
	So what exactly was the letter designed to do?
	Absolutely unclear.
	A top general suggested that this thing was quote-unquote an honest mistake.
	He said that this was a draft and that the release was an honest mistake, but obviously this led to a fair bit of heartburn in both the United States and Iraq because the prospect of the United States upping the ante by killing Soleimani and then immediately pulling out of Iraq would have been a really bad look and also really bad policy.
	The Pentagon tamping down on all the silly rumors about the United States targeting cultural sites.
	Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense, came out.
	He said, no, no, no.
	We are not going to be hitting any of these cultural sites.
	This is simply a bunch of nonsense.
	In comments to CNN, he pushed back.
	He said that the targeting of Iranian cultural sites would violate the laws of armed conflict, and he said that he would not be obviously moving forward with regard to any of that.
	In general, according to the U.S.
	Military Manual, in general, active hostility also may not be directed against cultural property, its immediate surroundings, or appliances in use for its protection.
	So, all of the media heartburn about that is simply not true.
	Now, a lot of what Iran is doing here could backfire on them, because right now Iran is announcing That they want to move away from some of the actual requirements of the Iran nuclear deal.
	So they're still holding within the deal, but they're saying that we are not going to abide by the provisions with regard to restricting our creation of nuclear weapons.
	But this is in turn triggering the Europeans to have to recognize that the Iranians are actually not abiding by the nuclear deal.
	So according to Reuters, European parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal could launch a dispute resolution process this week that might lead to renewed UN sanctions on Tehran, according to European diplomats.
	See, there's more than one party here.
	The United States pulled out of the Iran deal.
	The Europeans did not pull out of the Iran deal.
	What that means is that the Europeans have still been funneling money into Iran.
	But now, the Iranians, trying to punish the United States for killing Soleimani, say that they are going to withdraw from certain aspects of the Iran deal.
	Well, this is causing the Europeans to be forced to actually withdraw from their aspects of the Iran deal, which could actually hurt the Iranians much worse than it hurts the United States.
	Iran took a further step back from its commitments to the 2015 pact, with six world powers announcing on Sunday it would scrap limits on enriching uranium, though it said it would continue to cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog.
	Iran has criticized Britain, France, and Germany for failing to salvage the pact by shielding Tehran's economy from U.S.
	sanctions reimposed since 2018, when Washington pulled out of the agreement.
	Confirming an emergency meeting of the EU's 28 foreign ministers would take place on Friday.
	An EU diplomat said we must be ready to react to Iran's breaches of the nuclear deal.
	Again, what's amazing about all of this is that there is this worldwide global press and left assumption that the real aggressors here are not the Iranians.
	That the Iranians are really being victimized by sanctions from abroad.
	This is untrue.
	Anytime Iran does not want sanctions upon Iran, all they have to do is stop pursuing nuclear weapons and stop pursuing terrorism outside their own borders.
	That's it.
	At that point, all the sanctions go away.
	Anytime the Iranians want to normalize, they can normalize.
	It's amazing to watch as the entire world community circles around this idea, I mean talk about soft bigotry of low expectations, that Iran should simply be expected to be as terroristic and nuclear-seeking as they could possibly want, and it's the rest of the world's job to sort of adjust to that.
	Absolute sheer nonsense.
	Asked whether all of this could mean triggering a mechanism that could result in international sanctions being reimposed on Tehran, the envoy said it's increasingly likely, but not yet decided.
	Friday will be key.
	Iran, which says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, which of course is silly because they don't care about global warming over there in Tehran.
	That's not one of their big policy priorities.
	More policy priorities like oppressing women, hanging gay people from cranes, global warming not high on the policy agenda over there in Iran.
	The idea that they need peaceful nuclear power in a country that has vast stores of oil and natural gas is obviously silly.
	They've already breached many of their restrictions under the 2015 deal intended to increase the amount of time Tehran would need to accumulate enough fissile material for an atomic bomb from two to three months to about a year.
	One of the diplomats from Europe said the vagueness of the Iran announcement makes it more necessary than ever to launch the mechanism since its whole purpose is to resolve the differences that we have on all of this.
	So it turns out that Trump may have just baited the Iranians into forcing the EU to place more sanctions on Iran, which again would put us sort of where we were back before the Iran nuclear deal, isolating Iran, cutting off its economic bloodlines, and therefore preventing them from spreading terrorism across the region.
	That doesn't solve the nuclear problem, but it certainly puts the regime in Tehran On more slim footing, on shoddier footing.
	He'll get to more of this and we'll get to the latest reports about how Iran intends to respond to all of this.
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	Okay, meanwhile, the New York Times Reporting that Ayatollah Khamenei wants the Iranian government to take direct action against the United States.
	Well, in all likelihood, this is posturing.
	Here's the thing.
	Once Soleimani is killed, the regime looks weak.
	Now they have to look strong.
	That means a lot of posturing.
	$80 million bounties on Trump's head.
	And we're going to strike back in ways that will make the world burn!
	Okay, the fact is that the Iranians are on notice.
	They know that if they do something directly against American troops, President Trump is not going to stand for that.
	He is not going to sit by idly.
	He is not going to pay them off.
	He's not going to re-enter this Iran nuclear deal.
	And there was a lot of talk in the lead up to the Soleimani killing and the burning of the embassy in Baghdad that the Trump administration was trying to use all sorts of economic leverage in order to force the Iranians back to the table to shore up that Iran nuclear deal and actually make it better.
	Get them back to the table, negotiate away their terrorist use of money, their ballistic missile testing.
	The Iranians didn't want to do any of that stuff.
	So instead, they are protesting out in the streets.
	There's a video of Ayatollah Khamenei going around.
	And which is openly weeping about Soleimani dying and because they're very emotional over there about the killing of a terror leader.
	And Khamenei is sort of signaling to the rest of the world that it's going to be shock and awe.
	According to the New York Times, in the tense hours following the American killing of a top Iranian military commander, the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, made a rare appearance at a meeting of the government's National Security Council to lay down the parameters for any retaliation.
	By the way, this does give the lie to the idea that elections in Iran mean anything at all.
	Remember that time that the Obama administration claimed that the Iranian regime was about to moderate?
	And that if only we propped up Hassan Rouhani, that this would fix everything?
	Well now, this has been made clear.
	The Ayatollah still run that country.
	And Ayatollah Ali Khamenei just simply walks into the National Security Council and lays it on the line.
	It's pretty obvious who's in charge over there.
	It must be a direct and proportional attack on American interests, he said, openly carried out by Iranian forces themselves, according to three Iranians familiar with the meeting.
	So this is being leaked to the New York Times because the idea here is that Anytime you signal strength to your own people, you're signaling that you're willing to kill a lot of them in order to maintain your grip on the regime.
	According to the New York Times, it was a startling departure for the Iranian leadership.
	Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Tehran had almost always cloaked its attacks behind the actions of proxies it had cultivated around the region, but in the fury generated by the killing of the military commander Qasem Soleimani.
	Yeah, we'll see.
	We'll see.
	Color me a bit skeptical that the Iranians are going to go to direct war with the United States because the first person whose head will end up on a platter is Ayatollah Khamenei.
	It's all fun and games when you're asking other people to die for your cause.
	It's a very different thing when you yourself are going to be put on the mat by the United States military.
	Meanwhile, you've got the Obama administration out there still wringing its hands.
	What are we going to do?
	What's our strategy here?
	Well, you know what was a bad strategy as it turns out?
	Giving lots and lots of money to terrorists.
	It turns out that was an awful strategy from beginning to end.
	And when you see the media Tried to claim that Trump ratcheted this thing up, that the Iran nuclear deal was working, that everything was hunky-dory.
	Just remember, that is not true.
	In March 2016, the U.S.
	CENTCOM nominee, General Joseph Votel, this is Obama's nominee, Said that Iran had actually become more aggressive since the advent of the nuclear deal.
	In January 2016, Obama's Secretary of State John Kerry openly explained, quote, I think that some of the money will end up in the hands of the IRGC, that'd be the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or other entities, some of which are labeled terrorists.
	Which is of course exactly what happened.
	So when you listen to the members of the Obama administration lamenting the notion that Trump might actually reestablish deterrence, recognize that it was the Obama administration that for eight years spent years undercutting deterrence.
	Eight years undercutting deterrence.
	Now, if you want to go back further in history, there's a case to be made that one of the big problems here Was the Iraq War itself because the Iraq War created a vacuum for the Iranians to move in that by disbanding the Iraqi military, which was Sunni in the aftermath of the killing of Saddam Hussein, the capture of Saddam Hussein, that in the aftermath of the original invasion, that decision to disband the military created this opening for Iran.
	It maximized Iran's regional power.
	And then the aftermath of that was Obama attempting to appease Iran.
	And now this is Trump trying to put the genie back in the bottle, at least trying to With that said, the Obama administration's policy of, let's pay off the Iranians, not only was that a failure, it was a dramatic impetus for the Iranian government to increase its aggression.
	So, I'm not going to take advice from members of the Obama administration who are speaking out about how terrible it is that Trump is now re-establishing deterrence.
	One of those officials, a former Obama State Department advisor named Nassar, who was on CNN yesterday with Block of Wood Chris Cuomo, Vali Nassar, former State Department senior advisor, explaining that, no, I think that if Trump just keeps retaliating, what's he going to do?
	Just keep retaliating?
	And the answer is yes.
	The answer is yes.
	If you keep hitting American interests, we are going to keep retaliating.
	What are we supposed to do?
	Sign a check?
	We're going to be Iran's whipping boy here?
	The Iranians are not locked into some kind of a reaction when you see that kind of passion in the street in Tehran the past few days.
	You can't say that.
	You tell the people, OK, it's all done.
	Go home.
	We're not going to do anything about it.
	And then what's the next step for the president is going to hit him again and hit him again.
	And ultimately, is he going to invade a country of 80 million people?
	where the capital city is about 2000 miles and two mountain ranges away from the closest port.
	I mean, has he thought about what Iran would look like, a war with Iran?
	It will make Afghanistan and Iraq added together, multiplied by two look like child's play.
	Hey, no one is talking about war with Iran.
	Trump doesn't want war with Iran.
	Nobody is talking about boots on the ground, full-scale war with Iran.
	Pompeo, who's about as militant on this issue as anybody in the administration, is not talking about any of this.
	But this is the false choice the Obama administration consistently presented.
	If you don't pay them off, you have to go to war with them.
	No, it turns out that the United States has been in low-level conflict with a wide variety of external enemies for literally decades.
	No, we're not going to go to full-scale war with Iran, and the last thing Iran wants is to go to full-scale war with the most powerful military in history on the face of the earth.
	In just a second, we'll get to more media malfeasance.
	I mean, the media are just...
	The New York Times particularly is just awful, but it's not just the New York Times.
	We're gonna get to the media coverage of this stuff.
	They don't know what the hell they're talking about as per our usual arrangement on foreign policy.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	Okay, so the media's coverage of this obviously has been absolutely egregious.
	Absolutely egregious.
	Example.
	So, the New York Times, just gonna point this out.
	The New York Times' original obit of Qasem Soleimani said this.
	Qasem Soleimani, master of Iran's intrigue and force, dies at 62.
	Six hours later, they posted this obituary.
	Sam Weish, who was the last coach to lead the Cincinnati Bengals to the Super Bowl, but who was later fined by the National Football League for barring a female reporter from the team's locker room, has died.
	So just to contrast the treatment, Sam Weish was a coach who barred a female reporter from the team's locker room.
	That's in his obit headline from the New York Times on Twitter.
	Qasem Soleimani, a master terrorist responsible for the deaths of literally tens of thousands of people around the Middle East, mostly Muslims.
	His headline is, Qasem Soleimani, master of Iran's intrigue and force, dies at 62.
	I mean, the New York Times is really going to bat for Soleimani.
	Really going to bat for Soleimani.
	They tweeted out this morning the sort of tagline for their latest episode of The Daily, which is their daily podcast on news.
	Here's what they tweeted out.
	Wow.
	Isn't that moving?
	Don't you feel better knowing the New York Times is militating on behalf of one of the world's leading terrorists?
	Really, really nice stuff.
	And it isn't just that.
	strike, he was like a security umbrella above our country.
	Wow.
	Isn't that moving?
	Don't you feel better knowing that the New York Times is militating on behalf of one of the world's leading terrorists?
	Really, really nice stuff.
	And it isn't just that.
	They have an article by a person named Azadeh Moaveney today, a writer and analyst with the International Crisis Group called The Day After War Begins in Iran.
	The outpouring of grief for Qasem Soleimani is the country's first act of retaliation and this piece is just pure propaganda.
	It's absolutely pure propaganda.
	She says, last week, an American drone strike incinerated Iran's top general and national war hero, Major General Qasem Soleimani, along with the senior Iraqi militia commander, in what can only be understood as an act of war.
	See, it wasn't an act of war when Soleimani, you know, was like ordering strikes against Saudi oil facilities, or when he was attacking shipping and international shipping lanes, or when he was ordering militia To burn down the U.S.
	Embassy and planning further attacks.
	None of that was an act of war.
	It was an act of war when that guy got killed.
	And all he was, really, was a national war hero, according to this columnist for the New York Times.
	It's just propaganda.
	Pure propaganda.
	This columnist says, Being here again makes me feel that I, an American citizen of Iranian origin, have been here so often before.
	The cycles of imminent war and upheaval Iranians seem destined to face every few years.
	Cycles often driven by the whims of the United States and the increasing boldness of Iran.
	The whims of the United States?
	Who sits around thinking that Bush, Obama, Trump... By the way, Bush, Obama, and Trump all campaigned on the same promise not to get into war in the Middle East.
	All of them did.
	Barack Obama said he was going to end our endless war.
	George W. Bush in 2000 campaigned on the notion that he was going to minimize America's military presence.
	So did Bill Clinton.
	This has been a consistent feature of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.
	And then reality intrudes because it turns out that Iran is a giant terror state rogue regime.
	But according to this columnist, it's just the whims of the United States.
	Presidents get up one morning, they're like, those Iranians, we're just going to nail them!
	Nail them!
	Also, this idea that war and upheaval is just Iranians destined to face the war and upheaval, why don't you look at the Iranian government as maybe the source of the problem?
	She says, this now feels like a civilizational inheritance, a legacy that my mother bore before me, her mother before her, that I will pass down to my children.
	Every Iranian family's history is touched with this past in its own way.
	Okay, the sentences that mean nothing but attempt to boil down opposition to a regime to opposition to Iranians personally, which is just absurd.
	You know how many Persians I know who are living in the city of Los Angeles and despise the regime?
	Despise the regime in Iran?
	There's a reason that thousands and thousands of people over the years have fled Iran.
	I mean, Jewish Iranians can't even go back.
	I mean, Jewish Persians never go back because they're afraid of oppression from the regime, obviously.
	The American-backed 1953 coup destroyed both my grandfather and great-uncle's careers, until then in service in the government, and sent the latter into exile.
	Hey, thing that's important to mention, Mosaddegh, the so-called American-backed coup, that was a domestically-driven coup.
	The American involvement in the 53 coup was not the driving force behind the 53 coup against Mossadegh.
	In any case, America's support for and then eventual abandonment of the Shah helped shape the 1979 revolution, disrupted all of our lives, with the new authorities expropriating our assets, landing an uncle in prison for belonging to that educated pro-Western class that built modern Iran and saw the revolution as its demise.
	Again, this columnist now blaming the United States for the fall of the Shah, even though the United States supported the Shah.
	Now, everything is America's fault, according to this columnist.
	The fall of Mosaddegh, the rise of the Shah, the fall of the Shah, the Ayatollahs.
	Are you sensing a common thread here in this New York Times opinion column?
	The years that followed, says this opinion columnist, only deepened the Iranian-American chasm.
	There was the 1979-81 hostage crisis at the American embassy in Tehran, which killed nobody in the end, but poisoned relations to this day.
	Oh, it killed nobody.
	You know, it was not really a big deal, you see.
	It's just that the United States was ticked off that 52 American hostages were taken.
	The United States scarcely concealed its support for Iraq in the devastating years of the Iran-Iraq War, and in 1988, as the war dragged to a close, continued skirmishing resulted in the U.S.
	Navy shooting down an Iranian passenger plane flying over Iran's territorial waters, killing 290 people.
	Deeply regrettable, lamented President Ronald Reagan, but honors and medals for the naval officers.
	Um, are you suggesting that the United States was purposefully shooting down Iranian passenger planes, that that was not an accident?
	This is just, this is coming direct from the Iranian government coffers.
	I'm not saying this lady's being paid off, I'm just saying the message comes directly from the Iranian government, is being parroted by this person over at the New York Times.
	For decades now, the United States has often seemed driven to hurt Iran, at times through interventionist policies that were careless and transactional, and then after 1979 with a fierce determination out of proportion to whatever challenge the new system posed.
	Oh, you see, it's disproportionate for the United States to oppose a vicious, brutal, radical Islamic dictatorship that declares an apocalyptic vision of the future and supports terrorism up to and including the murder of American troops by the thousands.
	At a certain point, Iran started retaliating.
	At a certain point, Iran started- I mean, this is a column in the New York Times.
	At a certain point, Iran started retaliating, you see.
	The 1979 revolution was launched with the hostage-taking of four dozen Americans.
	But at some point, Iran started to retaliate, you see.
	It was really just the United States' aggression.
	In the 1980s, it cultivated regional groups and militias hostile to Washington and encouraged them to take Westerners hostage and staged attacks through these networks.
	In later years, says this columnist, Iran challenged American roles in the wars of the region and interventions in bordering countries by backing non-state allies that rose to become formidable powers in their own right.
	That's a nice way of phrasing supporting regional terrorist regimes that cross borders, murder government officials, and threaten foreign countries.
	This lifted Tehran's gain of asymmetrical leverage into regional influence it probably never conceived of achieving.
	General Soleimani was behind much of this strategy.
	Many consider him responsible for the deaths of thousands for his intervention in salvaging Bashar al-Assad's rule in Syria.
	But to many Iranians, Iraqis, Kurds, and others, he was a pivotal figure in vanquishing the Islamic State.
	Okay, this is just, this is pure, I've said it's propaganda, this is pure, unfiltered, uncut propaganda.
	This is the crack cocaine of propaganda.
	You think that to Kurds, he was a pivotal figure in vanquishing the Islamic State?
	That the Kurds were sitting around going, you know what we could really use more of is Iranian terrorism?
	The Kurds and the Sunni Iraqis just boycotted a session of the Iraqi Parliament dedicated to slamming the United States for killing Soleimani.
	So this is just pure made-up nonsense.
	When she says, to many Iranians, Iraqis, Kurds, and others, I assume she doesn't mean Sunnis.
	I assume she doesn't mean actual Kurds, because there aren't a lot of them who are real, really pro-Suleimani.
	In Syria, for the many Syrians who endured the industrial-scale brutality of the Assad regime, the general led what could only be understood as an offensive force.
	But Iran's leaders always reminded their people that Syria, the lone Arab country that sided with Iran during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, could not be abandoned, and that without it, Iran would be vastly more vulnerable in the region.
	Talk about a non-sequitur.
	So, hundreds of thousands of people died because Soleimani is supporting Assad.
	And this columnist's take is that, well, at least Assad supported Iran.
	It is for these maneuvers, in part, to provide Iran some deterrence against relentless American hostility that General Soleimani is remembered.
	So it was Soleimani who was deterring the United States, not pursuing regional aggression in every surrounding country.
	All of them.
	No, he was trying to deter the United States, which has had, shall we say, a very slim force in place in the Middle East, relatively speaking to the Iranians, who have hundreds of thousands of people in the IRGC, and many thousands of people, more tens of thousands of people, in terrorist groups sponsored by the Iranian government.
	He had become a patriarch.
	My God.
	My God.
	This piece was published in the New York Times.
	given at least by the hundreds of thousands who turned out for his funeral, for the hard excesses of the force he commanded, because he secured the land in a time of the Islamic State's butchery, seen as a man of honor and merit among political contemporaries who were usually neither.
	Of course, he certainly did not impress all Iranians in this way.
	He had detractors who did not support his regional stratagems.
	My God.
	My God.
	This piece was published in the New York Times.
	This was published in the New York Times.
	The mourning for the general, it could be said, is Iran's first act of retaliation.
	What amounts to an extraordinary four-day state funeral in not one, but two countries.
	Well, the mourning that's happening in Iraq is those Shiite militias that were actually being paid off by the Iranians.
	Just disgusting.
	I remember as a child, concludes Azadeh Moaveini, a senior gender analyst with the International Crisis Group.
	I remember as a child, during the years of war with Iraq, my mother telling me about relatives in Iran who gave away their jewelry to aid the war effort.
	This time, in the face of President Trump's tweets threatening to attack Iran and destroy its sites of cultural heritage, I needn't conjure the unity that comes the day after.
	The country has gathered to mourn.
	It is already here.
	I have a feeling there are a lot of people in Iran who are not super pissed that Soleimani is dead and don't like the regime very much, but you're not going to see them in the streets because they will get shot!
	It's just unbelievable that the New York Times is doing yeoman's work on behalf of the world's worst human beings.
	Really, well done, New York Times editors.
	Okay, we're gonna get to more of the media malfeasance because it's not just random columnists for the New York Times, it is mainstream players in the mainstream media who are making excuses for the Iranian regime and trying to suggest that Trump is the real bad guy in this whole conflict.
	We'll get to that in one second.
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	And so the media members of the United States don't know anything about anything.
	I mean, they can't locate Iran on a map, but they are apparently the best and brightest among us.
	And their coverage is just egregiously awful and obviously slanted toward the notion that President Trump is the aggressor here.
	Why?
	Because if Iran is the aggressor here, that shows the Iran nuclear deal was garbage.
	This is the big problem for members of the media and for many Democrats.
	If Trump is not the problem here, if Iran is the problem, then that suggests that Iran was never going to moderate and that Iran was never five minutes away from becoming Sweden if only we released pallets of cash to them.
	That at no point was Iran seeking moderation.
	In fact, Iran was seeking regional terrorism, ballistic missile testing, and eventually nuclear development as soon as the timetable on the nuclear deal ended.
	If it turns out that Iran was bad, the government was bad, is bad, and will continue to be bad, then Trump taking a harsh deterrent action in order to contain them makes a lot of sense.
	But that would be a complete rebuke to the Obama administration's repeated lies for years on end that the Iranian government was on the verge of a cataclysmic breakthrough.
	That Iran was about to change into Switzerland.
	They were moments away from moderating and becoming positive.
	And becoming a positive regional force on behalf of peace.
	And so the media won't let that happen.
	So instead, they're just going to slant their coverage.
	Their coverage is going to be all about how Trump is the real aggressor.
	That crazy, rogue... You want to talk about a real terrorist leader?
	A real rogue leader?
	That is President Trump.
	Not Soleimani, the terrorist he just ordered killed.
	No, it's Trump.
	So you have Richard Engel, who is just the worst.
	He's the worst foreign policy analyst on the American scene.
	He's just terrible.
	He's a reporter for NBC and he hates Trump with a passion that cannot be bridled.
	Here is Richard Engel covering this situation from Tehran and lamenting Soleimani's death.
	I mean, that's the only way to put it.
	Like, there was a comment that Nikki Haley made saying that Democratic leadership was lamenting Soleimani's death.
	I think that that is fair to say for a few Democrats.
	I don't think that's true for the overall Democratic leadership.
	It's certainly true for some of the media.
	Here's Richard Engel.
	I mean, the way that he is gushingly talking about Soleimani and the way that he is casting aspersions at Trump for killing a terror mastermind, it's pretty astonishing stuff.
	Now, after this killing, you saw people not only going out in the streets in millions, as Ali was describing, he was there, but throwing articles of their own clothing up onto the coffin so that attendants could rub it on the coffin so that they would have some sort of memento of an object that was close to Qasem Soleimani's body.
	They turned him into a martyr, if not a saint.
	And we're seeing now, all around the region, Shiite groups, allies of Iran, speaking in one voice, and that is that U.S.
	troops have to leave the region, should be forced out of the region, starting with Iraq.
	Wait, you mean that their agenda is exactly the same today as it was yesterday?
	To force American troops out of the region, which was always their agenda.
	I love it.
	They turn him into a martyr, if not a saint.
	People rubbing cloths on his coffin.
	Yeah, people did this for Stalin too, okay?
	So, like, let's get over the notion that the death of bad people is a bad thing.
	And that, somehow, this turns people into a martyr.
	Okay, so either he's alive and planning terror attacks or he's dead and people are sad about it.
	You can pick one.
	Those are the two choices.
	But Richard Engel says this killing backfired.
	It totally backfired.
	Really?
	We're like a week out.
	How have you... How has it backfired?
	You're gonna have to explain, Richard Engel, but he has no explanation other than he just doesn't like Trump very much.
	It has backfired in many ways.
	It has united people behind Iran when they were not, and it has increased calls for U.S.
	troops to leave the Middle East, and specifically leave Iran, which is exactly what Soleimani was trying to do.
	Okay, it's united people who already agreed with Soleimani behind Soleimani's agenda, and Soleimani supporters inside the Iraqi parliament who are Shiite.
	In other words, nothing changed.
	But according to Richard Engel, it's all Trump's fault.
	Again, they have to act as though something actually changed here, because if nothing changed, then Trump was right.
	And if something changed, if Trump ushered in a new era, then everything that happens from here on in can be blamed on Trump.
	If it turns out that Trump was just reacting to Iranian aggression, consistent Iranian aggression, since 1979, but accelerated actually, since the dawn of the Iran nuclear deal, then it turns out a lot of this is Obama's fault.
	In fact, a lot of this is everybody's fault.
	But mostly the Iranian regime's fault.
	And it's the media's fault for pretending that Iran was not a threat as soon as Obama suggested they were not a threat.
	Obama basically used the media as a meat puppet.
	He stuck his hand up their behind and manipulated their mouths.
	Well, don't you think that Iran is no longer a threat?
	Yes, I'm Richard Engel, and I think Iran is no longer a threat.
	Martha Raddatz over on Good Morning America is also reporting from Tehran.
	It is an amazing thing.
	One of the things that has to be done when you cover a terrorist entity like the Iranian government is very often there are restrictions put on reporters as to what they can see and what they can hear.
	This is true going for like virtually every rogue regime in history.
	Famously, the USSR had what they called Potemkin villages, where they would set up literally just storefronts, and then they would have people tour, and people were like, oh wow, look at all these brand new stores, they're amazing.
	Over in the Gaza Strip, for example, if you wish to be a journalist in the Gaza Strip, you can only do what Hamas tells you to do, and if you don't, they expel you.
	Well in Iran, Martha Raddatz has to put on the Iranian head covering because nothing says powerful independent journalism that speaks truth to power quite like obeying the dictates of the Iranian regime.
	And when I hear that, well, you know, that's just journalists doing what they have to do.
	Let's say that Martha Raddatz were visiting the Vatican.
	And the Pope wanted her to dress in a particular way.
	Do you think that she would just go ahead and do that?
	If she were visiting Meir Sha'arim in Israel and they asked her to put on a head covering, do you think that she would do it?
	Or probably not.
	It turns out that the reason that Martha Raddatz does this is because the Iranian government is, in fact, a tyrannical, anti-woman, brutal regime.
	But here is Martha Raddatz suggesting that the real problem, again, always, as always, is the Trump administration.
	The crowds are massive and emotional.
	There are many tears here, many signs with Soleimani's picture on them, but the message is also very clear.
	These people want revenge.
	Are we human or not?
	As we made our way through the streets of Tehran, people surrounding us shouting, death to America.
	We will have very hard revenge of Mr. Trump.
	Inside the funeral service, the emotion just as powerful.
	The Supreme Leader of Iran weeping and praying over a coffin draped in the Iraqi flag.
	This is the largest funeral in Iran since the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989.
	Well, I mean, that is pure... Again, that's the uncut stuff, man.
	They got into the supply.
	Because that... Look at the weeping and the gnashing of teeth and people saying they will have revenge on Mr. Trump.
	That lady who said, by the way, that we will have revenge on Mr. Trump, who is she?
	She has no rights inside Iran.
	Like, none.
	Is she running Iranian foreign policy?
	Or is it the guy who is crying in front of Soleimani's coffin and who has been supporting terrorism across the region forever?
	The Washington Post national security columnist, there's a Washington Post national security columnist who tweeted, her name is Sanam Vakil.
	She tweeted, hard to resist not retweeting this.
	Okay, what exactly was it that she was retweeting?
	It was a picture of the Tehran crowd for Soleimani's funeral and the Trump inauguration crowd, right?
	Look, more people supported Soleimani than supported Trump.
	And the Washington Post national security columnist tweeted that out.
	Tweeted that out.
	No, the media have no bias here.
	It's not that they hate Trump.
	Chris Matthews.
	Look, he's not an objective journalist, so you expect Chris Matthews to be Chris Matthews.
	He says Trump's an assassin!
	I get on in here.
	I roll on in here.
	Harold Rumpel.
	Pseudo-Rumpel.
	Coming out of the show.
	Rolling in here half-drunk.
	I talk about Soleimani.
	Heard about him yesterday.
	Seemed like a nice guy.
	Maybe not a nice guy, but not a terrible guy.
	Not like Trump.
	Trump's a really bad guy.
	Amy Klobuchar is sitting over there, eating salad with a comb.
	What do you have to say, Amy Klobuchar?
	Go, Chris Matthews, go!
	Here we are in the assassination business again.
	I'm sorry.
	This is a top general.
	We didn't need to talk to him.
	If he wasn't operational, he was a leader.
	We killed this guy, a president of the United States that used to hide from assassination responsibility.
	This president is bragging about his assassination.
	Pompeo is bragging about it.
	Is there a new deviancy in the American culture that we now support murder-killing of political leaders?
	Is this what we do now?
	And I don't think you're an assassin.
	Anyway, thank you so much.
	This president is.
	Anyway, thank you, Senator.
	Supporting murder killing of foreign generals.
	Like, I hate when people do that.
	Like, let's say that Hillary Clinton had like, you know, killed like Muammar Gaddafi and then said, we came, we saw he died.
	What if she said that?
	And she was like laughing all the time.
	And then I laughed too.
	Ah, ah.
	But Trump, he killed a terror leader and he's like an assassin.
	He probably plays Assassin's Creed!
	He probably gets up every morning and plays Assassin's Creed and then he goes out and he assassinates people because he's an assassin mcassin!
	Assassin!
	Come to the show!
	Chris Matthews, brilliant, brilliant analysis there.
	MSNBC's Chris Hayes joins also.
	He says, we're so close.
	And Chris Hayes is always the guy who puts on the faux solemnity.
	We're so close to the final meltdown where this is, we're gonna, it's thermonuclear war all the way down.
	He grabs Rachel Maddow's glasses right off that desk, puts them on, and goes into his Chris Hayes routine.
	Do it, Chris Hayes.
	If you are feeling dread and anxiety in this new year, you are not crazy.
	We are on the precipice of what many imagined as a worst-case scenario of Donald Trump as President of the United States.
	For all of Trump's narcissism and pettiness and braggadocio and ignorance, thus far, through sheer luck, we have avoided that absolute worst-case scenario of the President essentially plunging the country into a new military conflagration slash geopolitical quagmire.
	Yes, it's a geopolitical quagmire.
	Before, it was totally solved.
	Again, remember, the media's goal here is to defend Obama.
	That's all this is.
	They don't care about Iran.
	They don't care about Iraq.
	They don't care about any of this.
	Their goal is to defend Obama because Obama was their guy, and they are going to go down in flames on that titanic of his foreign policy while carrying his drool cup.
	That's what this is all about.
	Final note.
	Final note here goes to Bernie Sanders.
	Bernie Sanders really summing up what so many on the left think.
	When Nikki Haley, by the way, says that some Democratic presidential candidates actually have sympathy for Soleimani, Sanders may come to mind here.
	Bernie Sanders said that President Trump ordering the death of Soleimani is like Vladimir Putin killing dissidents.
	This guy is, you know, was as bad as he was an official of the Iranian government.
	And you unleash, then if China does that, you know, if Russia does that, you know, Russia has been implicated under Putin with assassinating dissidents.
	So once you're in the business of assassination, you unleash some very, very terrible forces.
	Oh, well, it's just like as soon as you assassinate, you know, a terrorist who's actually pursuing terrorist attacks.
	That's just like Vladimir Putin killing people who disagree with his government.
	Exactly the same thing.
	How do I know this?
	Well, because I had my pudding this morning.
	That is one of your two leading Democratic candidates for president, guys.
	Well done, everybody.
	OK, time for a quick thing I like, and then we'll get to a quick thing that I hate.
	So quick things that I like.
	Well, there's been a lot of talk about anti-Semitism in New York.
	It was pretty cool last week.
	There's something held called Sium Hashas.
	So this is a quick note to my Orthodox Jewish friends out there.
	Sium Hashas, the Talmud, is this voluminous set of study texts, basically, that were created in the first millennium.
	And they were supposed to be a review of the Mishnah.
	So a quick primer on Jewish law.
	So basically there's the Torah, which is the five books of Moses, and then there's the Tanakh, which is the more large corpus, right, that has the prophets and it has the writings.
	And then you have the Mishnah, which is the oral law that was supposedly brought down by Moses from Sinai and then was handed down generation to generation.
	That was written down very early on in the first millennium.
	And then you had the Talmud, which was All the discussion of the oral law and interpretation of the oral law.
	That comprises, I think, 23 volumes.
	It is a very, very large work.
	And it takes 7 years to go through it from beginning to end if you study a page a day.
	Now, a page a day doesn't sound like much, but when it's in Aramaic, and it's front and back, and it's big blocks of text, that takes a while.
	It takes 7 years.
	Well, they had the Siyyam Hashas over at MetLife Field.
	In New York, 90,000 Orthodox Jews showed up to celebrate the completion of this study cycle.
	So, while there's a lot of talk about anti-Semitism in New York, it is cool that that many people have participated in the study cycle, ranging from young to old.
	Pretty neat stuff.
	By the way, if you are into Dafyomi, so they restarted the cycle, I've started doing Dafyomi, which is to study one page of Talmud a day.
	If you're into that, there's a great resource put out by the Orthodox Union called alldaf.org.
	There is my very sectional Again, that's Aldoff.org.
	That's my very, very sectional thing that I like today.
	Here's my broader thing that I like.
	So Sports Illustrated writers have now said they're going to unionize.
	One of the things that I like best is when members of the left are eaten by the left.
	It is quite delicious.
	Sports Illustrator staffers, according to CNN, announced their intention to unionize on Monday, seeking better workplace protections amid turmoil at the Legacy brand.
	The union represents about 80 staffers in print, digital, and video.
	Sports Illustrator's magazine staffers were already part of the News Guild of New York.
	Digital staffers were not.
	Now both print and digital will be included in the new union that is also with the News Guild.
	In October, Seattle-based Star Up Maven took ownership of Sports Illustrated and immediately laid off 40 staffers.
	Then they were going to hire 200 contractors to increase their local sports coverage to compete with outlets like The Athletic.
	But now, the union says it's unacceptable that they were going to fire anybody and move toward independent contractors.
	The union said, quote, decisions made by new management over the last few months have put SI's reputation and long-term health at risk.
	Yes, I'm sure that's what you care about, the union.
	You could just, by the way, go get your own funding and start your own magazine.
	But no.
	What you really want is to drive Sports Illustrated into the dust in order to maintain the employment of people who are not earning their keep.
	Two dozen employees who lost their jobs were women or people of color.
	Who cares?
	Who cares?
	Not about people being unemployed, that's bad.
	But about, like, is it worse if it's a black guy than a white guy who is now unemployed writing for Sports Illustrated?
	In the world of sports, there's probably a better shot that if you're a minority you're gonna latch on more easily somewhere else than if you're just a white guy who is writing for your local sports publication.
	Moreover, Maven's directive to launch a network of team reporters on SI's platform without sufficiently vetting or editorial oversight has already resulted in errors that severely undermine our credibility.
	This is going to go well.
	So I am enjoying Sports Illustrated, which swung wildly to the left and hired a bunch of lefties, and now it turns out that they're going to unionize all their employees and kill the profit motive for a magazine that was already in serious trouble.
	Well done, everybody.
	Well done, everybody.
	Okay, you know what?
	I think that we don't need any things that I hate today.
	There's just too much to hate already.
	So we will be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content.
	All your updates on impeachment, John Bolton, everything else.
	Plus, we will have more for you here tomorrow.
	So stick around for that.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Rebecca Dobkowitz.
	Directed by Mike Joyner.
	Executive Producer Jeremy Boring.
	Senior Producer Jonathan Hay.
	Supervising Producers Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
	Technical Producer Austin Stevens.
	Associate Producer Colton Haas.
	Assistant Director Pavel Wydowski.
	Edited by Adam Sijewicz.
	Audio is Mixed by Mike Carmina.
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	Production Assistant Nick Sheehan.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
	As the left enters day five of mourning dead Iranian terrorist Qasem Soleimani, the outcry takes an explicitly traitorous turn.
	We examine an important political reality.
	You are known by the friends you keep.
	Then, the most prolific rapist in British history is sentenced to life in prison, but even amid the MeToo movement, virtually no one is reporting on it.
	We analyze a story that doesn't fit the leftist narrative.

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