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April 15, 2024 - The Ben Shapiro Show
51:39
UNPRECEDENTED: Iran Launches MASSIVE Attack on Israel
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So, over the weekend, the Islamic Republic of Iran essentially entered war directly with the State of Israel.
There's no other way to put that.
When you fire 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles at another sovereign nation, you are now in a state of war.
Now, this has been a long time coming.
The fact is that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been using all of its proxy terror groups to attack Israel repeatedly for literally decades at this point.
From Hezbollah in the north of Israel, to Hamas in the south of Israel, to now the Houthis in Yemen.
They've been using all of their proxy groups because they do not want Israel to take direct action against the Iranian regime itself.
They also understand, over in Iran, that the rest of the world is not interested in an Israel-Iran direct war.
And herein lies the conundrum for the state of Israel, because after you are attacked with 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles, Typically, you are going to respond in kind to the country that just attacked you this way.
We'll get to Israel's response in just a second.
First, the actual news was that on Saturday night in Israel, suddenly people started waking up one o'clock, two o'clock in the morning to the sounds of cruise missiles and ballistic missiles being shot down.
The video is absolutely astonishing.
It was Israeli weaponry, by the way, that was actually taking down missiles that had been fired near the Dome of the Rock.
If it were not for Israel's defensive capacity, many holy sites in Islam would have been destroyed because, again, the only defender of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in the Middle East would actually be the state of Israel.
Here is some of the dramatic footage as literally hundreds of drones and cruise missiles and ballistic missiles were shot over the state of Israel on Saturday night.
It was about 1.45 a.m.
Saturday night in Jerusalem.
It's a little different.
It's hard for me to assess.
There's the sirens now.
Guys, are we on air?
You can see the incoming cruise missiles and ballistic missiles being shot down by Israel's anti-weaponry.
This is directly over the Dome of the Rock.
That's the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, the third holiest site in Islam.
Again, this is directly over Israel's capital city in Jerusalem.
So dramatic footage.
In Ashkelon, Israel, which is near the South Israel, looks like a fireworks show.
As Iranian drones are shot down over the state of Israel, Ashkelon is a major city in Israel's south on the coast.
This sort of footage is shocking.
Israel's success right here was even more shocking.
So, in what can only be described as a technological miracle.
And if you're a religious person, obviously, when you see the miraculous in real life, you attribute that to the hand of God as well as to the hand of technology.
But it can only be described as miraculous that 99% of all ordnance emanating from Iran here was shot down by the Israelis and the UK and the United States.
Here's Clarissa Ward of CNN explaining just how successful the defensive measures were put forward by the State of Israel as well as Jordanian forces.
Jordan's revealed preference, by the way, is now for the State of Israel.
Revealed preference is when you say that you're for a thing, but what you're actually for is another thing.
Jordan has been proclaiming that it's very, very much pro-Hamas and the Palestinians.
And then when it comes down to it, they really, really don't like Iran at all.
And so they're shooting down incoming ordinance over Jordan, the United States, the UK, even France got involved in shooting down much of this material in an attempt to avoid an escalatory war in the region.
Here's Clarissa War explaining the success rate.
President Biden has urged Israel not to escalate further, but one Israeli official telling CNN that they will respond.
It's simply a matter of the scale and scope of what that response will be.
This after, as you mentioned, 300 Cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, drones fired towards Israel last night.
99% of them intercepted.
But tellingly, the IDF has said that a number, they won't give the specific number, of ballistic missiles did make impact at the Neva team air force base in southern Israel.
That is where those F-35 fighter jets are based.
It did very minor damage at the air force base in the south of Israel.
Not enough damage to actually stop that base from working.
It did no damage to Israel's F-35 fleet.
Again, this was not just an Israeli effort.
The United States, Britain, Jordan, and France all helped intercept the massive barrage of
drones that Iran fired at Israel overnight on Saturday, according to the Times of Israel.
The United States and Israel, of course, have been bracing for an attack for days after Iran said that it would retaliate for a suspected Israeli strike this month on what Tehran claims is a consular building in Syria killing 12 people, including the two senior Iranian generals and the Revolutionary Guard's elite Quds Force.
According to the Pentagon, the United States forces intercepted dozens of missiles and drones launched from Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen that were headed toward Israel.
Again, this is a testament to the technological superiority of Israel and its allies here.
Israel has a wide variety of defensive measures that it took against these particular incoming...
Missiles and drones.
Most of it was actually shot down before it ever reached the state of Israel.
Israel has what's called the Arrow 3, which intercepts ballistic missiles and handles longer range and higher altitude interceptions, including exo-atmospheric.
In fact, there was some film that was pretty astonishing of Israel using what looks like essentially Reagan-esque Star Wars to shoot down a missile in the higher atmosphere.
They have the Arrow 2, which is for endo and exo-atmospheric interception capabilities.
They have David's Sling, which is for surface-to-surface missiles.
And then, of course, Iron Dome, which is for short-range rockets.
We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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Now Iran, for its part, is saying that they are done, and they are threatening to hit American bases if Washington backs an Israeli counterattack.
According to the Times of Israel, top Iranian commanders warned Israel on Sunday the country would face a bigger attack if it retaliates against overnight drone and missile strikes.
Adding that Washington has been told not to back any military action from its ally, Iran's Armed Forces Chief of Staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri told state TV, quote, Our response will be much larger than tonight's military action if Israel retaliates against Iran.
Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi said if the Zionist regime, that'd be Israel, or its supporters demonstrate reckless behavior, they'll receive a decisive and much stronger response.
Now, Iran's been trying to play this off as a victory.
On Iranian TV, they've been showing Footage of fires from Chile, pretending that it's actually fires from Israel, they're propagandizing to their own population that this was not, in fact, a humiliating evening for the Iranian forces.
Which it was.
When you fire off that much ordnance, and nearly all of it gets shot down, and the only person who is severely wounded happens to be an Israeli-Arab girl, seven-year-old girl, who may die because of the Iranian assault, it turns out that that is a signal military failure.
Clearly, a signal military failure.
So the question becomes here, what happened?
In order to understand what's about to happen going forward, you have to understand how we got here.
So the first thing to understand, obviously, is that Iran was in a catch-22.
That catch-22 is a catch-22 of its own making.
So Iran, the way this whole conflict started on October 7th, is that Iran was deeply afraid that Israel was about to sign a new Abraham Accord with the Saudi government.
That was very close.
Everyone was openly discussing this.
And that would have solidified a Sunni-Israeli pact against Shia aggression in the Middle East.
Iran then would have effectively been boxed in.
Because the reality is that an American-backed Sunni-Israeli alliance would be extraordinarily powerful in the region.
It would be a massive counterweight to terror groups in Yemen and Hezbollah and Hamas and Iran itself.
Iran was feeling quite boxed in.
And so Iran activated through This General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who is the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, at least its terror operations in Syria, Lebanon, and via Hamas.
They greenlit the October 7th attacks.
They killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 hostage, 133 Israelis still missing, most presumed dead, dozens still held hostage in Hamas terror tunnels.
That was specifically designed in order to elicit a military response from Israel that would supposedly put the nascent Sunni-Israeli alliance On hold.
That was the entire goal, was to reorient the Middle East.
And the Biden administration, acting as cowards, decided to basically go along with that.
Instead of doing what the Biden administration should have done, which is say to Israel, do what you need to do to finish off Hamas.
Take that Iranian pawn off the board.
And then, if you need to make a move against Hezbollah in the north, which has been threatening Israel for years, then do that as well.
Because only strength works in the Middle East.
And the only way you're ever going to get a Saudi-Israeli deal is if the Saudis believe that the Israelis are militarily powerful to rebut all attempts to destroy them and or do significant damage to their civilian base.
What the Biden administration should have done in the aftermath of October 7th is given Israel the green light to do what it needed to do with Hamas and Hezbollah.
No American troops involved.
Continued funding to the Israeli military, which of course means buying from American sources.
Move forward and demonstrate strength.
Instead, the Biden administration, over time, began to put more and more shackles on the Israeli Defense Force in Israel's attempt to extirpate Hamas and also to counter Hezbollah.
And Iran saw the gap.
The reason that this latest attack happened is because Iran saw the gap.
Israel took out the general who had greenlit the October 7th attacks.
And Iran was faced with this geopolitical prospect.
One, the possibility that it would be seen as weak by its own people for not responding to Israel taking out General Mohammad Reza Zahedi in Syria.
They can't be seen to look weak in the face of this.
And two, they saw an opening with the Biden administration.
They saw that because the Biden administration had been putting so much pressure on the Israeli government, they felt maybe there's a gap there that we can exploit.
Maybe we can up the ante.
Maybe we can demonstrate to the Saudis and to the Israelis that we can flex some muscle and show our power.
The problem they had is they weren't sure just how far they could go in attacking Israel without the United States either directly responding or unshackling Israel.
That was their catch-22.
They needed to do something in response to the killing of General Mohammed Reza Zahedi, who of course was killed in response to October 7th.
That's why he's dead.
But it couldn't be strong enough that would actually elicit a full-scale military response from Israel, greenlit by the United States.
So what did they do?
It sounds very much as though the United States was approached via channels by the Iranians.
And the Iranians basically said, we're going to do something.
And we just want to make sure that what we do is not enough for you to take the chains off of Israel.
That's what it sounds very much like at this point.
According to the Jerusalem Post, in a stunning report, Iran apparently informed Turkey in advance of its planned operation against Israel, a Turkish diplomatic source told Reuters on Sunday, adding that Washington had then responded to Tehran via Ankara that any action it took had to be within certain limits.
You wanna talk about a betrayal of an American ally?
That is a betrayal of an American ally.
So two things can be true at once.
One, the United States can use its military might and billions of dollars in military weaponry in order to shoot down Iranian threats.
Second, the United States apparently, according to this report, actively greenlit a limited attack on its own ally from the Islamic terror regime of Iran.
That's what this report is effectively saying.
And the reason that Biden would do that is because he knew that Iran had to show its own people that it was going to stand up muscularly against the evil Zionist regime.
And at the same time, Biden did not want this escalating into a full-scale Israeli retaliation.
And so the happy medium for Joe Biden was a green light and attack that would cost America significant military resources and Israel significant military resources, literally billions of dollars in military resources, allow Iran to get away with a massive We'll get to more on this in just one moment.
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The Turkish source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Turkish Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan, had spoken both to his U.S.
and Iranian counterparts in the past week to discuss the planned Iranian operation, adding that Ankara had been made aware of possible developments.
Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke directly to Fanon to make clear that escalation in the Middle East was not in anyone's interest.
Quote, Iran informed us in advance of what would happen.
Possible developments also came up during the meeting with Blinken, and the United States conveyed to Iran that the reaction must be within certain limits.
Again, that's insane.
That's insane.
Can you imagine any recent time in American history where somebody has said that an attack on a sovereign
country has to be within certain limits?
Actually, I can.
You know when that last happened?
With Ukraine.
Joe Biden literally said it out loud with regard to Russia attacking Ukraine.
He said that if Russia only attacked Ukraine within certain limits, it would be fine with him.
And you know what Russia saw that as?
A full-scale go-ahead.
Iran, in this particular case, did not see it as a full-scale go-ahead, mainly because, in this particular case, Israel is not the inferior military power.
Israel actually does have the aerial power to wreck Iran's oil refineries as well as its atomic facilities.
So that'll be the question as to what comes next here.
But, it appears that the Biden administration effectively brokered this attack.
Which of course makes sense.
Joe Biden is now playing both sides of the aisle apparently.
So just a quick reminder about Joe Biden.
And again, this is the only way this makes any sense because I just want to show you the map.
Here is the map of the attack that happened on Saturday night.
Take a look at this map.
And again, this is a signal.
It's signal evidence of the efficacy of Israeli defense mechanisms and the amazing power of the American military, as well as our allies in the UK and France.
The United States can project power to such an extent that it can shoot down missiles and drones in an area 8,000 miles away.
In any case, Take a look at this map.
This map shows the distances to Israel from various sites from which ordinance was fired.
As you can see, the ordinance was fired directly from Iran.
It had to cross airspace in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan.
It was also fired from Yemen toward Israel, the Houthis.
Okay, what you will notice is that there was no massive attack from Hezbollah in the north.
Why does that make a difference?
If you are Iran, and you are firing directly at Israel, this is a massive lead time.
The fastest ballistic missile technology that you have might be 2,000 miles an hour.
Which means that if you're 1,000 miles away in Iran, that's still a half hour warning time.
There's literally no warning time for a rocket fired from southern Lebanon into Israel.
So, if Iran had wanted to create a mass casualty attack in Israel, A mass casualty attack that would have forced Israel to not only respond directly to Hezbollah and take it off the board, but also to respond directly to Iran.
It would have activated Hezbollah.
It would not have fired directly from Iran.
And you can see it directly from the map.
The vast majority, virtually all of the ordnance that was fired was from Iran.
There were some that was fired from Yemen, which again is very far away, but very little was fired from Iran's number one proxy in the region, which is Hezbollah, not Hamas.
So why would that happen?
Because again, if they were coordinating with the United States to allow a limited attack on Israel to save face, that would make sense.
Now again, that does not mean that Iran wouldn't have been happy if they'd killed more Jews.
They certainly would have been happy if they killed more Jews and demonstrated more technological capacity.
It is in fact a humiliation for Iran to have all of its ordnance knocked down as much as they are playing up the fact that it appeared in the sky over Israel.
But what Joe Biden is mainly focused on right now is no conflict in the Middle East, even if that means green lighting attack on American allies.
So just a flashback to 2020.
Joe Biden said that Donald Trump would get America into war with Iran.
Now the United States is actually having to use its material to shoot down actual ordnance from Iran.
That is because Joe Biden is a weakling.
It is because his foreign policy on the Middle East is idiotic.
The only thing that works in the Middle East is a perception of actual force.
You know what would have happened if Donald Trump had been president and Iran had approached and said, by the way, we want to issue a limited attack on your ally, Israel, so what do we greenlight?
You know what Donald Trump would have said?
He would have said, what I'll greenlight is I will kick your ass if you do that.
That's what Donald Trump would have said.
He certainly would not have tacitly, according to the Jerusalem Post and multiple other reports, winked and nodded.
At a 170 drone attack on a sovereign nation, including another, again, 120 ballistic missiles and some 30 to 60 cruise missiles.
But here is Joe Biden suggesting that Trump was going to get us into war in the Middle East.
Again, it's Joe Biden who's doing it.
A president who says he wants to end endless wars in the Middle East is bringing us dangerously close to starting a brand new one.
Donald Trump's short-sighted, America-first dogmatism has come home to roost.
President Trump has no strategy here, it seems to me.
He has no endgame.
And here's the hardest truth of all.
His constant mistakes and poor decision-making have left us, the United States, with a severely limited slate of options.
We are alone now.
We're alone and we'll have to bear the cost of Donald Trump's folly.
He should stop tweeting.
What a joke he is.
So he doesn't box us in with these threats that, such that only options left for Iran are increasingly damaging strikes and counter-strikes.
Okay, that is literally what Joe Biden has done.
Joe Biden has done all of those things because he is a weakling on foreign policy and when it comes to foreign policy, foreign policy is a fifth, it's a fifth grade Mr. President, what is your message to Iran in this moment?
to call the rules. Trump knew that Joe Biden is a weakling and so he doesn't.
It was just last week, in fact, that Joe Biden said don't to Iran. He keeps saying don't to
people and then they just do. You may have noticed that.
Here is Joe Biden late last week.
What is your message to Iran in this moment? Don't.
Okay, he can keep saying don't.
He also had suggested don't to Hezbollah attacking Israel.
Hezbollah has been continuously firing rockets into Israel, which means 60,000 Israelis are not living in their homes in Northern Israel.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration, which is a continuation of Obama, this is Obama part three, Ben Rhodes, the idiot foreign policy advisor to Barack Obama, whose foreign policy experience involved sitting and writing crap short stories in an apartment in Brooklyn.
Ben Rhodes was effectively defending Iran over the weekend.
Whether this is part of a multi-pronged attack that's really focused at trying to hit Israel and try to potentially take Israeli life, potentially hit Israeli military targets, or whether it's a kind of more symbolic effort.
uh... to to scare israel or did just demonstrate that they're doing something
in response i think as has been discussed here
of the rain is feel the need to respond they believe their sovereign territory
was hit that embassy in syria
uh... to them and uh... you know that is sovereign iranian territory
and so they wanted attack in some way sovereign israeli territory
the question is whether they uh... are really aiming to escalate in a big way using
multiple capabilities They did have their guy.
Their guy literally organized the October 7th attack in Greenland.
saying, well, you know, Iran was justified.
They did have their guy.
Their guy literally organized the October 7th attack in Greenland.
That's why he was killed.
The Ben Rhodes and the Obama administration.
We'll get to more on this in just a moment.
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Meanwhile, John Kirby continues to play both sides.
Again, this is about the Biden administration playing both sides.
It turns out that if you show an intransigent face to Iran, it boxes them in.
And when you simultaneously unfreeze tens of billions of dollars to Iran, Allowing them to use that money for ballistic missile technology, then fire an American ally, and it turns out that America now is paying to knock down those ballistic missiles.
It turns out you're a weakling and a coward.
Here is John Kirby.
He says that Joe Biden told Israel it's an incredible military achievement.
By the way, the Biden administration then promptly leaked to Barak Ravid, who is their stenographer over at Axios, that they had told Israel they shouldn't retaliate in any way, shape, or form to a massive military attack on Israel.
Here's John Kirby, the national security spokesperson.
The purpose of the call was to check in with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the end of the operations.
Not everything had finished getting into Israel in terms of the drones were still on the way, but we felt like we were near the end.
The President wanted to congratulate Prime Minister Netanyahu for an incredible military achievement.
The Prime Minister was very grateful for the support that President Biden offered and demonstrated in supporting Israel.
And the President made it clear.
That the self-defense of Israel is something we take seriously, and we will continue to take that seriously.
Well, they'll take it seriously, except when Israel actually has to defend itself by taking on, say, Hamas, when you'll rip into them for an error involving a truck convoy.
Or when you suggest that if Israel goes up against Hezbollah, which is currently aiming 200,000 rockets at Israel, including 50,000 that have targeting capability, then you'll really get on Israel's case.
Meanwhile, John Kirby says they'll continue to provide Israel counsel.
I'm sure that's what Israel needs at this point.
Do you trust his judgment in deciding how to respond to these attacks?
He's the prime minister of Israel.
He's the elected leader of their government.
We're going to continue to work with him, advise him, provide counsel and perspective, as well as make clear he knows, and I think he does certainly from last night, that the United States will continue to help them defend themselves.
Meanwhile, Senator Chris Coons, who's of course on the left of the Democratic Party, he's out there saying that the big thing is to tell Israel to take a breath.
Israel really needs to be convinced to take a breath.
Again, I've never seen something like this in all my life, where an American ally takes 300 incoming high-tech pieces of ordinance from a sovereign state, and the main focus is on how do we, the United States, tell our ally that they need to back off.
In response to that, let's just be clear about something.
If Mexico decided tomorrow that they were going to fire 170 drones across the border to attack American sites, and we shot all of them down, Mexico City would not be occupied by the Mexican government tomorrow morning.
There is no sovereign state on planet Earth That should be told by America that it cannot defend itself against a state that just fired 120 ballistic missiles at it.
That's insane.
But that's exactly the position of the Biden administration.
And not only that, the position of the Biden administration apparently was to green light the attack, at least softly in the first place.
Here's Chris Coons from Delaware.
I think we should take a breath and analyze what the consequences might be of an attack back on Iran by Israel or of any other escalation.
So I understand that there are those who think that's the only way for us to restore deterrence.
I think the most important deterrent action that Congress can take, and this is what former Secretary Mike Pompeo is calling for, this is what Republican leader Mitch McConnell is calling for, is for Speaker Johnson to not take days or weeks to try and come up with some other package, but to pass the supplemental tomorrow.
So we'll get to the aid package in a second because it does appear that that is going to probably be pushed forward in some form or fashion over the course of the next week.
The reality is that that should have been negotiated weeks ago.
Which is, you know, there are lots of questions to be asked about how much aid, the accountability for the aid, what aid is necessary, whether should we give it as a loan or not a loan.
But the reality is that the complete dysfunction of Congress has in fact been a problem.
However, the point here with the Biden administration is that the real reason they're doing all of this is because they're afraid of losing the election in 2024.
There are two things that they are aiming for in terms of their foreign policy.
One is please the disgusting pro-Hamas contingents in Dearborn, Michigan.
And that is a very real contingent.
And the second is that they want to avoid a broader war.
But they think that the way to avoid a broader war is to force America's allies into conciliation as opposed to intimidating America's enemies into obeisance.
Those are the two possibilities.
Trump always opted for number two, which is if you screw with the United States or our allies, then we will intimidate you.
We will stop you.
And you know what?
It made for a pretty damned safe world under Donald Trump.
Joe Biden's idea has been, feed the alligator and maybe it will be nice to you, eventually.
You know who understands this better than anybody, shockingly, is John Fetterman.
Here is John Fetterman over the weekend, the senator from Pennsylvania, who says it's astonishing that the United States is not standing more firmly with Israel.
I think it really demonstrates how it's astonishing that we are not standing firmly with Israel and there should never be any kinds of conditions on all that.
When a nation can launch hundreds of drones towards Israel, I'm not going to be talking about conditions.
Ever.
And second, I think that also was Iran had to have some fireworks after Israel smoked that Iranian general.
And I am here for that.
And I think it's just a matter of theater part of it as well, too.
And finally, it demonstrates how unstable things are and why we need to lean in and stand with Israel.
Man, John Fetterman, wow.
I've never been more shocked by a politician in my life than the senator from Pennsylvania.
We'll get back to this in a moment.
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Meanwhile, Donald Trump was speaking out over the weekend as well.
Before going any further, I want to say God bless the people of Israel.
directly saying that this never would have happened if he were president, which of course
is true.
And then he pointed out that Joe Biden is in fact showing tremendous weakness.
Here he was at a rally in Pennsylvania.
This would not happen.
The weakness that we've shown, it's unbelievable, and it would not have happened if we were in office.
You know that.
They know that.
Everybody knows that.
He is obviously exactly correct about this.
Senator Marco Rubio, he points out that Joe Biden leaked his conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu to the press, in which he told Netanyahu to stand down and back away.
He says the only reason to do that is please your pro-Hamas base.
There is a second reason, which is to signal to Iran that the United States is holding Israel's chain.
Here is Marco Rubio.
I think we go from that to the other extreme, which is Joe Biden telling Netanyahu, take the win, don't do anything.
And then his people leaking it to the media, leaking it to the press.
And what it sets up is they know that Israel is going to respond.
They know this for a fact.
So why would the White House leak it?
There's only one reason they leak that.
And that is that so when Israel does respond, the White House can say, we told them not to do it, and at least somehow, in some way, appease these so-called peace activists, by the way, these so-called ceasefire now people, who were out yesterday cheering the launch of hundreds of rockets and drones and missiles against Israel.
People that are out there cheering military attacks of this scale and scope are not peace activists.
These are anti-Semites, anti-Israel, pro-terrorist elements out there.
Rubio, of course, is exactly right about all of this.
Okay, so where does this leave Israel right now?
So, Israel has suggested that they're going to exact a price when the time is right.
So, first of all, a few things to understand about Israel's response here.
What is amazing is the media and the Biden administration have been so focused on painting the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, as some sort of wild-eyed extremist, desperate for conflict, that they are completely misreading the room.
Netanyahu, according to virtually every Israeli, right, left, and center, is at best an incrementalist.
The big rap on Bibi is that Bibi didn't do enough to stop Hezbollah from gaining 200,000 missiles.
The big rap on Bibi is that Bibi did not do enough to hamper the rise of Hamas.
The big rap on Bibi is that he has been talking about taking out the Iranian nuclear facilities for legitimately decades and has not done it.
The rap on Bibi, in other words, is that he moves too slow and he is too incremental.
And yet the United States and the media keep saying, well, I hope Israel has restraint because that wild-eyed crazy person, Bibi Netanyahu, is going to get Israel into a regional war.
Okay, that's not true.
That is certainly not Piers Morgan's suggestion.
He says, Israel must show restraint.
I fear Netanyahu won't.
I have a question.
Why?
What sort of restraint, exactly?
I mean, Israel does have nuclear weapons.
They're not going to nuke Tehran.
Israel does have the military capacity to seriously degrade Iranian nuclear capacity itself, the oil refineries over in Iran.
Unlikely they do that as well.
Again, this kind of bizarre notion that you call for restraint on the state that was just attacked by an Islamic terror state is totally insane to me and immoral at a deep root level.
Zinov Telly Bennett, who's the former prime minister of Israel, he put out a tweet thread explaining what he thinks is the situation.
Here's what he said.
He said, contrary to what pundits are saying, this wasn't designed merely as bells and whistles with no damage.
When you shoot 350 flying objects, time to hit Israel at the same moment, when you use three fundamentally different weapon types, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and UAVs, you are looking to penetrate Israel's defenses and kill Israelis.
The U.S.
administration is telling us, this is a victory.
You've already won by thwarting the missiles.
No need for further action.
No, it is not a victory.
Yes, it's a remarkable success of Israel's air defense systems, but it's not a victory.
When a bully tries to hit you 350 times and only succeeds at seven, you have not won.
You don't win wars just by intercepting your enemy's hits, nor do you deter it.
Your enemy will just try harder with more and better weapons the next time.
How do you deter?
By exacting a deeply painful price.
Third, it is incorrect to say nobody got hurt.
There's a seven-year-old Israeli Arab girl called Amina El-Hassouni fighting for her life.
That is who Khamenei hit.
The Islamic Republic of Iran made a big mistake for the past 30 years.
It's been wreaking havoc on the region through its proxies.
A terror octopus whose head is in Tehran.
Its tentacles are in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Gaza.
How convenient.
The mullahs send to others to conduct horrendous terror attacks and die for them other people's blood.
Israel's strategic mistake for the past 30 years was to play along this strategy.
We always fought the octopus's arms, but hardly ever exacted a price from the Iranian head.
This should change now.
Hezbollah or Hamas should to rocket at Israel.
Tehran should pay the price.
The enemy is the Iranian regime, not the wonderful Iranian people.
Israel is fighting everybody's war in Gaza, Lebanon, Tehran.
We're considered the small Satan by radical Islam.
America is the big one.
I'll be clear.
If these crazy fanatic Islamic terrorists get away with murder by hiding among civilians, this method will be adopted by terrorists worldwide.
We're not asking anyone to fight for us.
We'll do the job.
But we do expect our allies to have our back, especially when it's tough and now it's tough.
Be on the right side.
Help us defeat these horrible and savage regimes.
That is Naftali Bennett speaking on Twitter.
Okay, so in just one second, we'll get to the actual options that Israel has on the table.
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Okay, meanwhile, so what exactly will Israel do right here?
Well, Benny Gant, who is the minister who is largely perceived as the most popular person
If an Israeli election were held today, he'd probably be the prime minister.
He's a member of Israel's war cabinet.
He put out a statement suggesting that Israel would not, in fact, respond directly to Iran immediately.
He said, facing Iran, we will build a regional coalition and may Iran pay the price in a
manner and time that is correct for us.
He called the results over the weekend a strategic achievement, which Israel must leverage for
its national security.
He said this event is not over.
The strategic alliance and alignment of regional cooperation must be strengthened specifically now.
So what does he mean by that?
Okay, so Israel basically has three options in retaliation for what Iran just did, which is effectively declare war directly on the state of Israel with an attack directly on the state of Israel from Iranian territory.
So one.
Israel could, in fact, deliver a devastating blow to Iran directly.
Israel's been preparing for that for 20 years.
They have F-35s, they have F-16s, they have F-15s.
Israel could theoretically fire missiles directly at Iran.
Israel could target the oil refineries, devastating Iran's economy.
Israel could do serious damage to the Natanz nuclear base over in Iran.
Even if Israel did not have the bunker busters necessary to completely destroy those nuclear facilities, Israel could do enough damage to the surrounding areas that the nuclear facilities would not be reachable or usable for the foreseeable future.
Israel could do all of that.
That's option number one.
Option number two is that Israel could turn north and strike the actual most serious military threat it currently faces, which is Hezbollah.
Hamas is no longer the chief military offensive threat that Israel faces.
Hezbollah is.
As I mentioned a thousand times on the show already, Hezbollah, which is an Iranian-backed terror group, which has tens of thousands of troops in Israel's north on the southern border of Lebanon, has some 200,000 rockets pointed at Israel.
50,000 of those have smart technology capable of hitting serious targets in Tel Aviv, in Haifa.
It could theoretically kill tens of thousands of Israelis.
So Israel could take this opportunity and say, listen, we are no longer going to Pay homage to the Iranian threat.
We understand that you guys were trying to do something symbolic by sending stuff directly from Iranian territory, but the real military threat that you're holding over our heads here is Hezbollah.
And we're going to preemptively knock out Hezbollah.
So they could theoretically do that.
And then finally, they could do neither of those two things.
They could hold on both of those things because Joe Biden is weak-kneed and doesn't want them to do those things.
Israel could say, listen, Right now, the rest of the world is realizing the Iranian threat.
Hamas is, in fact, a terror proxy of Iran.
We need to finish off what we're doing in the Gaza Strip.
That's what Israel could say.
That seems to me the most likely scenario here.
There's one major city left to go in the Gaza Strip that is currently holding four brigades of Hamas fighters.
That's not going to end whatever terror threat exists in Gaza, but it is going to establish effective military control over the entirety of the Gaza Strip once Israel takes Rafah.
The United States has been whining about an accidental strike on an aid convoy that was obviously accidental by every available piece of evidence.
In fact, as we talked about last week, when it comes to that World Central Kitchen convoy, not only was it accidental, Israel saw actual armed fighters on top of the World Central Kitchen convoy and then went under an overpass of some sort.
A bunch of trucks came out.
Israel tried to call the World Central Kitchen drivers directly.
No pickup.
They tried to call the World Central Kitchen directly, like the actual major headquarters.
The major headquarters tried to call the drivers.
No pickup.
Israel then had drones that were only heat signatures.
In terms of their viewpoints, they couldn't even see the paint on top of the trucks.
And then they struck the trucks.
So in any case, obviously an accident.
What Israel could do right now is they could say, listen, the best policy here is just finish what we are doing.
And then when we finish what we're doing, we'll turn to the Saudis and we'll say, listen, you can see what Iran is doing.
You can see the true threat regionally here is Iran.
And we are back to the pre-October 7th geopolitics that Iran wanted to avoid in the first place.
If Israel finishes off Hamas and then Israel swivels and makes an Abraham Accord deal with the Saudis, Iran will have completely lost whatever it was attempting to gain on October 7th.
I think that's the most likely scenario, by the way.
I think that Israel always intended on going into Rafah.
I think Israel always was intending on finishing off the conflict because as even Benny Gantz and members of the left in the cabinet have said, you don't put out 80% of a house fire, you finish it off.
And I think then Israel will swivel and try to broker a deal with the Saudi Arabian regime in order to establish that Sunni-Israeli alliance that Iran had so desperately attempted to forestall with the October 7th attacks in the first place.
And all Joe Biden has to do is shut the hell up.
That's all he has to do.
All Joe Biden has to do is recognize the reality.
Hamas is an Iranian-backed terror group.
When you force Israel to not do things to protect itself, even in the most immediate sense, while Hamas is rejecting hostage deals, by the way, Iran is currently rejecting hostage deals.
They literally did this over the weekend.
On Saturday, they rejected the latest attempt to exchange hundreds of terrorists in favor of hostages.
Claiming that Israel should completely pull out of the Gaza Strip, which of course is not going to happen.
The only further step that Israel could take here, and they should take it right now, while the iron is hot, while the rest of the world sees what Iran is and what its proxies are, Israel should finish off its business in Rafah, finish the war, move to low-level cleanup operations and counterinsurgency operations in the Gaza Strip, and then turn and make a deal with the Saudis to box in the Iranians.
I have a feeling that's exactly what Israel is going to do.
The reason being, if Israel is unwilling to take a serious swipe at the Iranian regime by completely destroying its oil refineries and its nuclear facilities, if Israel is not willing to do that, a pinpoint hit-the-camel-in-the-ass attack is not going to serve Israel any purpose.
It does nothing.
All it does is tick off Joe Biden and the White House.
If Israel is unwilling to go to full-scale war with Hezbollah and finish it off right now because they're afraid that Joe Biden will not provide the support necessary for that militarily, not in terms of direct American strikes, but in terms of the sort of offensive aid necessary for Israel to finish off Hezbollah in the north, then there's no point in doing it.
In other words, go big or go home.
And the last aspect of go big for Israel is finish off the Gaza Strip, solidify that position militarily, and then turn to the north with presumably some foreign aid.
So this, of course, the latest attack on Israel underscores the fact that the United States does in fact have a significant geopolitical interest in granting Israel the capacity to militarily defend itself, and yes, to vitiate threats from abroad.
That is a good thing for the United States.
Because American allies that are turned weak force the United States to stand in directly.
That's actually the history of American foreign policy in the post-World War II era.
It turns out that when America's allies are strong and can defend themselves, the United States is less required to do things.
When American allies are weak and cannot defend themselves, the United States is forced to provide things like a nuclear umbrella in Europe.
The reason that happened is because the United States in 1956 during the Suez Canal crisis
took the opposite side from America's own allies, thus undermining their credibility
on the world stage.
And that in turn forced the United States to take more of a leading role in Europe.
So if you don't like America taking leading roles, what you need to do is strengthen American
allies to the extent that they can defend themselves.
And this, of course, is precisely what various Republicans were saying over the weekend.
So for example, Steve Scalise, who's the House majority whip, he put out a tweet suggesting
that it was time to pass.
He said, in light of Iran's unjustified attack on Israel, the House will move from its previously announced legislative schedule next week to instead consider legislation that supports our ally Israel and holds Iran and its terrorist proxies accountable.
The House of Representatives stands strongly with Israel.
There must be consequences for this unprovoked attack.
More details on the legislative items to be considered will be forthcoming.
Lindsey Graham is saying the same thing.
So the question becomes, what exactly that foreign aid looks like?
Because obviously, the question about foreign aid at this point is whether it's a giant foreign aid bill that also includes Ukraine, whether it's an Israel standalone bill, or anything else.
And that's going to be the calculation for the House this week.
Are they looking for Israel for aid alone, or are they looking for aid for Israel with regard to Ukraine?
We'll get to more on this in a moment.
First, the people of Israel are once again under attack.
Over the weekend, the Islamic Republic of Iran launched a wave of suicide drones followed by ballistic and cruise missiles at Israel.
The situation in northern Israel has been tense for months.
Tens of thousands of people are now living in their homes thanks to Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorists operating out of Lebanon.
Now the situation is coming to a head.
Israel needs your prayers and your support now more than ever.
The entry of Iran into the war is a serious development.
It means Israel could be fighting with Hamas terrorists in the south, Iran back to Hezbollah in the north, and Iran itself, which has military capabilities beyond either Hamas or Hezbollah.
The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has been responding to Israel's emergency needs during the war by supplying protective gear for first responders, emergency supply kits, bomb shelters, reinforced ambulances, and other critical needs in northern Israel.
They're on the ground right now, preparing to protect civilian populations
with mobile bomb shelters, food, and other basic necessities.
Please, I urge you, give as generously as you can.
Israel needs our help.
To give to the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, visit benforthefellowship.org.
Again, that's benforthefellowship.org.
God bless and thank you, benforthefellowship.org.
According to Politico, Speaker Johnson is vowing to take up aid to Israel
following the drone attacks and renewed bipartisan pressure.
The question is what he's going to do about Ukraine.
In an interview on Fox News' Sunday Morning with Maria Bartiromo, Johnson said he wants to move forward with Israel aid bills this week.
When asked about Ukraine, Johnson did not say when it would be taken up or whether it would, in fact, be tied to Israel funding.
One of the possibilities is a Donald Trump-approved idea that there would, in fact, be Ukraine funding, but it would be done as a loan.
He said that Trump has introduced the loan-lease concept, which is a really important one, which I think has a lot of consensus, as well as the other ideas, the Repo Act, which is the seizing of corrupt Russian oligarchs to help pay for this resistance.
The drone attacks mark a dramatic escalation, and of course, you have seen a wide variety of Republicans now come out and say that it's unclear exactly what's going to happen.
Are they going to bring up the Senate-passed bill to move with expediency?
Are they going to bring up an Israel-only aid bill to move forward?
Not clear at this point exactly what gets pushed forward at this point.
Suffice it to say that if they pass forward even the Senate-passed bill right now, it would pass in the House.
It would in fact get passed in the House.
And we should point out at this point as well that when it comes to the Ukrainian aid, one of the questions that, again, I cannot get an answer to from even people who I generally like in the Republican caucus, when they say that they don't want to give any aid to Ukraine, does that mean that you are okay with Russia just walking into Kiev?
Because that is the predictable result if you give no aid.
Again, you want to argue about whether it's a loan or whether it's not a loan, that's fine.
You want to argue about the amount, that's fine too.
You want to talk about actual anti-corruption facilities?
That makes sense as well.
But this bizarre notion that it's in the United States' interest to provide so little aid to Ukraine that Russia simply walks into Kiev and takes the rest of Ukraine?
I don't understand that at all.
Quizzed about that over the weekend was Senator J.D.
Vance.
Vance, of course, is one of the more isolationist members of Congress.
And he was asked repeatedly by Jake Tapper, are you willing to basically allow Ukraine to just be overrun by Russia?
And Vance simply wouldn't answer the question.
My solution to the problem is to rebuild our own country.
The reason that we're in this position, Jake, is because we're stretched way too thin.
We're stretched way too thin in the number of weapons systems that we need, that Ukraine needs, that Taiwan needs, that Israel needs, and we can't do all of these things at once.
So when you're stretched too thin, you've got to focus and you've got to rebuild your own country.
Let's take just one of those weapon systems that we're talking about.
155mm artillery shells.
The Russians currently have a 5 to 1 advantage over the Ukrainians.
The Israelis will need this stuff.
The Taiwanese need this stuff.
And of course, America needs this stuff.
Can we possibly fight all of those conflicts at once?
No.
The math just doesn't make sense.
Okay, so I'm confused.
He's literally arguing that Ukraine is outgunned, so we should cut off aid to Ukraine.
Jake Tapper asked him no less than three times if he'd be comfortable with Russia taking Ukraine, and he just misdirected the answer.
He just swiveled, and again, I like JD Vance.
I've had him on the show before.
But when you're talking about foreign aid sufficient to allow our allies to withstand predations from American enemies, and yes, Russia is an enemy of the United States.
They do not have America's best interests at heart.
They're not an allied nation to the United States in any way, shape, or form.
It turns out that is a bad foreign policy.
That is very bad.
So I think very likely this week some form of aid gets passed in the aftermath of all this.
I think very likely that Israel goes into Rafah and finishes off what is happening in the Gaza Strip and then swivels and makes a deal with Iran.
And you end up with a Trump-like foreign policy promoted in spite of the Biden administration, which has a significantly higher body count that would have been necessary if Joe Biden were not a foreign policy coward.
Okay, meanwhile, The Donald Trump trial begins today in New York City on the Hush Money trial.
According to Politico, former President Trump's criminal trial in New York begins on Monday with an immediate and fundamental challenge, selecting a jury that can fairly judge one of the most famous and polarizing figures alive.
Now, the reason that, of course, Democrats are very much focused on this particular trial is because they have to do something to really harm Trump's candidacy.
According to a brand new poll from the New York Times, many more Americans fondly remember the Trump years than remember the Biden years.
Well over 60% of Americans believe that Donald Trump's handling of the economy was good.
Almost 50% of Americans believe that Donald Trump left the country better off than he took it.
More than 50% believe today that they liked his handling of law and order.
Again, these are numbers that are significantly better than Joe Biden's.
The question asked by the New York Times, do you generally remember the years that this candidate was president?
Is mostly good years for America, mostly bad years for America, or not really good or bad?
46% of Americans say that Joe Biden's years have been mostly bad for America.
Another 27% say not really good or bad.
Only 25% say mostly good for America.
For Donald Trump, 42% say mostly good for America.
Only 33% say mostly bad for America, which means that Donald Trump has a pretty easy candidacy if all he does is just stand there and point at Joe Biden, which is why, again, they are focusing in like a laser beam on this criminal trial in New York.
According to the Wall Street Journal, The case of People vs. Trump is itself a mixed bag, with the lowest stakes of the four prosecutions he faces.
Trump would have no mandatory prison time if convicted.
Despite the salacious backstory, the case at its core is about documents, whether Trump falsified business and financial records accounting for hush money.
The political fallout could theoretically be severe.
Some voters show that they would change their votes, but it could also be met with a shrug.
And this particular case is incredibly stupid and it does look as though it is a political prosecution of all the cases against Trump.
This is the one that most looks like a political prosecution at this point.
So, media are going to focus a lot on this trial.
I'm not sure that that is going to work.
Because again, the world seems to be in flames thanks to Joe Biden's absolutely awful presidency.
Okay, in just a moment.
We'll be joined by Charlie Spearing.
He's the author of Amateur Hour.
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