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June 13, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show
57:19
Bonus Episode: THE REVENGE
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Well, we are here this evening bringing you a special episode of the Ben Shapiro Show, giving you updates as the conflagration between Israel and Iran unfolds.
Israel, of course, on Thursday night, struck a wide barrage of Iran.
And then this afternoon, Eastern time, the Iranians began firing back missile barrages.
About 100 missiles were fired into Israel, directed at civilian areas, unlike Israel's targets, which were military in nature.
Iranians obviously are simply attempting to kill as many Israelis as possible with their missile barrage.
The United States did aid Israel as well as other allies in knocking down as many of the missiles as possible.
Apparently somewhere between five and seven of those missiles actually ended up evading missile defense and landing inside Israel.
So let's begin at the beginning.
Obviously, over the course of this morning, there were more attacks by Israel on top Iranian nuclear scientists.
Here is some video of nuclear scientists.
Killed in the Israeli strike on a Tehran apartment building.
You can see here in this video the after effects of an Israeli strike on an apartment building targeting an Iranian nuclear scientist.
You can also see here in the background, there it is.
You can see it's a targeted strike.
Did not take down the entire building.
Took down a specific area of the building.
About as targeted as a strike can get.
But if you would like to see an even more targeted strike, an astonishing picture here of a hole in the wall, a precision strike against an Iranian military leader that apparently hit him directly in the bedroom.
It went only through the side of the building, leaving the rest of the building intact, hitting precisely one bedroom in this Iranian military.
That's how targeted Israel was.
We have emerging information on the extent of Israel's attack on the Natanz nuclear facility.
Israel is also apparently attacking Fordow.
That is a heavily bunkered nuclear facility.
Israel has been dropping weaponry on top of munitions.
The question is whether they will have the sort of munitions necessary to penetrate the deep bunkers built by the Iranians.
According to the Times of Israel, Iran's Natanz facility for uranium enrichment was hit by Israeli airstrikes targeting the Islamic Republic's nuclear program early on Friday, with Israeli defense officials assessing that the damage was significant.
According to the military, the IAF strikes destroyed the underground section of the site, which housed a multilevel enrichment hall, housing centrifuges, electrical rooms and other supporting infrastructure.
The strikes also destroyed critical infrastructure, enabling the site's continued operation and advancement of the Iranian regime's nuclear weapons project.
They said that the attack did damage several parts of the facility.
They then added there was no increase in radiation levels or chemical contamination.
However, the IAE chief, Rafael Grossi, said that the other main enrichment center in Iran, Fordo, was not hit, but that has changed since.
And, apparently, the IAEA is claiming that there may be some contamination at the Natanz nuclear facility, suggesting, of course, that the containment has been breached by the Israeli attack.
Meanwhile, other explosions in western Tehran as Israel attacks the areas around Tehran, military areas, nuclear areas around Tehran.
You can see the footage here in the background.
Significant explosions, mushroom clouds rising, smoke rising in the background.
Israel's intelligence penetration in Iran is extraordinary.
The Iranian regime legitimately does not know who is an Israeli agent and who is not.
Okay, well, all of this was lead up to the Islamic Republic's response to Israel.
Again, not particularly shocking, but Iran had suggested for hours, days, weeks, that if Israel attacked, they would, of course, respond.
It would be sort of a shock if that had not happened.
And, of course, Israel was prepared for that.
Immediately upon launching these attacks against the Iranian nuclear facilities and the military leaders of the regime, The Israeli officials told Israelis that they would have to stay inside much more than normal.
They'd have to essentially hunker down and wait it out.
This is a picture of what is called the SOFAR Red Alert Map.
The Red Alert Map, everybody in Israel has an app on their phone telling you who is being told to go down into the bunkers when there are a wide variety of missiles flying at Israel.
Pretty much everybody in the country goes into a bunker or if you are in a private house or an apartment building, what's called a mamad, which is essentially a safe room.
If you're in a major apartment building, then you might just go down into the parking lot, which is substantially fortified against the possibility of missile strike.
As you can see from this map, the entirety of Israel blanketed in these sort of red alert flags showing the possibility of an Iranian strike.
Now, this has become part and parcel of living in Israel.
It's just a reality.
Last time my wife and I and our children were visiting Israel, actually, there was a Houthi attack at about 625 on a Saturday morning.
The sirens went off in Jerusalem.
We immediately hopped out of bed, grabbed our kids, went to the Mamad and the place that we were staying, and waited until the all-clear happens, about a 10-minute period from the end of the sirens.
And then you can leave and it's all clear.
It's become kind of a regular part of life.
I was talking to friends in Jerusalem a little bit earlier today, and they said that last night they simply went to sleep.
And I know that the last time the Iranians were attacking Israel, which was several months ago, of course, last year.
Many of my friends didn't even leave the shower when the sirens were going off because their feeling was the chances of being hit were very, very low.
This is a bit different.
Everybody did, in fact, go into the bunkers as well they should have.
Now, it's a Friday night in Israel.
Friday night is, of course, the beginning of Sabbath for many Orthodox Jews.
And so many of the Israelis were gathering in this parking lot, in Mahmoud, to sing and dance in honor of the Sabbath as the Missal alerts were going on.
I can't even imagine.
Again, the difference between how Israel treats its civilians and how Iranian proxies treat their civilians is marked here.
In Israel, when the sirens go off, the civilians rush to the bomb shelters in places run by Hamas.
When the sirens go off, Hamas runs to the bomb shelters and puts the civilians directly on top of them.
But you can see this is sort of treated as normal in the state of Israel.
Israel is about to change that situation markedly.
By actively fighting back against Iran, the goal being to eliminate the Iranian nuclear capacity.
Okay, while all this was happening, there were interceptors that were fired over Tel Aviv.
Again, some five to seven missiles actually landed in the center of Israel, mostly in the Tel Aviv area.
Central Tel Aviv was impacted by ballistic missiles fired from Iran on Friday after Israel said it had detected dozens of missiles launched from Iran.
Apparently, that number is actually closer to 100 in a couple of different flights of missiles.
It's about nine minutes for a missile to get from Iran to Israel.
So all these sort of ordinance that is fired by Iran comes at different rates.
Drones may take hours because it is a significant distance.
The missiles travel quite quickly until you have a nine-minute period from when the missile launch is detected to when the missiles actually hit.
Here's some footage of interceptions over Tel Aviv.
And again, Israel has the world's most sophisticated missile defense system at this point.
President Trump is building Golden Dome for the United States, but Here's what it looks like from the ground in Tel Aviv.
You can see the interceptors are the objects that are moving in sort of erratic directions, attempting to locate and hit those missiles.
Now, of course, the sky over Israel was lit up all of tonight as those missiles were emerging over major cities in Israel.
The Iranian ballistic missile attack that actually struck Central Tel Aviv was caught on tape by reporters from Fox News.
Here's what that looked like.
Yaniv, get ready to pull it off the sticks.
Get off the sticks.
All right, let's go.
Time to go.
Okay.
Guys, come on.
Everyone move.
Everyone move now.
Stay with us.
Stay with us.
Pick up the gear.
Let's go.
W reporter Trey Yings, whose coverage has been less than stellar, but you can see, again, the missiles being shot down over center of Tel Aviv.
The other unknown, Sandra, is as Iron Dome and David Sling and the Aero System and the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense Systems are all going off at the same time, it seems, here.
The last time this happened, there was a coordinated defense between Israel, the United States, and other countries, including Jordan, to intercept these with aircraft as well.
Trey, I mean, it's unbelievable to see what we're seeing going on in the skies above Tel Aviv right now.
Yeah, John Sandro, you saw those live images.
Israel is under a massive ballistic missile barrage.
I have reported here for nearly seven years and never seen such an attack against an Israeli city.
The amount of air defense that you saw going off there, it's unprecedented.
And of course, Israel had fully expected that.
So for all of those alarmists who are suggesting that this took Israel by surprise, I mean, that's ridiculous.
Israel has been preparing for this.
And again, immediately upon the first attacks by Israel against the Iranian nuclear facilities, everybody was warned to prepare to stay near their mamad, and a statement went out to the general public to prepare to spend significant hours in their safe rooms and in safe places over the course of the next week or so.
The most stunning footage, of course, is footage of a ballistic missile hitting downtown Tel Aviv.
There was one ballistic missile that fell right in the heart of Tel Aviv.
Obviously, extraordinary footage.
*Squeak*
As you can see, that is the site of the missile falling.
Now, worthwhile noting that because Israel's air defense systems are so good, and also because Israelis do a good job of getting to safe places, the number of casualties thus far has been extraordinarily minimal.
Magandavid Adom, which is the Israeli Red Cross, says that the number of casualties in these barrages so far is 21 total.
17 of those are in mild condition or a state of anxiety.
So that'd be older people who have asthma and who have a panic attack because of the falling missiles, two of them in serious condition, two in moderate condition.
So by any statistical measure, a small miracle, given the fact that you're seeing these missiles fall in, again, populated areas.
Here's a picture of a residential building, apartment building, that was hit.
Again, the fact that you're not seeing larger casualty numbers is a testament to both Israeli defense systems and also to the fact that Israelis understand what to do in cases of emergency and they move quickly into safer areas of the buildings that they occupy.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards put out a statement, quote, following the Supreme Leader's directive, we responded precisely and significantly.
We attacked dozens of targets, military centers, and air bases.
The response is part of Operation Promise of Truth 3, which sounds like just an absolutely terrible sequel.
I mean, if you were going to, you know, label that, that's worse than like Super Baby Geniuses 2. Operation Promise of Truth 3, or Return to the Blue Lagoon.
This one goes on the list of worst sequels, Police Academy, Mission to Moscow.
In any case, the Iranians also put out a revenge video.
This is a video they've distributed before.
You'll take note of the fact that it makes open reference to the attempted assassination of President Trump.
Again, the Iranian regime is not a regime that is rich in peaceful people seeking an off-ramp with the United States, despite the bizarre propaganda of folks who seem to be in league with those who love Iran deeply.
This is not the activity of a regime that really is ready to make peace, disarm, become a member of the family of nations.
Here is a video distributed by Iranian state media in the middle of all of this.
That is the podium of the President of the United States.
Footage of the near assassination of Donald Trump.
of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then pictures of the Iranian...
And the idea, of course, is that they are targeting President Trump as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well, of all of this.
Now, again, it is worth noting here that the Iranian regime, when folks say regional war might break out, a regional war did break out on October 7th.
It was all of Iran's regional allies versus Israel.
That is what happened.
And that is going to go down in the history books as one of the worst military moves in the history of mankind.
Because on October 7th, Iran gave the go-ahead to Hamas, one of its proxies, to walk across the border of the Gaza Strip and slaughter as many Jews as possible and take 250 hostage.
And the result over the ensuing year and a half has been the complete catastrophic demolition of Hamas to the extent that Hamas no longer exists as a governing entity in the Gaza Strip.
And the entire strip is going to have to be rebuilt.
And made safe.
Hezbollah, which was the most threatening arm of the Iranian regime, armed with up to hundreds of thousands of rockets and missiles with targeting technology, was completely destroyed by Israel at minimal loss of life from the Israelis.
The Hezbollah infrastructure was hit so hard that it ended up taking down Syria next door because Hezbollah was a supporting pillar for the Assad regime.
Turkish backed HTS group, and the regime was just gone.
So all of the Iranian proxies have been brought to heel by the Israelis, and now Iran, of course, has been catastrophically damaged militarily.
And that will continue.
That will continue, without a doubt, because Israel has already said that thanks to this latest round of attacks, there is more to come.
According to Channel 12 in Israel, one of the main news channels, quote, any missile fired at Israel will trigger immediate strikes against Iranian national infrastructure.
What could that infrastructure be?
Well, there's the possibility that that infrastructure is oil-related.
So far, Israel has only hit military targets, nuclear targets, members of the military, echelons.
Well, there are a couple of targets they have clearly not hit.
One is the ayatollahs themselves, and the other is the oil fields.
If Iran's oil fields go up in flames, Iran has no economy.
The economy is just gone.
A huge percentage of the Iran of the Iranian economy is oil.
In fact, asking.
And the answer, according to our friends over at Perplexity, oil exports accounted for more than 40% of Iran's total export revenue in 2023.
It represents a quarter of the country's GDP.
So, taking out the Iranian oil fields would devastate them.
Especially because that is the only thing that even makes them remotely valuable to places like China, which uses them as a giant gas station.
Israeli Defense Minister Yisrael Katz says, Israel crossed red lines when it dared to fire missiles at civilian population centers in Israel.
We'll continue to protect the citizens of Israel and ensure the Ayatollah's regime pays a very heavy price for its criminal actions.
So this is not going to end anytime soon.
It was not going to end anytime soon.
This is all part of the plan.
Already coming up, the great one, Mark Levin, will join us.
We'll also have Plus, Democrat Congressman Ro Khanna stops by to disagree.
First, in these uncertain days, Israel now faces imminent attacks as war with Iran has already begun.
Families across Israel are living in fear, wondering if the next siren will sound in their neighborhood.
Israel just launched Operation Rising Lion, targeting nuclear and military sites deep inside Iran to prevent an existential threat while bracing for possible retaliation that could endanger millions of innocent lives.
In the midst of crisis, hope endures.
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IFCJ provides emergency food, shelter, trauma support, and security upgrades, including bomb shelters and fortified hospital units.
In the past year alone, IFCJ has helped over 2 million people, supplying basic needs to the elderly, Holocaust survivors, new immigrants, and children traumatized by war.
As Israel's defenders stand ready, IFCJ stands with them, funding bulletproof ambulances, supporting first responders, offering comfort to those in the line of fire.
Your support means food for the hungry, safety for the vulnerable, and hope for a nation under siege.
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That's one word.
And in fact, speaking of the fact that Iran is reliant on its oil exports, the Israeli Air Force apparently has now launched a series of attacks this evening on the oil exporting component of the Iran infrastructure.
They've been attacking energy facilities, according to a variety of sources.
the Raisi power plant in Isfahan, which is close to the nuclear refinement facility in Isfahan, is now being struck.
There are also reports of the IAF attacking on the coast of Iran, which would be Prime Minister Netanyahu is openly calling for the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their regime.
Again, he has no intention of quote-unquote regime change directly.
Israel is not going to be sending troops anytime in there to simply take control of the country.
Iran is not a neighboring country, nor is he calling on the United States to do so.
But the Iranian people hate the regime.
And if this is a moment, if ever there is a moment for the regime to be overthrown by the Iranian people, that would be the moment.
Tonight I wish to speak to you, the proud people of Iran.
We're in the midst of one of the greatest military operations in history, Operation Rising Lion.
The Islamic regime, which has oppressed you for nearly 50 years, threatens to destroy my country, the state of Israel.
The objective of Israel's military operation is to remove this threat, both the nuclear threat and the ballistic missile threat to Israel.
And as we achieve our objectives, we're also clearing the path for you to achieve your objective, which is freedom.
In the past 24 hours, we've taken out top military commanders, senior nuclear scientists, the Islamic regime's most significant enrichment facility, and a large portion of its ballistic missile arsenal.
More is on the way.
The regime doesn't know what hit them.
They don't know what will hit them.
The nation of Iran and the nation of Israel have been true friends since the days of Cyrus the Great.
And the time has come for you to unite around your flag and your historic legacy by standing up for your freedom from an evil and oppressive regime.
It has never been weaker.
This is your opportunity to stand up and let your voices be heard.
Life.
Freedom.
As I said yesterday and many times before, Israel's fight is not with you.
It's not with you, the brave people of Iran whom we respect and admire.
Our fight is with our common enemy, a murderous regime that both oppresses you and impoverishes you.
Brave people of Iran.
Your light will defeat the darkness.
I'm with you.
The people of Israel are with you.
Well, again, this is going to be the next step here is Israel is going to be hitting the energy infrastructure.
If Iran continues to escalate, then the Ayatollahs may be on the menu.
Joining us online to discuss all of this is, of course, the great one, Mark Levin.
Mark, thanks so much for taking the time.
Really appreciate it.
Great pleasure, Ben.
So, Mark, why don't we start with the obvious, your quick reaction to everything that's been transpiring over the course of the last 24 hours, Israel's attacks on Iran, Iran firing missiles into civilian centers in Israel, and now it appears contemporaneously right now Israel is attacking the energy infrastructure in Iran, which is what it said it would do if Iran fired missiles into civilian areas.
Well, Iran's trying to kill the Israelis.
That's what they do.
That's why they exist.
Or anyone that gets in their way.
They've been trying to kill Americans.
They've killed many Americans.
They've maimed many Americans.
They've killed many Israelis.
They've maimed many Israelis.
I don't know why people are confused by this.
There's good and evil.
Is that what our faith says and Christianity and all great faiths say?
And that's what we're facing.
This is evil.
These are terrorists.
And imagine any one of these ballistic missiles having a nuclear warhead on them, being fired into Israel, or when they get intercontinental ballistic missiles, which is what they're also building.
They shoot them over to the United States.
I mean, you would have such horrendous, monstrous genocide by these absolute Islamist nutjob Nazis.
What I think is taking place right now is you're seeing a country that is not only fighting for its survival, it's fighting for the West, which has become quite weak.
It's fighting for the United States, which is strong.
And they have to support a strong president, Donald Trump.
And I don't think they're going to stop until they get this done.
They're apparently hitting their infrastructure and so forth because they warn the Iranians, you attack our population centers.
Notice Israelis aren't attacking the Iranian population centers because they know the Iranian people hate their government and they wouldn't do it anyway.
But it's the first place that the Iranians aim at, the biggest cities in Israel.
And so now the Israelis are taking out their infrastructure and they are going to crush that country.
Now, one of the things I would tell Your audience, Ben, is when you watch TV, you're only seeing one side of the war.
You're seeing what's happening to Tel Aviv and Israel and so forth, which is bad enough.
But what you're not seeing is what's going on in Iran.
And apparently, from what we're hearing from the Israelis and the Americans, is that a hell of a lot is going on in Iran.
There are military institutions.
There are nuclear institutions.
The top-level military, the top-level nuclear scientists, and as I said now, now they're hitting the infrastructure.
I mean, they're sending 200 jets over there, not all at once.
But Ben, could you imagine the sound of hundreds of jets like that?
I can't even imagine it.
I mean, it is brutal, I'm sure.
You know, Mark, I think that here we should take a moment to acknowledge the extraordinary handling of this by President Trump.
So there was a lot of consternation at President Trump by the so-called isolationist or restrainer wing inside his own party, some inside his own administration who are very upset with him for standing by Israel.
President Trump has been utterly consistent for over a decade about his perspective on this issue.
His perspective is clear.
The Iranians are the threat in the region.
The worst deal in history was the JCPOA.
He was never going to sign a new JCPOA.
He understood that the Iranians were unwilling to make a deal.
And as the president himself has said, Israel has the resources to do what it is doing and Israel has the moral capacity to do what it's doing.
President Trump deserves enormous credit.
America is not directly involved, but it has been involved in shooting down many of the the missiles and the drones that are being shot from Iran toward Israel.
He's the most pro-Israel president in American history.
And also, in my opinion, the strongest foreign policy president of my lifetime, bar none.
And so the isolationists are very upset.
They're all over TV and radio and the internet and so forth, saying that Donald Trump has abandoned MAGA.
The biggest of the bunch is this Chadsworth, you know, Katarlson, as I call Tucker Carlson, who seems to think he owns the country, who seems to think he was elected president, who seems to think he and a few of his embeds should be running foreign policy.
And for Tucker Carlson, there'd be no.
He seems to be a special pleader to the biggest, most evil, genocidal maniacs on the face of the earth.
Why that is, is something a psychiatrist will have to figure out.
I can't.
But to lash out and to say those of us who want to defend America, defend the state of Israel, defend our allies against this evil regime that keeps talking about trying to destroy us and destroy Israel, and on and on and on, It's his issue.
It's his problem.
He's a paper tiger.
That's what he is.
He means nothing.
And now he's broken from the president publicly because he says the president is broken from MAGA.
Let me ask you, Ben.
77 million people are MAGA.
77 million people voted for Donald Trump.
77 million people voted for Donald Trump, many of whom don't know who Tucker Carlson is.
Or despise him and still voted for Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has never been an isolationist.
He wasn't in his first term, and he's not now.
He's not an interventionist either.
You know, he's not a John McCain or anything like that.
He gave this regime, what, a thousand opportunities to surrender their nuclear arms, excuse me, their nuclear development, but they wouldn't do it because they don't want to do it.
And so he put his foot down.
His job is as commander-in-chief, not as a chief.
You know, subscriber-based platform, grifter, who's out there going on and on about how America really, World War II, how Americans really are at fault.
You know, how he attacks Churchill and praises Chamberlain.
How his friend, the Tulsi Cabaret, basically slimes and smears the brave men and women who destroyed Imperial Japan.
These people are crazy.
You know, Mark, when I look at the lay of the land right now, the transformative action that Israel just took really does lay the groundwork for a better region.
Again, President Trump deserves enormous credit here by really bucking all prevailing foreign policy wisdom for both his first term and his second.
In his first term, he was told that if he killed Qasem Soleimani by people like Tucker Carlson, that it would lead to a regional war.
It, of course, did not.
He was also told by many of those same folks on both the right and the left that if he moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, that would lead to a regional war.
It, of course, did not.
And President Trump was the only president in my lifetime who's been able to broker actual serious peace between Israel and her neighbors in the form of the Abraham Accords.
Now, with his support and his willingness to stand side by side with Israel, Israel actually does the dirty work in Iran.
The president has set the stage for what could be a complete transformation of the region.
Iran is completely isolated.
Iran has no allies of any serious import in the region or outside the region.
And so the ground is now clear for the possibility of expanding things like the Abraham Accords to include.
Your point is so important.
Donald Trump is doing something that no president has done for 47 years with Iran.
He is a transformative president.
He is a historic, iconic figure in so many ways, whether it comes to immigration, whether it comes to taxes and so forth and so on, and whether it comes to foreign policy.
He's not a war hawk.
You're not a war hawk.
I'm not a war hawk.
We're all peace lovers.
Why would we be war hawks?
The fact of the matter is he tried over, over, over and over again.
But what he wasn't going to do was going to surrender to this Islamist regime the way Obama did.
He wasn't going to subsidize them the way Biden did.
And so he comes in.
He says, OK, I want peace.
Let's try and reason with these people.
Let's make some offers to these people.
But they cannot spin centrifuges.
And they would not only wouldn't.
Stop spinning centrifuges.
While we're talking to them, they're speeding up the process.
They're buying fuel material from the Communist Chinese to build more missiles, long-range missiles.
In other words, rather than respect the United States, respect the process, respect the President of the United States, they took the opportunity to use that 60-day period to prove to the whole world.
That they have no intention of signing an agreement, certainly not an agreement that holds their feet to the fire.
So I agree with you.
Donald Trump has done something no president did in half a century.
You know, Mark, I think another leader who deserves enormous credit here is the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu.
He's been under consistent fire from an enormous number of people inside his own country, people on the left who've been protesting outside his home continuously for a year and a half, calling for something he doesn't have.
have the power to do, compel Hamas to give up the hostages.
They've been attempting to attack him in court on a series of charges that I consider to be spurious.
And he's been obviously at the center of a wide variety of conflicts ranging from Yemen to Lebanon to Syria.
And yet, he stood tall and made a very difficult call here to actually He's
a remarkable man.
He's a great leader.
He's being undermined at home, or at least was, and still is actually in many respects.
He's defeated every enemy that they're facing, whether it's Hamas and Hezbollah, the Houthis, and now it's the mothership of terrorism, Iran.
I don't think any of us would have imagined anything like this, but he did.
And he decided in some cases against the advice of some very weak generals and very weak members of his cabinet.
To pursue a course to put an end to this.
No more halfway deals.
No more Oslo's.
No more paper deals with Hamas and all the rest of it.
Not after October 7th.
And that's where he threw the gauntlet down and said, this isn't going to happen.
He's an enormously intelligent man.
He's an enormously brave man.
You know, we're very lucky, Ben, to have these two great leaders in the world right now, Trump and Netanyahu.
And I can tell you from my own knowledge, all these reports in Axios and elsewhere, By the isolationist embeds leaking against the president, leaking against Netanyahu, and undermining and disloyal to the president, as a matter of fact, that they were far apart, that Israel and the United States were far apart, that Netanyahu's a warmonger and Trump's not a warmonger.
No.
These guys were together.
They are close.
There was no space between them.
This decision that was made, the Israelis did infect.
Inform the United States based on what I'm reading here now.
Why wouldn't they?
Of course they would.
And I just think what people should be watching here is it's like Reagan, Thatcher, Cole, John Paul II.
But in this case, you have President Trump and you have Netanyahu.
This doesn't happen all the time.
In fact, it happens rarely.
When great men, and women in some cases, they line up as leaders of countries at a time when they're needed.
And this is one of those times.
I mean, Trump and Netanyahu are absolutely fantastic.
Well, that is Mark Levin.
You can check out and should check out his show on Fox News, Life, Liberty, and Levin every weekend.
Of course, you should check out his radio show and podcast as well, The Mark Levin Show.
Mark, thanks so much for the time.
Great to speak to you as always.
You, and thanks for everything, brother.
Take care.
Well, again, as we speak, Israeli kinetic action is ongoing in Iran.
Here to discuss the strategy of the Israelis, what they're trying to do is Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy.
Mark, thanks so much for joining the show.
Thanks so much for having me, Ben.
So, Mark, looking at the progression of the Israeli attacks, the Iranian response, what do you make of the state of play in the Middle East right now?
Obviously, Israel's original strikes are sort of shocking in their success.
The Iranian counterattack, some of the missiles escaped.
Well, I think it's been an extraordinary 24 hours, certainly for the Israelis.
And I think they've exceeded once again their expectations.
I always said to people that if the Israelis don't surprise you, they lose.
If they surprise you, then they really are doing something extraordinary.
And like they did against Hezbollah with the beepers.
And against Nasrallah and against the whole leadership of Hezbollah and Hamas, I think they've once again really surprised us with remarkable capabilities, training, intelligence, dominance.
And so far, so good.
So looking at the amount of damage that Israel has done, we've seen some mixed reports about the damage to the nuclear reactor in Natanz.
Obviously, there's been bombing of Ford out.
There were serious questions that were raised about the Israeli capacity to seriously damage.
These institutions, obviously, we've only seen day one.
Israel is planning at least a seven-day barrage here.
You would imagine maybe up to 14 days is what they've announced.
What do you make of the Israeli capability to do serious damage to some of these underground facilities?
Yeah, I mean, it looks like they've destroyed Natanz.
They've begun to start bombing Fordow, much more difficult, buried underground, 60, 70 meters hardened with concrete.
They can do some damage.
Obviously, they need 30,000-pound massive orange penetrators, which is what the United States has, and we have B-2 bombers, and they don't.
So I think it's going to be a more difficult operation.
They started bombing Isfahan, which is an important conversion facility.
But Ben, what's a really important story that I think a lot of people are missing is that they went after 12 nuclear weapons scientists.
I mean, basically, the Robert Oppenheimer and the key physicists of the nuclear weapons program.
They've killed nine of them.
And we're waiting to see the sort of battle damage assessment on the other three.
But that is really remarkable because that is the key missing part of a deliverable nuclear weapon, right?
The Iranians have enriched material, they have missiles, but they haven't yet been able to build a warhead or even a crude nuclear device.
Well, this is the team of the top 12 most important nuclear weapon scientists.
We would build that warhead.
And if 9 of the 12 are dead or 11 of the 12 are dead, that's a devastating blow to Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Now, Mark, the Iranians obviously fired about 100 missiles at Israel over the course of the last few hours.
The vast majority of them were shot down.
I believe 93 out of 100 were shot down.
Seven landed.
Again, there are some dozens of injuries inside Israel.
What do you make of the Iranian responsive capacity?
What do you expect from Iran?
How much are they going to escalate?
And what are the risks for them in escalation?
Because obviously Israel has not yet touched the Ayatollahs or the oil fields in Iran.
Yeah, I mean, it does worry me.
They've got a massive inventory of ballistic missiles, 2,000 to 3,000 ballistic missiles.
So they have pretty extraordinary firepower.
And then they've got cruise missiles and drones.
They could do a lot of damage to Israel.
Now, obviously, the Israeli Air Force went in there with Mossad and it started to do significant damage to both the inventory and the production capability.
They also have to be very careful, as you acknowledge.
That if they're going to do damage to Israel, Israel can start to really escalate and go after significant leadership assets, including Khamenei himself.
Also, this is where the US role becomes really important because President Trump needs to message to Khamenei that he will not tolerate a response above a certain threshold against Israel and also against the United States.
And if he does, that could trigger a devastating US response.
And it's the credibility of a US response.
That's more important than if Trump actually does it.
The more credible it is, the more likely that Khamenei will be very careful because he knows the only force on God's earth that can bring down his regime is the United States military.
So, Mark, what do you think at this point is the possibility that the Iranian regime actually falls?
We've seen unexpected things happening in the Middle East, including, of course, the fall of the Assad regime after decades in power, thanks to the complete hollowing out of Hezbollah.
There's a lot of speculation.
The Iranian people do not like the Iranian regime at all.
The Iranians have shut down their Internet internally, so they do not want people obviously coordinating across Iran in the face of these Israeli attacks.
How real is the possibility that the Iranian regime collapses or that the Iranian people do something about it?
Because it does not look like a regime change is going to be forced from the outside.
Well, I think it can be both.
I mean, I certainly think that the Israelis taking out leadership assets.
I'm starting to go after the security apparatus of the regime, which, by the way, has two purposes.
One is for external aggression and one is for internal repression.
So you start to remove or to weaken or distract or undermine that internal repression apparatus.
Do you give space for Iranians to come back to the streets?
And Ben, as you know, they've been on the streets since 2009.
Millions of Iranians, multiple rounds, yelling death to the dictator, President Biden, Obama, Trump.
Are you with us or the dictator?
Weakening the regime, undermining the regime, potentially toppling the regime, a central pillar of their Iran strategy.
So pressure from the outside, maximum support for Iranians on the inside.
This is the Reagan strategy.
This is what Reagan did successfully against the Soviet Union.
I'm not going to predict the collapse of the Islamic Republic anytime soon, but I am old enough to have lived through the Cold War and the Reagan strategy.
And it was a matter of seven, eight years under Reagan where that strategy led to the collapse of the USSR.
So Mark, obviously you see some people who I would consider to be foreign policy, either ignoramuses or alarmists, who are suggesting this is going to escalate into a much larger, broader regional war or indeed World War III.
I have a hard time seeing exactly how that would happen.
And the fact is that the Iranian regime is at an all-time low in terms of its capacity, its military capacity, its ability to project force, its octopus tentacles have been essentially severed by the Israelis over the course of the last year and a half.
There's no cavalry coming for the Iranians.
The Russians are not going to step in and help the Iranians.
The Chinese are not going to step in and help the Iranians.
They're essentially on their own here.
So what do you make of people who are claiming that this is going to spiral out into a broader regional war that will quote-unquote suck in the United States or that it will turn into World War III?
I actually think those people are making war more likely, not less likely, because what they're trying to do is undercut U.S. military credibility.
If they undercut U.S. military credibility, that means the Iranians think they can escalate without paying a price.
If they think they can escalate without paying a price, they're more likely to do things that are going to actually create a broader regional conflict.
They may engage in attacks against U.S. forces, against our Gulf allies, terrorist attacks, not only in the region, but maybe in the United States.
Again, it's so important that Khamenei understands that he cannot go above a certain threshold.
And if he does, The wrath of Donald Trump and the U.S. military will come upon him.
But that crowd is making the argument, is really trying to weaken Trump, weaken his leverage, and weaken American military credibility, and in doing so, making that war more likely, not less likely.
Now, Mark, there's been a lot of speculation about the possibility that perhaps the Americans might join in for a couple of rounds.
That B-2s might be flown from Diogo Garcia to drop a couple of bombs on Fordow, for example, in an attempt to essentially destroy that remaining nuclear facility that, as you say, is deep underground and requires ordinance that the Israelis simply don't have.
What do you think are the chances of that?
Is that something the United States should actually consider?
Look, I think it really depends on President Trump.
I mean, if there's continued Israeli success, as there has been over the past 24 hours, I think he already is trying to own that success.
I mean, I think in his post today, you could see already him putting his arms around that success.
You know, I'm part of that success.
It was U.S. military equipment.
It was my support for Bibi.
These are the things that he's now starting to really embrace this, despite the fact that the isolationists in his party are starting to get very, very upset with the president.
I think at some point, President Trump could probably appreciate that.
Once the Israelis have done multiple rounds and have destroyed as much as they can, this would be an historic opportunity for him to really set back Iran's nuclear weapon program, not by months or years, but maybe decades.
And I think that may be the opportunity where he comes in with B-2 bombers, destroys Fordow, and gets rid of whatever remaining infrastructure the Iranians have.
The other potential option, and I think this is Khamenei's smartest play, is after this humiliation, wait a week.
But then actually send lead Iranian negotiator Iraqji to Oman to start negotiating with the Americans again.
Trump has already signaled.
He's prepared for a deal.
And he'll sit down with the Iranians and do this peacefully.
He's been warning about that for months.
We'll do this peacefully or we'll do this militarily.
And I think Trump was heavily engaged with Bibi in running a very well-oiled deception operation.
That lulled the Iranians into a false sense that the president wasn't prepared to greenlight Israeli military power.
And they were literally caught both figuratively and literally in their beds when the Israelis launched a preemptive attack and took out dozens of IRC commanders and army chiefs and nuclear scientists.
So Khamenei's best play, go back to the negotiations and see if he can get an offer that he can live with.
Trump, I think, actually now is in a much more powerful position, both at the negotiating table and in terms of his military option to strip Iran once and for all of the capabilities it needs to build nuclear weapons.
Mark Dubowitz, Chief Executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Really appreciate the time and the insight.
Thanks so much, Ben.
Appreciate it.
Alrighty, folks.
Well, meanwhile, this weekend, you can expect the protesters out en masse.
Not against the Iranians who are firing missiles into the center of Israeli cities or against Hamas who are still holding hostages and shooting aid workers, nor indeed against criminal illegal immigrants or anyone else.
No, the protests are going to be against President Trump because no kings or something.
According to DemocracyDocket.com, millions of people are set to rally across the nation in opposition to President Trump's extreme agenda and to counter-program the military parade in Washington, D.C. To have no kings day, the over 2,000 planned demonstrations are set to kick off Saturday morning, June 14th.
And as I've mentioned on the show before, this does not mean a lot of people are going to show up at each demonstration.
You can declare yourself a demonstration in Chappaqua, New York, and it'll be you and a buddy.
And hey, cool.
You're one of the 2,000 demonstrations.
The protests have been organized by exactly the same organizations who are always there.
They just switch the signs and they're ready to go.
Professionals, people who are bored, have nothing to do, no jobs, don't need to prep for Father's Day since they don't have families.
Really great people.
The ACLU, public citizen, Planned Parenthood, the rogues' gallery of terrible left-wing groups.
Deirdre Schifling, the ACLU's chief political and advocacy officer, said, quote, No King's Day is about standing up for our democracy, standing up for our rights, our liberties, making sure we are sending a strong message that we are going to have a free and fair democracy.
Wow, that sounds like a real message to resonate around.
Very inspiring.
I still don't know what you're rallying for and against.
What is it?
Aside from Orange Man Bad, what is this, precisely?
Schifling said, we've had this democracy for 250 years.
As imperfect as it has been, we are going to keep that democracy.
Question, wasn't Donald Trump elected president of the United States?
Oh yeah, he was.
Weren't the Republicans in Congress elected?
Yes, they were.
Schifling said, we didn't want to be a conflict or an excuse to have conflict with peaceful protesters in this military parade, which is why they are not doing an event near the actual army parade.
They also, I would assume, understand the optics of protesting.
The United States military looks pretty unpatriotic and unpleasant.
Many Republican governors and law enforcement officials are saying that if protesters obstruct traffic, well, things are going to happen.
A Florida sheriff named Wayne Ivey said in a warning to demonstrators, if you throw a brick, a firebomb, or point a gun at one of our deputies, we will be notifying your family where to collect your remains because we will kill you graveyard dead.
And that sounds about right.
And I love the characterization by some of the No Kings people.
He's saying he's going to shoot protesters.
Nope, you don't speak English.
If you throw a brick or a firebomb or you point a gun at a deputy, then that is a deadly threat.
That is assault with a deadly weapon.
And so at that point, you being dead is a likely outcome.
Governor Ron DeSantis also suggested that the law in the state of Florida, my wonderful home state where we don't tolerate none of this crap.
That if you obstruct drivers, if you surround a car in a threatening manner, the driver does not have to stop and allow you to trap them.
That the driver can continue to drive.
You're not allowed to surround cars and threaten the people inside the cars.
That is because we do this thing called rule of law in Florida, a thing we didn't do back in my old hometown of Los Angeles.
Well, speaking of events in California and speaking of the unfolding events in Iran and Israel, Joining us online is California Democrat Ro Khanna.
Thanks so much for taking the time, Congressman.
Thank you, Ben.
Appreciate you having me back.
So why don't we start with, obviously, the news of the day.
Huge geopolitical news.
Israel has launched a series of devastating strikes against the Iranian nuclear facilities.
They've taken out an enormous number of the top members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran had been making very clear for years that they had an intention to develop a nuclear weapon.
What's your take on the situation?
Well, respectfully, Ben, I disagree with you on this.
One, my concern is that Iran is going to move their nuclear development underground, that they're going to get rid of monitoring.
I don't think this is like Syria or Iraq where you could just, through strikes, eliminate all the nuclear capability.
I also think it runs the risk of a regional war.
We've already seen oil prices.
Go up.
That's going to hurt Americans in the pocketbook.
Any regional confrontation could put American troops at risk.
And I really had supported President Trump's diplomatic efforts, the type that Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene were encouraging.
Okay, so I want to get into that briefly.
So first of all, the idea...
That obviously is untrue.
The IAEA itself found this week that that is untrue, that they have been violating all sorts of regulations and agreements they had made in the past to rush toward a nuclear weapon.
the idea that Iran needs a civilian nuclear program in the first place is an absurdity, considering it's one of the most oil-rich nations on planet Earth and its economy has been totally shut off to exports of oil.
So it's not like they're And then beyond that, the idea of a regional war spreading outward.
The fact is that the situation has changed rather markedly in the Middle East, given the fact that Israel has done such a remarkable job destroying so many of the Iranian proxies in the area.
Who precisely would come to Iran's defense?
What would a regional war look like?
Iran's worst move ever would be to strike at the United States, given the fact that right now Israel has been flying sorties literally in the middle of the day, unfettered over Iranian airspace, refueling over Iranian airspace.
Right now, the Iranian government is in the weakest military position that it has been, certainly, over the course of my lifetime.
And so, I don't even understand how you get from point A to point B with the idea of a regional war on the horizon.
The Saudis are quietly celebrating.
So are the UAE, so are Bahrain.
Pretty much everybody who's not Qatar is celebrating this morning in the Middle East.
Well, we responded with a few points.
First, you're absolutely right that Iran was cheating on the nuclear civilian development.
I'm not defending Iran.
But the main point remains that they still had a long way to go to actually put nuclear energy on a missile as a transport of actually having a strike land.
That's different than developing nuclear energy.
Second, it's unclear that these strikes are going to achieve anything because many experts believe they're just going to move the program underground.
Totally stop monitoring.
That's why President Trump was trying to pursue a deal that would have actually stopped.
Third, the fact that the oil prices have shot through the roof suggests that people believe there's going to be instability.
First of all, they could hit Israel, which they should not do.
They should not be retaliating.
Secondly, they could hit American assets.
I'm glad Secretary Rubio made it very clear that there would be a major consequence if they did that.
Third, this is going to inflame other countries that Look, the president ran on saying that he was going to de-escalate in Ukraine, de-escalate in Gaza, de-escalate with Iran.
All three of the situations arguably are more inflamed than when he took office.
So, final question on this, and then we'll move on to the situation in California.
If it were to be found that Israel had significantly hampered or destroyed nuclear facilities, including Natanz, which apparently no longer exists this morning, and if this does not spiral into some sort of regional conflict, would you acknowledge that this was exactly the right move by the Israeli government and that, in fact, Iran had been essentially stalling for time in these negotiations?
It appears that that was the conclusion that was come to not just by the Israelis, but it seems like that was the conclusion that the Trump administration was pretty clearly moving toward anyway.
Look, I'm always open to assessing based on the facts.
When they took out Nasrallah, And I've been a critic of Netanyahu.
So if the facts on the ground were to show that it was effective, of course, I would look at the facts.
But my view is that the diplomatic solution would have been better, wouldn't have caused the kind of inflammation we see, and is the one that President Trump was pursuing and should have pursued.
But look, I'll evaluate it based on the facts that come out and whether this actually does make any difference in Iran's view.
All righty.
Meanwhile, over in California, there was a fraught situation yesterday when Senator Alex Padilla sort of crashed a press conference by Senator Kristi Noem, sort of conflicting views over how to interpret the events that happened right there.
What was your interpretation of the events?
Because the video can be read a couple of ways.
I mean, the truth is, I probably would not know Alex Padilla if I ran into him on the street.
And it seems to me that one of the things that happened here is that Alex Padilla walked in.
That the security didn't recognize him.
He wasn't wearing a senatorial pin.
And he started shouting or at least asking very loudly questions of Kristi Noem when he was not invited.
And they sort of muscled him out of the room.
You read it differently.
What was your read?
Well, look, I sometimes wander into the Capitol.
I may not have my pin.
And I get people at the Capitol Police saying, sir, sir, what are you doing?
And right away, I show them my ID.
I say, I'm Ro Khanna.
I'm a congressperson.
Here, the problem was that when Alex Padilla kept saying, I'm a senator, I'm Alex Padilla.
It's on the video.
I am a senator.
Someone should have said, OK, sir, can you show us your ID?
They didn't do that.
They pushed him out of the room.
They threw him down to the floor, manhandled him, and then handcuffed him.
So regardless of one's view, certainly we could agree that that use of force and not asking him for his ID was way, way over the top.
Well, I mean, I think that you can make a security-based assessment that he is pushing back against them.
At this point, he probably should have just walked out of the room.
I assume that if you were confronted by security at the Capitol building and they said, sir, we need you to step aside, you would actually step aside as opposed to trying to kind of continue to move your force into the room before...
Do you think they ought to be fired or something?
I think there ought to be an investigation about whether they should have manhandled Alex Padilla, pushed him down to the ground and handcuffed him when he's saying, I'm a U.S. senator, I'm Alex Padilla.
I guess the first question I'd ask them is, did you really not know who he was?
Under oath.
Or did some of these people know that he was Alex Padilla, a U.S. senator?
Because there were six, seven people around them.
I find it hard to believe that no one there, including Secretary Noem, knew who he was.
I mean, someone, Secretary Noem, could have said he's Alex Padilla senator.
Now, do I think Secretary Noem knows all 100 senators or all 435 members of Congress?
Probably not.
But that should be the first question of the investigation.
And then they should look at the video, because a number of times he says, I'm Alex Padilla senator.
Did anyone say?
Okay, sir, can you please show us your ID?
Because he was led in that building legitimately.
He had a meeting with someone else in the building.
He showed his ID.
He's in the building.
So can you see from Senator Padilla's perspective, he's in that building.
He's legitimately there as a senator.
It's not like he snuck in.
And then there's a press conference across the hall.
And he goes in and, okay, yes, he's slightly disruptive, but Ben, you're a huge, huge, He was not engaged in violent protests.
He was engaged in speech, political speech.
The response to that can't be the overbearing handcuffing and manhandling of a U.S. senator.
Now, on a scale of 1 to 10, Congressman, this is being treated as like a 10-level crisis by some in Congress.
It seems very impassioned floor speeches from Senator Cory Booker and the like suggesting this is the beginning of authoritarianism in the United States.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how grave?
Is the situation, do you believe, with Senator Padilla?
I think it's a pattern, and I'd put it at a seven.
Look, I've appreciated some of your criticisms.
Of the Trump administration, you call from your ideology, balls and strikes, but I think you see an administration that has gone after universities, that is going after local governments and states, saying we want to be sending in National Guard and we want to be sending in the Marines, that is going after private corporations.
Whatever your view of DEI, the state is now telling private corporations, here's what you need to do and not do.
And now has a use of force if someone is in a And I think the totality of that says, well, this is not constitutional limited government, and we've got to stand up for that.
Now, I believe we will stand up for that, and Donald Trump is basically going to be a lame duck in a year and a half, and we're going to have the American people stand up for constitutional government.
I imagine you have concerns about the response of the state, given your views of limited constitutional government.
I mean, listen, I think there are interesting discussions to be had on a wide variety of the topics that you've just mentioned.
I will say that when I when I watch that video and then see Senator Padilla filming videos a little while later talking about it and having seen how many other actual authoritarian authoritarian countries work, I'm not going to put it a seven.
This ranks pretty low on the scale of authoritarian moves by government that I've seen in my lifetime.
But we can agree to disagree.
Congressman Khanna, really appreciate the time.
Thank you.
You're always fair.
Always enjoy chatting.
Also, it's Friday.
We made another episode and no one stopped us.
It's Ben After Dark, 7.30 p.m. Eastern, only on Daily Wire Plus.
Tonight, I hit send on a bunch of thoughts I probably should have drafted.
Glenn Beck meets a $3,900 goblin plush and his friends.
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And for some reason, we're talking about Kristen Chenoweth's dog?
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Alrighty, folks, we've reached the end of today's show.
Obviously, it's going to be a busy weekend, so we'll be back here Monday with, I am sure, a lot more.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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