Episode 5177: US And Israel Attack Iran; War Builds In The Middle East
On February 28, 2026, the U.S. and Israel launched "Operation Epic Fury"—a multi-day strike against Iran using the USS Abraham Lincoln, USS Gerald R. Ford, and F-22s, targeting IRGC command posts, Chabahar naval bases, missile sites, and leadership. President Trump’s speech framed it as regime change, urging Iranian forces to defect while hinting at special ops involvement, mirroring Israel’s 2025 tactics. With over 1,000 targets hit, Iran’s navy may be crippled, but retaliation risks escalating amid Houthi blockades and Strait of Hormuz disruptions. Legal justifications rely on Trump’s Article II powers and the 2001 AUMF, despite no congressional approval—raising questions about oversight and future conflicts. [Automatically generated summary]
War and the rumors of war, no longer rumor, the United States commence major combat operations, as the President of the United States Commander-in-Chief told us earlier this morning.
We got Captain Finnell, Brandon Weik, Dr. Bradley Thayer, Sam Fettis, Joe Allen, D. Mike Davis, a whole crew today to actually walk you through exactly what is going on and potentially what direction is this going to take.
I want to start with our own Jack Bosobic.
Jack, been very impressed the last couple of days on human events daily.
You've gone back to your roots as a naval intelligence officer.
I think you made Captain Finnell very proud.
Walk us through where we are today, because what we're going to do is try to take out the opinions and really focus on some of the smartest people we know that know the region, know the assets that have been deployed, can walk through strategy, tactics, et cetera.
So the war room posse who will be inundated with people's opinions and the yelling and screaming about the politics of it all will have a good basis in exactly what in the hell is going on.
On Human Events Daily, we've spent all week saying that we expect strikes on Iran this weekend.
We said all the indications and warnings are there.
You saw these amassed forces of naval combat power that were sent to the Gulf, that were sent to the East Med, the Lincoln, and then, of course, the Ford arriving just a couple of days ago.
And so with that in place, plus the massive amount of air power that the U.S., as well as the refuelers, sent over to the Middle East, to the region, Saudi Arabia, Israel operating off of these airways and runways.
We know that these were not sent over for negotiations.
These were all the indications and warnings.
And we heard the signal out of the White House as well that strikes were imminent.
I think for me, one of the top indicators was the deployment of almost the entire Fifth Fleet out of Bahrain there in the Gulf, adjacent to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, them departing port.
That, of course, was done in terms of a classic defensive dispersal movement in preparation for retaliatory strikes from Iran.
Those strikes have come in the face of these initial strikes from the United States.
So, you know, we went in and we explained how all of this was marching towards the United States was clearly marching towards military action in Iran all week.
And that, of course, is what we saw.
And we put up potential strike packages that we could see for the United States.
It does appear that the U.S. at this point, we're told that the strikes were conducted using Tomahawk land attack missiles.
Those, of course, fired from destroyers.
It appears that the F-22s were used for suppression of enemy air defense.
So we know those air defense assets were targeted.
We know that military anti-air missiles were struck.
We know that ballistic missiles were struck.
We're told that IRGC command posts.
This is Iranians' Revolutionary Guard Corps, particularly their naval ports and their naval hubs were hit, Chabahar, Bandar Abbas, and other areas along the Gulf, because of course, the president and the White House understand the IRDC's initial goal in terms of all this,
one of their initial most deadly courses of action would be closing the Strait of Hormuz to be able to inflict massive economic chaos on the entire world, that being the key naval choke point for all of the oil, the petroleum, liquid natural gas coming out of the Gulf.
And so we see those strikes from the United States on the Israeli side.
It does appear that the Israelis were targeting leadership.
Again, remains to be seen.
And I would say, as always, truth is the first casualty in war.
So some of these initial reports, we do need to be circumspect.
We do need to wait for full confirmation from the Department of War, from folks on the ground who are giving us direct reporting about what exactly was hit, what the battle damage assessment is, what capabilities these sites, these facilities have, leadership, if any leadership was taken out, whether or not that's actually confirmed by both sides.
So again, we need to be careful when it comes to that.
But I will say this in terms of strategy, it appears that these strikes, the strike package, Operation Epic Fury, which the president has launched in the early hours of this Saturday morning here, this is not going to be one salvo.
This is not going to be one round of strikes.
This is going to be days, not hours, is what we're being told.
I've dubbed it the escalate to de-escalate strategy, where President Trump is going to run a series of strikes.
Israel is going to run a series of strikes.
You may see that over the course of one to two days, then wait to respond to the Iranian strikes.
At that point, pause, assess for battle damage, assess for whether or not they're seeing signals from the regime cracking and being willing to make this deal or potentially even regime collapse.
As the president himself said in his historic address that he announced and released in the early hours of this morning, calling for the Iranian people to rise up.
So, Steve, that's where things stand right now.
We're also, of course, seeing Iran retaliating with strikes on U.S. naval bases, U.S. military installations all across the Gulf.
We're even seeing Iran target Jebel Ali, the port of Dubai.
That missile was intercepted.
But again, Iran really looking to inflict that economic damage, that economic pain on the United States, our Gulf partners, Israel.
And of course, the regime knows that they are in survival mode right now in Tehran.
That's, I mean, and we have Brandon Reichert and Captain Finnell, who I think were very consistent over the last couple of weeks.
Both of these individuals were saying, hey, look, these negotiations, if something was happened, it'd be great.
But these negotiations, President Trump is really waiting to get all the assets in place.
And once he gets the asset in place, the party's on.
In President Trump's address, and we're going to break that down and play it in pieces so people can see it.
We've had this theory that if he's not going to get tapped along in these negotiations, now the Oman mediator, let's call him that, flew from Geneva to Washington, actually went to the White House.
I believe he met with the vice president to talk about how he thought there were big breakthroughs coming from the Persians.
He then gave an interview on CBS saying he thought there were breakthroughs.
He's like in shock now.
But it doesn't look like this is coercive diplomacy, that the president's giving him a tap to say, you're not going to drag us out.
I want a deal.
I want the whole nuclear effort.
You got to say it's shut down.
I think it's deeper than that because he's essentially calling for the Iranian people to rise up and use these strikes as a almost, if not total decapitation strike, a limited decapitation strike to call for the Iranian people to rise up and have regime change?
Well, Steve, that's what the president said himself.
He did not talk only about or particularly about the nuclear program in his speech.
He talked about 47 years that he called chaos of the Iranian revolutionary regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran since the takeover in 1979.
He talked about the attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq when that was ongoing and how Iran and Iranian proxies, Shia proxies and militias were behind so many of those attacks.
And he talked about how he perceived Iran as a great threat to the region, a great threat to stability.
And he responded by saying that now is the time for the Iranian people to rise up.
So, you know, what we're not seeing, I would say, in contrast with 2003 and the Bush strategy or Afghanistan, 2001, we're not seeing boots on the ground.
We're not seeing American forces.
We don't see those Marine expeditionary units.
We don't see Army forces, you know, National Guards being called up, that sort of thing.
We're seeing air.
We're seeing naval power, but we're not seeing boots on the ground.
That being said, President Trump clearly calling for the Iranian people to take aim at the Iranian regime and has targeted the U.S. military as such as well.
Well, and calling for regime change, remember, we're in the first, what, eight hours of this, right?
And calling for regime change, it doesn't look at least right now, it's insertion of any either special forces and or ground troops.
So he's calling for the Iranian people to take it into their own hands like a couple of weeks ago when Scott Besson had broken with breaking the currency.
They took to the streets.
He's calling for the Iranian people to do the regime change.
It looks like we'll go in and try to do as much decapitation as possible.
And I certainly wouldn't preclude the option of a commando force.
We saw the Maduro raid not long ago, also conducted on a weekend similar to this.
And so I wouldn't preclude the president.
He certainly has that option to call up special forces, tier one operators.
This is what they do, whether it's Delta, whether it's HEAL Team 6, to be able to go in and target either leadership or target these weapons of mass destruction stockpiles, either these enriched uranium sites or anything that's still available, anything that they deem as either NBC, nuclear, biological, chemical, any of those potential sites or research sites that they could be looking at within the regime.
Certainly Israel has conducted commando raids within Iran in the past, has used leave-behind assets, deep insertion of Mossad units, IDF special forces as well.
So we could be seeing that type of activity.
I would say pretty much everything's on the table.
And I would also point out that these initial strikes could even just be shaping operations for larger strikes that are still yet to come, B-2s or others, that the president, if he chooses, could send into battle.
Now, we don't have reports of in the June, in the 12-day war, the initial strike on that Thursday night, Friday morning, all throughout that Saturday.
It was obvious that there were insertion of Mossad.
They actually took out certain members of the Revolutionary Guard, other senior commanders.
That looked like a regime change strike at the time, as we were the first to bring up here on War Room when we were covering it.
Has there been any indication at all they've had that type of infiltration in the type of Kind of the tactics the Mossad used the first time to take out individuals that they had targeted that were senior members of command and control.
Well, Steve, at this point, I would say it's too early to tell or perhaps just too early to confirm.
We're seeing rumors that members of IRGC leadership are taken out.
There's a rumor spreading across social media.
Some people say the Ayatollah was taken out.
Some people say that he was secured in another location.
Again, this is the fog of war, and we are in the fog of war.
Truth is the first casualty in war.
So my recommendation to everyone that is stay frosty.
Although, of course, we know going from the 12-day war back last June, that is certainly the MO of Mossad, that is certainly the MO of IDF, and working with those partners in a coalition force, as the United States did at that time.
It would not surprise me at all if those commando units or those types of raids were used.
We're also hearing, by the way, reports that the United States, for the first time, ever used one-way attack drones or kamikaze drones.
These, of course, are ubiquitous on both sides of the Ukrainian conflict, now being used by the United States, according to reports, in the first ever time for combat operations.
So, again, targeted kamikaze drone attacks, that could certainly be something that could be used against leadership.
We've got a packed agenda of all of our best and brightest.
Just closing thoughts.
The question is always timing.
When you saw the president's eight-minute video, and we are hearing that the president, in fact, we've got McCabe at the White House, Brian Glenzon, up and working about the timing of this.
Why now?
Why early on a Saturday morning on the last day of February in the year of our Lord 2026, sir?
Well, Steve, of course, the president operates on the president's time.
And clearly, just from an operational standpoint, what they were waiting for was for the Ford to arrive off the coast of Haifa, which is the port of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem area there in the eastern Mediterranean.
It's very obvious that that's exactly the moment that they were waiting for.
And we were tracking the USS Ford as it crossed through the Strait of Gibraltar, as it was crossing through the East Med.
President Trump, I think, you know, just having spent time with him on Air Force One last week, he repeatedly brought up those protests in the streets of Tehran.
He said over and over, it looks like the people are ready to rise up, but perhaps they just need a little push.
You know, they need a little pressure on the regime.
We know that the economic forces, the currency, the sanctions that Secretary Besson and other countries have put on Iran have really broken the economy, broken the currency in Iran that's leading to a lot of the economic pressure that's causing some of these protests.
And it appears that President Trump thought that this was the right time to pull the trigger.
A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.
Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.
Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.
For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted death to America and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops, and the innocent people in many, many countries.
Among the regime's very first acts was to back a violent takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, holding dozens of American hostages for 444 days.
In 1983, Iran's proxies carried out the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut that killed 241 American military personnel.
In 2000, they knew and were probably involved with the attack on the USS Cole.
Many died.
Iranian forces killed and maimed hundreds of American service members in Iraq.
The regime's proxies have continued to launch countless attacks against American forces stationed in the Middle East in recent years, as well as U.S. naval and commercial vessels in international shipping lands.
It's been mass terror, and we're not going to put up with it any longer.
This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States armed forces.
I built and rebuilt our military in my first administration, and there is no military on earth even close to its power, strength, or sophistication.
My administration has taken every possible step to minimize the risk to U.S. personnel in the region.
Even so, and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill.
The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties.
That often happens in war, but we're doing this not for now.
We're doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.
We pray for every service member as they selflessly risk their lives to ensure that Americans and our children will never be threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran.
We ask God to protect all of our heroes in harm's way, and we trust that, with his help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail.
We have the greatest in the world, and they will prevail.
Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces, and all of the police, I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity, or in the alternative, face certain death.
So, lay down your arms.
You will be treated fairly with total immunity, or you will face certain death.
Finally, to the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand.
Stay sheltered.
Don't leave your home.
It's very dangerous outside.
Bombs will be dropping everywhere.
When we are finished, take over your government.
It will be yours to take.
This will be probably your only chance for generations.
For many years, you have asked for America's help, but you never got it.
No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight.
Now you have a president who is giving you what you want.
So let's see how you respond.
America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force.
Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach.
This is the moment for action.
Do not let it pass.
May God bless the brave men and women of America's armed forces.
Commander-in-Chief, earlier this morning, the hour of your freedom is at hand.
He's telling the Persian people.
A couple of notes.
Number one, the White House, I believe, just came out and said the president, all rumors and discussion of the president addressing the nation today are inaccurate.
That's from the White House.
So it looks like what we got from the president is what we've gotten.
Also, the foreign minister of Iran is saying the initial strikes on senior leadership of the Iranian government has failed.
Well, Steve, it's a really serious time in our history and the history of the region.
I say that it's a result of 47 years of inaction by previous administrations.
And so the political side, you said we won't talk to today, but you are seeing what military planners inside the Pentagon have been looking at for 47 years, a culmination of examination and looking at targets across Iran.
And the president, in his statement today, said they were going to destroy missiles and the missile industry, annihilate the Navy, stop terrorism, which means stop the leadership of Iran, both the government leaders, the mullahs, the IRGC, which is their Revolutionary Guard Corps military, and then their regular military.
And then he said no nuclear weapons.
And again, he talked about the leadership.
So those are the basic great categories.
Then you have the targeting that's been done.
And we don't know the extent of how many targets were struck.
I would guess something of over a thousand or more targets were identified, probably closer to 2,000, given the scope of how big Iran's country is, the size of their military, and these general categories.
And so we don't know all the details.
Jack was right.
We're in the fog of war right now.
There's obviously, I would say the Iranian regime is in a state of shock in terms of their ability to assess what's been hit.
So we don't have all the details of all the results of the TLAM strikes that went against all these assets and targets in Iran.
On the naval side, I think it's really interesting.
And I think the USS Abraham Lincoln was probably the lead on the naval portion of this strike, whereas the Ford and the other ground-based air assets that we have in the region were probably conducting more strikes deeper into Iran.
In fact, the Ford is actually closer to Tehran than probably the Lincoln was.
In terms of the naval, we should not forget that in 1988, the USS Samuel B. Roberts was struck by an Iranian mine during Operation Frayn Mantis.
And then three years later in 1991, the USS Tripoli and the USS Princeton were both struck by mine.
So as the president said, Iran has been terrorizing the region and killing people for a long time.
And this is what the attacks are going after, to make sure to defame their ability to reach out and disrupt international shipping or anything else.
I want to get Brandon in on this thing, but real quickly, just to make sure people understand, you're saying the Ford, which is in the eastern Mediterranean, probably had more impact on this than the Lincoln that's in the North Arabian Sea.
In terms of attacking ground targets, we don't know what naval targets were struck.
We haven't had any reporting out of what happened in Bandur Abbas and Karn Island, the naval platforms themselves.
Where is the Iranian Navy?
I would expect that much of the Iranian Navy is either below the sea and sunk or is inoperable or isolated because of the Lincoln and that array of naval armada that's there.
And it's not just surface ships.
It's not just the aircraft carriers.
It's also the submarines.
And one last point Jack mentioned is this issue with what can we do in terms of special operations.
We shouldn't forget that there is Expeditionary Mobile Base or ESB-3, the Chesty Puller, is in the Gulf of Oman or in those waters south of Iran.
And they have the capacity to bring special operation forces in to do special operations like we saw in Absolute Resolve in Venezuela.
So we have all the assets in the area that we need to be able to continuously pound the targets that we know that we need to get after to defang Tehran.
And I don't take any pleasure in saying that, but it is here now.
And it was an excellent assessment by both Captain Fannell and Jack.
So well done.
Thank you.
But I think we need to also confirm something.
I have been told that the Wall Street Journal report is correct, that they have killed at least two IRGC commanders.
I have also been told that there is some concern now that the Houthis are getting ready to launch long-range strikes against Israel.
I would like to note that so far, according to my guys in the UAE, the American air defense or the air defense systems in the region have so far held up, which is something I did not think would be possible, which either indicates to me that the Americans and Israelis were more effective in knocking out those missile launchers than I thought they would be, or the Iranians are still trying to organize an effective counterpunch.
But I think that's some good news this morning.
And also, it looks a lot like, according to Bloomberg two hours ago, and I think this was going to happen anyway, the oil companies are now redirecting the flow of oil away from the Strait of Hormuz to other areas because the Houthis are already starting to impose their blockade again of the Red Sea.
So to me, it looks like the first strike packages of the United States and Israel have been relatively effective.
The Iranians have countered, although I am not convinced that the Iranians have gotten the kill shot in yet, which is good for us.
Because if the ultimate objective is to ensure forever that Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb, I think we have cracked that problem through these negotiations by agreeing a very important breakthrough that has never been achieved any time before.
And I think if we can capture that and build on it, I think a deal is within our reach.
And this was something I might have said to Kurt Mills or you, I can't remember, in the weeks ago, I was saying that it really isn't about nuclear weapons anymore.
This is really a joint U.S.-Israeli issue.
And therefore, the Israelis are going to have veto power as much as the Americans are when it comes to negotiations.
And for the Israelis, it's never been just the nukes.
It's really been the ballistic missile and hypersonic weapon threat that Iran poses.
And in order to get the Iranians to agree to no enrichment that the Omani was referring to, Trump basically had to verbally say, okay, I'll drop the ballistic missile reduction issue.
And there's no way that the Israelis are then going to come on board with that.
And that's the issue right now, because this is not just about America and Iran, unfortunately.
It's also about Israel now.
So that's why I was saying that this was all sort of spoken.
But even with the blissed missile, this is what I get to.
What the president said today is this is he wants, he's calling for the people to rise up in the streets and take their, this is a regime change, is it not?
And he's not saying he's going to put boots on the ground, but he's implying I'm going to do what I got to do.
And you take it from there.
And in fact, the police, remember, there's a massive army besides the Revolutionary Guard.
Revolutionary Guard is obviously the lair on top that controls things, but he's telling police, he's telling law enforcement, he's telling the army, if you put down your weapons or if you turn against the regime, there will be no implications against you.
I do think that there are a few tiny differences between the way the administration dealt with Congress before the Venezuela operation and before this Iranian operation.
Before Venezuela, the administration didn't do much outreach to the members that you would typically see an administration do outreach to.
In this instance, my sources tell me and my colleague Julia Jester that Secretary of State Marco Rubio actually did do his best to reach out to all members of the Gang of Eight.
That's the top four congressional leaders from both parties.
And then, of course, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee from both parties.
Rubio was able to make those calls.
He wasn't able to get in touch with all of them because some of them were traveling, not able to pick up the phone.
But I do think that that is one key difference.
Of course, it does not explain away the fact that if Trump is calling it a war and warning of American casualties, he did not do this through congressional authorization.
But I think there's something the administration is going to lean on in the coming days here because a U.S. official is telling MS now that Rubio, during that briefing on Tuesday that he did with the Gang of Eight before Trump's State of the Union, the U.S. official is saying that Rubio consulted with congressional leaders during that.
Speaker Mike Johnson put out a statement this morning where he said that Rubio during that Gang of Eight briefing on Tuesday said that strikes might be needed or imminent to protect American assets in the region.
I think all of that is going to suddenly become very important.
It was definitely important before, but now in light of who's authorizing what and on what legal grounds the administration is acting, it's going to be key because coming out of that briefing, Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries had a lot of questions and they were not supportive of what the administration was telling them.
And certainly that's going to be important as the administration might maybe try to argue, well, we consulted with members of Congress.
Certainly members of Congress have not voted on any of this and that's key.
But I think we're watching these fault lines begin to emerge as we start questioning what happened here, under what authorization, and importantly, what might come next.
Okay, Mike, you've been one of the leaders in this thinking of the Article II powers of the president, particularly his Article II powers as commander-in-chief.
You're one of the biggest advocates of using the Alien Sedition Act from what, 1798 about the situation with Venezuela and Trinidad and the invasion of our country.
You also were around during the Bush years.
Just technically, walk me through.
We still have this, what, military authorization use that's from 2001, I think is what the kind of the legal documentation that has been used to do various military operations.
So just give us the range of what's out there.
Your interpretation now of his Article II powers.
They've already had a gang of a briefing.
Once again, the administration is saying that Ruby has got the lead on this.
Where do we stand with actually the technical, technically how the commander-in-chief can do this, sir?
Under Article I of the Constitution, Congress has the power to declare war.
And there's a difference between declaring war and making war.
Under Article II, the President of the United States is the Commander-in-Chief.
And going all the way back to the Federalist Papers, our founders all agreed that the president has the inherent power to repel an invasion or an imminent attack on the United States.
We have not had a declaration of war since World War II.
And in 1973, Congress passed over President Nixon's veto.
They overrode the veto and they passed the War Powers Act of 1973.
That's been on the book for over 50 years.
The problem for that statute is no president, Democrat or Republican, has ceded its constitutionality.
Every president has said the War Powers Act of 1973 is not constitutional, and no president has complied with the War Powers Act of 1973.
Any court that has addressed this issue when people have sued the president to try to stop, for example, President Obama's attack on Libya, the courts have said that these are political questions that the courts will not decide, meaning these are questions for the political branches, for the Congress and for the president to fight it out, to figure out who has the power and who does not.
Yeah, every, and not only do textualists And originalists think it's unconstitutional.
Every president since 1973, when it's enacted, Democrat and Republican, has said the War Powers Act of 1973 is unconstitutional.
One of the big problems with it is it provides a legislative veto, which is unconstitutional, according to the Supreme Court's.
I think it was Chaka versus decision in like 1986.
You can't have legislative vetoes by Congress.
How the War Powers Act is supposed to work, if any president ever complied with it or acknowledged its constitutionality, which no president has done, Democrat or Republican, is that the president provides notice to the Speaker of the House and the President pro tem of the Senate within 48 hours of the actions taken against a foreign country.
And then there's a 60-day time period where troops must be withdrawn unless Congress authorizes the military action.
And that's the problem with the War Powers Act.
That's what makes it unconstitutional.
You can get an extra 30 days on top of that 90 days to draw down the troops.
But if Congress does not authorize the action within that 60-day time period, the president has to pull out all the troops within 90 days.
And not only do we have the use of force in 2001 after 9-11 that gives the president broad power to go after terrorism, including, some would argue, I think President Trump would argue and many others would argue that that applies to Iran.
There's the 2002 military authorization against Iraq and its proxies, and presidents have used that as well.
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Mike Davis, explain to us, you made a comment.
There's a difference between declaring war and making war.
That is one of the reasons for the military use authorization.
Explain to people what that is, how it came about, and how it looks like.
It appears that that's what President Trump is going to use as his authorization to go do these strikes, particularly since he's had the Secretary of State and his national security advisor.
Because remember, Ruby is the first guy since Kissinger doing both to go up to Capitol Hill and brief the gang of eight.
That's not a random, that's not a random thing that happens, sir.
Yeah, there's the difference under the Constitution between declaring war, which that power belongs to Congress under Article 1, versus making war, which belongs to the Commander-in-Chief under Article 2.
There are serious legal ramifications if Congress declares war.
That affects our civil liberties as Americans.
The president has more authority over American citizens to fight a war than he does when there's not a declaration of war.
So I think people should be careful, these libertarians who are urging Congress to, urging the president to seek a declaration of war, there are serious implications for civil liberties if that happens.
But regardless, our founders understood that there's a difference between the two.
If you go back and look at the Federalist papers, the president as the commander-in-chief under Article II has the inherent power to repel an invasion.
He has the inherent power to stop an imminent attack.
And so if Iran, for example, we saw the Supreme Leader of Iran put out a video saying that he was going to sink American ships.
Well, the president has the inherent power, the inherent duty, actually, as the commander-in-chief to make sure that the supreme leader of Iran does not sink American ships regardless of whether there is a declaration of war.
And if you go back to 2001, after 9-11, Congress passed an authorization for the use of armed forces, the AU, excuse me, AUAF.
And it was back in 2001.
I'll just read it to you, and it's very broad.
It talks about this, that the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed,
or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons.
And Congress specifically noted in this AUMF that this is consistent with giving an authorization under the war powers resolution.
So the president has very broad power to go after international terrorism, particularly these Islamists, like the Islamists who run Iran, who have been organizing and carrying out terrorist strikes against the United States for the last 47 years.
I was in the North Arabian Sea on a combatant as a plane guard ship for air defense for the carry battle groups on Gonzo and Camel Station in the workup to what was a failed attack.
I think it's in April or April of not attack, but a rescue mission that didn't work.
We've been around there and president went through that.
He went through the Marine barracks.
He went through the coal.
He went through nine.
Is there, do you think they get caught up in like what's the justification over the last week?
What's the justification?
You know, what is it?
Are they going to get, are they going to get pressed on that hard, sir?
And I would just remind people that Iran has declared war on the United States for the last 47 years, and they've killed thousands of our people around the world for the last 47 years.
They've gotten after American military members.
They've gone after our diplomats.
They've gone after our citizens.
They've funded these terrorist attacks for 47 years.
And when the Supreme Leader is threatening to sink American ships, he learned the hard way that he's messing with the wrong president.
But under his Article II power as commander-in-chief, under this 2001 congressional resolution against international terrorism, he doesn't need to do anything.