Episode 5181: Where The Next Few Weeks Go With The War With Iran
Donald Trump’s U.S.-led strike on Iran’s supreme leader—killing him and succession candidates—accelerates a punitive campaign against Tehran’s missile, naval, and nuclear threats, with Israel as the operational lead. The operation, framed as retribution for decades of proxy wars (Hezbollah, Hamas) and a thwarted 2024 Trump assassination plot, risks escalation despite fragmented Iranian leadership and economic attacks on Saudi/Qatar assets. Meanwhile, Texas AG candidate Aaron Wrights ties an Austin shooting by a legally immigrated Senegalese suspect to "Islamification," pushing audits of immigrants and dismantling extremist networks, while Trump’s team warns of CENTCOM supply shortages if the conflict drags on—hinting at a Venezuela-style regime collapse or prolonged asymmetric warfare. [Automatically generated summary]
Formerly, Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, is dead.
This wretched and vile man had the blood of hundreds and even thousands of Americans on his hands and was responsible for the slaughter of countless thousands of innocent people all across many countries.
Last night, all over Iran, the voices of the Iranian people could be heard cheering and celebrating in the streets when his death was announced.
The entire military command is gone as well, and many of them want to surrender into saving their lives.
I just spoke to President Trump for several minutes about Iran.
I asked him about who is going to take over now that the Ayatollah, the supreme leader, is gone.
And his answer was interesting.
He said the attack was so successful, it knocked out most of the candidates.
He told me it's not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead.
I talked to him about the fact that the Iranians had tried to kill him.
There was a plot in 2024, an Iranian plot to try to kill Trump.
And he said of the Ayatollah, I got him before he got me.
They tried twice.
Well, I got him first.
As for how long the war will go on, the president told me he always thought it was going to be a four or five week deal.
That's what he told me, a four or five week operation.
He said it could be shorter, and he was prepared to go longer.
And about the three Americans who were killed, the president said it's war and you have casualties in war.
He marveled at the fact that with all the operations he has conducted as president in Venezuela, the one last summer in Iran, and this one, that the total casualty count, American casualties, is three.
That's a quick summary of a rather lengthy conversation with President Trump tonight.
Combat operations continue at this time in full force and they will continue until all of our objectives are achieved.
We have very strong objectives.
They could have done something two weeks ago, but they just couldn't get there.
Earlier today, CENTCOM shared the news that three U.S. military service members have been killed in action.
As one nation, we grieve for the true American patriots who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation.
Even as we continue the righteous mission for which they gave their lives, we pray for the full recovery of the wounded and send our immense love and eternal gratitude to the families of the fallen.
And sadly, there will likely be more.
Before it ends, that's the way it is.
Likely be more, but we'll do everything possible where that won't be the case.
But America will avenge their deaths and deliver the most punishing blow to the terrorists who have waged war against, basically, civilization.
Khan is a place that could be wonderful without Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has American blood on its hands.
It killed those Marines, 220, 18 sailors, in 1983.
And Ronald Reagan, the great Ronald Reagan, left and never did a damn thing.
Mr. President, unleash the American military with Israel on Hezbollah tonight, finish these bastards off.
They have American blood on their hands.
And it shows you how desperate Iran is to have to rely upon Hezbollah.
We have a chance here not only to take the mothership of terrorism down, Iran, we also have a chance to eliminate one of the most lethal proxies in the Mideast, Hezbollah.
Mr. President, do it and do it now.
They're weak.
We can take them out and we should take them out.
Between the United States and Israel, we got these bastards on the ropes.
Finish them off.
Is President Trump finished the job that President Reagan failed to do?
I am a big admirer of Ronald Reagan, but I'm here to tell you that Donald Trump, in my opinion, is the gold standard for Republicans, maybe any president, when it comes to foreign policy.
Maduro, everybody talked about him.
Well, Donald Trump's got him in jail.
Cuba's next.
They're going to fall.
This communist dictatorship in Cuba, their days are numbered.
The Iranian regime, the mothership of international terrorism, is about to collapse.
The captain of the ship, the Ayatollah, is stone cold dead.
These actions are right and they are necessary to ensure that Americans will never have to face a radical, bloodthirsty terrorist regime armed with nuclear weapons and lots of threats.
For almost 50 years, these wicked extremists have been attacking the United States while chanting the slogan, death to America or death to Israel or both.
They are the world's number one state sponsor of terror.
We are the world's greatest and most powerful nation, so we can do something about what they do.
These intolerable threats will not continue any longer.
I once again urge the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian military, police to lay down your arms and receive full immunity or face certain death.
It will be certain death.
Won't be pretty.
I call upon all Iranian patriots who yearn for freedom to seize this moment, to be brave, be bold, be heroic, and take back your country.
America is with you.
I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise.
The rest will be up to you, but we'll be there to help.
Thank you.
God bless you to our incredible warriors, and God bless the United States of America.
It's the typical NBC sort of gotcha type question.
President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take.
Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks.
It could move up, it could move back.
We're going to execute at his command the objectives we've set out to achieve.
And what he has shown an ability to do that other presidents can't quite seem to have the aperture to do.
Well, I mean, Joe Biden didn't even know what he was doing, is to look for opportunities and off-ramps and escalations for the United States that creates new opportunities to execute what we need on our own timeline.
So you can play games about four weeks, five weeks.
He has all the latitude, and I'm glad he does because there's no better communicator than our president expressing those things.
I've been in meetings with the president for the last two and a half days.
We know exactly where his headspace is, and he will communicate as he should exactly what he would like, and we will follow those orders.
And I think everything he said on that is right down the middle.
unidentified
Thank you, sir.
As you've said, there are a large amount of U.S. service members that are in harm's way right now.
First of all, my prayer for them is that I do pray for them.
My wife prays for them.
Our family prays for them.
Our cabinet prays for them.
None of this is done on a whim.
Having been in their boots, having been in their shoes, having been in their flight suits, I think we, I mean, I know we think about them with every decision that we make and every recommendation that we make to the President of the United States.
Those recommendations are made prayerfully.
And when I pray every day for them and for this mission, I pray simply for the biblical wisdom to see what is right and the courage to do it.
It's going to take courage to follow through on this.
There's going to be a lot of noise.
And we pray for that, and we hope all of you do as well.
No, but we're not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do.
I think it's one of those fallacies for a long time that this department or presidents or others should tell the American people, and our enemies, by the way, here's exactly what we'll do.
Here's exactly how long we'll go.
Here's exactly how far we'll go.
Here's what we're willing to do and not do.
It's foolishness.
And so President Trump ensures that our enemies understand we'll go as far as we need to go to advance American interests.
But we're not dumb about it.
You don't have to roll 200,000 people in there and stay for 20 years.
We've proven that you can achieve objectives that advance American interests without being foolish about it.
Now, will we be bold about it?
Are we willing to be decisive about it?
Do we put months and months of planning into what kind of effects we want to achieve?
Absolutely.
But going forward, why in the world would we tell you, you, the enemy, anybody what we will or will not do in pursuit of an objective?
We fight to win.
We fight to achieve the objectives the president of the United States has laid out, and we will do so unapologetically.
Well, Trace, what's amazing here is that the president has showed that for the first time, someone who comes in as a businessman, someone who didn't have a background in government, is able to achieve his objectives in the Middle East without boots on the ground.
This isn't going to be a forever war.
We're not seeing the gender studies programs in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
We're not seeing the pallets of cash to the mullahs.
We're seeing President Trump understanding what the situation is and figuring out how to deal with it smartly and swiftly, and then hopefully getting home and getting to peace.
Okay, Monday, the 2nd of March, Year of Our Lord 2026.
Just some logistics.
There's going to be a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House at 11 o'clock.
I believe the president, I think, is actually, we're hearing now, may actually do a spray or talk to some reporters.
So we got a PAC show, as we do on Saturday and Sunday, with the best brains in the business and best experience.
But we may have to do some juggling, and I'm sure you'll bear with us.
So we'll be going to the president of the White House, Eric Prince.
Aaron Wrights is also going to join Situation in Austin, Texas.
Aaron's running for Attorney General.
He's going to update us on momentarily.
Of course, Jack Vasobic.
Jack, we didn't get to play the package.
We have a whole package on General Raising Kane.
People should understand General Kane has just been a tremendous military advisor and architect and implementer, execution of the plan for President Trump.
A lot of credibility there.
Jack, you've given a number of briefings.
So with all that, it kind of did the level reset, the level set today.
We did have a briefing this morning.
We played some of Pete's Hegseths overall, but we didn't get to Raising Kane.
We'll do that later.
But your assessment, particularly on the briefing itself, of what we actually know, and it was some of this, we didn't see a Norman Schwarzkopf video, grainy video.
Really didn't talk about the command structure because my understanding is that they've destroyed a lot more of the command structure than the Ayatollah and 40 guys having a picnic with him.
Is this because of OPSEC?
Is operational security still paramount right now?
And that's why they're being very close hold about putting up maps, putting up charts, showing any video, sir?
When Operation Midnight Hammer was conducted, that was General Raising Kane at his finest.
That was the tech.
He gave us the technical briefing.
He explained how those bunker busters worked.
He explained the angle, the diameter.
He explained exactly how the holes worked, how they punched through, et cetera, et cetera.
Everything that took place to those underground bunkers that was done.
That was the level of briefing that we got after Midnight Hammer.
Didn't have that here.
And perhaps one of those reasons is because we were told the B-2 bombers came in, conducted another bombing run.
We didn't get a lot of specificity about that.
But also, Steve, to your point on the leadership, Marco Rubio briefed over the weekend that it was, in fact, Israel that's been taking the lead in focusing on these leadership, these decapitation strikes.
Looks like Israel was the one that led the strike on Ayatollah Khomeini.
And so, of course, the question remains, what is the level of intelligence sharing between Israeli special forces, between Mossad intelligence and the United States?
Are their operations being conducted directly with us or are they doing things and then telling us after the fact that they're not?
And that being said, it remains to be seen what level of operations Israel is still conducting.
And look, if they're still conducting these operations, they may not want to put that information out because of the fact that the Iranians have lost this C2.
They want to keep, for strategic ambiguity, they want to keep the leadership guessing as to who exactly is alive, who is not.
You saw the Iranian foreign minister even sort of mention this himself yesterday when he said IRGC units are isolated and operating independently.
That means that a lot of these attacks you're seeing on the Gulf partners, this is part of a contingency plan that was put in place should leadership communications be severed.
This was the plan, attack U.S. and U.S. allies across the Gulf.
Eric Prince, on Saturday, you had some concerns about this.
Are you more comfortable that it looks like they're going through, as Captain Finnell walked us through over the weekend, that they're going through a pretty systematic degradation, particularly of command and control and the Iranians and the Persians' ability to have even organized strikes back?
Because it looks like what they're hitting us back with is a little haphazard.
I do understand.
And probably for Operations Security reasons, maybe they're not talking about in depth, but my understanding is they've gone pretty deep in the command structure.
People are saying the battalion or brigade level of even taking out some of these bad IRGC folks.
Well, the thing about taking out the top of their command structure means that the bottom is still very much intact.
And they also, the Iranian foreign minister said that they had delegated authority and responsibility to the lowest level units to maximize their fight.
And look, the Straits of Hormuz are closed.
The Rashtanur facility in Saudi Arabia, which flows six, it's a loading terminal for 6 million barrels a day of crude.
It was hit.
The fire was put out, fortunately.
The Qataris just took off 20% of the world's gas production from their facility, which has also been attacked.
So even if there's a lot of command and control at the senior levels that have been damaged, if they can still launch the hundreds, if not thousands of drones they still have, there can be significant economic damage.
I think it's a great opportunity for the president to declare a win.
They took out the leadership of Iran, the people that killed those protesters over the last months.
And if they negotiate with the mullahs or whatever for some kind of transition, give them the city of Mashhad, almost like a Vatican, where the mullahs can go and be super Islamic and strict and let the rest of Iran breathe free if they want to.
But ultimately, it's the Iranian people's opportunity to do this.
It is not our, it's not up to our air power, our troops, and our blood to fix it.
Look, America owes a debt of gratitude to France, remember, because it's the French Navy that showed up at Yorktown, which assisted us to trap Cornwallis's army, giving us the victory at Yorktown.
The United States has done a great gift to the Iranian people by removing their leadership and degrading some of their capabilities.
But ultimately, this has to be decided by the Iranian people on the ground.
If I were the president, I would not encourage him to go deeper and deeper on this.
Treat this almost like the way the Romans used to do a punitive raid at the edge of empire when they had a misbehaving state.
They would send a Roman general like Scipio Africanus, who punished Carthage after Carthage had been marotting up and down Italy and Spain.
Remember, Hannibal was the one that took the elephants all the way to Rome.
But use this as a punitive raid, pound them for a few days, and then leave.
If I remember my history, if my remember our history, I think Scipio Africanus took it part brick by brick and salted the earth.
It's more than one or two, but your point is one of these Roman punitive raids and/or a Viking raid where you go in and punch hard.
You heard today discussion, and the president told Jonathan Carl again in an interview: hey, it could be four or five weeks.
I'm not going to put a timeline on it.
Your advice is that you think you could hit hard enough in the next couple of days because the new guy that's kind of you know, that's kind of their spokesman or leadership spokesman.
He's not a religious cleric.
He's saying we have no interest in talking right now.
The president said, Hey, I'm open to talk.
He said it the other day, but they're not interested in talking.
So, how do you get your off-ramp or your, hey, let's get this done in 24, 48, 72 hours instead of five or six weeks?
That punch, you have to have somebody on the other side to actually talk to, let them do a transition, get back in a room and talk about their nuclear program.
Okay, what would Eric Prince's if this is a Roman punitive raid like the empire used to do, or even the Republic?
If you're going to hit them, what is your recommendation?
You're our expert.
What do you, from what you've seen in operational security, they haven't put a lot out, but what would you do in the next 24 to 48 hours to make sure that they understood this is rough Roman justice?
The Persians should respond to that.
They got enough of it when those two empires wanted each other, sir.
Every IRGC, uh, not that they would be in the barracks anymore, but anything that was of value to the IRGC that enables the IRGC could force MOIS to continue to suppress the people, bomb the bomb the hell out of those, and then be done.
And then cut away and then tell the uh the Iranian leadership that remains: if we have to come back, we're going to take apart all your economic infrastructure.
Um, the problem is the problem with bombing, with picking a fight now with uh Iranian cleric religious extremists is they are really willing to die for their cause and they will take everything else with them and they will burn down the rest of the Middle East.
I suspect they will continue to launch drone attacks into the rest of the GCC countries.
Hell, they even built, they even hit Cyprus yesterday, the British base at Equateri, because there's U.S. aircraft launching from there.
So, they have the ability to punch, punch much harder than we suspected.
For all the smoke and thunder about the U.S. action against the Houthis, the fact is the Houthis are still there controlling the same terrain with significant weapons load.
And for those period of months, they effectively shut off the Suez Canal at the southern end.
And now we're thinking we're going to do the same to the Iranians in their home country with as much as they've been stockpiling.
Look, the Russians have been at war in Ukraine for four years.
The Iranians have been learning.
The Russians bought that Shahhead drone for $20,000, $30,000 a piece, and they have produced many, many improved variants of it.
And so the Iranians certainly have been learning.
They had good capability before.
They reinvested.
And for us to have to shoot down a Shahhead drone with a $1 million, $2 million, $3 million Raytheon PAC-3 level missile, it's really, really bad math.
I want to talk about that Cyprus because Matt Bull was in Greece last week and said how the Turks, the Greeks, everybody were concerned about this and they hit Cyprus or try to hit Cyprus.
So hang for a second.
Jack Basobic, as we go to break here, your thoughts on Eric's Roman punitive strike or a Viking strike, hit him, hit him hard, and then say, hey, it's your deal.
You take it from there.
What would that mean?
And your definition, as a naval intelligence officer, a Roman punitive strike on Iran that would take a couple more days would look like what?
Well, you remember, I mean, this is what Rome would do.
They would take out the leader and then they would see who comes up next, see if they wanted to cut a deal.
If that guy didn't want, they take him out and then they'd keep going down the line up until they found a leader that was willing to make a deal.
You know, we can see exactly how that's done.
President Trump, I believe, in remarks to ABC last night, Jonathan Carl said something along the lines of how the second and third runners up for who they thought would take the leadership of Iran were also killed in Israeli strike.
So they're actually now looking for either that leader or a potential group to be able to take the reins.
But we're also seeing, you know, been parsing the tea leaves here.
We're also seeing the administration say that this, again, this isn't regime change.
This isn't a forever war, that this isn't going to be nation building like we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, but instead it's taking out the current leadership and then working with who remains after.
What does that look like?
That looks like Maduro.
That looks like exactly the Venezuela model that we saw just last month, last early February.
So, you know, I think that seems to be where the administration is settling in this.
Look, you get to the point where you have stable leadership, where they're able to meet the president's objectives.
I think the objectives clearly have been met.
You saw that from Secretary Hegset as well this morning, stating it several times.
They may have some more objectives that we don't know about yet, but it does look as though the president has the ability now to find that stable leadership, cut the deal, ensure peace, and do so swiftly and smartly rather than get into a prolonged and protracted conversation.
We know there's mullahs that are still there, as well as the civilian leadership that does remain in place.
And again, these IRGC units that are operating under the standing orders from the previous Ayatollah, should the Ayatollah be killed, that's when they embark on what?
The asymmetric warfare that we're now seeing, striking those economic implements, striking the OPLAT, striking pipelines, striking the ports.
Again, this is the asymmetric war, that radar system, billion-dollar radar system out in Qatar.
So the asymmetric warfare campaign has been continuing.
But remember, a lot of the civilian leadership is still there in Iran.
This morning, police in Austin, Texas, along with the FBI, are investigating whether a deadly mass shooting there is connected to the U.S. war on Iran.
This happened at a bar in the busy entertainment district.
Authorities say the shooter was armed with a pistol and assault rifle and started firing out of the window of his SUV.
Two people are dead, 14 others wounded.
Police shot and killed the suspect.
CNS Holmes Leibrand joins us now with the latest on this.
So this individual armed with a pistol, with a rifle, did end up shooting two individuals who died, as well as 14 others.
Now, investigators are looking at whether there is a nexus in terms of the attacks on Iran.
This individual was seen with a shirt that had the Iranian flag, and there were other items that were found that kind of give investigators this potential idea that he may have been motivated by the recent attacks by the U.S. against Iran.
Now, something to kind of contextualize that is this individual also, who originally from Senegal, became a U.S. citizen in 2013, has had mental health issues and mental health instances with authorities in the state of Texas that also could be part of this, and it is certainly part of the investigation.
Now, all of this also ties into the FBI and DHS really being on high alert for any potential attacks on U.S. soil inspired by the attack against Iran.
We already have multiple assassination plots that have been foiled by Iranian government in the U.S. That's including against President Donald Trump twice, as well as his former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and his former National Security Advisor, John Bolton.
So this is certainly something that investigators will continue to look into.
It is something that they are very concerned about, especially in these early days after the attacks against Iran.
For our seven-day-a-week coverage yesterday morning, I'm really proud of Rev and our own team here at War Room putting together.
I want to David Nino Rodriguez, the great podcaster, former boxer, the head that we talked.
Our show came out at 10 o'clock Eastern Time yesterday.
We talked at 7, and David kind of had the story, but we didn't feel comfortable enough that we had enough verification by FBI and joint terrorism's task force.
That's why we didn't put it up yesterday.
I want to give a hat tip to Nino, who actually had this story.
Aaron writes, Aaron, first off, you've served your country in these bad neighborhoods.
Your thoughts of what you've seen over the last 24, 48 hours, and then specifically, you're running basically as the law and order candidate in the Attorney General's race in Texas.
Yeah, look, I think it's as you teed up in that CNN clip, right?
It's we're asking to, we see a guy who came into Austin, Texas.
He's wearing a shirt that says property of Allah.
He's wearing under that sweatshirt a flag of the Iran.
They found a Quran in his vehicle.
We know that he's from Senegal, which is a Muslim-majority country.
And now we're being asked to speculate about what his motive is.
And look, I appreciate that law enforcement has to sort of be very careful about what they say publicly.
But for civilians that are watching this sort of thing, there is no question that this guy is an example of the spreading jihad, not only into the United States in general, but in Texas in particular.
And this is something you've covered, and I've been on this show before to talk about the Islamification that is happening in Texas.
We know exactly what motivated this guy.
We know exactly what led to him coming here.
A lot of people make this distinction between illegal immigration and legal immigration.
Okay, illegal immigration is bad, but legal immigration is good.
Well, let me tell you something.
This terrorist who killed two people and injured at least 14 was technically a legal immigrant.
The problem is that we have such a lax immigration system that not only have we allowed the invasion of tens of millions of illegal aliens, but we've rubber stamped all of these so-called legal immigrants.
And this is why I've called for several things as the next Texas Attorney General.
Number one, we need to treat the Sharia pushers, the Islamification pushers, like the feds have treated the mafia in the latter half of the 20th century.
We've got to smoke them out.
Number two, we have got to audit all of the so-called legal immigrants that have come here over the past couple of decades to ensure that they comply with the highest standards of federal law, statutes, and case law.
And number three, we need to get rid of these so-called gun-free zones, which is just another word for we're here as sitting ducks zones.
That's why terrorists like this man from Senegal came and shot up a bar because of the 51% law.
He knew that people wouldn't be in there armed and that he could just open fire and slaughter a bunch of Americans.
And so, look, we know what inspired this guy.
Law enforcement has to do their due diligence to speculate.
But as an observer, myself, and as your audience darn well knows, we know exactly what motivated this guy.
And when I'm elected attorney general, we are going to smoke out.
the sorts of networks that inspired this man to commit his act of terror and we're going to get them all out of Texas.
Aaron, the governor has designated Muslim Brotherhood and Care as terrorist organization, but obviously he's going to leave it up to the Attorney General to implement this.
As Attorney General, what do you tell our audience you will do in that regard, sir?
Well, the governor declared, as you said, declared these entities foreign terrorists and transnational criminal organizations back in November.
That was a great move because in that executive order, it unlocked a whole wing of the armory of legal weapons that we can use to smoke out the Islamic network here in Texas.
And so the Attorney General now has new tools in the Texas Property Code, the Civil Practices and Remedies Code, the Health and Safety Code, the Penal Code, all these other provisions under state law.
The AG now has access to those tools.
One of the campaign promises I've been making on the campaign trail from the very beginning for the last nine months is that I'm going to treat the Islamic network here in Texas like the feds treated the mafia in the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
How many mob bosses did we put behind bars for committing murder in the latter half of the 20th century?
They wipe their fingerprints off the weapons that they committed their heinous acts with.
But what we got them with instead were the process crimes, the financial crimes, the money laundering, the racketeering, RICO violations, human sex and drug trafficking, tax fraud, tax evasion, all of these sorts of things to where we created a bramble bush of litigation, investigations, regulations that crippled their ability to operate and choked them out.
We can do the same exact thing here in Texas.
As Attorney General, I have vast constitutional, statutory, regulatory, and administrative weapons and tools at my disposal to ensure that the kinds of networks that aided, abetted, gave cover, and inspired this act of terror here in Austin, where I live, frankly, I drive by Buford's where this act was committed all the time, right here in downtown Austin.
We are going to stop this sort of thing and we're going to roll back the Islamification.
We're then going to partner with the federal government, the Trump administration, to conduct a widespread audit of legal immigration paperwork.
We're going to remigrate these people that came here over the past couple of decades.
And I'm going to partner with the legislature to get rid of so-called gun-free zones.
All of these are critical actions that the next attorney general needs to take.
Tomorrow is election day, Tuesday, March 3rd.
Texans need to get to the polls and vote Aaron Wrights for Texas Attorney General if we're going to effectuate all of these things.
Yeah, look, Paxon has been in office serving our state ferociously, effectively for the past 12 years as Attorney General.
The number one question that Texans have on the campaign trail in the grassroots is who is going to be able to keep his foot on the pedal, keep his foot on the gas to continue and even amplify the sorts of effective fights that Paxson has gotten us involved in and got us victory in.
When Paxson endorsed me earlier this fall, he made it very clear about why he endorsed me.
He said, Aaron Wright is the only battle-tested, proven, and qualified candidate that I trust to carry on the baton into the next generation of legal fights up and down the chain of the justice system.
Paxson has known all of the candidates in this race for decades, and yet he said Aaron is the only guy who has proven himself in legal combat, leading legal troops into the most consequential legal fights to deliver legal victories for Texas, for our nation, and for our constitutional values.
If Texans want somebody who has been endorsed by Paxton, trusted by Trump, I most recently came from the senior ranks of President Trump's Justice Department.
Trump called me a true MAGA attorney and a warrior for the Constitution, who's trusted by Trump, endorsed by Paxon, and who has a Marines fighting spirit, fighting spirit to advance our values in court.
Well, Steve, to be fair, I'm not citing Jake Tapper on this.
I'm citing Donald J. Trump, who called in to CNN.
He stated that the U.S. military knocking the crap out of Iran, but the big wave is yet to come.
He said it's going, I think it's going very well.
It's very powerful.
We've got the greatest military in the world, and we are using it.
He also said, I don't want to see it go on too long.
I always thought it would be four weeks, and we are a little ahead of schedule.
And so he said, we want everyone staying inside.
It's not safe out there.
Again, he's talking about the protesters, maybe sort of explaining why we haven't seen those mass protests materialize in terms of opposition groups to the regime.
And then again, saying that the biggest surprise was Iran's attacks against the Arab countries in the region, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates.
So the Gulfies, as they're called in the region, these partner forces, Saudi Arabia also attacked, by the way.
And so you hear the president saying he expected four weeks.
We had reported that originally over at Human Events and now saying that he believes they are ahead of schedule.
Also says in terms of succession, we don't know who the leadership is.
And this is key, by the way, we don't know who they will pick.
Maybe they will get lucky and get someone who knows what they're doing.
So that says to me that it does actually look like the United States may not be trying to play a role in picking who the successor will be on the Supreme Leader side as the Ayatollah from those mullahs, that perhaps the United States will be trying to sit back and actually let the Iranian people, the Iranian leadership, be able to reconstitute there.
Talking about being ahead of schedule, look, achieving those objectives that Pete Hegseth said.
That's what I was talking about last night when I was on Fox.
That's what I'll say here again.
President Trump swiftly, smartly, and then hopefully be able to return home and return to peace very quickly.
You know, the president, you know him very well, loves, always wants optionality and always wants a range of alternatives, never wants to signal too much of what he's going to do.
He has said, hey, I'm open to talk to people.
If you get actually leaders there, I'm prepared to talk to him.
But people should take your number two principle and write down.
When he says we haven't really hit hard, the big wave is coming.
Look, he just showed that the B2s were able to get in and get out without taking any shrapnel, not taking any flack.
He's certainly able to do so.
I've talked about as well, we haven't seen attacks on civilian infrastructure as much yet.
Maybe a couple of pipelines here and there, but not too much in terms of oil platforms and other economic implements, which certainly could be responded to after seeing what Iran did to so many of the Gulf partners in terms of their asymmetric warfare.
So the escalatory ladder has many rungs left on it with which the president can ratchet up the leverage.
Talk about the Venezuelan, where you've actually going to think you're going to line something up with who's left, and then you move on.
Your thoughts, by the way, we're hearing right now, there's a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House, and somebody's just reporting that President Trump may actually address there in a spray or with the media the Iranian people and talk directly to them.
So we're going to cover all this and we have to juggle some breaks.
We'll juggle some breaks.
Jack, your thoughts right there, you and I talked about this extensively about the Venezuelan model.
That would lead me to believe the Roman punitive hit is kind of the operating philosophy here, sir.
Well, Steve, again, you know, this weekend, I've been working the phones.
You've been working the phones.
We've been in discussion with members of high-level individuals.
And this tone, this rhetoric, this idea of the Venezuelan model certainly is something that has been shaken out because, look, going back on the success of the Maduro raid, which President Trump spoke about at the State of the Union, which was less than a week ago, I would remind everyone.
Less than a week ago, he gave that command performance at the State of the Union.
Now conducting this operation, this weekend operation in Iran.
If this thing is able to be put to bed quickly, you could see something like the Venezuelan model being put forward.
That's what we talked about yesterday here on the war room.
That's what we're seeing now the president saying to Brett Baer over at Fox.
And it certainly seems to be an angle that I think the United States would be hopeful for.
Now, the question, of course, as to what does Iran do?
Do you have these elements of the IRGC that continue going?
What does Israel do?
Does Israel sue for peace or does Israel try to take out more leaders?
A lot of this remains to be seen.
But President Trump, we are told that Medal of Honor ceremony coming up is supposed to be 11 a.m. Eastern, and he will potentially be speaking to press and potentially to the Iranian people as well.
So I encourage everyone to follow our special coverage at Human Events Daily.
Download the podcast, Apple Spotify, that really helps us out.
That really helps to support us in everything that we're doing.
We're also going to be doing special, just to let everyone know, we will be doing special coverage with the Thought Crime crew over at the Charlie Kirk team for the Texas primaries on Tuesday and then potentially another Thought Crime episode on Thursday.
And today, I'll be on Piers Morgan.
You're going to be having a little debate with Tim Miller, Dave Smith, some of the others on Iran, and really just kind of chopping it up.
If I could, by the way, one thing that we're working on before all this went together, we went up this weekend to, and we're going to be putting a special video out of, if people remember the Team USA, when Huffington Post was attacking Team USA and was attacking the American flag, there was one organization, one business establishment that actually stood up for them and told the Huffington Post to go F yourself.
And that was Jimmy's Famous Seafood out of Dundalk, Maryland.
Well, the Poso clan took to the road and we went out to Jimmy's famous seafood.
We told them that we were with Turning Point.
They knew exactly who we were.
And we're going to be putting a special video out on that.
And I would just encourage everyone in the wardroom posse, go and support the great patriots at Jimmy's famous seafood.
They ship nationwide.
These guys, Steve, I got to tell you something, man.
I have never had crab cakes like I've had these crab cakes.
Well, I am, as I noted the last time I was on, getting very concerned about the stockpiles Stockpiles in the CENTCOM area of responsibility.
It looks like we have maybe about a week left if we keep at this operational tempo.
Now, they're going to try to stretch that out, our logistics people.
But if this thing keeps going at the tempo that it is, we will run out of the critical stockpiles of air defense interceptors and missiles for CENTCOM, which means our logistics guys are going to have to then pivot and start pulling systems from the Indo Paycom AOR, which is causing a lot of dyspepsia, to say the least, among the guys I know at Indo Paycom, because that could leave a strategic window open for China to do something big and bold against Taiwan or the Philippines.
So if this conflict can, in fact, end up being a punitive raid, like you and Eric were talking about, then Trump comes out looking like a genius.
Otherwise, we're going to have a headache because we're going to then have to start stretching our logistics chain and it's going to be problematic.
The regime in Iran has been damaged.
It has been degraded, but it has not been destroyed.
And their only objective in this war right now is to hang on until they think we're running out of weapons.
And we're trying to do that level of quality every day.
President, though, I think it's going to have a Medal of Honor ceremony.
We do not want to miss that.
I also believe he's going to address, at least maybe take some questions, talk to the press.
Now there's some rumors he may actually address part of this to the Iranian people.
As you know, this is about he's a very big believer in freeing the Iranian people or giving them the opportunity, he said, will never come again in generations to actually get their freedom.
We're going to take a short commercial break.
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