Episode 5199: WarRoom Sunday Special War In Iran Continues
Stephen K. Bannon and experts Captain Jim Finnell and Sam Fattis analyze Iran's escalating war, detailing massive U.S. bombing campaigns targeting oil refineries and desalination plants that could displace 100 million people. While Bannon argues Congress lacks constitutional authority for military action, experts warn Iranian leadership's apocalyptic Mahdi worldview ensures they will prolong conflict through asymmetric attacks rather than surrender. The discussion highlights divergent goals where the U.S. seeks a democratic Iran while Israel prefers a broken state to neutralize nuclear threats, ultimately suggesting regional vendettas and chaotic outcomes threaten global stability. [Automatically generated summary]
Ladies and gentlemen, we've had 125 military actions since the beginning of this republic and 11 declarations of war, five of which were during World War II.
And the last one was 1942.
Show me anywhere.
I challenge Hakeem Jeffries.
Show me where in the Constitution that Congress has to authorize military action.
Show me.
Show me the language.
Show me.
It's not there.
What declaration of war?
We know what that means.
Because the first draft of the Constitution, you see, ladies and gentlemen, this is what we call Madison's notes.
And not one of those knucklehead Democrats have ever read Madison's notes.
I know I'm kind of a nerd.
I study this stuff left and right.
They took out the phrase, make war, in the original draft of the Constitution for Congress and changed it to declare war.
And then under Article II, they gave the president the power as commander-in-chief to set foreign policy and national security.
No president has ever gone to Congress and said, will you please give me permission to take military action?
They may want a declaration of war to sort of back up what they're doing, but on a few occasions.
But the power to make war belongs to the president.
And no War Powers Act passed by statute in 1973 can fix that.
You know how I know?
Because Barack Obama said it was unconstitutional.
Biden said it was unconstitutional.
Clinton said it was unconstitutional.
Pelosi said it's unconstitutional.
Hillary Clinton said it's unconstitutional until today.
I don't see how a small contingent force could do that, could lead to an unconditional surrender.
You're talking about tens of thousands, if not more, of U.S. troops that would be needed to suppress any type of opposition that the regime would still be able to bring forward.
So this unconditional surrender is just, it's mindless.
And I think it shows that Donald Trump realizes that it's very messy out there right now.
And his rhetoric and his bravado is increasing as I think he gets more concerned that it's not going the way he had hoped.
And so why should a lot of Iranians decide to leave the regime because they don't know how it's going to turn out?
They don't want to be targeted then by those who may come to power as a result of the United States coming in because the situation in Iran is going to remain chaotic.
It's going to remain very violent for a long time.
I don't see how a puppet regime in Iran is going to be put in place by the U.S. while the Iranian people and a lot of the people of the Iranian regime are still going to remain as defiant and they're going to resist because this is a war that was initiated by the United States and Israel.
And there are a lot of Iranians who are very much going to try to take retaliatory strikes, I think, against U.S., especially if U.S. forces are on the ground.
The Iran and the FBI piece of this for a moment, but the president doesn't seem overly concerned about, given the comments of Time magazine, about increasing attacks in the U.S., the potential of that.
One would have to assume that given the number we have taken off the game field and the idea that Iran would have no motive not to replace them with some other covert operators, you have to operate on that assumption.
But we also, and I think what the President was saying is we're under constant threat from the remnants of ISIS and al-Qaeda.
We saw the bourbon street attacks in New Orleans on New Year's Day two years ago.
We've seen the plots that have been interrupted and thwarted.
This is a post-9-11 constant as long as that propaganda is out there.
The factor of Iran, though, is they do this very professionally, and they are in a position where they've always done targeted violence, targeting particular people.
This is the kind of environment where they could go to a mass casualty incident.
So you've had covert Iranian intelligence officers who have come in and out of the United States under various covers and then recruited individuals associated with violence or criminal organizations to target particular people for them for a hit or for an assault or a kidnapping or a murder.
But we've also seen them use elements of Hezbollah that were planted in America, Anderson, for the specific purpose of cataloging targets, studying them, mapping them, developing target books, and transmitting them back to their handlers in Iran.
So this is something that Iran has been thinking about and planning for 20 years or more.
It's Sunday, 8 March in the year of Rural Art, 2026.
I want to thank Real America's voice, Park and Rob Sig.
I want to thank our great team in Denver that works overnight to do this.
And of course, our War Room production team for the, we're going to cover the war seven days a week until some sort of denim or conclusion or how this thing grinds out.
One of the reasons for that is you need to be constantly up to because you're the most powerful political force in the country.
And if you don't believe that, then check out Prop 10 in Texas, the Sharia law proposition, and Paxton on this fight to make sure that the MAGA voice and the grassroots voice is heard in the United States Senate.
You need to have the facts.
I will say as an observation, and if we have time, because we have a packed show this morning, I want to thank all of our contributors for giving up parts of their Sunday to join us.
And we are absolutely packed today, all the way to 12 noon.
I'm going to let the audience decide, and maybe we can play it later.
We'll play Carville's Carvel.
We don't need to call it again, guys.
We'll play Carville's Trump derangement syndrome next to Mark Levin.
Maybe we'll intercut that and you guys can tell.
We'll have a poll of who's the most offensive.
It is quite important, though, that we have experts in this field that can actually cut through the fog of war and tell us exactly what's going on.
To start, we've got Sam Fattis and Captain Finnell who have dedicated their professional lives in situations like this.
Captain Finnell, I want to start with you.
Sam Fattis got some great stuff up on his sub stack on Nan Magazine.
We're going to get into a second.
One of the reasons we do the Sunday show, it appears that Saturday night has become a bombing night.
Last night, I think we went next level on the bombing campaign.
Can you walk us through?
You're a targeting officer.
We got about two minutes here.
I'm obviously going to hold you through the break.
Can you just give us a quick update on what you saw overnight, sir?
We saw bombing, obviously, a massive round of bombing in Tehran that included an oil refinery in Tehran that's gotten a lot of attention.
Oil refineries associated with supplying the IRGC military.
And then there was a counter-strike against some places in Bahrain and other places, maybe even Haifa desolidization plant.
So it looks like there's a little bit of a tit for tat there.
What we don't really know is because we're essentially getting the one side of the story from all the attacks that are coming from Iran into the GCC.
So every missile or drone is highlighted.
But whereas what we're actually doing inside Iran is getting some attention, like the bombing of that refinery in Tehran.
But the actual cumulative effect and the details of where we're striking each place is obviously being withheld from the Pentagon for operational security reasons.
So I think getting your what you call battle damage assessment reporting on the effects on Iran, we have to discern from what we see from the behavior.
So as the Pentagon has reported, missile and drone strikes are down significantly, missiles more than 90%, drones over 80%.
And then we are seeing the reports of some specificity.
Captain Jim Finnell, an expert in naval intelligence and targeting.
Sam Fattis spent a big part of his career.
He'll be able to give you his ideas about unconditional surrender.
Understand they've also named a new supreme leader.
President Trump said that's going to have to pass muster with him as the war continues on.
I think we went next level last night.
Massive bombing campaign.
Also, our allies being hit.
Short break.
back in the warm in a second here's your host steven k man captain finnell obviously they look like they went after oil infrastructure resources last night is that uh is that a shit Is that just what happens when you proceed down?
You've been, you've said, hey, look, and I, you know, as a surface warfare officer and you're an intelligence officer, people should understand.
This is what the Navy does.
You do these exercises constantly, all the time.
You practice, practice, practice, so that it becomes second nature.
So when the balloon goes up, you know what to do.
And, as you said, you've got your target sets.
That can change with Intel, but you know what you're doing when you want to take down, or what it was called, degrade their ability to have force projection either uh, to surrounding countries or force projection now, as the president keeps talking about, on their own people.
Do you believe that we've gone to another phase of this war, not just the how brutal the bombing was last night in Tehran, but it looks like they went after all infrastructure?
Sir Steve, I would say that we are entering a second phase.
The first phase, as Admiral Cooper stated, was about being able to kill the Iranian things that could shoot at us.
So this first week over 3500, possibly closer to 6,000 attacks from both U.S.
And Israeli forces was about rolling back their air defense capabilities, their missile capabilities that were on the ground and their air defense and their naval forces.
We have successfully, I think to the large degree, eliminated most of those that are out in the open.
So now we're going into the second phase, which is to really start going after the infrastructure that supported the military, the IRGC.
So the target sets are, command and control centers, military communication sites, IRGC Joint Headquarters, IRGC Aerospace Force Headquarters, the integrated air defense of ballistic missile cities, now the Iranian NAVY ships and subs, and they struck last night Isfahan Bashir Qombandra, Bondra Abbas.
So there's massive strikes going further inland from that coastal region that we needed to establish so that our forces could get in and out without risk.
So I think we're in this second phase.
And what people need to know is this is not just a naval force.
This is a joint U.S. military force commanded at Central Command.
And it's now a combined force.
And so what they have is what they call a combined targeting coordination board.
And that represents all the services that are involved, all the nations that are involved, plus the intelligence agencies from CIA, DIA, NGA, all that.
It's an interagency process.
Even State Department gets involved.
And there are people there that are saying, hey, we need to consider this.
We need to consider that.
It goes before the board and people analyze it and they say, yes, this is something valid we want to go after or not.
And then it gets put on the list.
And then there are legions of people that find the target material and intelligence that helps give us precise location of where these assets are.
But it's worked together and it's been going on for, I would say, years, the planning about how if we, you know, contingency had to go after Iran.
CENTCOM's been working on this for decades.
And so what you see is the unfolding of a plan that's being refined to do the levels of damage that will ensure that Iran's military is completely and thoroughly defanged.
And as we, as I said in a communication to you this last week, as Mao said, the party controls the gun.
And if there's no gun in the party's hand, then who's running everything?
And so the mission is to take the gun away from the Iranian regime.
I think if you look at the 12-day war, if you look at Venezuela, if you look at what's happening here, we're going to leave the politics aside.
We're going to get into all that and the strategy and all that.
But if you just look, this is why our military is so magnificent.
The practice, the precision, the dedication to make this second nature, to ingrain this in yourself.
Before I go to Sam Fattis, I'm going to ask you to stick around, Jim.
In 1979 and 80, when I was there, we had two carrier, we eventually, because the Navy had never really been there, we had two carrier battle groups on Camel Station and Gonzo Station in the North Arabian Sea.
We have two carrier battlegroups, two strike forces today that contain 10 times more lethality than we did back in the 80s, just because of the weapons packages.
But now you're the first one to call it.
You said on the show over a week ago, he said, hey, they're going to get the Bush.
They're going to get a third carrier strike group over there.
Yes, the Bush, the carrier, George H.W. Bush, completed its basic final phase of its training and on the 5th of March pulled into Norfolk.
It certainly reloaded fuel and ammunition for not just the carrier, but the strike group.
And there's indication that she's already leaving or has already left Norfolk and is making the transit.
It's about a four or five day transit across the Atlantic, very small compared to the Pacific.
And so that'll add a third carrier.
And I'll just remind folks: in Desert Storm, we had six carrier battle groups operating for Desert Storm.
In OEF, we had five carrier strike groups.
So just adding a third one is really about bringing in more of that ordinance that's using the Mark series, the dumb bomb series with the fusing and the fins in the back that give us the precision strike.
So we don't have to use the high-end, high-demand, low-density interceptors and other kinds of missiles that are, you know, were discussed on Friday in Washington.
So it's this idea of moving from standoff to stand-in weapons.
It's planned.
It was understood.
And the Bush will bring a lot more punch to the fight with that from the Eastern Med, while the Ford and the Lincoln now can combine their carrier strike groups.
And now those 16 destroyers that are with it can now start to work on how are we going to open up the strait and provide some kind of escort plan.
We're not going to escort ship by ship, but we'll maybe do something like we did in 87 where we had baskets and we had ships on station in those baskets as we get further along than that.
Particularly as you also take out their missile defense, the combatants can then go into the Straits of Hermuz and figure out how to open this or if it even could be opened.
Hang on for a second.
Right before I go, the Brits, he's now talking to the Brits.
He's all over Starmer.
They were actually discussing two of the smaller, they got smaller carriers, two deployment of two British carriers to the region also.
Well, the Brits were, and it's coming out this weekend that actually the U.S. approached the British three weeks before the bombing struck to say, this is what we're thinking of doing, and we would like to coordinate with you, our ally, and let's work together on it.
And the Brits and Starmer gave us the Heisman and said, no, we're not going to let you use our bases.
So when the war started, they didn't participate.
They denied us use of their bases in Cyprus.
They denied us use of Diego Garcia.
And then just here only a couple of days ago did Starmer say, well, you can use our airfields, but we will only allow you to use your aircraft to attack defensive targets in Iran, which is like air defense sites and missile sites.
So they put a lot of restrictions on it.
In the meantime, the Iranians attack their base in Cyprus, and the Brits still have yet to send a single destroyer out there because of their readiness.
The British Navy is almost gone.
It's less than 80 ships, probably less than 70.
So they don't have much to provide to us.
And I think the president's instincts are right on this in a way.
Hey, you know, you didn't want to be with us at the beginning.
Why do you want to come in now when you feel like the tide is turning?
Sam, you wrote an amazing piece over the weekend about our objectives and goals, but I want to ask you this whole situation with unconditional surrender.
I mean, you spent a good part of your life inside here.
They're talking about unconditional surrender.
I think they've overnight and they now have an official supreme leader, President of the United States, saying, yeah, I don't know about that.
We don't want to come back here every 10 years.
So I think I got to have a hand in picking that.
From the mindset of the Persians as they sit right now, when they hear the president talking about unconditional surrender, and that means no force projection against neighbors, but most importantly, no force projection against their own population.
I don't think there's any way on earth that they are considering unconditional surrender.
Now, I've said from the beginning, there is some possibility here that at some point you get some guys within this government who effectively stage a coup, and we end up with the Venezuelan solution.
And they say we're not riding this thing all the way to the ground.
And that would be, in my view, a happy ending.
But as of now, they're going to dig in and they're going to take this thing into an unconventional realm and they are going to prolong this conflict.
And are they going to be hammered mercilessly by the United States military?
Without question.
I mean, anybody who bet on the Iranians to stand up to the U.S. military was delusional.
They've been flattened and they're going to continue to get flattened.
But in their worldview, they will just dig in and this will become low-cost drones and proxy forces and terrorist attacks abroad and attacks on desalinization plants and oil refineries and sort of let's all go to hell together kind of mindset.
They're tried to hit it, or they hit a desalination plant.
Uh, are they?
Is it all bets off Persians versus Arabs right now, or is that back on hold?
In last night's bombing we've got about a minute i'll bring you back after the break was was the difference in intensity last night of the Americans, of our forces, going after their oil infrastructure and hitting Tehran, the refineries there?
Take this next level, Look, I think what they were trying to do was divide us from our allies and encourage the Gulf states in particular, to part company with us.
And that didn't work.
And so now they've gone.
I mean, they just hit a desalinization plant in Bahrain.
They've hit a number of other targets.
So they gave that a whirl and it didn't work.
So now they're going to intensify what they do against the Gulf states to the extent they can.
You talk about objectives, trying to divide allies.
Wrote a pretty impressive piece for Ann Magazine.
If we can get that up and if Mo and Grace and Elizabeth can make sure the war imposse sees it, we're going to bring Sam Fettis back and talk about that point.
Also, Rabbi Willicki would join us from Jerusalem for a live update.
We're packed.
We got Poso, Thayer, Weickert, Caroline Wren on this huge political story in Texas.
All of it this morning, our special edition of The War Room.
By the way, Birch Gold, I think now may be the time that you want to go and talk to Philip Patrick of the team.
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Had president, was down with the Uh Shield Of America, The Hemispheric Defense, which is obviously something the WAR ROOM would love to focus on.
But right now we have other concerns that are top of mind.
Sam Fattish, you wrote an amazing piece.
You talk about allies, allies being together.
This war is metastasizing.
President Trump did say yesterday, hey, I don't want the Kurds, I don't need the Kurds in.
Of course remember, president Trump's a disruptor.
He's never going to tell you exactly what he's going to do.
Right, he wants to leave all he.
When I tell people about Trump, he wants optionality.
He always wants a range of alternatives, and don't box him into a corner uh, because he always wants a range of alternatives to be able to pivot, and sometimes pivot hard.
Yesterday on the plane yeah, I don't know the Kurds yeah, i'm not going to give him the go-ahead, but he has talked I think it's been leaked about a special forces to go secure some of the nuclear material.
That's what they're talking about, boots on the ground right now Sam, your piece about America and Israel, because the war in part in Lebanon and in other areas is starting to uh increase as it is in the Gulf, not just in in in Tehran, maybe Azerbaijan and other places.
Well, I mean to to take off from the point in the article.
Look, we're we're in this war with the Israelis.
People have different ideas about the extent to which we are in the war the war because of the Israelis.
But however we got here um, it is very clear that when the president talks about this, he he envisions a happy ending.
Uh, in other words, even when he says unconditional surrender, then the next thing he talks about is a free, democratic Iran, working with us, prosperous.
All of this.
That's how he sees it, that in some sense, that's what we all on the American side want.
It is not clear to me that that is necessarily at all what the Israelis regard as success.
Meaning if, if Iran ends up as a much bigger, much more intense Libya, a totally broken, dysfunctional state where people are sold as slaves openly in markets, i'm not sure that is a bad outcome to the Israelis, because what it means is a an Iran that probably can't Can't threaten them directly,
isn't building nuclear weapons because it's impoverished and it's in chaos and it's in civil war.
From an Israeli national security perspective, the way they look at things, which of necessity is very hard-nosed, I think that very well could be a success in their view.
I don't think anybody on the American side really would view that as a success.
As you know, and you're one of the experts I turned to because you know this so well, but I am not, I am not a wild enthusiastic supporter of this war.
We are going out of our way at War Room to show you a range of facts and opinions to make sure it's balanced.
However, I'm for, if it's a chaotic mess, I just don't care.
I don't care about Iran.
I don't care about the Persia.
I just don't.
We got enough problems here that we got it like yesterday's thing.
And to get, I noticed nobody's talking about the 25 million illegal aliens we got in the country.
And by the way, last night there was a terrorist attack on this Southwest Airlines.
That's why we showed that video of people had put their hands up and they took a guy off.
Or I guess they're figuring out was a terrorist attack.
We got problems.
I mean, you heard all the cold open.
We got problems here.
If it's a chaotic mess, they brought it on themselves and they threw us out 50 years ago, threw the Shah out, through any type of Western because that country was developing a middle class, right?
And there may have been huge problems, a police state, all that, but it's much better than today.
If it's a, if, if the outcome here, I don't care.
I don't, if we had to spend a second and a dollar for a free and democratic Iran and all this happy talk from Levin and all these guys about that, I could care less.
If it's a chaotic mess and they're at each other's throats and they're and they're the payback, because the only way they're going to get through this is almost like the French Revolution.
They're going to purge themselves.
We can't do it.
So for 30 or 40 years, if they do that, hey, have at it.
I could care less.
I want to get back here and start getting 25 million bad, you know, the illegal aliens out of the country.
So I don't mind that as a war objective.
Is that do you actually think?
I mean, President Trump, he is looking at, I think, a World War II model where the Nazis and Imperial Japan and all the bad guys, it turned out to be a happy ending, right?
Or at least a relatively happy ending.
And you're saying the Israelis, the Israelis don't want that.
I think they would be very, personally, I think they would be very happy if it ends up as a broken, dysfunctional country consumed by civil war.
But even if we attack, if we adopt Your thesis, which is, okay, look, guys, it's your country sorted out, which certainly on some level I agree with fully.
The problem is it doesn't just stay within their borders, right?
When Libya disintegrated, more Libyans joined ISIS than from any other country in the Middle East.
Libya is not the most populous.
Syria was blown up, and we unfortunately still get stuck with the implications.
It doesn't stay within the borders, right?
That's where the terrorist groups take over terror for.
The biggest, are you implying that this is that is that the law of unintended consequences here?
Our partners in Qatar, everybody's living on Qatar, everybody's all the influencers are hanging out in Dubai.
You're saying that the collateral damage here is this thing, it devolves into some hellhole, most logically will be the potential toppling of those monarchies that control the tiny houses in Qatar, in Saudi Arabia, and in UAE.
You know, MBZ came out yesterday.
He said, hey, look, and he was talking about Dubai and Abdur Dikes, just because we're beautiful places and we've tried to westernize a little bit and we're a huge vacation place and people are coming here.
We're as tough as scorpions and the Iranians will know if they strike at us.
Is that him sending a warning or exactly your thing?
The collateral damage here of the collapse of the Persians will spread and topple supposedly our most important allies in the region, the Gulf Emirates in Saudi Arabia?
Well, look, I think what you're talking about is like you're breaking a sheet of glass, right?
There are going to be shat, it's going to shatter in hundreds of different directions.
So we were talking a little while ago about desalinization plans.
The area where we're fighting this war is a desert, and there's like 100 million people that are in that region that rely upon seawater from which the salt has been removed.
It's been turned into freshwater desalinization plant.
I don't know.
There's like 400, 500.
Okay, we're now starting to see those desalinization plants hit.
The Iranians claim we started it.
Who knows what the truth of that is?
It doesn't matter.
They've already started striking them.
Okay, you take those things offline and destroy them.
You don't re, if they are really hit, not just a minor strike, then they're offline potentially for years.
And so you're now looking at 100 million people who don't have water to drink.
You're talking about taking out refineries.
Well, again, some of these strikes are relatively minor damage.
But if we really start losing major infrastructure like that, you don't put it in operation again next week.
So now you're talking about tens of millions of people without water and you're talking about the world without whatever oil and natural gas production.
So these are just consequences.
I mean, look, we've got crazy stuff going on in Cyprus now, right?
The Iranians, actually, I think it was Hezbollah on their behalf, hit the British base in Cyprus.
That got the Greeks all energized because the Muslims were attacking their brothers and sisters in Cyprus.
So now they're sending Greek naval vessels to defend Cyprus from the Muslims, right?
It's the Battle of Lepanto all over again.
And now all of a sudden, we got Erdogan talking about sending F-16s to northern Cyprus, which they occupy, to protect Cyprus from the Greeks who are invading again.
You're like, yeah, everybody's thinking, what the hell does this have to do with hitting Tehran?
But it's that kind of ripple effect as it goes on.
These are ancient vendettas versus, you know, Rahim gave me a free constant to Dobble shirt two Christmases ago as a gift.
We had a big Christmas celebration at Rahim.
I think the thing got 5 million.
Boyle tells me, and thing is still iconic in Greece, that they loved it.
It's like 5 million hits or something.
They put it up the other day.
The Greeks are thinking free Constantinople.
I mean, my point is that when you talk about unconditional surrender, you talk about the Persians.
These are ancient civilizations that vendettas and wars from a thousand years ago are as current because they teach their kids.
They pass it down.
Here in the United States, you can't have, and a lot of times, particularly for younger people, you can't have a logical discussion about the Iraq and Afghan war because they don't really understand the details of it.
That's not in this region, that's not how they're brought up or how they're taught, is it, sir?
Look, when I lived in Athens many years ago, there was a graffiti on the wall across the street from my house.
It said in Greek, Constantinople is the capital of Greece now and for forever.
So a 15-year-old kid, idiot kid with a spray can, that's what was on his mind, was something that happened in 1453.
I mean, come on.
That's like not his gang sign or anything else.
It's like, we got to go retake Constantinople.
So, I mean, every group out there has this, you know, some vision.
Look, I actually was having, talking to a Greek asset many years ago, a very senior guy, retired military officer, and he actually brought up the Battle of Lepanto, which I think was, what, 1571?
And he said, the problem with you guys is you think that we defeated them then.
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Sam Fattis, President Trump, adamant now, talking about unconditional surrender and putting some meat on that bone, saying the ability not just to project force against allies in the region like Israel or Qatar or Saudi Arabia, but also internally force projection against their people.
I mean, he was very specific.
When they get to a point where they can't lay waste to protesters or people that want to, I guess, overthrow the government.
That's a pretty hardcore statement.
Your thoughts from the view of guys are picking another supreme leader that may be in the bloodline of the last one we lost and some guys that come from an ancient civilization.
You're talking about people who have an apocalyptic worldview.
They believe that they will win.
They believe the Mahdi, the Iranian Superman, is returning and they effectively have to walk through.
Armageddon is a necessary precondition of their ultimate success.
In other words, fire brimstone and the end of the world is what you have to go through to emerge on the other side for the inevitable preordained victory.
I don't think you want to put those guys in a box and say it's all or nothing.
You must quit.
Again, there is some chance, in my view, that at some point some guys in senior positions, but not at the top, stage what amounts to a coup and depose them.
But absent that, they will dig in.
And I don't think the people have the capacity to overthrow them.
So you're putting their backs against the wall.
And what they will then do is become, they're already doing, is become more desperate.
You will see more attacks around the world, any place they can attack us, including inside the United States.
It came to me as Sam was talking: if you want, and this is not exactly analogous, but I think as a form of entertainment, it can be enlightening to people about the Mahdi.
Winston Churchill wrote a book as a young subaltern called The River War about the uprising of the Mahdi in Khartoum in Sudan back in the 19th century.
They made a film about it called Khoom, starring Charlton Heston and Sir Lawrence Olivier.
Sir Lawrence Olivier plays the Mahdi.
And it is absolutely, I've always thought Charlton Heston plays General Chinese Gordon, who had taken on, I guess, the Boxers and then had then pivoted to, he was called back to service to go take on the Mahdi down in Khartoum.
Anyway, fascinating, but it shows you the power that was inspired in this Muslim army by the Mahdi, this mythical, this kind of mythical, mythical to us, but real to them.
It's quite fascinating.
And Churchill's book, The River War, has still been one of the best descriptions.
I remember the beginning of it.
I can't believe it.
We're talking about stuff that we talked about at the very beginning of the global war on terror.
We have a Muslim, we have a Marxist jihadist Muslim mayor in New York City.
And you're seeing yesterday with the nail bombs and now everything coming out about his wife and her social media account as a true hater.
You have a Muslim, you have a Marxist jihadist mayor in the greatest city in the world, the greatest city in the United States of America, the financial capital of the world.
These people think very differently than we do.
Very differently.
And you can put on suits and you go to conferences and you can, you know, talk about crypto and everything you're going to do.
They are two radically different civilizations.
The Judeo-Christian West, and there's a lot of splits sometimes between the Judeo-part of that and the Christian part of that.
But it has thousands of years from Athens to Jerusalem to Rome to London to Washington, D.C. and New York City.