Episode 5229: Israel Continues To Bomb Energy And Oil Facilities In Iran
Stephen K. Bannon's War Room examines Tulsi Gabbard's confirmation that Iran holds 440 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium, enough for ten weapons, despite failed sanctions under multiple administrations. The episode details FBI Director Kash Patel's claims of a historic year with a 112 percent rise in arrests and debunks FISA Section 702 myths before analyzing Israel's strike on Iranian oil facilities against Trump's orders to pursue a "Greater Israel Project." Featuring Kobe Bloomfeld Gantz on Medicare overpayments and President Trump's meeting with Japanese PM Shigeru Ishiba, the discussion concludes that these actions signal an aggressive strategy to collapse Iran and stabilize global energy markets through overwhelming military force. [Automatically generated summary]
They currently possess at least 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium at 60 percent weapons grade that would be capable of putting together 10 nuclear weapons.
There is a reason you are at 60 percent because you are pursuing nuclear ambitions.
So we have sanctions have been imposed in the past, and yet that pursuit continued.
Their economy was teetering.
The pursuit continued.
Their people were suffering.
The pursuit continued.
Under the Bush, Obama, Trump 45, Biden now, Trump 47, that pursuit continued.
Then last June, Operation Midnight Hammer.
Nuclear program was dealt a significant setback.
But not only that, the autocratic, illegitimate regime in Tehran witnessed firsthand that the American resolve under this administration should be taken very seriously.
I want to read you a few quotes.
Iran will never be permitted to build a nuclear weapon.
Barack Obama 15.
The message to Iran should be loud and clear.
We will never allow you to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Never.
Hillary Clinton.
Iran will never get a nuclear weapon on my watch.
Iran can never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon.
Joe Biden.
Make no mistake, as president, I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend American forces and interests from Iran.
Kamala Harris.
So last June, we have Midnight Hammer.
And not only did they see the resolve, I mean, they saw that we were committed to actually taking action and not just the words this time.
And even after all of that, did they abandon their pursuit and their nuclear program?
I think you point out the success of Operation Midnight Hammer is that one of the things that we assess in the intelligence community broadly is that since that operation, Iran has been unable to enrich a single kilogram of uranium to 60 percent since that operation.
But as you correctly point out, Congressman, notwithstanding that, our intelligence is also clear that they have not lost their ambition and that the activities to rebuild or reconstitute their nuclear facilities and centrifuges is something that the intelligence, there is a body of intelligence that I think confirms that.
Then we had eight months of negotiations and attempted diplomacy.
They proved fruitless, and yet the pursuit continued.
And then, Director, is there any intelligence or evidence that the Supreme Leader and his thug Mullahs, after all that, at the beginning of this year, were going to finally stop their pursuit of a nuclear weapon in their program?
No nation state that achieved that hadn't produced a nuclear weapon.
We can either talk about it, kick the can down the road, and let them get a nuclear weapon or get danger close to it and on the precipice, or we can take action now, and this is what this administration chose to do.
Every day, the brave men and women of our intelligence community, armed forces, and federal law enforcement work to protect our homeland from a constant and evolving array of threats.
But since Democrats chose to shut down the Department of Homeland Security, those threats have grown more acute.
Our country has already experienced four terrorist attacks since the shutdown began.
The consequences are no longer hypothetical.
They are unfolding in real time.
At a moment when the global threat environment is intensifying, terrorist organizations are resurging and adversaries continue to encourage violence against Americans.
Congress should be reinforcing our defenses.
Instead, Democrats have sidelined the very department responsible for keeping the homeland safe.
Not a single Democrat here on this committee voted to reopen the Department of Homeland Security.
That was not an accident.
It was a political decision made at the expense of the safety and security of the American people.
As threats to our homelands rise and our enemies grow more emboldened, this decision has weakened our defenses and replaced action with dysfunction.
Each day, the threat environment worsens, and with it, the risk to the American people, which is indefensible.
Do each of you agree that the reckless Democratic shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security has affected your agency's ability to detect, deter, and respond to threats against the homeland?
Specifically, has it impacted intelligence sharing, operational coordination, or your capacity to prevent attacks?
So, Director Gabbert, in your opening statement, talked about the threats to the homeland and the changes that you've made as it relates to the border and the changes that the President has made after four years of open border policies under President Biden, during which cartels and gangs expanded their operations into American cities.
What specific actions has ODNI taken to disrupt these criminal cartels and networks and stop the fentanyl and murdering U.S. citizens?
We've taken several actions to be able to get after this threat that the President made a priority.
Number one being making historic shifts in intelligence collection towards addressing this threat.
I believe it is the biggest shift in intelligence capabilities that we've ever seen, or certainly in a long time.
The integration and cooperation between our National Counterterrorism Center with the DEA and other Department of Homeland Security elements is also unprecedented.
We have taken and coordinated the collection of individuals, known and suspected terrorists, known and suspected cartel members, leaders, and inputted that into the TIDE system, which has radically increased and improved our ability to identify those who are cartel and gang members trying to enter our country and those who may already be in our country.
National Counterterrorism Center has been working again in coordination with our interagency partners to get after the financial networks that these cartels and gangs rely upon to be able to continue to fund.
As Director Patel has spoken about, we have national counterterrorism elements that sit within the joint terrorism task forces and support the interagency efforts to continue to get after this threat very effectively.
Director Patel, Mr. Cohen was asking you about a recent firing of counter-espionage agents with Iranian expertise.
You and the FBI are taking, will continue to take, all required steps to keep the American people safe during President Trump's historic military action against an oppressive and evil Iranian regime.
And there's a document that you posted on X, and I think that's what you have in front of you, about all of the wins in the changes that the FBI has made under your leadership and President Trump's leadership during 2025 and the little time that I have remaining.
Could you just highlight some of that for the American people?
Under FISA Title I, Title III authorities, information was presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, a search warrant to surveill individuals associated with the Trump campaign, which was later revealed through the House Intelligence Committee's work that the information collected was not only unverified, but individuals lied in that application, individuals that were government officials.
I think it's worth pointing out that whether this process was FISA or in regular court, it was still lies told by the people trying to get the warrant.
It had nothing to do with FISA.
It was simply the people trying to get the warrant were lying.
Okay, myth number two.
A query means that we're spying on Americans, means we're reading their inboxes, we're getting inside their text messages, all of that.
You're just seeing if they have spoken to somebody who is a foreign intelligence officer, let's say, and you would know they've spoken to them because they would show up as part of that conversation.
So when somebody, and let's say their name rhymes with, I don't know, Tucker Carlson, is claiming that the CIA is spying on him.
I would, I'm going to guess here, because I don't know.
I'm going to guess that the most likely scenario is that in the process of him speaking with Iranian intelligence officials, it is incidentally collected.
Nobody is spying on Tucker Carlson or his inbox, to my knowledge at least.
Number three, another myth, a warrant requirement, should it be required by law, is it's for a simple query, that should be easy to get, right?
And the reason it wouldn't be easy is because oftentimes these queries are part of a very typical analytical process, and they would not meet the judicial standards of probable cause.
And I've seen many examples of this.
I would love if you guys had some examples that are declassified.
I've seen them in a classified session.
So I guess my point is, and now that we've debunked these myths, is you put that warrant process on a simple query.
You're taking away our analysts' ability to connect the dots, to connect the dots from the outside actors, which we can collect on.
They have no constitutional protections.
But you're removing our ability to connect them with the inside actors, which is kind of where it matters.
It's like giving up when you're right at the goal line.
That makes zero sense to do, and that's exactly what this would do.
I've already heard Director Ratcliffe's answer on this, but 18 months, clean reauthorization.
I don't know where that number came from, but would you rather have it longer?
Okay, the situation with these gas fields and the oil in the Persian Gulf, and we said, hey, the theory of the case is the war has the center of gravity, you know, in a Klaus Witzian sense, is the Persian Gulf in the Strait of Hormuz.
And now, as we said yesterday, the pipeline going from Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea that gives them an alternative than going through the Strait.
That was a hit last night by the Iranians.
We said the gap down there in the Red Sea is even more treacherous than the Strait or Formuze.
We're going to get to all that.
Brent, which is the indicator of European.
The cost there went to 119, backed off now at 110.
West Texas Intermediate, which is the checking for the U.S., is about $96.83, bouncing all around.
And we'll talk more about that.
Try to get bowling up here if we have time.
Brandon Weickert's also going to join us in a little while, talk about the strategic situation, what we're hearing from both the Pentagon and other sources.
We'll get that in a minute.
Kobe Bloomfeld Gantz, thank you for joining us, founder, CEO of Chapter.
I'm pretty stunned.
I want you to describe your industry first and why you set this company up.
But my understanding, and look in this analysis, there's essentially in the Medicare advisory to make sure people get the best Medicare possible.
And I admit, I use somebody to help me go through this right now because it's so confusing to me.
I can't make head nor tails of it.
But that the fees that are out there are like $100 billion that is this pool that the insurance companies want to make sure it all cuts their way.
Yes, Medicare is one of the most consequential decisions that American seniors face.
It's also one of the slimiest industries I've ever seen.
So I started the company a few years ago after seeing my parents struggle with the Medicare signup process.
They had been working with a local Medicare advisor who didn't really have the tools, the data, or frankly, the incentives to provide great advice.
My parents were then far overpaying for the same Medicare plan that they could have had for a lot less.
And my mom actually now is subject to lifetime late enrollment penalties because she got bad guidance.
And so there's all these gotchas and difficult areas in Medicare to navigate that the government, for a lot of reasons over time, has created a system that's really not transparent.
It's because it's been Frankenstein together over generations.
Medicare was initially started under LBJ in 1965.
And over the past 60 years, different rules and regulations and regimes have basically been layered on top as new dynamics have come out and new paradigms have come out.
So that's really the underlying reason why it's so complicated.
That on top of just our healthcare system in this country in general, not just Medicare, but all of it is so complicated and rife with a lot of issues.
I heard, as you said, it's very hard even for very well-educated people to navigate.
I heard a Stanford health economist.
This is a guy who has a PhD in health economics from Stanford say he couldn't navigate Medicare.
What is, talk to me, before we get into the data and what you guys have created, given your parents' situation, why is it not full transparency on the incentives of people, people that come, because there's all these commercials and it's all this complicated, even watch TV about who you go to, who do you talk to?
Why is it not transparent of what the incentives are?
Because now that I've researched your company, I find out that some people that actually say they're there to help you and get the best, get you the best deal, turns out their incentives are really related to the insurance companies making out better.
And that's why I talked about this $100 billion annually pool of fees out there.
Why is it not a requirement that you actually got to say, because people wouldn't mind, just tell us what side of the football you're lined up on.
Unfortunately, every Medicare advisor in this country, with the exception of chapter, is really an agent of the insurance carrier, not a fiduciary to the individual.
And that's really what it comes down to.
So insurance carriers want Medicare advisors, Medicare brokers to push plans that the insurance carrier wants.
It's not.
let me find a plan that's in your best interest as a consumer.
It's let me find a plan that makes the insurance carrier the most money.
That's how the laws are actually written.
As a Medicare advisor, you are an agent of the insurance carrier, not an agent of the individual, which is really unfortunate and why I started the company, really.
But all of these fees in the industry are there to push Americans into plans that pay the insurance carrier more, and then ultimately that pay the Medicare broker more.
So walk me through then your combination of fiduciary responsibility, working for actually your client and data and your access to data that other people don't have or you guys have put together.
So walk me through the whole value proposition of the company then.
We look at 100% of Medicare plans across every type of Medicare and there are a lot of different types of Medicare.
There's Medicare Advantage, which you've probably seen a lot of ads for.
There's also a thing called a Medicare supplement plan.
There are Part D prescription plans.
There are lots of different types of Medicare plans, which a lot of people don't realize.
So we look at 100% of options.
We ask each individual American what their needs are, their doctors, their prescriptions, their lifestyle preferences.
And then we match the right plan for each person, whether or not Chapter earns any money.
And so we enroll people in Medicare plans every day, even when we earn nothing.
And importantly, our Medicare advisors don't know how much Chapter earns on a given plan, and their compensation doesn't vary whether you enroll in a plan that Chapter earns money on or a plan that Chapter doesn't earn money on.
So we've aligned incentives entirely with the end user to make sure that we're always doing what's right for the American.
And, you know, selfishly in the long term, we think that actually creates a better business because it creates a better user experience.
It builds trust.
But we are really pushing against the legacy industry that is just trying to push these plans into people onto people who really don't need them or where it's far more expensive than it needs to be.
The advisors, these other advisors are incentivized on a percentage basis or some sort of bonus basis or some sort of incentive about getting someone into a plan, a commission basis that the insurance company is essentially paying them and they're really working for the insurance company.
So my parents, like any American signing up for Medicare, had to figure it out.
They had to go and talk to the Social Security office.
They had to make a lot of calls, had to fill out a lot of paperwork.
And they were working with a local Medicare broker who only had access to a small subset of the plans that were available.
So my parents signed up for a Medicare plan that I learned much later was more expensive than it needed to be for the same coverage.
And then the government actually imposes penalties that accrue over your lifetime if you don't sign up at the right time.
And the policy rationale here, because there is one, is that Medicare is a risk pool and they need to make sure that people who are younger and healthier of the Medicare population sign up when they're still healthy.
They don't want people to just sign up for Medicare once they're sick.
So there is some logic to it, but it's so hard to know when you are supposed to sign up that if you miss that window, the government then adds percentages of premiums to your required payments each month that you are late.
So my mom was a few months late after her window to sign up.
And so now she has to pay significantly more every month to the government until for as long as she's on Medicare.
So for our audience, for the Warren Posse, if you've already used a broker, you've already signed up for something, can you still come to chapter and you guys deconstruct it and help it get better?
Or is that just tough break for a swell guy or gal?
There's so many perverse incentives in the Medicare system where the insurance carriers want you to sign up for one specific plan that makes them more money.
They incentivize Medicare brokers to push that plan.
And as a result, Americans overpay by $100 billion a year.
And there's really no reason other than this Frankenstein system with perverse incentives that's really leaving Americans in the lurch when Medicare is not a welfare program.
This is a program people have been paying into their entire careers.
So at chapter, we're really trying to make sure people get the health coverage that they've been paying into and frankly, they deserve.
Look, Kobe, I think everybody in the audience has signed up for one of these things, regret it.
It's still confusing to them.
They don't fully understand it.
They now realize they've been dealing with brokers that are really paid for by the insurance companies.
In addition, they're working with limited data.
So they can't look at the whole range of alternatives and really deal with making an efficient market because you got perfect information, which is where the data comes from.
Here's what I want.
I really want everybody in the Warren Posse in our audience, both on the live show and the podcast, to be able to get in touch with you guys.
Just walk us through right now.
Take a minute.
Because this audience loves the receipts.
They love to immerse themselves in information.
And this is one of the things where our other sponsors have built relationships with people.
And I know you guys do too, but I want them to get access to you guys.
And I want to do it today.
Because when you listen to you, when I first got to know you guys and started doing the due diligence, you just get so mad when you, this perverse incentives and something that should be straightforward.
And you just made a brilliant point.
This ain't a welfare program.
People have been paying into this.
This is not a welfare program.
This is your hard-earned money.
And this is why you ought to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of that investment.
Yeah, please come to askchapter.org is our website.
And there should be a phone number that people can call.
We're available anytime.
Generally, when people have any questions about the Medicare plan, we're here to answer it.
And there are so many of these mistakes that people make along the way that, as you said, people sign up for a plan, they don't realize that they've been pushed into a wrong plan until maybe they go try to see their doctor and they're not in network or their prescription is far more expensive than they expected.
And so we are really just here to help.
And anyone can give us a call for free.
The number for this specific audience is 845 War Room.
So it's very easy.
Give us a call at 845 War Room and we will help you out.
And if you're already on the right plan, we'll tell you that.
And really, we're just trying to make sure that all Americans are aware of their options and we're really fighting back against this system.
So I just really wonder, so if somebody's already in a plan, they can come to you just for a check on that plan, or maybe you guys can then help them deconstruct it and make it better, correct?
So if I've already signed up, that doesn't preclude me from getting in touch with you guys and working it through, right?
We help people every day optimize their plan, switch their plan if it's appropriate, and make sure they're getting the coverage they want and need at the lowest possible price.
The president has stated that his objectives are to destroy Iran's ballistic missile launching capability, their ballistic missile production capability, and their Navy, the IRGC Navy and Mine Lang capability.
And to what do you attribute Israel's decision to strike Iranian energy infrastructure, despite President Trump's call to keep those facilities off limits?
Like I said, regardless of how we got in here, and we can debate that, and I'm sure that even in the next couple of days will come up.
We are where we are.
We have to win, right?
Now, the definition of that victory is for the President of the United States.
But the President of the United States gave a very clear order out to the public, to the country, to everybody, that Iranian infrastructure, oil infrastructure, was not to be hit.
These gas fields were hit deliberately.
He said that he put out this true social that couldn't be more searing.
Of course, he put the Iranians on notice, too.
You hit Qatar again.
It's going to be the end of you.
Brandon Weickard, I know we got a broader picture to talk about.
The center gravity of this war, and the objectives are very precise, but the objectives are very tied to Tehran in Iran.
Now we're in the Persian Gulf, straight Hormuz, Red Sea, all of it, and it's rattling, whether you like it or not, whether you support President Trump or not, the reality is Brent crude went up to 119, it's back to 110, but even at 110, it's rattling the world's economy and President Trump's economic plan.
Well, I think that that committee hearing was stunning.
I've never seen anything like it, really ever.
Clearly, there is a severe breakdown in communication, not only between the U.S. and its purported allies in the region, but also between within the administration itself.
And I would encourage everybody in the administration, get on the same page now, because this is not going well.
The American people do not understand what's going on.
And a committee briefing like that only makes it worse.
But this is where CENTCOM and the chairman and today in his briefing on the indices, you know, the nuclear program, the missile, ballistic missile program, the industrial infrastructure.
And they keep saying to project power, not internally anymore, but against neighbors like Israel and the Gulf, we're methodically going down.
I also want the audience to understand, Pete's pretty blunt.
Every day it's ratcheted up.
It's getting more intense every day.
Today is going to be more intense than yesterday.
Yesterday was more intense than the other day.
Now the sorties are going to get to what, 10,000 or 15,000?
And furthermore, whatever the Pentagon and CENTCOM and the Intel community is saying publicly behind the scenes, the Iranians are still popping these missiles off.
You just had, I texted you shortly a while ago, that the Qataris are saying they're going to be doing force majeure on five-year contracts, which means they're going to be turning the spigot off because they can't reliably produce oil given what's going on.
You have the Saudis now, and you can talk more about this with bowling, but the Saudis announced they're selling off their gold assets now to try to fund their operations going forward because it's getting so bad.
So the Iranians are still in this fight, and the Iranians are still effecting a very effective strategy of going after the center of gravity, as you and I noted last week, which is the economies of the region.
And you asked about Israel, and I would just say that I don't think we have any idea who is running Israel right now.
I have seen no confirmation as to whether or not Netanyahu is still alive or in command.
I have seen no confirmation that anyone has succeeded him.
Given the President States, we talked about the center of this war, the flip in this war was the Saturday night bombing of the oil facilities that turned into a firestorm in Tehran.
We got to have some incentive for these people to overthrow the theocratic demons.
And part of that is that they're going to actually have some sort of economy afterwards.
What possessed, what do we know now?
Because they're saying President Trump, listen, folks, the fight on this thing is that they're saying President Trump actually signed off on the bombing of the joint oil and gas field.
I just don't think in a million years that President Trump would sign off on that.
What are the Israelis saying was their incentive or why did they want to go after that?
They want the, not only do they want Iran to be collapsed, like a Libya model, but they also want the surrounding Arab states to be weakened as well because they want the Greater Israel Project, which is clearly at hand here, at least in their minds.
Now, they've been getting slammed, but they're trying desperately to keep that viable.
So they're going to keep goosing this thing.
And we saw implications of this or hints of this in the Joe Kent resignation letter a couple days ago, where he explicitly said that the Israelis are basically manipulating us into a war.
The Israelis are on the ground, so they're able to do more, even more than we are, in terms of kind of pushing this thing every day further down the line.
But for such a dramatic, for such a dramatic, and I'm sure more details are going to come out of that, that is a very bold thing to say.
I've been someone that's saying, hey, we've got to look into this, right?
We've got to get to the bottom of this.
But there weren't a lot of receipts last night when Joe went on Tucker.
There was some general conversation, but if you make that charge, and particularly that the President of the United States, who's had your back before in your congressional campaigns and that you've then selected you for one of the most important jobs in the United States government and had your back, you have to have more specifics.
Now I realize a lot of this is classified, but we still haven't gotten down to showing the receipts.
You agree with that that we haven't shown the receipts on the state.
And to do so, I am ready to reach out to many of the partners in the international community to achieve our objective together.
So today, I came here at the White House to directly convey this message to you.
And speaking of the situation in Iran, Iran's development of nuclear weapons must never be allowed.
And that is why we, Japan, have been urging them and also reaching out to other partners in the world.
In addition, Japan condemns Iran's actions such as attacking the neighboring region and also the de facto or effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
As a matter of fact, my fellow minister, Minister Moteghi, Foreign Minister Motegi, also had a direct exchange with the Iranian Foreign Minister and urged Iran to stop such activities.
Donald, you have shown deep trust in Japan and also the unwavering commitment to the Japan-U.S. alliance.
Once again, thank you very much for that.
And today, I look forward to having a discussion on how we can cooperate to make our two nations, both Japan and the United States, stronger and more prosperous.
And I also brought specific proposals to calm down the global energy market.
We're doing, we're going to be speaking about it today.
We've had tremendous support and relationship with Japan on everything.
And I believe that based on statements that were given to us yesterday, the day before yesterday, having to do with Japan, they are really stepping up to the plate.