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June 16, 2025 - The Charlie Kirk Show
27:54
Israel v. Iran and America: The Best Outcomes...And the Worst
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Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here, live from the Bitcoin.com studio.
The war between Iran and Israel continues.
Should America get involved?
We do a very sober take on regime change.
And email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Your thoughts if America should get involved in this war offensively?
We have a full conversation.
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Buckle up, everybody.
Here we go.
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Right now, Israel is getting bombarded.
Major, major, Missile volley coming from the interior of Iran as Israel just bombed.
Let's get this footage up here.
Israel just bombed the media and the news agency headquarters in Iran.
The state TV building is burning after Israel bombed it.
So let's kind of go through the update here.
There is major and significant back and forth between Israel and Iran.
Israel, they were the first to strike.
And Israel went after nuclear facilities and went after military targets.
They even impressively went after some of the generals and they took them out.
Iran responded with a major ballistic missile volley.
Now, Iran is going to run out of missiles at some point.
Iran does not have unlimited ballistic missiles.
They have about 3,000 of them.
They've probably already used about 700 of them.
And so they're going to continue to spend down their payload.
And right now, there's been another direct hit in Haifa that we're keeping our eyes on.
Now, will Iran come to the table?
We'll see.
Now, the best possible outcome for Israel would be that Israel gets to hit all their targets, they get in, they get out, they get to declare victory, so on and so forth.
So, great, fine, terrific.
No American involvement.
The worst involvement for America is a little bit harder to define.
At any point in time, American troops could get caught up in this.
The longer that this goes on, the greater the increase for American troops to be caught up in this conflict.
What happens if Iran hits one of our bases?
What if Iran kills 50 Americans?
How then does the U.S. respond?
Are we duty-bound to strike back?
Probably.
Are we duty-bound to send American troops?
Boy, I hope not.
But then who is to blame if we get then hit by Iran?
Yes, of course, obviously it's Iran, but is Israel trying to drag America into this war?
They're saying, no, we are not publicly.
Other reports internally say, yes, they are.
America is involved in some defensive capacity, which is totally justifiable.
There's probably over 700,000 Americans in Israel right now, and we've long done that alongside the Jordanians, so it's not America only that is doing that.
Some people are pushing for regime change.
I have a very important write-up that I want to share with you about regime change.
We do not have time for that right now in this segment.
But the important takeaway is this.
Be careful when you want to replace a dictator.
Take out the Mullah.
Take out the Ayatollah.
Be careful what comes next.
It could be even worse for Israel, actually.
I know that's hard to believe.
It could be even worse for America.
In fact, the only reason that the Mullahs are in charge of Iran is because of America.
We got involved and we got rid of Mossadegh.
And since we got rid of him, then we put the Shah back in, who was deeply unpopular, and then the Iranian revolution happened.
Did regime change work with Gaddafi?
Nope.
Started a bloody Libyan civil war.
Regime change in Syria?
Time still to tell.
John Bolton is chiming in.
John Bolton, who's been wrong about every major foreign policy decision of the last 20 years.
John Bolton has been wrong about everything.
Iran's ayatollahs are weaker than ever.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
But when the chief neocon John Bolton tells me that, I'm going to be awfully suspicious.
Is the goal of the Israeli government regime change?
They say it's all about nuclear targets.
But if it was only about nuclear targets, why are they hitting the media center in downtown Tehran?
These are questions we're going to ask.
Pesak Walicki is right now.
We should pray for all that are being impacted by these ballistic missiles.
Charlie Kirk here.
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We are joined now by a great man, Rabbi Pasak Willicki, columnist from the Jerusalem Post, host of the Shoulder Podcast, and he is live from Israel as they just endured another major ballistic volley, salvo from Iran.
How are you holding up?
What is going on on the ground in Israel?
Take our audience into the vibe and the energy on the ground.
Well, the vibe is interesting.
It's a bit unique in terms of what we dealt with.
For most of the war that we've undergone, all of the rocket fire and the ballistic missile fire at us has been, almost all of it has been shot down.
But over these last few days, there have been a number of direct hits and there are casualties in Israel's population centers.
So that is casting a bit of a pall on things.
However, and this has been in all different reports, you know, coming out of all different sectors, the Israeli people are wall to wall.
Behind this operation.
I've never seen a national consensus quite like this.
In fact, Yair Lapid, who is the uber-left, Bibi-hating, he's kind of like our equivalent of Nancy Pelosi for you.
He's kind of the head of the opposition, and he is the wokest, most anti-Bibi political figure.
Published an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post today.
Basically saying the entire Israeli people are united.
And that was a very powerful statement to make the point.
Here's the guy on the left end of the spectrum, the guy who leads the charge to try to take down Bibi, saying on this thing.
And he's been calling for ending the war and that whole anti-Bibi protest movement.
But he published that op-ed today to make the point.
And I hope your audience hears it loud and clear.
The Israeli people are wall-to-wall behind this.
The casualties in Tel Aviv, which is our...
There have been interviews all over the media of people whose houses have been destroyed saying this is worth it if it ends the Iranian threat once and for all.
So Rabbi, thank you for that.
And we're praying for the peace of Jerusalem and so many friends throughout Israel that I have and that we have.
So a couple of just logistical questions.
And if you can't comment on it, it's fine.
What exactly is the military operation that Israel is undertaking in the interior of Iran right now?
Where are the targets?
How are they doing it?
Are they using UAVs?
Are they using drones?
Have they been able to continue to take out the Iranian air defense system?
Are they using traditional F-15 or F-35?
I don't know if they have F-35s.
Technology, please give us some insight into the military strategy that Israel is embarking upon.
There are no F-35s in the fight.
Just get that one out of the way.
So the military strategy starting from the beginning of this was, first of all, there was Mossad operatives on the ground who assembled drones on the ground that were used for a lot of the initial strikes.
Those operations, as I understand it, are continuing.
In fact, I understand that there was actually a Mossad headquarters in Tehran, if you could believe it.
And so, so not all of these They are doing that as well.
I don't know all the details, but I know that as ballistic missiles are fired at Israel, each one of those ballistic missiles that's fired then reveals a location from which ballistic missiles are fired.
So the Bank of Israel.
And I should add, and this is important for your audience, there's a lot of kind of reductionist black and white thinking about this.
This isn't only about taking out the nuclear sites.
Israel has been terrorized and Israelis have been murdered by the Iranian regime for decades and decades.
And this is about taking out Iran's ballistic missile capability, taking out their military capability, because this is a regime that is, by its own daily statements in parliament and at the beginning of every school day in every classroom, devoted to the genocide of the Jewish people and the destruction of Israel.
So this is really about destroying Iran's capability to harm Israel.
I don't know all the details of all the different places that they're striking.
What I do know is that from my sources in the Israeli government and the Israeli military, we are way ahead of schedule, meaning the operation has moved along much more quickly with much greater success than was even anticipated.
If someone had told you before this, and there was a lot of fear-mongering going on before this of all the terrible things that would happen, and of course it's not over yet, but if someone had told you before this started that within a day, You would have been told that you were crazy and that the Israelis don't have that capability.
But it turns out we do.
And there's a lot of other capabilities that Israel has that the naysayers are still saying that Israel does not have.
So as far as I can tell, as far as I understand it, the operation is moving along more quickly than even expected, but there are still many more targets.
I'm hearing that it's expected to be weeks-long operation, but how long it's going to go is really going to be determined.
At what point is the threat neutralized?
You know, if your kid is sick and you're by their bedside and someone says, how long are you going to hang out by this bedside?
You don't say, well, I have a timeline on it.
You say, until they're better.
And our children are under attack every day.
Our families are under attack every day.
We've been under attack for a long, long time.
We haven't had the opportunity to do this because we had hundreds of thousands of Hezbollah rockets aimed at us.
We had a Hamas army that was a significant army, and we had Iran basically controlling Syria.
There were a lot of other threats that made it impossible to take down the primary threat, which stands behind all of those other threats.
But back in October, Israel took out The majority of Iran's air defenses, which were Russian-built air defenses that Israel took out, Iran recently started rebuilding them, and that's what really led to the urgency.
Again, another piece of misinformation is this whole debate about how close Iran was to the bomb.
And that's not the relevant point.
The relevant point is how, you know, if someone is vowing to kill me and is They've also taken action throughout the years, trying to kill me and hiring people to kill me and coming after me to kill me.
My decision about when to take them out is not only based on how imminent is the danger.
It's based on when do I have the opportunity to do it.
And with Iran's air defenses degraded last October, Israel realized that the time is now to finally, once and for all, deal with this Iranian threat.
So, there's a big push.
I got lots of text messages this weekend saying there's a big push for U.S. involvement, specifically for bunker buster bombs.
Do you think that's necessary or needed?
We certainly here in America are very skeptical and cautious towards that.
Yeah, there's a lot of—I see this talk a lot also, Charlie, on social media and elsewhere about Israel calling for U.S. involvement, Israel wanting U.S. involvement.
All I can say is both from an interview given by Israel's foreign minister on CNN yesterday, but also from today, the National Security Council head, Sachi Hanegbi, who's really been—if you ever see a picture of the Security Council, the Security Cabinet in an Israel meeting, he's always the guy sitting to the right of Prime Minister Netanyahu.
He said today in mass media, and it was quoted on X, that the war was planned by Israel.
We do not need the U.S. for the goals that are defined by the war.
We can handle it ourselves, including Fordow.
As far as I can tell, and I'm very well-sourced, Charlie, the Israeli establishment, the Israeli government, the Israeli leadership is not asking for U.S. involvement.
I know there's a lot of misinformation about this, but they are not asking for U.S. involvement.
If that's the case, then all foreign aid can be cut to Israel?
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Rabbi Pasak Walicki is with us.
Rabbi, I want to give you a chance to respond to that because there is some confusion from our audience.
What does U.S. involvement mean?
And then can we have agreement that we should not have bunker buster B-52 type material supplied to Israel?
Listen, the Israelis, I'm going to say it again, the Israelis have not asked the United States for their assistance.
Publicly, statements have been made by the top echelons of the Israeli government saying that They're not requesting U.S. assistance.
They've informed the U.S. of what they're doing.
What the Americans decide to do, what they decide is in American interest, they will decide to do.
Israel's not going to refuse an offer of assistance if it comes from the Americans, and then if American citizens are upset about that, that's between Americans and their government.
Israel's not requesting this assistance.
But the question you left us with before the break, if we could talk about that.
Can we go there and talk about the U.S. aid?
Because, you know, you asked the question about, you know, cutting off aid to Israel.
Look, I am one of a number of voices, and I get flack from this here in Israel, from people who disagree, of course, but I'm with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who said just about a month ago, And I've been calling for that.
There's a number of Knesset members who have started calling for that.
And I'm in favor of ending the aid to Israel.
And to me, the political cost of the aid is not worth it, but also it ties Israel's hands.
we are right now nearing the end of a 10-year memorandum of understanding that was signed at the tail end of the Obama administration in September 2016, a military aid package to Israel.
And that package, when you say like ending the aid, that package included a requirement that Israel shut down certain critical parts of its own weapons industry so that they could not make them themselves and would only be able to acquire them by buying them from the It's kind of a bait and switch.
Wait a second.
We have to shut down our military industry making certain weapons.
That's a good point.
You're just going to.
So we can't cold Turkey cut off the aid because Israel needs to have an opportunity to rebuild that part of its weapons industry that Obama.
So I am in favor of getting rid of the aid.
Let me also add in, Charlie, we have to put the aid into proper perspective.
And it's something that's really missing from the whole conversation.
If you look at a map of where the United States has military bases around the world, and this is available online, you'll see that there are American military bases in numerous Middle Eastern countries around Israel.
Jordan has American bases in it.
Saudi Arabia has American bases.
There's other countries in the area that have American bases in them.
What does it cost to operate those bases?
You know, there's no U.S. base in Israel.
And so the U.S. military aid, I'm not saying that's what its purpose is necessarily, but no one refers to the U.S. bases in Jordan as U.S. aid to Jordan.
They're just called defense spending.
But America doesn't need to have bases in Israel because Israel is a reliable ally.
So when we take a look at the expenditures abroad, the aid to Israel is not that significant.
That said, I agree, we should draw it back.
At this point, it equals less than 1% of our GDP.
It's about 2% of our total budget.
90% of Israel's military is paid for by Israel.
So the time has come.
Israel is independent enough.
Israel is strong enough.
And Prime Minister Netanyahu has said this, that we need to move towards drawing down the aid completely.
A final point I'll make, Charlie, is that the amount of money that the United States has poured into Ukraine, and I'm opposed to all of that.
I'm with you.
But the amount of money that the U.S. has poured into Ukraine since the start of that war is greater than the total amount of money that Israel has received in aid from the United States since the state of Israel was born in 1948.
That's right.
That is true.
Rabbi, in closing here, just what would you say is a victory in the next couple of weeks?
Like, in your own words, define what victory would look like in this war.
That's a great question.
Let's first define the war.
This is not a new war.
People talk about Israel starting a war against Iran.
Hezbollah is Iran.
The Houthis are a proxy of Iran.
Hamas was funded by Iran.
The only reason that Israel didn't do what it's doing now, on October 8th, when Hezbollah started firing ballistic missiles at our northern communities, was because we had other enemies facing us that we had to deal with.
So this is the same war that was started on October 7th.
Let's make no mistake about it.
This is just...
What victory looks like is that there is no longer a threat from Iran.
That there is no longer a threat of ballistic missiles.
There is no longer a nuclear program.
And how the Iranian people, whether the existing government moderates, whether there is a regime change from within, that is up to the Iranian people.
The Israelis are not going to impose anything, and we're not going to put troops on the ground there to do it.
Rabbi Pasek Woleki, thank you so much.
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Take out the mullahs!
Knock them out!
You got John Bolton who's getting a little excited.
Let me translate for you right now.
He writes in the Wall Street Journal.
And you guys know I'm pro-Israel.
I don't think I need to prove that any further.
I have the scars to prove that I'm pro-Israel from all the campus events.
Iran's Ayatollahs are weaker than ever.
Let me tell you what John Bolton is really saying here.
He's basically saying that we should go for the throat and we need to execute regime change.
That is what John Bolton is saying in neocon speak, in so many words.
But did you know that we only have a problem in Iran at the scale and the magnitude that we currently have because we involved ourselves in regime change?
America has a long history of regime change with Iran.
Historically, Iran was then called Persia way back in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.
It was ruled by a Shah, an absolute monarch.
During World War II, the British and the Soviets invaded Iran because they were worried that it would ally with Hitler.
They deposed the ruling Shah, throwing the country into turmoil.
The Shah's son took power, but then he was overthrown too.
Iran came under the rule of a prime minister who had a lot of popular support.
But to be honest, he was kind of a communist.
He wanted to nationalize the oil.
His name was Mosagdet.
He was not a great guy.
He basically tried to make himself a dictator.
He tilted towards the Soviet Union, and he was hostile to American economic interests.
So our leaders got in their heads that they should overthrow him.
So they said, this guy is bad.
How could anything get worse than Mosagdet?
He was largely secular.
He was not Islamic.
So we, in our American mind, said this guy is terrible.
He's a communist.
Take him out.
What could be worse than Mossadegh?
So we did.
And by the way, our government lied about it for years.
The CIA and MI6 assisted the Iranian military in overthrowing Mossadegh.
They lied about it and finally declassified files showed that No, we were involved and we got rid of the democratically elected, somewhat communistic, Mossadig, interfering with the self-determination of the Iranian people.
Because we said, what could be worse than this guy?
Well, we reinstalled the Shah.
And look, the Shah was an autocrat.
He was also super sick and very weak.
He was not able to really run the country.
But hey, he was anti-communist and pro-America.
But he was not popular in his country.
And since he was America's guy, that made America much more unpopular in Iran.
And then in the 1970s, Iran had another revolution because of us.
And this is when Islam surfaced.
A group of radical Islamic students launched demonstrations against the regime, and eventually they overthrew the Shah.
They recalled an exiled Islamic cleric, the infamous Ayatollah Khomeini, back from exile, and they made him the theocratic ruler.
Because America had involved itself so aggressively in Iranian affairs before these people really hated America.
And so, thanks to our intervention in that country in the 50s, we made them an enemy for decades to come.
This radical regime took dozens of Americans as hostages in our embassy.
They sponsored terrorism around the world and they called us the great Satan.
The moral here is that we should not invade Iran and we should not...
Sometimes you get something way worse.
Like Iraq, you get ISIS.
Libya, you get civil war.
This has unforeseen and often disastrous consequences.
And that's why we should avoid reckless regime change wars when we can.
Very often, you get even worse than what you used to get.
And right now, if you have regime change in Iran, what do you think you'll get next?
You have a regime change in Iran?
You'll get a civil war, almost certainly.
Oh, who cares if they have a civil war?
Oh, okay.
Where are all those people going to go?
To Europe.
They're going to flee.
You'll create a refugee crisis.
If the Iranian people want to have self-determination and they want to have a new form of government, so be it.
We as the West should not be involved.
We should not call shots because Iran is only a problem today.
Because we got involved thinking we knew better.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email us, as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
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