Jack Posobiec and guests cover U.S.-Israeli strikes—Epic Fury and Roaring Lion—targeting Iran’s missile industry, navy, nuclear sites, and leadership (including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Raisi) in Tehran, Chabahar, and Bandar Abbas. Retaliation hit Bahrain’s radar, Dubai’s Fairmont Palm Hotel, and U.S. bases, with unconfirmed claims of 85 Iranian school casualties possibly from misfires. Trump’s Board of Peace allies now face scrutiny as strikes risk oil shocks and public backlash despite his past anti-war stance. CIA warns hardline IRGC could replace Khamenei, complicating regime change amid skepticism over Iranian uprising and strategic benefits like disrupting China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Optimism lingers but demands transparency to counter propaganda and generational war fatigue. [Automatically generated summary]
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All right, welcome to this special Saturday coverage live stream of the United States military, along with Israel forces, striking Iran.
We knew this was a potential.
We actually sort of warned about it all week long.
We weren't sure when or if even.
Last we heard is that the president was not confirmed either way.
Well, now we know.
He has authorized military strikes in the heart of Iran.
We've seen strikes all over, actually, including the Ayatollah's residents.
There are reports that he may be dead.
He may believe he is.
I don't think it's confirmed yet, but he certainly hasn't done any dramatic appearances proving he's alive.
Well, and you also have to assume that they have pre-recorded videos of him.
So if you see those, stay frosty.
As Jack Pesobic always says, always wait for the confirmation.
But yes, we are seeing preliminary indications that he could, in fact, be dead, along with other top leaders of the IRGC.
And it remains unclear, though.
It's the fog of war.
So the first casualty of war, as they say, is the truth.
So we have to just say what we know.
And this is what we know.
The United States and Israel launched coordinated major military strikes on Iran today with U.S. operation named Epic Fury.
And Israel, which is called Roaring Lion, President Donald Trump announced major combat operations are underway aimed at destroying Iran's missile industry, navy, and nuclear capabilities while preventing it from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Strikes targeted Iranian leadership, including apparent attempts on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khami Khameni and the president, the armed forces heads, nuclear sites, missile facilities, and other regime military assets across multiple cities, including, of course, Tehran.
Trump publicly urged Iranians to rise up in his speech to take over your government and seize their freedom, framing the action as an opportunity for regime change against the wicked radical dictatorship.
And said, in fact, he said that this was a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
And obviously, that's in response to the massive wave of protests that rose up, at which point the regime then killed tens of thousands of its own citizens to quell.
Iran then retaliated with a large wave of ballistic missiles and drones targeting Israel, with intercepts reported over areas like Haifa and Jerusalem and multiple U.S. military bases assets in the region.
Iranian strikes hit U.S. facilities, including Al-Udayd Air Base in Qatar, bases in Kuwait, Al-Dafra in the UAE, the U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, and other places in the Gulf.
Explosions and air defense activations were reported in UAE, Dubai, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan, with civilian impacts, including a reported Israeli strike on a girls' school in southern Iran.
U.S. And Iranian Strikes: BS Or Reality?00:08:28
This is not, as far as I'm aware, has been confirmed.
That's per Iranian state media, so take it with a grain of salt.
But obviously, that's a negative, if true.
The conflict marks a massive, massive escalation with ongoing operations expected over several days.
UN Security Council emergency meetings called, and global reactions ranging from calls for restraint to fears of broader regional war breaking out.
This is nothing new.
This happens just about every time.
And yeah, we are still waiting for confirmed reports of Iranians' top officials, whether or not they survived or are dead.
And howdy, everyone.
And that is how it's going to be today.
I would say if you're online looking for updates on X or YouTube, be ready for, you know, the fog of war has been replaced by a fog of BS.
Nowadays, you have, obviously, a lot of people are propaganda actors, and now we're in the age of AI.
So you could see a video, and that video is fake.
You could see a lot of, you'll see a lot of reports that this has happened, that a missile has struck this place or that place.
You have to be careful.
Don't believe everything is true, especially if it's an account you're not familiar with.
Hopefully, if it's coming from a major news outlet, it's going to be more reliable, but even they can be fooled, as we've learned in past U.S. military interventions.
So we're watching everything, but really, unless the United States government itself is confirming something, be prepared for things to shift rapidly.
So far, there have been no reports of American casualties, but the president did warn in his remarks last night, which we're cutting up right now.
He did warn that that might happen.
This is not like the strikes last summer, where it seems we struck their nuclear base, and then Iran was ready to sort of do this KFABE, shoot missiles so they can show their honor, but they weren't really trying to hit anything.
They went wide on this.
Yes, this time, our stated intent is to bring down the regime of Iran, and we can reasonably expect them to shoot at us for real this time.
And we're going to see how effective they are.
On the positive side, I will note that our first strikes went at around in the middle of the day.
And so, based on that, I would guess Iran does not have a strong ability to defend themselves.
And we can hope that they don't have a terribly good ability, strong ability to hit us either.
So, the two waves of attack, one from the Israeli side, one from the U.S., the U.S. is going after military installations.
They're going after, including like naval yards.
They're trying to take out the military and the anti-air capacity of the Iranians.
They look to have been remarkably effective, actually.
The Israelis, we're told, are going after the head of the snake.
So they're hitting military officials.
So it's sort of a divide and conquer.
It does appear that this has been a remarkably effective first volley by the United States and Israel forces, the joint operation.
Air defenses are holding up in Israel, which is one indication that the missile capabilities of the Iranians have been taken out fairly successfully.
They are obviously still able to shoot missiles out.
However, at this point, what we can tell is that the first wave of attacks and strikes by the U.S. have been successful.
Let's go ahead and play a clip from POTUS.
This was late last night in the wee hours.
This is when he made the announcement to the nation that the strike had commenced, 252.
A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.
Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.
Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.
For 47 years, the Iranian regime has chanted death to America and waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops, and the innocent people in many, many countries.
It's been mass terror, and we're not going to put up with it any longer.
So, you know, I, calling around this morning, you know, it became very clear to me, you know, that I would say there is extreme concern that Iran had reinitiated its nuclear ambitions.
And the president referred to that in his remarks.
So there's two different sort of things we need to analyze here.
There is the political analysis and the military analysis.
From a military standpoint, we pray for all of our troops.
We pray for peace.
We pray that there would be zero American casualties.
Although, as you said, Blake, the president has alluded that that could happen.
The missile capabilities, especially, of the Iranians are advanced.
And one of the reasons that Israel throughout the years has wanted to take out Iran, we talk a lot about nuclear.
They were very concerned about their interballistic continental missiles, right?
The intercontinental ballistic missiles.
That was actually a bigger concern for many in the military of Israel.
So there's a military consideration and then there's a political consideration.
The political consideration, we have to just be honest that there is a sense that this was not sold to the American public sufficiently.
Perhaps there will be an opportunity on the back end of this.
If there is concerns about the weapon capability or the bomb capability, the nuclear capability of the Iranians that we are not aware of, then perhaps we'll hear about that on the back end.
Obviously, you want to avoid a situation if, you know, for example, what happened in Iraq where we were told that they were developing weapons of mass destruction only to find out that those reports were untrue or fabricated.
So I'm sure they're being very, very cautious with how they're communicating that.
However, one thing is very clear.
There was a dramatic, urgent concern that there could be weapons that were being developed imminently.
And I don't know what that means.
We're going to have to wait and find out and hear, but that is one thing that we need to keep our eyes on.
And obviously, if you have thoughts, send us messages.
We're on Rumble right now.
We're live there.
If you send us messages, we're happy to read them.
We want to get a sense of how the base feels about everything that's unfolding because we're here for you.
That's why we're live.
So we have a lot of just messages, you know, praying for our nation, praying for our military, many prayer emojis, of course.
And we will keep monitoring that.
Referencing the nuclear stuff, as you said, the president did directly mention that in his remarks as well.
Let's play that.
253.
It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular, my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon.
I'll say it again.
They can never have a nuclear weapon.
That is why in Operation Midnight Hammer last June, we obliterated the regime's nuclear program at Fordeau, Natance, and Isfahan.
After that attack, we warned them never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Lay Arms, War Changed00:11:38
And we sought repeatedly to make a deal.
We tried.
They've rejected every opportunity to renounce their nuclear ambitions.
And we can't take it anymore.
Yeah.
And I mean, so the other thing I would say here is I'm seeing a lot of people on the internet reference clips from Charlie.
And this is something I was very aware of.
It's a dynamic I'm sure you were aware of as well, Blake.
But, you know, I've been called by multiple members of the press trying to get our reaction.
What would Charlie think?
What would, you know, here's what I know.
Charlie was by instinct and by default against regime change wars.
He just was.
There's no getting around that.
There's no truth other than that.
But Charlie was also a realist.
I remember on multiple occasions, he told me something along the lines of, listen, the world is a very dark place without American military leadership.
Didn't mean he was in favor of foreign adventurism or regime change wars because he wasn't.
But he was also a realist.
And President Trump had earned his respect.
President Trump had earned a big long leash, not an unlimited one, but a very long one to make tough decisions.
As Charlie used to say, this is why we elected him, to make tough decisions.
Now, I am not saying that I think that this war has been properly sold to the American public.
I don't think it has been.
But if there was additional information that we are not privy to that would have, in their minds, necessitated an urgent, aggressive attack if they felt the diplomacy avenue had been exhausted, if they were getting dragged around, if they were getting played for fools, then President Trump would act.
And we always knew that that would be the case.
Thinking on it, I would think, frankly, how he engaged with the strikes in Iran last summer, which is I know he did not really favor involvement there.
He did not like escalation.
The idea of striking Iran did fill him with some foreboding.
I think in the lead up to this war, this is purely a guess on this part.
Charlie is not here, unfortunately.
I think he would have been lobbying against these strikes, but it is as you say.
I think if he were arguing against it to the administration and they went with it anyway, he would allow himself to consider they may know something I don't, or the president, he reached this conclusion for a reason.
Ultimately, we do elect the president to make those life or death calls.
And we have a history of presidents who have run on a platform of avoiding wars and then they have chosen to initiate them after taking office because they believe the situation has changed or the intelligence has changed.
And I think that is the attitude Charlie would have, that the decision has been made.
Now, we have to hope the president has a good plan, has a good strategy, has a way to make this work out the best for America.
And that is what he would pray for right now.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think, you know, I'll never forget the hit that he did with Jesse Waters where, you know, you could tell Charlie in his own mind was hoping that it wasn't going to happen.
But ultimately, he said, at this point, you have to trust Trump.
And I don't mean the meme.
I don't mean the cliche.
This is why you elect leaders to make difficult decisions, even when they are politically unpopular.
You have to sort of trust that the providence of God is leading us.
You have to pray for our leaders to make wise decisions, even when you feel like you would have been, you would have made a different decision.
Ultimately, we do not have all the facts, and we have to watch.
Now, I will say that this was the largest buildup of U.S. troops since the Gulf War in, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, if you will.
This is the largest buildup of troops that we've seen.
So I was always under the impression that something was going to happen.
And I will say, from initial indications, this seems to have been very well thought out.
We are also finding out that the U.S. is using a new form of one-way drones that have not been used before.
So they're using those in the interior of Iran, which they're kamikaze drones.
Apparently, that's not been something that we've used in the past.
We're using them now, and they've proven extraordinarily effective.
War has changed.
War has changed.
This was another warning from President Trump to the IRGC to lay down your arms or face death.
256.
To the members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces, and all of the police, I say tonight that you must lay down your weapons and have complete immunity, or in the alternative, face certain death.
So lay down your arms.
You will be treated fairly with total immunity, or you will face certain death.
Lay down your arms.
All right, so getting reports on this bombing of the school where 50 school children are reportedly.
We should explain that one.
Yeah, so there's a report.
Iran is claiming that an elementary school was struck and that several dozen students are dead.
That is their claim.
I would, again, as I opened at the top of the show, all claims are subject to revision, and some things will just be made up.
Some things will just be lies.
I highly doubt our government would intentionally strike an elementary school.
So there's a possibility.
Didn't happen at all.
Accidental strike.
Iran might have launched one of their missiles and it didn't go well and it landed inside their own country.
All of those things are possibilities.
But people are going to run with whatever narrative they want for political reasons in the days to come.
Yeah.
And listen, I'm seeing a tweet from Cernovich saying the Mullahs did it to blame the U.S.
We don't know that either, technically.
But we'll find out.
I mean, again, the fog of war is completely set in.
So do not jump to conclusions here.
That's the main thing.
But they're trying to, it's clear that if this is an op, they're trying to make Trump look like a child murderer.
And this is, you know, very, very early grain of salt time.
Huge.
Anything from the Iranian state media, by the way, they do this with Hamas.
You know, Hamas's state media claims all these casualties.
None of this is confirmed, but people parrot it anyways and they quote it as the official number.
All right.
So, again, two different lines of analysis that we need to consider this entire stream.
One is political, one is militarily.
From a military standpoint, it looks like Iran sprayed and prayed, hitting U.S. bases even in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia then responded saying that it will get in the fight with us.
So, there is a difference sometimes between Arabs and Muslims.
Look at the board of peace that President Trump has put together.
It was interesting because a lot of people looked at that board of peace and said, this isn't like the old boards of peace.
This isn't like the UN.
You get Tony Blair.
You've got a couple sort of old mainstays, Western Alliance partners, but a lot of that was Turkish.
It was UAE.
It was Qatari.
It was Saudis.
So that's looking fairly prescient right now as we're involved in this Iranian strike.
So interestingly enough, we have a lot of support from that region of the world.
And guess what?
The Iranians have been a thorn in a lot of the Middle Eastern country sides for a long time.
All right.
So they are reacting, I think, as you might, it might be surprising, but actually, when you know the history of the region, Iran is no friend of a lot of those countries.
As a matter of fact, Iran has been a bully.
It's the number one state sponsor of terror.
And it's an irrational actor at times.
I'm not saying it's fully irrational, but it has been sowing chaos through the region, killing Americans.
The president is right about that, that they have been killing Americans through their proxies in the region for decades.
And, you know, here's a picture of the Board of Peace, which we need to get names of these folks because I think that's important.
259, this is the Board of Peace that President Trump has put together.
Well, it'll be interesting to see who on that board of peace has our back in this moment.
And so far, Iran has misplayed its hand by hitting a lot of people, other Arab nations in the region, even if they're going after U.S. bases.
As one U.S. official said after the strike that landed in Saudi, they said that they made a huge mistake.
They made a huge mistake doing that.
So now Saudi is getting in the fight and striking back.
Yeah, it does seem, again, this is why this is different from past ones.
It seems, to use a pro-wrestling term, there was some K-fabe about our past conflicts with Iran where we'd bomb something and they would shoot a missile into the desert.
We'd blow stuff up and they would, again, they'd just shoot missiles and they'd blow up a mile outside of one of our bases.
This time, Iran realizes that we are going for the regime.
They are more seriously aiming at everyone.
And to the extent there's anything good about that, I think it will align the region that Iran is a rogue actor that needs to go down.
I don't think the Saudi public is going to be happy that they're having missiles blow up in Riyadh.
The Emiratis are not going to enjoy missiles blowing up in the middle of Dubai.
Yeah, well, we just got some images here.
This is an Iranian missile struck a five-star Fairmont, the Palm Hotel in Dubai.
We'll get these images up.
Some sources claim there were U.S. personnel at this hotel, but this gives you a sense of the damage that we are seeing if we can get some of this.
Yeah, look at this.
It looks like it might be just a piece of debris.
Like, it's not a big fire.
Well, but nevertheless, this was an Iranian counter-strike that has now hit a five-star hotel in the Middle East.
So, and by the way, there's images like this all over the internet right now of the Iranian counter-strikes and debris falling, as you said, Blake.
Some of them getting shot out of the sky, but not completely.
And then the debris falls near civilians.
These videos are all over the place.
Again, I want to reiterate: the U.S. strikes were taking out the military installations.
That seems to be the divide of responsibilities here while the Israelis were taking out personnel.
You remember, I'm kind of reminded of those images where Israel struck those apartment complexes, and they didn't hit the seventh floor.
They didn't hit the ninth floor, they hit the eighth floor to kill people.
And so we know that they have very precise striking capability when it comes to locating certain personnel and then taking them out.
We know that Mossad has infiltrated the Iranian regime at the deepest level.
Precision Strikes00:06:13
So they, with some likelihood, with some good likelihood, we can predict that a lot of Iranian top military brass, top government officials, their locations would have been known.
And if they wanted to take them out, they very well could have.
Now, we're still waiting on confirmation on the Ayatollah himself.
That's sort of the big domino to fall.
And then the question becomes, what happens if that happens?
Will the Iran regime fold like a cheap suit?
You get the head of the snake.
Does the rest of the apparatus and the regime fall?
Is there enough popular goodwill within Iran to overthrow the regime?
Will the IRGC continue fighting?
Will it attempt to push back and reestablish control?
The answer is we'll see.
These things take longer than a couple hours, which I know is frustrating in the age of TikToks and such.
Everything moves faster, and wars move faster as well, but they still take days, weeks, sometimes months.
And we'll see what unfolds here.
And by the way, I called a number of, let's just say, D.C. folks, members of Congress, that sort of thing.
The hope seems to be, and the early indication seems to be, let's start with the hope.
The hope is that this is a quick operation that, let's say, lasts days, not weeks.
But it very well could last weeks.
And that would be, I think, politically and militarily a bad outcome.
But it could.
And we need to brace ourselves for that.
The hope is that this is a days-long struggle, that we are successful, that the regime falls quickly, if that is the goal.
Again, I'm not saying I'm pro-regime change.
I'm saying now that we're here, what are the best outcomes?
As a matter of fact, I am very much like Charlie, that I am against regime change inherently by instinct after everything that happened after 9-11.
But we are here now, and this is why you elect a president.
This is why you trust you have to, at some point, as a republic that is representative of a republic, you have to trust your elected leaders to do the right things, especially once you're in these types of situations.
We can debate whether this was the right move to do or not at a later point.
Certainly it is politically fraught.
But at this point, we have to pray that it is successful and that the best outcomes happen.
And so far, we're not sure.
But that is the hope in D.C.
The hope in D.C. is that this is quick.
I will tell you that.
Let's look at what some people are saying in the chat.
We do want to see what the base thinks about this.
These people want all of us dead.
They consider us infidels.
If you don't understand that, you don't understand the people of Iran.
Well, that's interesting because I think part of the optimistic case for this is that the Iranian regime is unpopular.
They did have a major uprising a month ago.
It has not been, it is certainly not a government that has made its people wealthier or better off.
So I think there is a lot of sentiment in favor of toppling them.
But it's also true that sometimes the quickest way to bolster support for a crappy government is to have bombs falling on your country.
So we will see what unfolds in that dimension.
I support the United States from Dylan.
Sunshine Kim says, people have jumped to conclusions with everything Trump has done, and he was proven right each time.
So that is what we are hoping for.
We saw that with the strike last summer.
We'll be frank.
Charlie was very wary of that.
I was very wary of that.
I think all of us were.
But in the end, the strike was successful.
There were no casualties.
There was no serious retaliation.
So he was able to properly thread the needle to get the U.S. involved without it escalating or extending into something prolonged.
And if there's a similar arrangement here, I think we do see, I'll be frank, we see opposition to this from people who are on the right, who are in the president's space.
But success justifies itself.
If this is a short war, if this is a decisive war, if U.S. casualties are low or even, man, we could pray for this non-existent, then there will very rapidly be somewhat.
Yeah, I mean, we have to brace ourselves for the fact that there probably are going to be some casualties.
Probably hopefully not dead.
Casualties, remember, is sort of an all-inclusive expression that could mean injured and dead.
Let's hope that we lose no lives.
But I think it would be naive to anticipate that we don't have some casualties in some form.
So be happy says, dear God, please protect our troops, then get them out of the Middle East.
That was my initial thought.
And I mentioned this on X, that I think the best success case for this conflict is if you take the attitude, Iran is the last really major foe of the United States in the Middle East.
You have some terrorist groups in rural areas.
You have tinpot types.
But this is the last regime that could, you know, is making a serious bid for nuclear materials of any kind.
And the thought is, if you can topple them, this can be, we've had a lot of wars in the Middle East in the last 40 years.
This could be our last war in the Middle East.
And if the president is able to come out of this and say, now we are able to dial back America's involvement here, we can send those troops home or send them to Asia to contain China.
Yep.
And we're done with the Middle East other than, you know, we have a few allies there.
We're buds with them.
They're our strategic friends.
And if he can say, I use the Abraham Accords to make it so everyone's no longer at war with Israel.
And I use this to make it so Iran is settled business after 45 years of their nonsense.
It's done.
We're disengaging.
I think that is a winning message if he's able to sell that message.
President's Bet on Middle East00:04:02
Yeah, so yeah, come on in.
So here we got, this is the Board of Peace, by the way.
This is the executive board, which is focused on diplomacy and investment.
This is Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Jared Kushner, Steve Witcock, Tony Blair, Ajai Banga from the World Bank, World Bank president, Mark Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management, Robert Gabriel, all this stuff.
All right, so here's the countries.
U.S., Israel, Saudi, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Argentina, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, and there's some others, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Cambodia, El Salvador, Kosovo, Mongolia, Paraguay, Turkey.
So when you look at that list and then you realize the region that we're fighting in, the Board of Peace has all of a sudden assumed a much larger consequence, which I think is fascinating.
You sort of see maybe President Trump was lining up the political, the diplomatic backing to finally sort of excommunicate this evil from the region.
And by the way, whether you're for or against this strike is irrelevant to the truth that Iran is an evil regime, at least the Ayatollah and the regime that runs Iran.
We're not saying that about the people, but you do see that this board of peace could assume a larger consequence given the situation.
Hey, Mikey, welcome.
Mikey just drove in, wanted to join in.
How's it going?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I was watching the stream.
I think you guys are doing a great job.
But I agree with you, Andrew, that I do take a stance against regime change.
But at the same time, I don't feel, I think we learned our lesson with the Venezuela thing and also the 12-day war, which is just that initial reports aren't always accurate.
And this isn't the first time we've even heard claims that Khamenei is dead.
And so anything from Khamene is dead to Republicans are going to lose the Senate because of this.
All of that is kind of all over the place.
And I think we need to wait a little bit.
However, I will just add time and again, I've bet against the president when it comes to foreign entanglements like this.
And time and again, I've been proven wrong.
I even remember with Venezuela, I was texting Josh and a few other people.
I was like, this is blah, And then in the coming days, I was like, wow, that was a crazy operation that we ran.
And so I think this is something that we're going to see with Iran, but also with Charlie specifically, I mean, he saw young people, and I can relate to this, which is that young people have a different stance when it comes to foreign policy.
And it's not that we, you know, don't want to be involved in any foreign issue.
It's just that we kind of have a little bit of a fatigue with it.
I mean, from the time I was born, so believe it or not, I was born in 2001.
Pretty crazy.
But from the time I was born, 9-11 to today, there has literally been a conflict in the Middle East.
And also, I mean, when you take it into account, like there's been a conflict regarding Israel from the time I was born to today.
And so as a young person, you're seeing, you know, this increase in your ability to probably never be able to own a home, never be able to afford a family.
You know, the dating market's shrinking.
The average home purchase is 40 years of age.
And everything is like kind of betting against young people.
And so when they see something like this, their initial reaction is, why do I care about that?
Why do I want to do that?
Why do I want to be involved?
But to your point, you bet against President Trump.
We've bet against President Trump.
I remember with Charlie feeling a lot of consternation behind the scenes, wondering what the heck was going on, only to be proven wrong again and again.
Now, none of that is to say that this is politically popular.
Elections And Softened Strikes00:15:48
So that's a whole other analysis.
But I do believe that President Trump, and I've been convinced that he has our best interest at heart, whether or not it's always the political winner that we want it to be.
We have Jack Posobiec joining us now.
Jack, what do you make of this?
Hola.
So yeah, I've been up running on Real America's Voice, doing some work there from about eight in the morning, woke up early, saw the news like everyone else.
Look, you know, over human events, we've been reporting all week that it looked as though these strikes were imminent.
We saw all the indications and warnings.
The fifth fleet pulling out of Bahrain, they knew Bahrain was going to be one of the earliest targets in any retaliatory strikes from Iran.
And indeed, just in the last couple of minutes, we're hearing that Iran's response actually was able to take out, it looks like one of their kamikaze drones, these Shahed 136 drones, was able to take out a radar installation, direct hit on a radar installation on the Bahrain naval base there.
So again, real questions about Iran's ability to penetrate U.S. electronic defenses, air defenses, et cetera.
But so we saw the ships pulling out as a huge indication of that.
Obviously, the United States Navy reflecting all the way back to the lessons of Pearl Harbor and knowing that when you're getting in these hostilities, obviously a different situation, but the vulnerability of ships at port.
Then, you know, we just saw the sheer amount of material being moved over to the Middle East.
And the indications we were also getting out of the White House was that it looks like it looks like things were about to pop off.
So we were putting up strike packages on things that we could see the United States do, whether or not it's going to be infrastructure, regime infrastructure, whether it's going to be military-only targets, whether or not we're going to target economic infrastructure, oil pipelines, oil refineries, that type of thing hit Iran where it hurts in the wallet, whether or not the strike packages will include that.
What we've seen so far is it seems the United States is targeting IRGC facilities, specifically those at Chabahar, Bandar Abbas, these naval facilities, of course, because everyone knows that Iran's most dangerous course of action is their ability to either mine or blockade the Strait of Hormuz.
And in fact, they only need to appear to mine the Strait of Hormuz to be able to shut down really the entire global right.
Well, similar to the Houthis, right?
So the Strait of Hormuz is in the Gulf.
The Houthis were on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula there in the Red Sea.
And so Iran, with their very tight border, if you look at that choke point at the mouth of the Gulf of the Persian Gulf, they have the ability just to just completely shut that down with mine.
So yes, very similar to what the Houthis were doing in their choke point, the Strait of Babel Mendeb at the mouth of the Red Sea.
So this real ability to constrain global shipping and global oil markets.
I'm glad I filled up yesterday.
You know what I mean?
You know, thinking that something like this was going to be coming.
But what I'm also hearing out of the White House is that, look, expect strikes to be days, not hours.
This is not going to be a one and done thing like Operation Midnight Hammer.
President Trump, of course, in his overnight address to the nation, of course, we're going to see whether or not he has another address to the nation.
But he said that this is about the regime.
This is about conducting an air campaign, hurting the regime.
And he wants the people to rise up and have the people flood the streets, as we saw weeks ago, but really wants them to try to take over the regime.
He's called for this.
And so what we're going to see, I think, here is we're going to see salvos of alternating attack, pause and assess, attack, pause, and assess.
So wait to see the battle damage assessment, see what has been hit, what the capabilities are of those strikes, what the regime does, whether or not they want to sue for peace, whether or not you see a regime crack and they want to come to a deal on the nuclear programs President Trump has talked about, or perhaps an actual regime collapse, in which case, obviously something that Charlie and we're here on the Charlie Kirk stream.
So of course, we all remember what Charlie said about those regime change scenarios back in June.
You really don't know what is going to come after.
And I'm sure we have all the clips and it's all been going viral right now.
And people are pulling up the old tweets of Charlie where he spoke about this and warned about the dangers inherent and risks inherent in a regime change scenario.
That being said, as we look forward, I don't think this is going to be over anytime soon.
And of course, we want to see what Iran does in response.
Know Iran has also looks like they've conducted strikes not only on U.S. bases like Bahrain, as I pointed out, but also in Jebel Ali.
That's the port of Dubai.
And it looks as though that port, one of the major ports on the Sunni-Arab side of the Gulf, that's the whole Gulf split, the Shia Iranians, the Persians versus the Sunni Arabs.
So Jebel Ali, that huge port there in Dubai, looks like they did target it.
There was a strike, an interception of that strike.
So it didn't land all the way, but it does look like some of the debris and this video is going around now.
It looks like it's been confirmed, have hit one of the four-star hotels in Dubai.
Of course, Dubai, what do they call it?
The Pearl of the Gulf.
And so real questions as to the economic fallout from all of this as it remains to be seen.
But President Trump out there stalwart and saying that he wants to see this through.
But again, from what we're seeing so far, air, naval combat powers, no boots on the ground.
But it wouldn't surprise me if we see some commando raids, IDF, potentially even U.S. special forces.
We don't know just yet.
Similar to the Maduro raid, obviously we saw a Medal of Honor recipient there at the State of the Union with Erica a couple of days ago.
So whether or not U.S. special forces are involved, all of that will come out in the coming days and weeks.
All right.
We got a donation message from Sandra.
Thank you very much.
And she says, I joined late.
Can you give us a quick recap of what happened?
Well, fortunately, the recap is going.
Yeah, well, he basically did.
Even quicker recap, of course, is last night.
I think it was about midnight Phoenix time, 2 a.m. 2 a.m. Easter.
So it's interesting, it's broad daylight in Iran when this happened.
We were used to, past strikes have been convenient for stream timing because it's happened in the evening, in the afternoon here because it's nighttime over there.
But they launched strikes on Iran in broad daylight.
It was already Saturday in the middle of the day there.
And that's basically where we're at.
We're waiting to see what the ramifications of those strikes are.
Maybe we killed the Supreme Leader.
Maybe we didn't.
We are possibly have done assassination strikes on several other leaders.
In response, Iran has shot missiles all across the Middle East.
Some of them appear to have caused damage, but we don't know what casualties, if any, there are.
And we are waiting to see what happens next.
Conflicts like this take days or weeks.
They don't happen in hours.
Can I just add to all of this as like an umbrella statement?
Just there's so many claims that you're going to see online right now in just breaking minutes.
People are going to say that the Supreme Leader is dead.
And I'm sure other people are going to say that B.B. Netanyahu is dead.
And this leader has been killed.
And that leader has been killed.
Just take everything with a grain of salt.
Understand we are in the fog of war.
Truth is the first casualty in war.
So stay frosty when it comes to all of this until any of these claims until things are actually confirmed.
Do not just take everything at face value.
I totally agree.
We actually have John Solomon who's calling in.
John, welcome to the stream.
You've got Blake, Mikey, Jack, myself.
Yeah, please give us, just, you know, we got an email in, or I guess it was a comment asking for a recap.
Give us your assessment of what this strike is about, what the goals are, the military mission.
What is the win?
What is the administration hoping to achieve here?
Yeah, I think the president is pretty clear that the objective of this goal is to basically knock down Iran's defenses and leadership to a point where the Iranian people can overthrow them and take over the government without Americans having to put boots on the ground, without having to have a significant invasion like we did with Iraq or other regime change moments, Afghanistan.
It is an air superiority mission that is designed to degrade the leadership, the military capabilities, and eventually open the door for the Iranian people themselves to overthrow the government.
I'm sure the CIA has been working on an overthrow plan for some time with groups like the MEK or the National Council for Resistance of Iran.
I wouldn't be surprised if at some point you see some of the Kurdish special forces come in from the West.
The West is pretty fortified now, but that time that will be degraded.
And the goal is for us to just soften it up enough that the Iranian people can go in, make their own regime change, make their own democratically elected government, and get over this 47-year era of tyranny.
Now, that's going to take time, particularly when you're doing aerial only.
Last time it took about 12 days to just simply soften up the air defenses so we can run some stealth bombers through and take out the nuclear facilities.
This is going to be probably a more complex project, although Iran was pretty degraded.
It's also low on resources, low on money, low on oil, low on energy, low on food.
So it may crack sooner, or the Mullahs may at some point, though it's not been their tendency, say, we've had enough.
We'll tap out.
And so I think those are two options that the U.S. intelligence committee will be looking at.
Is there a moment where the Iranians tap out because China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba can't help them?
And if not, I think we just keep degrading to the point of where an aground invasion by Iranians leads to leadership change.
That's the goal here.
The president's very clear.
John, so yeah, this does seem to be a regime change operation.
I don't think there's any way around it.
Have you heard any rumors or reporting that, I mean, we saw JD Vance basically allude to the fact earlier this last week that they were developing, there was indication that they were developing nuclear capabilities again, that that would become underway.
Is there any indication from you, like of a dirty bomb or some other piece of intel that maybe hasn't been made public yet that could have increased the urgency to strike?
Yeah, I think there's a couple things that we do know for sure.
We do know from, and I have confirmed this with my own resources, that Iran was pressing China for some hypersonic missiles to get them shipped in the next few weeks so that they would have the ability to take out our ship fleet.
Those hypersonics are so fast they can evade even American defenses sometimes.
And that's something that China's been very good at.
Those conversations, which U.S. intelligence intercepted and monitored, was a primary reason.
You want to protect your fleet.
You got a lot of big assets in the water there, and you don't want a hypersonic to create a loss of life or a loss of capability for the United States.
So that was the primary reason.
The second reason is there is some indication they're rebuilding.
They're trying to get to some of the uranium that's buried beneath the rubble that we created last summer.
That could lead to a dirty bomb, though, quite frankly, it'd be easier for them to create a dirty bomb by just getting some medical waste in Europe somewhere than trying to extract it from the ground.
But we do see some early signs that Iran was trying to reconstitute some elements of their uranium enrichment and weaponization program.
But they're pretty far back.
They've lost a lot of capability from those strikes last summer.
But both options are there.
The third option to keep an eye on is just sleeper cells anywhere in the world here in America.
There's always been a concern of Hezbollah on our own soil.
Europe, always clear evidence that Hezbollah has been on our soil.
Remember, the Iranians just sent someone and was working on a plot to kill Trump in 2024 on our U.S. soil.
They previously tried to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador at a Washington, D.C. restaurant.
So non-traditional warfare is probably a third option of what they're looking at.
Yeah, so that's what's interesting about this whole thing, John.
And we're about to be taken by Real America's voice in about three minutes.
John, I don't know what your schedule is like.
I can stand for about 110 minutes.
Yeah, 10, 15 minutes.
I got to go back in.
Minutes till our rav uh join, but here, here's my sort of psychological you know, I I have no other proof other than i've watched the president closely for a decade here.
But yeah, you know the attempted assassinations on his life which have been confirmed.
There are potential sleeper sills cells in the United States.
He's also, I think, convinced that Iran has tried to meddle in the elections.
If you, if you combine these things with just the open threats that Iran has made throughout the years, if you combine these things with you know the fact that they have killed Americans, that they are a state sponsor of terror.
He's shown throughout the years, whether it was the taking out Solemani, the Ford Oh Strikes, that he's shown an increased willingness to strike Iran.
It seems to be where he believes there is a important uh, you know, I would say mandate for the American people.
Uh, especially in that, in that country.
Uh, 30 seconds, John.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I think the enough's enough.
He said i'd give you a chance, give you a chance, give me a chance to negotiate at some point.
Not serious, we're just finishing this.
47 years, a menace society, Iran has been all across the western world, even on our own soil, I think Donald Trump just reached the fill-up point.
We're done, and uh, he's going to make the capability for the Iranian people to be able to overthrow their government if they so choose.
That's, that's where he's at.
I think that's a pretty clear read.
Yeah so, and this is seven hours ago on TRUE Social president Trump posted, Iran tried to interfere in the 2020 2024 elections to stop Trump and now faces renewed war with the United States.
And that's a.
That's a headline from JUST THE NEWS.
JUST THE NEWS.
John Solomon uh, so he retruthed uh, retruth that so uh for, for our rav audience, john and Jaggo, to first to John and then to Jack uh, just again, let's recap where we're at right now.
It john, you, you confirmed just a minute ago with us.
This appears to be a regime change military operation in Iran.
Please your thoughts.
Yeah, and again, the idea is that we're not going to uh change the regime.
We're going to make it possible for the Iranian people, if they so choose, to do that.
It's not our goal to go in and get the Mullahs out, but we will soften up the ground, we will soften up the military capabilities.
We will inflict significant damage until the Iranian government, the Iranian forces, can't attack its own people strong enough, and that gives a chance for the Iranian people to decide if they want to, on their own, throw out the Mullahs.
That is the objective.
That's clearly what the president said.
Let us do this and then, when the bombs stop, go overthrow your government, take control of your government.
Your freedom is at hand.
That's what he said in the early hours of the morning.
So that's what this is, we are creating the capability for the Iranian people to overthrow their government.
We won't overthrow the government ourselves.
We won't go in and get sodom, like we did in 2002, or throw out the Taliban.
Yeah john, you know there's conflicting reports, that about uh the ayatollah himself being uh killed in these strikes.
The way I understand it is that the?
U.s is looking at, you know infrastructure, military sites, naval sites, uh radar defense missile sites Israel, Israel is going after the head of the snake operations, going for top officials, maybe the Ayatollah Himself.
Protesters and Keeping Powder Dry00:02:25
Do we have any confirmation?
Do we know?
Are you seeing indications, early indications, one way or the other?
We do not.
U.S. intelligence does not have confirmation one way or the other.
There are some reports the U.S. have received that some top Republican Guard commanders were killed at these military sites, possibly a defense official.
No word yet on Khomeini, though it is clear that Israel picked Khomeini's many known locations during the strike.
So Israel, clearly, their weapons were clearly targeted at the Supreme Leader.
Whether they hit him or not, I don't know.
There was a very important event that occurred on Monday.
It didn't get a lot of news.
We covered it.
But the resistance group, MEK, which is one of the possible successor governments here, they launched an attack on Khomeini's palace and they got to inflict substantial damage.
And that was very eye-opening to the U.S. government, U.S. intelligence, because Iranian forces weren't able to protect that facility.
And it was pretty clear that Khomeini must not have been there, right?
That they had a lower fossil level.
So that gave us some inclination that Khomeini had left one of his known refuges and then moved somewhere else in the country, much like he did before the nuclear strikes of the 12-day war last summer.
But the second part of that was they realized that Iranian forces are depleted, that they couldn't even resist a ragtag team of resistance fighters who aren't nearly as well armed as the IRGC.
And it was a sign that the world is caving in on the mullahs, that their military capabilities are diminishing.
And I think that just added to the paradigm of intelligence that they evaluated before they launched this morning strikes.
John Solomon, just the news.
Thank you so much, John.
We appreciate it.
Great to be with you guys.
Absolutely.
John, great analysis.
Jack, your thoughts.
Well, look, John is absolutely correct.
You know, we're not going to be sure just yet whether or not leadership was taken out in terms of the regime leadership, the Ayatollah.
I mean, look, when two aircraft carriers are sent over like that, when you see that much American air power, naval power, naval combat power brought to bear in the Gulf, it doesn't surprise me at all, or wouldn't surprise me at all if the IRGC moved him to a hardened site, one of Iran's extensive underground bunker systems.
And, you know, so it really becomes that spy versus spy kind of question of whether or not they knew where he was, when they went to take him out, whether or not he was using decoys, all this sorts of things.
Iran's Oil Shocks Risky00:03:58
So, you know, really just holding our fire when it comes to that, keeping our powder dry.
We're staying frosty.
But at the same time, we need to understand, I think, and the American people want to hear what are the goals here?
What's happened on the ground?
What is the status of the regime?
And are we seeing it have the effect?
Are protesters flooding the streets?
Are they coming out again?
But, you know, big questions for the protesters, of course, because they faced severe crackdowns when they came out a couple of weeks ago from the IRGC, from members of the regime.
And so that's going to be this real scenario of, you know, are we going to get another, are we going to get a 1979 in reverse or are we going to get a Tiananmen square?
Again, these, you know, it's risky.
It is always risky to try to attempt regime change at all, let alone with the air power alone.
It's something that where the track record is mixed.
It's a very mixed track record of these things.
There's certainly no confirmation.
And as Charlie himself always said, that you take out the Ayatollah, you have no idea what is going to come next.
You could have these resistance groups launch, as John was saying, you know, there are some who have militias as well.
You could see a civil war scenario break out and a total regime collapse that turns into a quagmire.
And then, of course, for U.S. forces in the region, look, you know, that's why they pulled out of Bahrain.
That's why they pulled out of other areas because they know Iran has many ways to take this worldwide.
And certainly, by the way, certainly, if the regime does feel that they are in survival mode, and there's no question in my mind that it seems like Israel, and you heard from the president, are directly targeting the regime.
If they go into full survival mode, they are going to pull out the stops.
Anything they can do, whether you're talking sleeper cells within the United States, within Europe, whether you're talking straight to Hormuz, everything is going to be on the table.
Jack, the ripple effect of this, what does this mean for countries like China, who got like 5% of their oil from Venezuela?
They get a majority of their oil from, I think it's like 20% of their oil from Iran.
What does this mean for the CCP?
What does this mean for other countries that are directly involved with the Iranian regime?
Well, I mean, in the near term, you know, it's hard to say, right?
It all sort of depends on how this shakes out.
Clearly, if this goes on for several days, you're going to see an oil shock.
Probably Monday, you're going to see that with an oil spike.
If there is, and keep in mind, with that straight of Hormuz, the IRGC doesn't even need to actually mine it.
They could have a couple of freighters go out there and just drop empty barrels in the water, but if that's enough to look like mines, there's nobody that's going to be sending these massive oil tankers that are filled with $100 million worth of their supply to go through there.
They're not going to take that chance if they think Iran has actually put mines in the water, whether they're real mines or not.
There's, of course, a joke in the joke in the United States Navy that every ship can be a minesweeper once.
So, you know, it depends to see who's going to go first.
Do you send some barge or some kind of drone thing up there?
But that being said, that's going to lead to those oil shocks.
If there is a, you know, a regime change scenario, like take Venezuela, for example, where the United States was able to find a more reliable partner after Maduro, one who is willing to send oil to the United States as well as continue those shipments to China, but then under U.S. auspices, that could be another scenario that plays out.
However, I would caution against that because the Iranian regime is not, it's not the same as the Venezuelan regime.
It's a regime where you have the Ayatollah on the religious side, you have mullahs on the religious side, but then you also have, it's very split, it's very mixed in terms of its government.
You also have the IRGC, you have the civilian government.
So again, any one of those is going to play a role in any regime collapse that comes out.
Regime Complexity Questions00:15:14
Also, real questions as to whether or not Russia gets involved here.
Although my assessment would be that because Russia is so bogged down in Ukraine right now, also we didn't see Russia get involved when Assad looked like he was on his last legs up there in Syria about a year ago.
I would be very surprised if Russia gets involved here.
I wouldn't rule it out, but I would assess that seeing Russian involvement, the likelihood at this point is low.
So just as a recap here, Iran's defense minister Amir Naza Zadeh and Revolutionary Guard Commander Mohammed Pakpur are reportedly have been killed in Israeli strikes.
Again, we don't know about the Ayatollah himself, but that's something.
UKPM Kirstarmer has said that their forces are active and British planes are in the sky today as part of the coordinated regional defense operation.
And as you said, Jack, Iran has moved to close the Strait of Hormuz with ships reportedly receiving VHS, a VHF transmission from Iran's Revolutionary Guard warning no ship is allowed to pass the Strait of Hormuz.
Let's go ahead and just for the sake of Charlie's voice getting in here, because everybody's invoking what Charlie had said.
And I think that can be a little frustrating when you're on this side of it.
And Jack and Mikey, Blake, you can all attest because we were involved behind the scenes with Charlie, understood the way he was strategically thinking about things.
Some of the presentations of his voice on social media are one-sided.
Let's just put it that way.
Let's go to 238.
This is Charlie explaining Trump's unpredictability as the point.
238.
This is why how President Trump is handling it is perfect.
You do not know what President Trump is going to do.
And let me kind of cue you in on something.
The unpredictability is the point.
The fact that I don't know and you don't know and Iran doesn't know is the greatest power he could possibly exercise over these maniacs.
The fact the U.S. military could blow Tehran to smithereens and he's saying, get out of Tehran now, that's power.
And President Trump means it when he says it.
And President Donald Trump is balancing all of these things.
And he and only he is positioned to be able to solve this problem.
He has earned our trust.
We should continue to give it to him.
But we have he weighed in on Iran many times because we've had many Iran things.
And so, as we've discussed, one of the struggles with this conflict is I think it's going to catch it's it catches some people off guard that it's happening at all if they're not big news followers and they haven't fully sold yet why this is necessary why this is essential why this is for America's core interests I think they still can and if it's a big success it will be easier but they have to make that case and Charlie commented on that let's play clip 250.
I'm by no means a military expert, but here's, my rule when it comes to all military things is, if you, as an American citizen, can't understand it, then they have not a good done a good enough job explaining it, because that stuff's actually not as complicated.
Would you agree Blake like, oh you know, this is just for military minds.
Actually no, you're a U.S. Citizen.
You deserve a right to understand it.
You're a stakeholder.
This is your government.
Yeah well, and and we started off the show before we joined Rav, and it's worth reiterating here for the real America's Voice audience, by the way, we have Alex Marlow joining us in just a moment.
A few other guests lined up throughout the hour.
But what?
What we will say is, my blunt assessment is that this war was not sold sufficiently to the U.S. Public.
I have no problem saying that it's.
I think that's just, that's our conclusion.
Okay, but on the this all, this morning I was making phone calls, I was reaching out to people.
There is legitimate concern within certain circles of DC that John Solomon confirmed this that maybe it was a dirty bomb, maybe they were reaching out to the CCP for hypersonic missiles, but there was an urgent move.
I think Iran knew that the time was running out and if we find that out on the back end and they do use that to sell this and the urgency of this strike, I do think that would be helpful and they should make that point if they can confirm it.
I I do think there's reticence in making those points ahead of time because of what happened with the weapons of mass destruction debacle in Iraq, where we were sold a war based on the fact that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.
We find out that wasn't true.
And then it became a larger scandal because of that.
So I don't think they want to sell the war per se on Iran having a dirty bomb or getting hypersonic missiles from China.
What they want to do is say they are not allowed.
The Iranian regime is not allowed to have nuclear capabilities.
They want to develop these things.
We can't let them.
It's time for the people of Iran to rise up.
I think those are the two safest points of action.
I think we can also say is that President Trump was sick of getting messed with on the negotiating table.
His patience wore thin.
So everybody hold your calm.
I would say this is why we need to allow the process to play out and not rush to judgment.
I will tell you, everybody on the internet that is claiming what Charlie would have thought or said, Charlie would not rush to judgment.
Charlie would have been, I think, instinctively against a regime change war.
That is very clear.
But he also would have understood the fact that President Trump is stuck between a series of very difficult decisions and that this is why we work so hard to get him elected is to make these types of difficult decisions.
So that's what I'd say.
Jack, am I misstating the facts?
No, I don't think you're misstating it at all.
And look, we all know that Charlie gave his all to prevent a ground invasion of Iran last year, that he's on record for doing this.
He traveled to the White House, went to speak to the president in the Oval Office about this, and said, we do not want to see boots on the ground.
We don't want to see a ground invasion.
Gen Z, who, and everybody knows Charlie spent four hours a day going on campus talking to Gen Z. That's how he knows exactly what Gen Z thinks about this, that Gen Z support would totally collapse for the coalition in terms of a ground invasion and pushing for a full-on regime change war where it was unilateral from the United States.
We don't know exactly what Charlie would have said in this scenario where you're seeing air, you're seeing Navy, but you're not seeing that boots on the ground piece where President Trump is calling for the Iranian people to be the ones that are the forcing function to push out the regime.
We also know that Charlie was very forceful when he talked about the idea of endless war, prolonged war, forever war, and just the idea in general that anyone can come up here and tell you that you know what's going to come after the Ayatollah collapsing, that the Ayatollah is going to leave and suddenly, you know, it's all going to be horseshoes and rainbows.
You could see a regime change or excuse me, a regime collapse scenario.
You could see a quagmire.
You could see a civil war.
You could see regional actors come in, non-state actors.
This is the Middle East after all.
It is rife with terrorist groups.
That's kind of the whole idea.
So the sense that this is going to lead to some kind of immediate, you know, immediate victory for the Iranian people is actually a much, unfortunately, for, you know, I'm not saying it's a good thing, but I'm just saying that given the track record in this region, we should be very, very wary of anyone telling us that everything is going to be perfect in the wake of this.
And I think that Charlie understood that and also understood where Gen Z was coming from in terms of their wariness because they don't want to see more war.
They want to see arrests for Epstein.
They want to see deportations.
They want to see economic relief.
They want to see a focus on domestic policy.
That's particularly where Gen Z is.
And Charlie always did his best to be that voice to the administration and to the world so that folks would be able to understand that scenario.
Mikey, Gen Z.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't want a black pill, but I'm going to wait.
I'm going to wait.
I'm going to have patience.
But you said it earlier, which is great.
I mean, even people in D.C., our friends in D.C. right now, they don't want this to drag on.
And again, back to the 12-day war, we thought that that was going to drag on to another endless war, and it ended in 12 days.
The K-Fabe, the K-Fabe.
Yeah, and even our friends in D.C., I mean, I got this this morning.
It's success looks like limited strikes, focused on denying nuclear capability.
No ground troops, no invasion, no forever war from this.
And then also, just a reminder that Iran has historically armed terrorists time and again.
Number one state sponsor.
Yeah, of course.
And so when it comes to, you know, terrorist groups like even the Houthis, right, that are attacking American ships, what if they got their hands on nuclear weapons because of Iran or a dirty bomb because of Iran or hypersonic missiles because of Iran?
You know, that all kind of trickles down.
But, I mean, as a Gen Zer, I don't, like, a lot of us just don't care.
Like, we don't care.
Why do we want to see that?
Why do we want to be involved in this?
It is worth remembering the divide because when you think even this even predates me, of course, and I'm kind of old, that Iran was basically public enemy number one in the 1980s.
Well, Russia was.
Well, but even Russia didn't do things.
Iran literally took American hostages, over 100 of them, for over a year.
And young people won't understand what it was like that every night on television, the evening news, which was a thing people watched then, it would come on and they would say, it has been 228 days that Americans have been held hostage in Iran every single day.
Carter was thrown out of office over this.
Yes.
And it was a huge psychological shock that a foreign country would just torment dozens of Americans taken hostage in this way.
And we felt powerless to do anything about it.
There was an attempted rescue mission.
It failed.
And in that time, Iran.
So if you lived through that, it's very relatable to see Iran as this very severe, permanent United States enemy.
And I think that psychologically shaped a lot of people.
But as you say, if you're Gen Z, you've mostly lived through the era of just Iran is perpetually a country we might go to war with.
But you don't have that shock memory of that time Iran actually did a hugely, you know, a hugely harmful thing to a large number of Americans.
Well said.
So we're going to have Alex Marlow join us in just a moment, and then we're going to have Mike Davis.
I'm going to throw up this image.
Actually, it's, you know, John Fetterman keeps surprising, but throw up 281.
There's a whole conversation.
You know, Axios has this article.
Democrats demand war powers vote after U.S. strikes Iran.
John Fetterman responds, committed Democrat here.
I'm a hard no.
My vote is Operation Epic Fury.
So we're going to have Mike Davis walk us through the legalities of the strike because this will constantly come into focus.
And I want to throw in a billion grains of salt here.
So endless grains of salt.
But as we await for confirmation of the fate of the Ayatollah himself, Khomeini, you know, I'm getting one more little sort of unconfirmed report.
Again, unconfirmed, unconfirmed, unconfirmed, that Supreme Leader is out.
Unconfirmed, thousand grains of salt.
But as we sort of piece together these data points, it's an interesting one to hear.
So we're obviously very much looking at that, and we will confirm when we can.
But that's one indication.
Very, very interesting that I'm getting.
Since we're waiting on Alex Marlow, we have a very good clip featuring him where he was speaking with Charlie about this conflict.
And it's a good statement of Charlie's attitude, which I know a lot of people are interested how he would respond to this, which was that he has his personal biases, his personal beliefs, but he has also, as an American citizen, a tendency to place trust in President Trump, which is why he supported him.
Let's play 249.
I think that we need to also differentiate for everyone keeping score online where they say, oh, my goodness, Donald Trump started a new war.
It is very conceivable that if he bombs those two cities, that is not a new war.
Now, Iran could retaliate, and then what happens after that, but I trust President Trump 100% in this moment.
He's a man made for this moment.
Understanding he's been through all this.
He took out Soleimani.
He took out ISIS.
He is able to navigate this.
So that's the hope I think we're all having is that we lived through the Bush administration, for example, which had a very open-ended approach to wars.
Go into Afghanistan, drop thousands of troops there.
What does victory look like?
We don't know.
Go into Iraq, overthrow its government.
Over 100,000 U.S. troops there, thousands of them killed there for ages.
When do we get out?
What's victory look like?
We don't know.
We do have confidence that President Trump will have a clearer sense of what does he hope to get out of this?
What are the limits of how far he will go on this?
And he's repeatedly demonstrated ability on that front.
And so we are hopeful, we are prayerful that this will be another case of that, even though this is a bigger intervention than we've seen in the past.
So I agree.
Sorry, I'm just trying to – A lot is going on, folks.
Yeah, a lot of information incoming here.
And it looks like we're going to have, let's see, Rich Barrett is going to join us.
We're going to talk about the political side of this with him connecting via phone in just a few minutes.
We also have Mike Davis coming on, talking about the legality of it.
We also have Alex Marlowe, editor-in-chief of Breitbart, joining any moment now.
So, you know, let's just, we want all voices here.
We don't want to drown out the folks that don't want this.
We don't want to hype it up as if it's a good thing.
The truth is, we just simply don't know.
One thing we do know is that Charlie worked his butt off to get President Trump elected because he trusted him to handle these types of decisions.
Whether or not Charlie was in favor of such operations, that's very clear.
He didn't like regime change.
That being said, he was willing to take each different action on its own merits.
He did, you know, regime change as an instinct, bad.
Incredibly Weak Commitment00:07:01
Okay, fine.
But Charlie was willing to take each individual operation on its own merits.
That's very, very clear from all the time I spent with Charlie.
So we have to do the same.
Jack, are you hearing?
I think, oh, we lost Jack for a second.
Hold on here.
We have Alex Marlowe just told me he's in the queue.
So let's go ahead and try and log him on.
And we have Rich Barris also joining.
We are here on Real America's Voice as well, streaming everywhere.
Thanks, everybody, for joining.
Lots of incoming.
So, yep.
So we get another confirmation.
Iran is telling the Revolutionary Guard tells ships passage through the Strait of Hormuz is not allowed.
EU naval mission officials say.
So the EU is confirming that the Strait of Hormuz is being closed by Iran.
Whether or not that will hold, how long that will hold is yet to be determined.
So we have that from Reuters.
Iran's, again, Iran's revolutionary guards tell ships passage through the Strait of Hormuz, not allowed, EU naval mission officials say.
Well, the EU will just allow Iran to do whatever it wants.
So the EU is like, oh, I guess we can't do that.
I haven't had.
It is very funny.
I saw today.
Oh, right.
Alex is joining us.
We saw there was a French politician who's a member of a pro-EU party.
And that Van der Leyen person who heads of the European Commission did some statement upset about this.
And the French politician just said, basically, shut up.
You guys are really annoying.
Because they're always a sad little.
Alex Marlow, welcome to our special Saturday stream here, reacting to American strikes against Iran as well as with Israeli forces as well.
I think there's multiple ways you can analyze what's going on here, Alex.
One is from a purely political stance.
One is from a military perspective.
Taking the military side, obviously we pray for our troops.
We pray for everybody's safety.
We pray for zero casualties.
All of those things.
It seems to have been extremely effective strikes just based on Iran's failure to retaliate.
But, and we're still waiting on confirmation on who's still alive, who's dead.
Take it to the political side, though, Alex, which, you know, what do you make of the political fallout of a strike like this?
Yeah, these are all great ways to frame it up.
And first of all, credit for you guys for getting on the stream.
I know it's what Charlie would have wanted.
So I don't love speaking for Charlie, but I can tell you that.
So great job.
I know his audience wants to hear what's going on.
Yeah, I got quite a bit of insight because I spent some time with the president this week and we did talk about this.
It was off record, so I'll try to speak in broad terms about it.
But the political stuff here, just to start there, I don't see huge upside for the president, even with a successful strike.
It seems like one of these endeavors where even if he nails it, I don't know if he picks up new voters from that.
But if he fails, of course, it'll be a defining thing.
It'll complicate the midterms.
It'll complicate 2028.
So it's a bold move, but he knows this.
He's a smart person.
So he must have felt highly confident that this thing was going to be successful.
And he was sick of dealing with Iran's negotiating tactics, which are very tough and very unreasonable.
And they demand crazy stuff.
They never back off an inch, even though they're very, very weak right now.
So that seems like where it comes from politically is I don't even know if he nails it, if he picks up any support.
But his perspective, from what I'm able to glean from my conversations with him, is that people tend to be very negative when things happen initially.
And then if they're successful, they all of a sudden get on board.
It's kind of like people remembering they were at Woodstock when they weren't, that sort of thing.
So he thinks that a lot of people didn't like, for example, the Maduro raid.
And then now everyone kind of likes it.
And so he has that data point in his head.
And he thinks there's a lot of unfinished business with Iran.
And he thinks they've been incredibly weak since Solomani's killing in the first administration.
So we got that going.
And I feel like this is one where the early evidence suggests it has been an early success for President Trump.
But the key thing here, he was crucial about emphasizing this point.
He is not going to tolerate Iran getting a nuclear weapon.
And nothing in their rhetoric, and we follow Iranian state media very closely, Bright Britt News, nothing in their rhetoric backed off of that at all.
He was 100% no hold barred, full steam ahead from the Iranian regime, even after the devastating attacks of a couple of months ago, where their nuclear program was pretty much wiped out.
Their air defenses, as you can tell from today, basically non-existent.
They are incredibly weak, and they are not backing down at all.
So if the Ayatollahs wanted to stay in power, they needed to commit flat out, we will not have nukes.
And they didn't come remotely close to that.
And clearly, nothing changed in the last 48 hours of negotiations.
Yeah, and by the way, people need to understand this.
President Trump has been remarkably consistent on one thing with Iran.
They cannot have nuclear capabilities.
And I said it earlier, Alex, and I think it's worth stating again.
You know, I was calling around.
There seems to be, listen, I would put this in the unconfirmed category, but there seems to be a serious concern on the part of a lot of people that are as ardently anti-war as we are, and as Charlie was within the leadership of our own government, ardently anti-war, that the urgency to commit to this strike at this moment escalated quickly.
And I don't know if that was a dirty bomb or as John Solomon said before you joined that there was concern of hypersonic missiles.
Something in the calculus changed.
And I would presume that they wouldn't want to go public with that to sell the war because of the WMD fiasco.
We all remember.
But something happened here.
And I think Iran understood that their time was ticking and they were trying to make pretty serious moves to, you know, as a deterrent, or maybe they were serious about using it against us.
Yeah.
Alex, go ahead.
Yeah.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So I have no information on that, but I will tell you from my time with the president, and you could see the steady buildup around Iran of American military personnel and our fleet.
It felt like this was going to happen unless Iran said, as Trump put it, the magic words, we're not going to have a nuclear weapon.
I think he probably some other desires as well.
But it was interesting because I was going to follow up with him when I was talking about this.
I was going to ask him, well, what about making sure they release all these political prisoners?
What about them becoming Democratic?
What about them having a free press?
Can we press them and stuff like that?
And you could tell it was pretty singular.
It was they need to commit to no nukes ever.
Brother's Concerns Unpacked00:03:35
And their rhetoric is they want enrichment to 60%.
There's nothing else they're going to do with that.
That's not for, you know, medical RD for 60%.
If they're pursuing that and you're doing it in Trump's face, Trump hates when you get in his face.
Remember when Maduro started dancing in the street and then Trump went and he got him.
He went and took him out.
That's one of the things with Trump you don't do.
And Iran was relentless about not backing down, continuing to have rhetoric as if they're very strong.
They're very weak politically.
And there's no real clear opposition, which is a big complication.
We could talk about that for hours.
But the regime was weak within Iran.
They're weak from the air.
And Trump is not liking the way they're behaving.
So that's where it comes from.
And I don't know if any of the calculus really did change.
Iran is just very tough negotiators.
They're smart people.
And they thought they, I think they kind of dared Trump to do it.
They got, I mean, they got away with this posture for literally decades doing the same thing for decades and getting the same result.
You get used to it.
You think it's going to work.
I think we, I was going to say, you brought up, Alex, the political angle of this.
We have Rich Barris, but I didn't want to cut you off.
Let's jump to Barris in a sec, but I want to address something because a lot of people inevitably, a lot of people cared about what Charlie thought about these things.
They looked to him.
They trusted his judgment.
And we're seeing a lot of people repost.
We've showed several Charlie clips.
They're also posting tweets of his.
And some of them are very straightforward.
There's one he made last summer when Lindsey Graham was calling for regime change.
And Charlie said, regime change will cause a civil war.
It would be insane.
It could kill hundreds of thousands of people.
It could start another Muslim refugee crisis.
That's what he said at the time about a regime change war.
And I think we should be frank.
Throughout, if Charlie was with us, I believe throughout the lead up to this conflict, he would have had those same concerns.
He would have been warning the president about the downsides.
He would have been warning other members of the administration about the downsides.
He would be worried.
We were in those check chains.
We would have seen it.
That said, he also always did have trust with the president and he would look for the bright side of things.
And he was an American patriot, so he would pray for our success once that began.
And I just want to say that to offer perspective on how I think he would have felt about this.
And that's not to use Charlie as a shield.
That is not to use, say, everything just revolves around him because he's not with us anymore.
But I know people, all of us are feeling the lack of Charlie in a moment like this because he was a natural leader of the movement.
Well, I think that's also like as soon as all this broke out, you saw that social media immediately went to go find Charlie because he still is, even in death, like the leading voice on a matter like this.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, I was just going to say, and it makes me upset, though, because for these people that didn't actually know Charlie, like you said, in private, he would be not happy with this situation.
And he would express his thoughts.
You would oftentimes see him talk about on the show.
But then as soon as this would happen, he would have trust in the president.
He would try to calm people down.
And so it's really irritating for me to see so many people on social media have the opposite reaction, to use his voice to actually cause chaos, to actually cause fear of the situation, to actually cause hatred of President Trump in this whole ordeal when actually that's not what he would want.
Well, and one of the Charlie, Charlie resisted ideological fervor or these like the drums of war.
He was really good about that because he hated war.
But he trusted the president.
Matt's Calming Influence00:15:54
That's certainly true.
I think we've established those points.
But politically, there's no, there's, I think, less ambiguity to help us unpack that.
Rich Barris, are you still on the line with us?
I'm here, brother.
All right, brother.
Hey, so.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you.
So you're on with Alex Marlowe, Mikey McCoy, Blake Neff, and myself.
So welcome to the show.
Rich, you know, I kind of know, if I know you at all, Rich, I know kind of some of what you might say here.
But, you know, break it down.
I mean, how bad could this be?
But also help us paint the best case scenario.
Okay.
Look, I mean, well, first of all, we're a little bit in ahistorical waters.
Like, we're in uncharted waters because we've never had something to compare this to, right?
You had a president, and I hear what other people are saying about, you know, he was consistent that Iran could never have a nuclear bomb.
Listen, Americans do not follow the minutiae of policy like this.
Donald Trump was the anti-war president.
He rose to prominence and took out two massive political dynasties, largely on the no new wars promise.
That is what every average American voter will tell you.
They're not going to tell you about some like, you know, comment he made on a campaign stop somewhere about Iran not getting a nuclear weapon.
And this was, and the administration knows this was, a deeply, deeply unpopular action.
The last one that we handed to them before we got out of the field was 70% opposed.
That includes a majority of Republicans.
So like, I would love to gauge out and say this will cost this much.
But the truth is, we've never been here before.
Presidents have sold military actions to the public.
They've done their best to drum up support for it before they did, you know, took any action, but they did not do this.
So there's no, look, my knee-jerk reaction, guys, and I'm not saying this to be negative or positive.
I mean, my job is a pollster, right?
Is that there's really, there's no upside here.
I know, I heard what was said before, too, about the administration and their mindset, because obviously I was talking to people myself in the last couple of weeks about this.
You know, that Maduro wasn't popular, then they snatched him and he got more popular.
Maduro polled more popular than this.
And the fact is that Maduro is just a grab.
It's not, you know, a regime.
There's more of a symbol to a regime change war in the Middle East when it comes to Donald Trump.
Like that specifically was his shtick.
And if you, you know, I just feel like that's a bit of a generational disconnect.
If you're still thinking that, you know, there's a rally around the flag effect in this country and, you know, a positive outcome is going to elicit more support, you're kind of missing, you're missing the plot.
You know, the plot is that everybody who's under age 55, 50 years old in this country feels that no matter who they vote for, all they get is more focus on the Middle East and more wars and a government that doesn't pay any attention to them and their needs.
So the out, you know, the opposition to this conflict was less about the specifics of it or whether, you know, we're doing good or we're doing bad.
It was just like, no more, no more.
We have needs at home.
And I don't know how you get around that.
I mean, even a successful mission, which I don't know what successful mission is.
I mean, regime change is never an overnight thing.
There are always unintended consequences and bad political headlines that plague you, you know, time and time again.
Even if there was, though, quote, a success, it doesn't negate why they, you know, it doesn't negate the fact that voters oppose this and they opposed it for a reason.
Yeah, no, I hear you, Rich.
I wanted to get your voice in because I think it's important.
Jack has rejoined the show, Jack Posobiec.
Did you catch what Rich just said?
I'd love to get your input on that.
Well, I mean, I've heard Rich in general, you know, his stuff.
I've had to source call just some, you know, and really, you know, look, there are real questions, I think, as to what, as to how long this plays out.
And I think the longer it goes, the more political ramifications are.
I think that's basically it.
And if President Trump does indeed mean to see this all the way through to full regime change, that could be longer.
That could be a lot longer than one weekend.
It's certainly going to be longer than one round of strikes.
But we could be looking potentially at weeks of operations within Iran.
Yeah, I mean, I think this, you know, sort of one of these things that we pray it's a days, not weeks situation, but it certainly could be more drawn out.
And we have to be honest about the fact that Iran is a much bigger country, a stronger country.
Yeah, there's weaknesses politically, militarily.
I think the regime is probably at its weakest point, as Alex mentioned, that it's been in a long time.
But it's still Iran.
We're talking 80 million plus people, a lot of internal division and factions, different regional geographical differences.
Alex Marlow, final thoughts to you, my friend.
Thank you for making the time on a Saturday.
Yeah, we have my pleasure.
No, I think Jack and Rich touched on really important stuff.
One of the hangoffs for me is what is next.
And it is a very factionalized country.
And I think Trump, again, is probably drafting off of what happened with Maduro is it wasn't really a regime change war.
They just took out one bad guy.
And it seems like things are moving in a positive direction.
I think Trump understands leadership.
And I don't think that he feels as though whatever is going to fill the void is going to be as threatening to the Western way of life as the Aitollas are.
And so I don't think he's got a lot of confidence in reinstalling the Shah.
I don't think that's going to be a popular thing.
But I think the litmus test will be, are there boots on the ground?
I think once American boots are actually on the ground and this is no longer an aerial campaign, I think that's when you're going to start losing a lot of people.
I think a lot of people are going to tolerate this from a political standpoint.
Again, I don't know who he's going to be adding politically on this, but if he's able to take out some bad guys, neutralize some threats, do it from the air in just the spirit of going in, kicking ass, and getting out the way he's done in the past.
Stuff ages very well.
But if there's boots on the ground and the regime change becomes America doing it hands-on, I think that is going to be very, very deeply unpopular.
And I do think that's the sort of thing that Charlie certainly didn't like.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that's right.
Rich, you have done analysis on, you know, kind of the polling of the president.
And listen, there's other considerations besides polling that in a moment like this, you have to take into account.
But you, you're, I remember that graph you came out with, Rich, that it was basically Iran and Epstein, and the president still hasn't recovered.
We just had that bump.
I texted you privately, Rich.
You said he was going to get a bump from the state of the union.
Does this complicate that bump?
Yeah, it does.
And this is something I warned.
And I mean, I don't have a problem saying this out loud.
This is something I, you know, I warned them about.
You had a great moment during the State of the Union.
This is something we can really build on.
Let's take this momentum now and show the American people that we've refocused on their needs.
And, you know, I mean, guys, this is something I said yesterday, too, because, you know, no one's going to remember a great moment during the State of the Union when something like this happens.
It completely drowns out all of the positive that you refocused and built on.
That's just the way American voters work.
And let me just put it like this: look, if you feel we just won an election in 24, guys, you know, with the president was being persecuted.
Joe Biden rounded up more political prisoners than Vladimir Putin.
They want to pack the court.
They want to add states.
They want to dismantle our entire system.
And we ran on this concept that, you know, Democrats were an existential threat to this country.
What their ideology stands for, the political violence behind it, they are the threat to average Americans.
They're the threat to the unfairness in the economy.
And if you know taking an action like this has basically no upside and will just do nothing but shave, it doesn't matter if it's 2%, 10%, it weakens the coalition.
And if you believe both things are true, then this was not wise.
End of story.
You know, the primary objective must be to preserve the integrity of the coalition, because if Democrats take this government back over in November, the presidency is effectively over.
You know, we're going to, why would, why would anybody, and I don't use this term lightly, why would you waste the first two years of your peak presidency when the president has the most opportunity to get real change done?
Why would you waste both years now on other people's problems instead of showing the American people that you cared about their problem and what their problems and what you were elected to do as your primary focus?
Weakening this coalition, which could have been a 30-year governing coalition like the Roosevelt coalition, is an unbelievable thing as a political guy to watch.
It really is.
But hold on, I got a cup half full.
I'm not going to rewind in my head.
Yeah, I got a cup half full of reaction to something that Rich said, which is that I think Trump is aware of this stuff.
I think he understands that if he blows the midterms, we're doing impeachments, we're doing non-stop investigations, we're doing non-stop lawfier, his presidency is ruined.
So it shows you he's got a very high degree of confidence that there's not going to be a ground war and that he is, this is going to age well.
And this is going to be, we took out a terrorist regime that is funding terror all around the world from getting nuclear weapons.
And that will be the post-it note talking point.
I have no evidence that that's going to be how it's going to turn out.
Maybe it won't.
And I'm very cautious that it won't.
But I feel like that's clearly what he was thinking when he made this move.
And so, hopefully, the information he's got, which is that they were just so weak, so vulnerable, particularly from our very capable air forces, to go in and do some real damage quickly.
So, hopefully, that's all this is, and this is not a pro-long regime change thing.
Yeah, I mean, I pray for that.
Yeah, that's the best case scenario, Andrew, which you asked me about before.
I echo that 100%.
I pray for that.
Absolutely.
And I want to address something here because, again, these are just my sources, but it's also John Solomon.
I think Jack has been hearing similar things.
You know, here's a post by Matt Walsh.
And, you know, Matt Walsh, it's a very lengthy post.
I think it's a very sober post.
It's basically saying, you know, nobody's sufficiently explained how this benefits American citizens and on it goes.
He says, and he brings up a, I think, a very good point, but I want to address it.
We hear about the dangers of a nuclear Iran, but that's odd because we were told that Iran's nuclear capabilities had already been set back decades.
We hear that this war will be over quickly and easily because Iran is powerless, which I hope and pray is the case, and maybe it will be.
But that's odd too, because if Iran is such a paper tiger, then how are they in danger, a danger to us in the first place?
It seems hard to argue both that Iran is an existential threat to the United States and that we can topple them in 20 minutes with no casualties or negative downstream effects.
So I think those are very logical statements by Matt.
But if some of the rumors that I'm hearing about concerns about either a dirty bomb or hypersonic missiles from China, that they were trying to initiate some sort of connection with the CCP there, even a weak Iranian regime, if properly motivated, if they understand that their time is running out quickly, then they could be extremely dangerous.
Even if we took out Fordo and some of the other nuclear sites, they could be dangerous extremely quickly and even weakened.
And you know, a dog backed into a corner could bite you.
All right.
So I don't necessarily think that these things have to be mutually exclusive.
Somebody was chiming in.
I don't know if that's the same thing.
Yeah, can I actually, yeah, Andrew, can I address that?
Because I think Matt is probably summarizing what the consensus is right now.
I mean, we're already in the field right now.
We're already talking to voters about this.
You know, they woke up to this this morning, so we'll take them some time to process.
But these inconsistencies are very glaring to the point where even normies who aren't focused on politics like we all are 24-7 are constantly saying this in interviews.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
The Fordeaux plant, the other two sites, this was supposed to, you just told us six months ago that we completely decimated their nuclear capability.
Like, this is not going to be lost on people.
And it was, it is the case.
It is the job of the president to make that case.
And he didn't.
And that is a massive problem.
George Bush, when they lied, but George Herbert Walker Bush, babies at an incubator, you know, he threw, he drove support before he took action.
It was unsupported at first.
He drove it to 80% before he launched the Gulf War.
Even Grenada had almost, yeah, I think it was actually 79, 80%.
They took time to build their case, to make their case to the American public.
And this time, Americans are feeling slighted.
There's no other way to put it.
You didn't even bother.
Yeah.
No, I agree with you, Rich.
Yeah, I agree with you that I think this has not been sold to the American public, and there is going to be a political fallout.
The question is, how long will that hangover last?
Rich, thank you for calling in.
Rich Barris, big data poll.
Really important analysis there.
We're going to do a little line change here, Rich.
So I appreciate you calling in real quick.
Hey, Jack, you've got some new reporting on the line of succession that apparently we were aware of should Khomeini be taken out.
Well, of course, and this still remains to be an assessment, but this is in line with what I've been reporting over at Human Events.
This coming from Reuters.
They're saying that there's a CIA assessment that was presented to the president that prior to the Iran strikes, the CIA had assessed that even if Ayatollah Khomeini is killed, that he would be replaced by hardline IRGC elements.
It goes on to say that in the run-up, that is more than likely that the IRGC would take over.
These assessments were produced over the last two weeks, really asking that question.
What would happen?
What could happen if a U.S. military operation or U.S. and Israeli operation would trigger regime change in the Islamic Republic?
Now, obviously, as President Trump has called for, that is the goal of the operation.
This is the, of course, the IRGC being the elite military force whose purpose is to protect the Shiite Muslim clerical rule in Iran.
Could not conclude the scenario with any certainty, but most likely that it would be elements of the IRGC that takes over.
And that, of course, coming out of Reuters, but a report written by the CIA, presumably Director Ratcliffe, who we know is down at Mar-a-Lago right now with the president, as well as Secretary Hegseth and other members of the national security team that are there at this sort of the winter situation room, if you will, there at Mar-a-Lago has presented to the president.
Implications of IRGC Takeover00:16:04
Yeah, I think that's important.
Basically, one kill is not going to topple the regime.
I think that's a fair assessment here.
I would say that's not Venezuela.
Yeah, this isn't Venezuela, but there have been other kills.
And so as confirmations come in, we'll keep an eye out for that.
Mike Davis, Article 3 Project, is joining us now.
We have this story, these rumblings up on Capitol Hill.
And I want to make sure we throw to it because we've seen Fetterman is chiming in.
281 here.
Throw it up, please.
Axios, Democrats demand war powers vote after the U.S. strikes Iran.
Mike Davis, explain to us the legality of these strikes and what's the jockeying that's about to take place on Capitol Hill.
Yeah, under Article 1 of the Constitution, Congress has the power to declare war.
Under Article 2 of the Constitution, the President of the United States as the Commander-in-Chief has the power to repel an imminent attack, to repel invasions of America, of the homeland, to repel attacks on American soldiers, service members, allies, interests.
Back in 2001, the Congress passed a congressional authorization for the use of military force after 9-11 that permitted the president to go after terrorist attacks.
Presidents since then have interpreted that broadly.
Back in 1973, over President Nixon's veto, Congress passed the War Powers Act.
No president, Democrat or Republican, has ever complied with the War Powers Act of 1973.
Every president since 1973 has said that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional.
If the president were to follow the War Powers Act, what would happen is that Congress would have up to 60 days to pass a joint resolution to tell the president that he is authorized to continue to use force.
If they do not do that during that 60-day period, the president has up to 30 more days, 90 days total to withdraw those military forces.
So that would basically hamstring the president.
So you're saying that since the passage of the War Powers Act, 1973, every president has basically defied it.
Yes.
Yeah, Blake.
We like to, our presidents like to do things.
Yes.
I mean, I don't see how it's even functional, though, actually, right?
Because you have to move quickly.
You do, but I think we should reflect on this fact that for most of this Republic's history, we did rely on the motions of the Congress.
We declaring war.
We declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor.
We declared war on Germany in World War I.
We declared war on Spain before going to seize Puerto Rico.
And I think you would, ideally, you would want Congress to sign off on an intervention of this magnitude.
And for that matter, in Iraq, we did sign off on that use of military force before we went in.
And I don't think we want a country where we just passively accept the idea that any president can start any war of any duration without some sort of check on.
Yeah, so Mike, reflecting on that, obviously any activity is more legitimate when you have the backing of Congress.
It's good politically.
It's probably good culturally.
Explain the difference of those war resolutions, you know, in World War II, for example, World War I, versus what was established in the apparently unconstitutional War Powers Act of 1973.
Well, we haven't had a declaration of war by Congress since World War II.
Correct.
And there are serious implications for Americans' civil liberties when you have a declaration of war.
The president has more authority to do things within the borders of the United States, including as it relates to American citizens' civil liberties when there's a declaration of war.
So I think we have to be careful about going down the path of a declaration of war because it actually may have the opposite effect of what many people think, libertarians think in particular.
It means that our liberties are more at risk.
With the War Powers Act of 1973, again, passed by Congress, they overrode President Nixon's veto.
They were trying to curb the president's war-making powers during the Cold War, because again, we haven't had a declaration of war since World War II.
No president has followed it.
I would say this about this current bombing of Iran.
I think the president has inherent power under Article II of the Constitution as commander-in-chief because you just had Iran's supreme leader, I think it was 10 days ago, put out a video saying that he is going to sink American warships.
That is the president has the power and the duty under Article 2 to make sure that Iran does not sink American warships, and it's hard to sink American warships as Iran's supreme leader if your house is obliterated or you're dead.
Yeah.
Great analysis there, Mike.
I appreciate you.
I think this is going to be a really much ink will be spilled, put it that way, over this fight in Washington about what Trump's abilities are in the next coming weeks.
So this is really important context.
We needed it.
Thank you, Mike Davis.
You know, guys, there's a legal issue which Mike addressed really well, but a lot of this is part of the problem here is that the Democrat Party is run by online activists on the internet.
And this is a big risk of that: if they want to be included in big boy decisions, then they can't let their online radicals control the whole party because there probably isn't even most of their voter base.
And if Rich was here, I'd ask him what the polling is on that.
But it's one of these things where they're so deeply unserious as a party that they pretty much check out.
And so that's why, of course, we don't want the president breaking the law.
But what's he going to do?
He's going to call up.
They did, apparently, according to sources that I have, they did speak to the gang of eight.
So that includes four Democrats, or at least three of them.
They got on the phone from what I'm told ahead of time.
But you can't consult most of the people in that party and expect anything serious to happen.
It's just a waste of time.
And how do we know they're not going to leak stuff?
Remember, we're not that far removed from General Milley basically warning the Chinese if we're going to attack them or saying he would do that.
So there's so many people who try to undermine this president every turn.
We don't get to have nice things like everyone working together when we might go to war now.
And that's a deep shame.
Yeah, that's really well put, Alex.
So I just got a note from one of my contacts in the military, and he basically said, you know, first, he wants to make this clear: Iran is not Persian, it is Persian, not Arab.
They are Western friendly, more so than some of the some, I think, in our popular imagination that we think, and of course, he's talking about the actual people of Iran, not necessarily the regime.
The falling of the mullahs in Iran will give an opportunity for Iran to become Western friendly, more so, and also join former allies in the Middle East to regulate oil away from bad actors and adversaries.
Obviously, thinking about the CCP, you made this point earlier, Mikey.
It will greater limit Russia to a regional power, and it will lose, which will lose an ally there.
It will remove an ally from North Korea.
It dams up the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative and will cause them to have a further play, pay global prices for energy they can't produce.
So there are knock-on downstream effects.
There's also implications for Taiwan and China, potentially.
So I do think that Trump is thinking strategically from an international standpoint.
I want to talk to China here, Andrew, if we can, because almost 90% of Iran's oil exports go to China and they get at a cut rate.
And China is trying to destroy our country with fentanyl.
And I'm sure that's part of Trump's calculus.
Again, I'm not trying to justify anything is particularly if this thing becomes a complicated ground war with regime change.
I'm not trying to do that.
But I do want to add to the context that if they're giving the Communist Party of China cut rate oil at a steep discount, then that is going to be devastating to China, who is trying to murder Americans with fentanyl as we're having this conversation.
No, I think that's spot on.
All right, Jack Posobiec, please.
Yeah, no, I was just going to say, you know, when it comes to China and their reliance on Iranian oil, that also could potentially up the anti-Ford.
You know, typically we don't see the Chinese get involved in these types of wars.
We typically see them be more circumspect when it comes to that.
But at the same time, you certainly could see China getting in and supporting, similar to how they got behind the Taliban very quickly in the fall of Kabul.
You could really see China get in and back potentially.
We were just talking about the scenario if the IRGC gets in.
You could see China come in and backstopping them very quickly because it's all about stability for those oil supplies.
China is even understanding of the issue with the Strait of Hormuz.
That's why they've been trying to build as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, a pipeline across Pakistan and across Xinjiang.
That's why the Uyghurs are so important to them in keeping the Uyghurs down because they want a pipeline directly to their Iranian supplies and Iranian oil supplies there in Persia.
And so this is something that's very, very important for the Chinese.
They don't have the types of oil supplies that they, you know, that other countries do.
This is why, of course, they're building pipelines with Russia in Siberia.
So you really could see as an X factor here, China getting involved, backing the IRGC the same way that they backed the Taliban in Afghanistan because it's just that much more important for them.
Yeah, I wonder how much Russia can actually backfill what they're about to lose from Iran, assuming this plays out the way it looks, dude.
And none of that is certain, but I wonder how much Russia could backfill if they lose an Iranian source of oil.
Blake, why don't you speak?
It's just not sufficient.
It's not.
Those pipelines aren't built yet.
Yeah, so there is a time delay there.
But you're kind of looking into some of these down knock-on effects, what this could mean for the Indo-Pacific, for example.
Yeah, I mean, the best, it's like I said earlier, the best argument for this conflict is if this, instead of being yet another Middle East war, is could this be the last Middle East war?
We come to Venezuela kind of.
Something.
Or, you know, we've had so many troops, so many assets, so much attention on the Middle East for my entire adult life.
We had the Gulf War, which turned into, you know, we bombed Iraq several times throughout Clinton's presidency, which then leads into Afghanistan, leads into Iraq, leads into Libya, leads into the ISIS war.
And now we're back around to Iran where this all started.
And even before I was born, we had the conflicts with Iran, with the hostages and other standoffs.
It's been this huge focus of America for a long time.
And what's driven so much frustration is we've gotten involved repeatedly.
Thousands of Americans have died and won.
There never seems to be super clear progress.
And instead, it just seems to go on forever.
And there's not clear upside for the United States through all of it.
And if President Trump is able to overthrow this regime and then say all of the big threats to America are gone, we're expanding the Abraham Accords.
We'll, you know, we'll stay friendly with all the countries involved.
But now America is self-sufficient in oil.
We're an oil exporter, which we never were throughout a lot of these conflicts in the past.
And now we can take all this focus that we've had on the Middle East and we can focus on America, focus on China, focus on where our core strategic interests are.
That is the best sell that he can make on this.
And that's whether you think this war is a great idea or is a disastrous idea.
The war is happening.
And so now we look forward.
I don't know.
Like, I could be wrong, you know, in the coming weeks or whatever, but this really doesn't, from early reporting, even look like a war.
I mean, it's day one.
It's day one.
And we could be wrong, but this doesn't look like a war.
This looks like strikes on regime.
But if you look back to Iraq, I mean, the images out of Baghdad during the start of the war, like that was very different.
That actually was a war.
This is very different.
And we could be wrong as time goes on, but President Trump time and again has been right on this.
The 12-day war, everybody thought that this was going to go on forever.
Venezuela, people thought it was a bad idea.
And now this is the third time where President Trump could prove us all wrong again.
However, I just want to say this is a sign to China.
This is a sign to Russia that when President Trump warns of something, when President Trump says not to do something, and you do the opposite, he's coming in.
He will take action.
It's like that Marco Rubio great one-liner where he says, well, if you didn't know, now you know.
Yeah, exactly.
But he's done that a couple of times.
And I do think there is power in that, basically saying, you know, if you don't get in line, bad things are going to happen.
And then they actually happen.
I mean, that is a break from a lot of previous presidents.
It just is.
And I think it's going to have potentially positive impacts.
I think, Alex Marlow, thank you for making the time.
Final thoughts to you.
I think we should do a bit of a round the horn here.
What do you hope to see?
What do you expect to see?
And then we'll move to Jack.
And then yeah, I'm cautious about the fact that Trump's reputation as someone who does not start wars is in jeopardy at the moment.
And he wants that.
I think he likes that for himself for historical context.
So he must have obviously thought this was a really legitimate opportunity to take out a terrorist funding regime that's deeply tied to China and could do a lot of good here.
So I am definitely going to wait it out before I have a full evaluation that I'm not going to light my hair on fire over this yet, particularly if we keep it aerial and we seem to see evidence of high-profile targets getting hit with precision, which it looks like that's what we're seeing initially.
This could go any sort of direction.
But as of now, I'll keep cautious optimism.
The one thing that I want to respond to that's been a discussion is this question of what is his obligation to sell the war.
And it's unfortunately, I feel like it's sort of a fruitless endeavor or a pointless endeavor for him to try to sell it to people because if he's talking about anything other than affordability right now, he's probably losing.
And if he's talking about affordability, he's probably losing too.
So it's one of these things where what is he supposed to say to get people on board?
And I don't know.
I think victory winning is its own ideology.
And so if he can have success and then say, look at the great success in retrospect, that is, in my opinion, probably his best strategy.
And I think that's why he can go out and sell this.
This was noticeably absent from a state of the union.
He had no Iran talk at all, which I thought was very telling.
I thought that meant that he must be really knee-deep in the negotiations for it not to come up at all, which was, it was a striking omission, I thought.
Iranian School Reports Cautioned00:03:26
And it made me think something really might happen here unless these guys say they're going to give up nukes.
That set a signal to me.
He was serious.
He was going to attack.
And I feel like the salesmanship element is not something that I expect.
It would be nice to get it, but I think there's just too much risk that a convincing sale could tick off China, which is not Trump's position.
Remember, Trump never talks about China.
Even when he's going up against China, he never says anything negative.
He always says what a great guy Xi Jinping is.
That's all he ever says publicly.
That's the approach.
So you got to imagine that will continue, even if a lot of this does turn out to be about China in the end.
And I think he feels like the more information he gives, the more people misinterpret it, the more people twist it, the more people leak.
And it's a tough spot for him.
So victory is, again, its own ideology.
If this thing holds and is successful and a lot of high-profile targets go down and we don't have boots on the ground and we're not micromanaging a regime change, then we're going to look back on this in a few weeks and we're going to say it was another W.
But there's so many other scenarios that could present itself between now and then.
Great, great summation there, Alex.
Jack, we've got more intel coming in on this potential school that was hit.
Fill us in.
Yeah, so there's been reports from early on regarding a school that was struck.
And again, just when I see everything on Twitter, when I see things like this, you know, you really have to be careful with all of it because you just don't know what is real, what is a, you know, what is a false report, what's disinformation.
I'll just say this is what the AP is reporting right now.
It is saying that according to Iranian state TV, the death toll from a strike that hit a school in southern Iran has risen to 85 people.
This is also being reported currently in New York Times, BBC, and PR, but those are also being based off of Iranian state reports.
So, again, I would caution that with a grain of salt as to exactly what's going on there.
Also seeing reports that this was a facility or this school was near an IRGC facility that's going back and forth.
But again, I'm just reporting what they're reporting, which is based on Iranian state reports.
But because this is so much being reported in the media, we're just telling you to keep abreast of it that that's what we're hearing.
There's also questions as to, and just like I would say, you know, we saw this in Ukraine a lot, where there would be times where a missile or an interceptor or something that was in the path or nearby a certain facility was hit,
that it may not have been that anyone was intentionally targeting that school, that hospital or something, but given the nature of air combat and missile warfare, that if you get a shootdown, if you get a deflection, if you get a misfire, if you get debris, all of these things, if you're shooting down a drone, for example, that the munitions could still be active.
And it may be, unfortunately, you know, in many of these cases, that it hits an unintended target.
And again, just, you know, blanket statement.
I don't know.
I'm not confirming whether or not this happened.
We're just seeing those reports, but blanket statement that these are the things that happen when you go into war.
American People Want Live Presidential Address00:06:06
As they say, the enemy always gets a vote.
Mike Tyson is famous for saying everyone's got a plan so they get punched in the face.
And we are currently in the fog of war.
So that is, that's the brief as far as I can give it on that report right now.
Yeah.
Mikey, Mikey, then Blake, and then we're going to wrap.
Mikey, you're Gen Z, you were born in 2001.
You've only known war.
Yeah, I mean, this is why Charlie's stances on these things were so appealing to young people is because we just kind of had a fatigue with it.
But at the same time, having been under kind of the tutelage of Charlie, I learned oftentimes what was emotionally felt in private isn't always what needs to be said in public.
Even though I am ultimately against regime change, President Trump has a record, and I'm not going to bet against the record.
And I also think as a patriot, seeing America take a firm stance against enemies is something that ultimately I think all of us can agree on if it's done in the right way, if there's full transparency, if we understand why it matters to Americans.
So mine is a half, a glass half full, let's wait and see approach.
But ultimately, the images coming out of Iran, I really doubt this looks like a war for now.
And we could be wrong, right?
This is only day one.
Time will tell.
However, I think that these are Persian people.
They are ultimately pro-West.
And all you have to do is look at the reports of videos from young people in Iran right now.
Look at reports of in Iran right now.
And so the irony is that young people here in the U.S. really don't care about foreign policy, but then young people in Iran are cheering President Trump's name and running out of their schools.
Well, for them, it's domestic policy.
Yeah, exactly.
So we'll wait and see.
But ultimately, I think we need to just trust President Trump and our friends in D.C. right now.
What I'll say is, if you polled me last summer, should we do regime change in Iran?
I would have said no.
If you polled me two weeks ago, should we do regime change in Iran?
I think I would say no.
But the president did make this decision to pursue this.
We are all American patriots.
We want the best for this country.
So we must hope that this goes as the president hopes it will, as the military hopes it will.
And we must support them in trying to achieve that.
A lot can happen.
A lot can happen before this day is out, before this weekend is out.
We might all be back in this studio in a matter of hours if something major happens, if a U.S. ship is hit, if U.S. soldiers are lost, if there's major strikes, will hopefully be a place that you can turn to for honest perspective on this.
And so looking ahead, we are hoping for the best, but we've been frank.
The administration must make a strong case for this conflict to the American people at large and to its base.
They did run as a peace ticket.
They made the case that President Trump is good at avoiding wars.
He was very proud that in his first administration, he did not begin any new ones.
That doesn't mean he never has to start one because sometimes that is the best call for the American people.
And if they can make that case, God bless them.
And we'll be praying for them to be able to do that.
And until then, we're playing a waiting game like everyone.
Yeah.
Jack, any final thoughts before we log off here?
Jack or Alex?
I concur with everyone.
I think that, look, I think the American people want to hear from the president.
I think the American people want to hear from the president live.
They want to know what's going on.
They want to hear from the man that they elected.
That if this is the goal, they want to see a live speech from him from Mar-a-Lago or in the Oval Office, if that's possible, to be able to understand what's going on and what actions are going to be taken.
Should we take this as a one-day event, a one-off event, or are we going to see more?
When you've got that many American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, again, each aircraft carrier carries 5,000 American souls on it.
So that's 10,000 just there sitting off the coast.
And as these reports come out that Iran may have hypersonics, well, what does a hypersonic missile do?
Those are carrier killers.
That's what they're designed for.
So with Americans in harm's way, everyone, of course, is praying for them.
We are praying for them.
And the American people are going to want to hear from the president.
There's no question.
Alex Marlow, final words?
Yeah, that's a great point from Jack.
I would love to see it.
And he does, he's generally his best spokesperson and advocate.
And everyone will pay attention if he does make a formal address because I feel like that'll get through the media filters, which is just completely sick what's going on on a lot of the networks.
We're just trying to get every single person to not give him any benefit of the doubt, just to try to divide as much as possible.
There's obviously complicated stuff.
War is very complicated.
We're getting a lot of flooding of Iranian propaganda into American media that will be touted by our press in order to try to harm our war effort.
But it is a war effort.
It's not a war per se yet, and I hope it doesn't get to that point.
He obviously had a high degree of confidence that aerial assaults would be effective in taking out some high-value targets.
And I think creating perhaps a leadership vacuum in a country that's already very weak right now, both militarily and politically.
And I think we all can acknowledge that it'd be nice if there was something else in there other than the Ayatollahs in leading Iran, which does have a lot of Western elements to it and is big supporters of China, as we've discussed multiple times now.
So there's a lot of upside here if this works.
The problem is, is that we all have so much scar tissue from things like this not working out.
Not from President Trump, but from prior presidents.
And even those of us who are the biggest Trump supporters imaginable have that in the back of their mind right now.
So the more information that we can get, the better.
Believe in Precision Strike00:00:55
Yeah.
And I'll just say for now, the president has decided to take action.
He's shown us for over a decade that he doesn't do endless wars.
So we have to trust and believe that that is the goal here as well, that this will be a precision strike and that it can be quick and surgical, that we don't have any U.S. casualties.
That's the hope and that's the prayer.
And so we pray for our troops.
We pray for our leaders, President Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and on down.
And we will monitor the situation closely as the information comes on.
Monitoring the situation.
As the information comes online, we may be back here in the studio before you know it.
But until then, thank you everybody who joined the stream.
Thank you to Real America's Voice for taking it on their network, Alex Marlow, Jack Basovic, Mikey McCoy, Blake Neff, and myself.