U.S. Says NUKING IRAN Is The Only Option, Should The US Intervene? w/ Karys Rhea & Will Thibeau
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Transcription by CastingWords Shocking reporting has just come out.
First, the Goni reported the White House was not considering a nuclear strike on Iran.
However, according to Fox News, officials have said they have not ruled out using a nuke and that all options are on the table.
According to the Daily Mail, Trump was briefed that the only way to destroy the Iran nuclear facilities at Fordow would be to soften the ground with bunker busters and then drop a nuke, to which Trump has reportedly said, yeah, we shouldn't do that.
So the assumptions are now that the reason Trump is saying he will wait for The reason why he's meeting with Steve Bannon and calling Tucker Carlson is that, one, it may be a big ask that we nuke Iran but actually pull back and say, you know what, we can do this with humans with boots on the ground.
But the reality is we just don't know for sure.
All we can do is sit back and wait and probably debate amongst ourselves as to what should be done and what is currently going on.
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We got a couple people here to join us in this debate.
Ma 'am, would you like to introduce yourself first?
Well, I think what we should do depends on what we see unfold in the next few weeks.
I think it completely depends on the success of Israel's operation, and I think it depends on what the Iranian people choose to do once the bombs start falling, or stop falling, excuse me.
So, you know, I don't pretend to be so arrogant to have the scenario that we should absolutely commit to, regardless of how the facts on the ground change Depends what you mean by regime change.
But you do want, I don't wanna say you do, but would you just want to see that structure of governance in Iran altered You know, like, they remove the Ayatollah and they put something else in.
I think there's a real risk that the United States and Israel have different desired end states from this conflict.
President Trump has been pretty clear he doesn't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
I don't get the same kind of clarity from Israel, perhaps justifiably so, on what their end state is from this operation, whether it be to eliminate the Iranian ballistic missile program, eliminate the nuclear threat permanently, or perhaps, more broadly, regime change.
I think if the United States intervenes militarily with Israel, And they have different end states.
That is a recipe for escalation, regardless of the first step the United States takes to intervene.
I see a lot of people, they don't like the title that the U.S. says nuking Iran is the only option.
Let me show you the chain of events here.
We have this from Mediaite first.
White House denies Trump ruled out using a tactical nuke on Iran, Fox's Heinrich reports.
Okay, well...
Well, we have this from The Guardian.
Trump cautioned on Iran's strike linked to doubts over a bunker buster bomb, officials say.
There's been numerous reports that the bunker busters don't even have the capability to penetrate Fordow.
And the argument is Iran intentionally built a nuclear facility where they knew even U.S. bunker busters would have a difficult time penetrating.
And then we have the ongoing live feed from the Daily Mail.
Donald Trump is believed to have backed down from military action against Iran, paving the way for diplomatic talks, after realizing that a nuclear strike may have been the only way to completely destroy the buried Fordow enrichment plant.
The president is said to have told defense officials it would only make sense for the U.S. to join Israel if its bunker buster bombs are guaranteed to be able to destroy the key enrichment site, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Officials were said to have been told the U.S. would have to soften the ground with conventional bombs before dropping a tactical nuclear weapon from a B-2 bomber to completely destroy the site, believed to be some 90 meters underground.
But Trump is said to have ruled out nuking Iran, insiders told The Guardian.
The possibility was said not to have been raised by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or Chairman of the Joint Sheets of Staff, General Dan Cain, during recent meetings in the Situation Room.
Fox News then reported the White House has refuted the entire Guardian report indicating the use of a nuclear weapon had not yet been ruled out.
The future of the region hangs in the balance as diplomats scramble to find another solution.
There's been an ongoing conversation about whether or not the bunker busters will even work.
Jack Posobiec went into great detail on the battle, I believe it's called the BDA, the Battle Damage Assessment, and that the bunker busters are lower yield bombs but designed to penetrate.
So they'll break through the concrete before detonating, in which case, I believe it's 90 meters, about 300 feet.
You would need multiple conditions Well, and they'd have to hit in the same exact spot.
And they're precise, but it poses, I think, part of the conundrum that many who are hoping President Trump Trump reconsiders military action because if we take a strike at the Fordo nuclear facility, for example, and it doesn't work, we have still initiated combat action.
We've initiated physical participation, offensive war against Iran that makes the 40,000 Americans in the region and all our military assets a target, a frankly legitimate target for Iranian retaliation.
We don't know what happens in the event of an escalation.
I deployed to Iraq twice, and our kind of main station was at a base in northern Iraq where on a clear day I could see the mountains of northwest Iran.
And so, and there, there, again, there are thousands of American soldiers within that range.
That's well within ballistic missile range, probably wouldn't even take a ballistic missile.
Um, and so my point is, okay, it's perhaps it's not 40,000 Americans directly at risk of retaliation, but how, how many is too many?
I would, I would push back on this idea that any, that Iran, just because they are a very large and mountainous country and, you know, they have a very sophisticated population, highly educated, civilized, that they are anything other than a paper tiger, which we have seen again.
and again but then why would the United States need to get involved they can't even look as long as Israel has the skies right now And they are – they can't even get a plane off the ground except like the three that they've managed to get off the ground to flee the area.
You think that America cannot defend itself against an air attack from Iran?
I mean this – to me that's just so ridiculous.
Like the air superiority of America is just – it's – But do you understand the backwards logic here?
You're saying that Iran is a paper tiger, so America need not fear retaliation.
But at the same time, they are such a formidable military threat that Israel needs our offensive military assistance in order to defeat the threat that Iran poses in the region.
It can't just be like, will they retaliate or not?
Of course they're going to retaliate.
But what has to be involved in the conversation is their capabilities.
And the best way to measure that is to look at past actions that they have taken, like the October 2024 ballistic missile talk, even seeing how they've just responded in the last seven days.
I mean, yes, of course, they've caused a lot of damage throughout Israel.
Yes, there have been 400, 450 missiles that have gone through and, like, you know, a thousand drones that they shot, none of which reached Israeli airspace.
Yeah, but that could be humanitarian for all we know.
We have no idea what's in there, and until anybody has any evidence in terms of what those planes contained, then I'm not going to think that China is going to come to Iran's rescue.
I mean, China has been laying low.
They've already implied that they want nothing to do with it.
That's not material to the point that's being made in that, We're wondering why Iran hasn't launched a larger barrage of higher-yield, mid-range missiles, and the things to consider tactically would be China's shipping something and we don't know what that is.
That's a concern.
If Iran is launching these mid-range, lower-yield missiles, the strategy is fairly obvious.
I'm a layman, you know?
Just watching Fox News, and we had an interview with a guy on the show the other day.
They're saying, well, obviously, no one's going to launch their stronger warheads knowing Israel's loaded with interceptors.
But interceptors are very expensive.
So likely what Iran's going to do is they're going to choose a medium yield so they can save the more powerful rockets, burn down some of the interceptors, hope they penetrate that air defense with some strikes that actually will freak people out.
They don't want to go—this is what we were told by a— An expert in the region.
They don't want to use low yield because when they do break through, there won't be enough damage and people will just be like, oh, this is weak.
But if a couple break through and they're strong enough and the impacts are – and they've been pretty devastating, Israel is going to ramp up its interceptors concerned about the strength of these rockets.
Then once Israel depletes the majority of its rockets, Iran will launch a full salvo of high-yield mid-range ballistic missiles to actually start causing massive damage in urban areas.
Well, to my mind, the burden of proof should be on those who want – We're good to go.
I think necessarily retaliate and the United States would necessarily retaliate in the event that Americans are killed or American assets are threatened.
And then you have a path towards regime change, whether or not the United States wanted to march down that path in the first place.
There is, you know, and to my mind, that's why I don't find the helpful distinction between You know, this chain of, oh, well, we should support Israel because it's their fight.
the IRGC has stated many times death to America has not merely been a slogan or a chant but a governing doctrine that since 1979 we have seen them carry out from the first moment that they took our hostage it that tape they took our diplomats and our Marines hostages for 444 days and the IRGC bragged about it then going to the 80s with the the the you know the two
They're not the good guys.
Okay, but that's just scratching the surface.
Then let's go.
That's just what they've done to us in the region, in the Middle East.
Then let's go to the Western Hemisphere and look at what they've been doing in Latin America.
Look at them sending UAVs to Venezuela.
Look at them, the reports that they've been trying to dig underground tunnels from Mexico into the United States There's nobody who's done better fieldwork on this than Todd Benzman.
And the fact that they essentially have been wreaking havoc on the region of Latin America strictly so that they can position themselves.
I mean, there's a reason why they're working with the Mexican drug cartels and the Colombian drug cartels.
that threat is as existential and absolute as you present, then I think it begs returning to the original question of if regime change should be the goal of America.
That's why I find it almost a So let me clarify.
To me, it's like, which is Iran this paper tiger that we must confront in order to preserve the interests of the American people?
Or are they a paper tiger that we can handle with a few bunker busters and the Israelis Okay, well, two things.
Instead of presuming what my views are, feel free to ask.
But second of all, what I mean by Iran is a paper tiger is precisely what makes them such a threat in these realms
But that is precisely why they use proxies.
That is precisely why they are trying to essentially co-opt other governments and regimes and brainwash them and support them so that they can do Iran's dirty work because Iran does not have the capacity to do it.
Communism, as evil as it is, they're atheists, man.
They have some sort of sobering idea that makes them understand the risks that their country is going to get nuked to hell.
Why do you think the Soviet – why do you think that, you know, mutually assured destruction worked in the Cold War?
It was because the Soviet Union understood the actual implications of a nuclear world.
Iran are – these people are – this is the thing that, like – This is actually really the thing that the non-interventionists don't want to really dig into.
And I would love to...
So given this threat, real quick.
The fact that this regime is a Shiite supremacist, like, you know, they're fanatical.
I mean, to be fair, I mean, the option of nuking anybody is always on the table.
And that's why I think Trump denied it.
I think the possibility, the probability of Trump nuking Iran is zero percent.
But you'd be insane to be like, we will never nuke anybody, no matter what.
That's dumb.
Like, if Iran actually said, you know what, we've already enriched uranium, we've got dirty bombs, we're dispatching them, and nuclear war is now, the U.S. is going to retaliate and say, okay, then we're taking out Fordo right now by whatever means necessary.
And I think even Tucker was saying that if they are actively trying to kill Trump, then he would be in favor of bombing the hell out of their country.
He was the second person that they linked to an assassination attempt on Trump.
And I mean, it's so ridiculous that this is considered like a hypothetical to me.
I mean, like this is so...
Because if you look at what the IRGC has done in the rest of the world, look at what they've done in the UK.
Look at, I mean, their assassination attempts and espionage, This is like part and parcel.
Oh my god.
Iran is like, I mean, the way that Iran has infiltrated the UK has made that has, I mean, you can even look at like David Lammy's like recent comments on them.
They are a level four emergency threat in terms of how they are trying to destroy that country from within.
I think but we need to return to the original question.
And this is why I'm not necessarily convinced by the arguments to to warrant the United States taking military action to help Israel, because if it's true that all they need is a few bombs dropped on Fordow.
But that this threat is so vast and multidimensional, then that's the least we should do.
And that's also irrelevant to this threat, this extensive threat.
But then I think, to be honest— That's a good point.
After the killing of Soleimani, Iran was like, we will get revenge.
We will kill Trump.
I thought this was, you know, fairly common.
They say that Amir Ali Hadjizadeh, the head of the Revolutionary Guards Aerospace Force, spoke of Iran's often repeated threat to avenge the killing of Qasem Soleimani, Tehran's top military intelligence operator in the Middle East, saying, we are looking.
He went on to give a threat that he wanted to kill Trump.
And then he just pulled this guy's Wikipedia page and he died on the 13th.
However, I believe that if that diplomatic solution allows for any sort of future
if they are able to enrich uranium to 60% purity, you know, at the 90% threshold for weapons grade material and have 400 kilograms of, of, of, um, you know, of uranium again, then to me, I think that just shows that we were naive.
However, It just depends how much you are prepared to verify and to essentially keep your guard up.
But I want to just address a point you made before, which is a really good point, that if they're already such a threat, If Iran is such a threat, then it doesn't make sense to make a deal or to do limited airstrikes.
And that's why they essentially need to have a level of transparency that, to me, is very, very, very difficult to get, which makes the diplomatic solution very difficult to achieve.
They might have centrifuges in other places.
I mean, we know that they—I mean, the whole reason they—that Fordo is 300 feet underground is precisely because it was covert and it was in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the IAEA found.
unidentified
And they don't want to get bombed by— They wanted to specifically— Exactly.
If you have regional ambitions, you also have to know your own capability, right?
And so we can kind of trust North Korea to know that.
But because Iran has all of these proxies and because that's coupled with these dogmatic, religiously fundamentalist ambitions, they actually believe that they can carry out a complete restructuring of not just the region but the entire world.
I mean, we're talking about, you know, over a billion, over a billion Muslims.
And even if like 10% of that are, are, are, are a group that is sympathetic to any sort of like Islamist way of life.
I think Iran is an adversary and I don't think they are some people that we should coddle but to say that you know letting I don't think that's a good thing to hope for or to allow.
But I think we should be realistic and concrete about the details in the actions that would be required to stop such a future.
In my mind, there are two options to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon.
One is diplomacy and a deal.
Good reporting before the war started that Iran was willing to accept American investigators on the ground, which was something that President Obama didn't secure.
So a deal that allows some sort of verification of their nuclear regime, all the caveats about how difficult that might be applied, or it is an all-out ground invasion that necessitates the...
You mean like in 2003 when the IAEA came out with their huge report and discovered that like since like 1980 or since like the 1980s at some point, Iran had a completely covert like secret nuclear weapons program and was in complete violation of the treaty that they had signed on to?
I mean, this is, I think, underlies a point about the debate.
We're told that there is this limited option where we can take some precise action against a regime that is also a paper tiger and an existential threat to humanity at the same time.
And then somehow avoid further entanglement, further military action.
And that is...
Again, when I say it's not being honest, I'm not saying a deliberate lie, but I think it leaves unsaid and undiscussed the real eventualities of what happens when we think that we can take quick, decisive military action in the Middle East to achieve policy outcomes that are actually a lot more slippery.
I think what's happening is actually pretty obvious.
The United States for a long time now would do whatever it takes to remove the Iranian government and they want regime change.
The problem?
You got about 90 million people there and many of them have deeply fundamentalistic Islamist worldview that is actually kept in check by the current regime.
Meaning, if you remove the existing government right now, you have 10 million people maybe.
I'll put it this way.
Probably one of the biggest civil wars we've seen in hundreds of years, if not ever, because population expansion.
And then you're going to have these people spreading out into various other regions, and you may end up with the biggest ISIS problem we've ever seen.
I think so.
But this is the U.S. government assessment, basically, that they want the Ayatollah to heal.
They want to bring him to heal so he keeps all those extremist forces in check, but also isn't developing a nuke.
But I think the analogy that like, well, OK, well, three things.
First of all, I just have to say, well, I explained why I called them a paper tiger and why they are also a threat.
And doesn't that make sense?
Doesn't it make sense to say that their military capabilities on their own cannot overpower America or Israel, but they work around the world through their proxies?
The principal threat we face in Iran is in the Middle East.
Like, obviously, we can say that, you know, the biggest threat China poses is the South China Sea and the trade agreements and the alliances we have with the Commonwealth nations and Taiwan, etc., etc.
You know, the reason why I asked about whether they're going to nuke us is because for some reason, and I don't know why, like, I just, nobody says it.
You know, I keep hearing about, you know, even Trump has been saying for 40 years they cannot have a nuclear weapon.
And I'm like...
And everybody always dances around that question because I'm like, is the answer yes or no?
I think the bigger question is, the bigger risk, is that Iran's going to give a bunch of crackpot Islamist lunatic rebel groups low-yield nuclear bombs, like dirty bombs and suitcase nukes.
Yeah, and I guess I don't buy that you, perhaps, would accept a future where— Iran continues all of these adversarial actions around the world just without a nuclear program at home.
No, I think we should continue to confront them, like you said, asymmetrically.
Until when?
Well, until essentially America and Israel and their new Gulf allies have essentially taken out all of these proxy groups and the maximum campaign of sanctions have essentially rid Iran of their economic capabilities to fund these groups.
And they essentially have to, they're forced to focus primarily on their own people.
I think that starting down that path, starting down this path of U.S. military action necessitates a world where we are involved in a regime change in Iran.
Why does everything have to do And there's examples of Trump being—of actually being successful at taking military action that does not result in, like, forever wars or boots on the ground.
I think my position is the status quo with a credible threat of U.S. military action in order to facilitate a better deal that provides a more permanent end to the Iranian nuclear program becoming a weapons program.
But you are then saying that there is a possibility of U.S. military intervention.
So to what scale, depending on the threat, would you tolerate U.S. military intervention?
What I mean by that is if Iran— If Iran—if the Ayatollah goes on TV literally holding a red button with a giant nuke behind him saying, we're going to launch this, would you then propose a military—like a full regime change?
If Iran killed U.S. soldiers, certainly at scale, as they already have, but in an exchange of conventional military firepower, then the United States would be justified in invading Iran.
There's one scenario where I think literally 95% of people in this country agree that we would send boots on the ground into Iran, and that is the assassination of Donald Trump by the Iranians.
I've even talked to anti-interventionist libertarians who agreed, if a foreign nation kills your president, there's no question.
It's an obligation to respond.
Your nation doesn't exist if your leaders are killed by your enemies.
So I think most people, when we have this conversation of intervention or not, we're really just talking about the threshold of threat.
At what point do we deem the threat to have exceeded the red line to which we have to go in?
And I think what we're really seeing is the anti-intervention voices think that line is very, very far away.
And then many people think we're at that line.
That if Iran gets fissile material, then it's too late.
So the line is now that they're so close to having it.
Well, and also, like, a nation like Israel, like, America can afford to take a lot more risks with Iran than like a nation of Israel can.
So it also just depends, It also just depends like, you know, what, like, you know, where we are in the world I don't describe myself as an anti-interventionist.
I think the United States should take military action when it is necessary to preserve the interests of the American people and our nation, our borders.
To say that it's anti-interventionist or not is, I think, a little bit of a way to misframe I definitely don't think you're an anti-interventionist.
I do think that there are extremes on the issue, and the anti-interventionist voices have more prominent extreme –
personalities so utopian than the pro intervention typically like even mark levin who is probably one of the most pro intervention is if i were to scale things at like a minus 10 to positive 10 and the positive 10 people are like go in boots on the ground take over remove the ayatollah and the anti-interventionists are like we should never be involved no matter what you're insane minus 10 i think that the prominent voices we see that are anti-intervention skew closer to the extreme
than the pro-intervention forces.
It's not a moral I think it's PR.
Their actual vision is like Bolton when he said next year we'll be celebrating in Tehran.
Publicly they know that if they come out and they say we're going to send boots on the ground, tens of thousands of Americans will die, and we will raise an American flag over their capital city, if you say that you're going to Well, but like I'm – but I'm somebody who – I don't think that's always true.
I mean, maybe there are some of these people that are more reserved and secretly are war hawks or warmongers, but I think a lot of these people who support President Trump just really believe in a peace through strength agenda and really do think that Iran is a credible national security threat.
So depending on the question, there's sentiment against striking Iran, but sentiment in favor of stopping them from getting a nuke, which is like, Not even.
My point is it doesn't need to dictate foreign policy.
We don't have like mob rule.
But what I'm saying is if an overwhelming amount of people Are supporting a certain action, like on the foreign policy, like international stage, then I don't think that without good reason, a small group of people then should be like, oh no, all of you people are wrong.
For all, like, you know how the media painted in a ridiculous image of President Trump, right?
Through like Russiagate and all of the lies about him that just bared no reality to the person he was, right?
He's a fascist, he's a dictator, all this kind of stuff.
I don't like Netanyahu at all.
So I'm not saying like, But the way that the media portrays him and the way that conservatives have even fallen for some of the media's lies about him is hysterical.
Netanyahu is not a hawk.
He is a pussy.
He is a bitch.
And he essentially has...
I know, of course.
Well, that's the thing.
This is all binaries.
It's war or appeasement.
It's the Iraq War.
But the thing is, what's different?
Look, all of these conservatives that are now saying we should make a deal, let me ask you, Will.
Trump ran on the idea that the JCPOA in 2015 was an absolute disaster.
So if Iran is not agreeing to these new terms, these more hardline terms that Trump is giving them, then how could a deal be possible?
Because there was real evidence and reporting that they had agreed to some terms that would have made a more stringent deal.
Before Israel started their campaign of airstrikes.
What I heard is that the Ayatollah had these- So there is a world where, for example, Iran accepts an inspection regime that includes American inspectors, a key oversight of the JCPOA and something that I think would go a long way towards visibility into a future nuclear program.
And hey, there's even a world where the Israeli military campaign is a really effective means of getting an even better deal.
And that's what I think we need to talk about is what does Israel do from here?
It's pretty clear that they cannot achieve the outcome of ending the nuclear program militarily by themselves.
I think that's true.
And so perhaps this is the time, if it's true what...
If it's true that they can't destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, then I think a great outcome for Israel is to use this kind of zenith of pressure to back Iran into a corner where they have to accept a good deal.
That, to me, is...
or, again, it's even further escalation.
That's why I think this weekend is so key.
These two weeks Trump has given us is so key.
Because it's the chance for Israel's military action to produce the best possible outcome, which is a better deal for Israel and the United States.
Otherwise, we get to the point where we run out of steam.
Israel runs out of steam in some ways, defensively and offensively.
I don't know what you think about that.
But again, we have to be real about what defensive interceptors look like.
It just sounds like to me that the evidence and the reporting that comes out that kind of fits your kind of preconceived assessment about this, and the evidence and reporting that comes out on a day-to-day basis that fits my already previous assessments are...
It's like, we're looking at different evidence.
I'm looking at evidence.
I'm in, like, WhatsApp groups and Telegram groups with, like, you know, with Iranians and IDF people, you know, that are sending real-time stuff that are saying different things to me than, you know, than what your groups are telling you about whether, you know, Iranians are, about whether the Ayatollahs are prepared to actually give up their nuclear weapons program in a real way.
there's a world in which they could have already escalated this if they really hated America so much and if they really wanted to cling to their nuclear regime to the death uh I you know if I'm if I'm just putting myself in their shoes and I I wanted a nuclear program other but they have other no but they have certain ambitions that they are always weighing right so like of course they want to destroy America of course they want to take down the west right but they are but they are trying to do this in multiple ways in
different geopolitical theaters of war around the world so if they believe that you know dropping a nuclear uh bomb is going to offset some other things that they're trying to do like everything's like in that sense like everything's like In that sense, they are rational because they're essentially juggling all their different methods of ambitions for global domination and they're trying to figure out what is the best way to achieve that on any given day.
I agree with you, but that's why if the United States gets militarily involved, all bets are off for them.
Because they know that they're in a world where they're not just fighting the IDF.
That requires a complete escalation of violence.
We'll probably see the whole nature of their air defense assets.
That's my concern with the news about what these bunker busters would or would not do.
it seems to me that it would be reasonable for Iran to preserve some of their most sophisticated air defense assets, especially around their military sites.
And so what it would look like, But even if we're going to drop three or four bunker busters, which is probably what it would take, that's also 10% of our supply.
It would require probably a half dozen other U.S. aircraft to go in before the B-2s with the bunker busters, expose themselves to air defense capability.
I mean, I actually think the U.S. understands this.
Israel's going to go in.
Iran's known for their air defense, and it's mountainous, which makes it very difficult for the U.S. to come and just flatten.
Iran knows they're not going to penetrate Israeli interceptors with U.S. support.
So the assumption is they're holding back their higher yield warheads until they feel that they're going to start breaking through the interceptors.
So I think it's fair to assume, and I think probably the U.S. has already assessed this, when they do go in with bombers, new Iranian air defense is going to pop up they did not know.
I think it's a possibility, but if we're prepared to doubt Iran's capability, like I'm also doubting these headlines that say that, that's what I'm saying.
A lot of news like this has come out in the last few months, a lot of stuff that's been leaked to anonymous sources, and then Trump will send out a treatment.
they'll just be like, fake news, you know?
So I'm just like, I'm skeptical of that analysis too, especially when like, And I don't think it's necessarily true.
Look, it's also true that Israel might be able to do this themselves with their 5,000-pound bombs, okay?
So, like, we have to— And this is why I said at the very beginning that what I think America should do completely depends on how this develops on a day-to-day basis and what Israel is discovering and how their operation is progressing, how we see the momentum of the people on the ground in Iran shaping up.
I think all of these factors are so important before we say what America should or should not do.
We need to be able to have I disagree with that only because if we were convinced that this was an operation with a reasonable chance of success and a necessary one, I think we had to have done it this week.
I think that the reason these moves are being made now has less to do with enriched uranium and more to do with I think this will be the last period based on current trends in which the US supports Israel.
I think within 10 years, you're going to start seeing more and more calls to defund USAID to Israel.
And I think within 20 years, we probably cut off Israel entirely based on the trends in polling and sentiment towards Israel.
With the boomers largely being the support base for U.S. involvement with Israel, I think as they start dying, getting older and exiting the economy.
And if they're on the left, they're going to say, we hate Israel.
The end result is, the funding is cut off, and if this were 10 years from now, and Israel started striking Iran, the US would be like, leave us out of it, bye.
that's a whole different conversation that I am so happy to get into because you just said a lot of things that actually assume certain in I'm not assuming I would say misconceptions about the relationship between No, no, no, no, no.
I know, I'm not saying that your assumption about people not supporting Israel is incorrect.
I'm saying your characterization of funding Israel and USAID actually USAID.
Sorry, funding them through USAID and giving them aid I didn't say anything about that.
Or whatever, and the memorandum, however, all the ways that we've given Israel money, whether it's the DOD and the $3.8 billion package, or USAID help, whatever it is, right?
All the ways in which we fund and help Israel, like to me, that like, do I believe that the younger generations are going to be, you know, fundamentally opposed to this?
Sure.
But that's only if the messaging stays the same.
And if that if if if people still continue to believe that we are literally writing like a blank check to Israel and they can do whatever they want, because that is a flat out lie.
It's not material to what I'm saying, and let's just call it funding.
The current sentiment, according to Pew, is minus 53. So 53% of Americans reportedly have an unfavorable view of Israel.
I don't really care about whether that number is accurate.
I care about the trends that Pew has tracked.
I think trends are better, are easier to understand because they're using similar polling methodology and using the similar methodology, they found a different result.
That is, for U.S. adults aged 18 to 49 among Republicans.
Republicans are lean right.
It went from 35 to 50 percent unfavorable.
And among Democrats, it's 62 to 71. The younger generation is overwhelmingly shifting in that direction.
Israel would not be able to launch an attack on Iran like this even five years from now.
I know, but what I'm saying to you, Tim, what I'm saying to you is that It's already started to change since October 7th, so it won't matter.
So I'm not saying that this isn't true.
It could be true.
But right now, what is happening is what October 7th showed Israel is that essentially the entire like post Yom Kippur war decision to gut their, you know, the most important units of their military and focus on, you know, what they call a small and smart army and offload, you know, so much manufacturing to America and depend America was depend on America.
America for their military needs was I wish it was taking I wish I mean this gets into the whole IDF and the political class in Israel and the and the generals and whatever and all that all the whole can of worms.
But I hope and it seems like people are starting to wake up in Israel that like over time they 100% they should decouple with America because it's an unhealthy toxic situation.
What?
Like essentially, like the fact that America, I mean, Biden was holding Israel hostage, one hand tied behind their back.
They wouldn't let Israel do what they needed to do to win the war, and it ended up prolonging this Gaza war and dragging it out for way longer than it needed to be dragged, just because Biden knew that he was able to pull the strings because he was holding hostage necessary armaments that Israel needed for this war.
Yeah, but look, Israel is damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Look, you even saw this with like the anti-interventionists, right?
Like when, like right at the beginning, when, when Israel carried out this, this incredible, you know, Michael Corleone, Sherlock Holmes, 007 strike on the 12th, 13th.
Immediately the response from like people like Jack Posobiec and, you know, some Groypers and stuff like that were like, I mean, of President Trump.
And these are the same people saying that, like, we need to decouple and, you know, Israel should just, like, do their own thing and, like, America should—well, which is it?
Do you want Israel to do their own thing or do you want Israel to be coordinating with America?
This is always—no matter what Israel does, because Israel is the collective Jew.
Israel is just the collective Jew.
Any classic trope that you apply, classic anti-Semitic trope that you apply to the anti-Semitic Jew has just— It's been transferred in the modern age onto the state of Israel.
Do you think it would have been—I don't know what's true in many ways, but do you think it would have been problematic or it would be problematic if we found out that Netanyahu launched this military operation knowing that Israel needed America to finish the job and he did so without prior coordination with Trump?
But there's plenty of reporting that indicates President Trump and the Americans asked Israel not to strike multiple times.
There's negotiations scheduled for the Sunday, last Sunday, I suppose, right?
And so my point is, like, if we want to perhaps abate this trend, because I think Tim is right, that it's kind of a pivotal point for the Israel-US relationship that I don't think you can just wish away on either side.
That's why diplomacy is important.
These numbers will accelerate drastically if there is, I think, even a not necessarily that long protracted war in the Middle East, because Americans don't want that.
I think you're right, and that's why the best case scenario is a world where Israel's decisive kind of surgical military action precipitates Well, some of their strategic military outcomes.
And it's also a world where the United States doesn't need to be more further militarily involved in the Middle East after 30 years of Boots on—still boots on the ground.
If, hypothetically, say Donald Trump, could snap his fingers and erase the existing regime of Iran and their insurgent proxies in the region, should he do it?
And I'm saying this not—my point is, if it was within the power of the United States to remove troublesome actors, violent actors— Yeah, I can tell you why.
Because as we've seen with the Abraham Accords, many of these Gulf countries are wanting to turn over a new leaf.
Even if their populations are still largely, you know, maybe like more tribal or have more like Islamist beliefs, they are walking a fine line and countries like Saudi Arabia and UAE and Bahrain and even countries like Jordan and North Africa.
They want to be part of the modern world.
They want to reap the benefits of having good relationships with the West.
And if anything proved that, it was the Abrahamic.
So because the Gulf countries have these goals, right, what's the biggest hindrance to that?
You just said it.
It's Iran.
Okay?
They're all threatened.
They're all threatened.
Iran has been trying to, in conjunction with Sunni groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, they have been trying to...
They've been trying to take out the government of Oman, of Morocco, of Bahrain.
I said Jordan.
Okay, so these people are Actually, obviously there's a conflict with Saudi Arabia.
Go look at the work of like Yorm Ettinger.
He has literally been – this is his expertise.
He's a former ambassador and anyway, he has literally been documenting this for his entire career.
I'll say I don't want the Iranian regime to stick around, but there is a world where a perhaps feeble, inflamed and angry Shiite regime does some – Aren't
The Abraham Accords, that is like real, real top-down and ground-up peace building on all sides.
How about Trump?
And so once that infrastructure, that architecture is in place, it's going to be very hard.
If you take out a nation like Iran and these peace deals have already been signed and they are in the same, you know, like I said, it's not like a cold peace like the peace deals of Jordan or Egypt, but it's more of the Abraham Accords, then that's going to be very, very hard to bring.
That was before these Gulf states had essentially decided to give up their Sunni fundamentalist beliefs and come to the table and try to moderate and try to reform.
That's why I wonder if the true best case scenario is an Iranian regime that is still a Shiite Islamic Republic, but one that is closer to North Korea in its geopolitical and economic relationships with the rest of the world.
Genuinely isolated, but still in existence and kind of under the thumb of this Arab-Israeli coalition in the United States that doesn't pose a threat to Israel, certainly, and to the regional counterbalance.
Well, they 100% do not, and also, like, I don't think there's anybody that would tolerate that.
And even people who say we should like nuke Iran, I don't think any of them would, even the biggest war hawks, I don't think any of them would say.
And the reason why they wouldn't say that, Tim, the reason why they wouldn't say we need to occupy Iran is because those people have some understanding of the differences between the Persian people and the Arab people.
Okay, well, my question was just if we have the forces to do so.
The reason being, it sounds like the tactical nuke statement.
We got to bunker bust and then nuke it is a big ask.
The goal being, oh no, I mean, all we can do is nuke it.
There is another option, though.
Israel's proposed human intervention with commandos.
However, if you want commandos to go into Florida to actually start dismantling and blowing all this stuff up, you're going to have to secure the entire region, which means you'll need a ground invasion first.
I think it requires probably the entirety of Israel's tier one special operations forces.
I'm frankly more concerned about what happens after they leave.
You know, what is the plan?
Like you start smashing centrifugally.
fuses with hammer, you know, like presumably this is, uh, uh, it's, I think it's achievable in, in concept.
If, if it is true that Iran doesn't have a robust air defense, um, then But what it would look like, theoretically, let's say, is that Israel would focus precision fires and covert action to what they call prepare the battlefield.
And then some combination of airborne and air assault forces.
I think you would need hundreds of Israeli commandos on the ground, and then probably what they call an outer cordon of more conventional but still special operations forces to prevent an Iranian counterattack, and then a whole host of air power.
I mean, it's a three or four day operation at a minimum.
It's incredibly risky.
And I don't even have a good understanding of what...
But I will say, I think it's probably, there's a higher chance of success, even though it's much riskier, with that than an airstrike.
Because there has to be a battle damage assessment, I think, as you mentioned, Tim, earlier in the show.
And that requires people on the ground.
Maybe it's intelligence officers.
Maybe it's an asset.
But at the end of the day, all of this A lot of these activities result in, quote-unquote, boots on the ground to figure out what the heck is going on in reality.
And so I don't think it's unreasonable for Israel to do this with commandos.
I mean, that's, I think if the Israeli military has a strength that is in surgical precision operations that don't necessarily involve a commitment of sustained commandos.
and they're going to be able to waltz on and one does not simply walk into a photo nuclear facility and destroy their centrifuge well if you're a Yeah, but if you're a historian of U.S. military operations, the first effort to retrieve the American hostages from the embassy in Tehran was a joint special operations mission called Desert One that was not foiled by an Iranian airstrike or, you know—
It was a colossal failure, an embarrassment for the U.S. military.
That's frankly left a huge stain and extended the hostage crisis by probably another many months.
So it's not even the fact that Iran might kind of kill Israelis with AK-47s or surface-to-air missiles.
I mean, just imagine what it would take to stage Israeli commandos.
How do you get human beings to Fordow with enough time and resources, ordinance, to destroy a deep underground military base, meaning they're going to have to be carrying explosives in?
Engineers planting these things, detonating them, and escaping.
So that's why I was asking Tim if you could find an airstrip nearby because you'd either – the mission is to either make an airstrip – and that's possible but very risky – or to find an airstrip that you can seize.
This was the mission of my old unit where you parachute onto an airstrip.
And then you create, call it a lodgment, or an area that you control that's big enough where you can land planes and successive forces.
I think it would obviously be an operation that involves not merely this deliberate commando raid and accompanying airstrikes, but also massive cyber attacks and...
If a plane flew over any rural area of the United States and dudes with Iranian flags were flying out with guns, random hillbillies would be shooting at them with pistols.
And I feel like we're acting as if these are like sand people or something and not like a highly civilized, sophisticated, educated population that is the least anti-Semitic in any Middle Eastern country, including many Western countries like France and Germany, where the overwhelming majority of the people have been trying to take out this regime, not just in, you know, not just in 2022 with the Woman Life Freedom protests, but in 2017 and in 2018.
The reason why they're having trouble is because they're largely secular, these people, and they don't have the organizational structures that Khomeini found with the mosques, in the mosques, that essentially was able to unite people.
That's what we will be greeted as liberators means.
It means, no, you will not.
You are not going to bomb a foreign country in any capacity, be it industrial control systems or missile sites, and have the civilian population of the country cheer for you.
You know, if there's a civil war, like if we're talking about like the North and South Vietnamese or like the Koreas, and you said we'll be greeted as liberated, it's like, yes, by one of the warring factions.
But Tim, you have to be caught in order to say something like that.
You have to understand like the ethnic makeup.
Like, you have to understand the positions that they have taken since Israel stopped, started dropping bombs.
A lot of these ethnic minorities, they have, you know, their councils and their spokespeople and stuff like that of this institution and this institution.
And a lot of them have put out statements in full support of what Israel is doing.
The point – and this – again, this is why I think people are suspicious is we're trying to make the same case that we can analyze a Middle Eastern country, Southwest Asian country in order to achieve and support military and geopolitical aims that are inherently unpredictable.
The discourse surrounding the case for intervention to me is based on a little bit of hubris around guessing what will happen in a world where we can't.
And I think I could fall prey to that as well, for sure.
But I think that the other side of that is there's also a possibility that you don't have hubris and that you're actually just making calculated cost-benefit analysis or risk-benefit analysis.
you know, calculations and deciding that it's worth it, that the possible risk of like A, B and C happening is worth it for, you know, to stop the possibility But the people who bear the consequences of decision-makers being wrong about that are going to be at least one generation of American and Israeli men who spend their 20s in this country.
I remember reading the newsletter and seeing the post or whatever, and it was just like the first week of war with Iran, a war with Iran, that this would be catastrophic.
That this would be so catastrophic that our economy would be destroyed.
We'd have $30, $40 gasoline.
Thousands of American troops would die within the first week.
Well, yeah, but to me, the World War III – but I've never once said that any – I've never said the words World War III except in the context of other people talking about it.
Okay, so you're essentially saying that both camps, people who would potentially support intervention and people who never support intervention, are saying that there's going to be World War III, both of them, and so they're both fear-mongering?
Me saying that I believe that Iran will use a nuke at some point when they have a nuke against Israel based on the fact that they've said this is so different than saying in the first week that we have an Iran war, thousands of Americans will die, our economy will collapse, gasoline will be $30.
One of them is laying out a specific scenario that they are certain of based on proof and evidence that they clearly do not have, but they are trying to convince you of.
And another one is saying that based on what these people have said, I believe that a general situation could arise that is a direct causation Those are connected.
One, we can argue— One to me is making incredible—is associating things that you're trying to— You're trying to take two things and you're associating them with nothing in the middle that's connecting them.
And the other thing is making a possibility based on an association that everybody would understand.
I don't think it's ridiculous to say that in the first weeks of a U.S.-Iran war.
We have a very recent historical example of what we thought would be a fast, limited military intervention growing into a quagmire that distracted U.S. national security priorities and got a lot of Americans killed.
We're not just associating everything that happens in the Middle East with the war in Iraq.
We're, I think, drawing some reasonable conclusions about what happens when we think we have the chain of eventuality.
Thousands of Americans killed in the first week, collapse of our economy, $30 gasoline, then a world war where China and all of BRICS joins in to support them, writing, and then there's the question of the war itself.
Iran may not have nukes, but it has a fearsome arsenal of ballistic missiles.
Many of which are aimed at U.S. military installations in the Gulf, as well as at our allies at a critical energy infrastructure.
The first week of war with Iran could easily kill thousands of Americans.
It could also collapse our economy as surging oil prices trigger unmanageable inflation.
Well, I just think that there's certain, Tim, I think that there's certain, like, slogans that are very trendy now to use, and I don't think that they're based on Honest assessments.
There was a lot of people in conversations on Tucker's show and Candace's show and stuff like that that were talking about how Russia would defend Iran.
And I'm sitting there listening and I'm like, are you guys insane?
I think that's a very good possibility, but you guys are bringing scenarios.
You guys are talking about scenarios.
We started this whole conversation talking about a scenario that, in my mind, was not one of the scenarios that I was thinking in terms of people talking about World War III.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, it wasn't tactical nukes.
It was using bunker-busting bombs or maybe a commando raid or maybe Israel using their own bombs.
It wasn't actually dropping a nuke on Fordo, right?
I think that things like that have there's a different order of magnitude in terms of the consequences for our enemies and for our allies.
And I think if like Tim said, if it's if it's just a strike or bunker busting bombs, I think anybody who says that Russia would get involved over that is just so ignorant about, you know, the bandwidth that Russia can handle right now.
And also Russia's relationship with Iran or Russia just said yesterday, they just said, sorry, we're not even going to hide you.
We're not even going to provide you safe passage.
And then the Ayatollahs came out and they're like, we're never going to forget this.
I agree with you, but that doesn't—I think you're still undercounting the justification Russia would see to ratchet up the own weapons that they feel comfortable using in Ukraine.
It's largely about what trade they can maintain because what does global image really matter to a country at war?
Russia needs supplies.
And if they're seen as the first actor in a nuclear strike, they may get supplies cut off even from China.
But no, then I would agree to a certain extent that there is a probability should the US use a nuke, Russia might be like, don't look at us.
We didn't start this.
But I don't imagine a scenario that makes sense where we nuke Iran and then Russia is like, and then they fire on Ukraine and then Pakistan start firing at each other.
There are usually periods where they're little regional wars.
And there's just conflicts going on in all these different areas, but they have been brought about because of some sort of action in a totally different region.
I guess, right, it's not a lot of time, but it is like if you think about taking five escalators down to get to the subway, that is like a ton of escalators.
