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Sources Confirm Buildup Complete
00:04:50
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| We might be going to war with Iran. | ||
| We might be going to war with Iran. | ||
| It actually looks like it's getting quite serious. | ||
| Obviously, it would have been, what's today, Thursday. | ||
| So Tuesday night, we saw reports that virtually anything that could fly that has a U.S. flag on it was heading in the direction of Iran. | ||
| And so a lot of people saw that and they said, okay, it looks like the buildup is occurring. | ||
| Now, there's a lot of different reports going on. | ||
| One thing we do know is a official told Reuters that the buildup was not expected to be completed until mid-March. | ||
| But every source that we have available, human sources, we would call it, you know, tracking airplanes, tracking ships, and then also sources that have spoken under anonymity to various outlets have said the buildup is effectively complete already. | ||
| We are ready to go. | ||
| So this is why this headline is very interesting. | ||
| This is from CBS News and basically every other outlet has picked this up as well, obviously. | ||
| Trump has discussed timeline for Iran strikes, including as soon as this weekend, but no decision yet. | ||
| So again, official told Reuters, I think this was yesterday, buildup won't be done until mid-March. | ||
| Well, top security officials are saying Trump could be ready to go by this weekend, which is really something. | ||
| So we're going to read here. | ||
| This is from CBS News out of Washington. | ||
| Top national security officials have told President Trump the military is ready for potential strikes on Iran as soon as Saturday. | ||
| But the timeline for any action is likely to extend beyond this weekend. | ||
| Sources familiar with the discussions told CBS News, Mr. Trump has not yet made a final decision about whether to strike, said the officials who spoke under condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national matters. | ||
| The conversations have been described as fluid and ongoing as the White House weighs the risks of escalation and the political and military consequences of restraint. | ||
| One moment. | ||
| I need some cold brew concentrate mixed with urine. | ||
| I think that would be the solution here. | ||
| Over the next three days, the Pentagon is moving some personnel temporarily out of the Middle East region, primarily to Europe or back to the United States, ahead of potential action or counterattacks by Iran if the U.S. were to move ahead with its operation, according to multiple officials. | ||
| It is standard practice for the Pentagon to shift assets and personnel ahead of a potential U.S. military activity and doesn't necessarily signal an attack on Iran is imminent, said one of the sources. | ||
| I'll keep reading here. | ||
| Contact by CBS News on Wednesday afternoon. | ||
| A Pentagon spokesperson said that they had no information to provide. | ||
| Secretary of State Mark Rubio plans to visit Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in about two weeks for further discussions, according to one of the sources. | ||
| Carolyn Levitt said at a White House press briefing on Wednesday that there are many reasons and arguments that one could make for a strike against Iran, but diplomacy is always the president's first option. | ||
| And she declined to discuss whether a potential strike would be coordinated with Israel. | ||
| But she told reporters a very successful operation in June that targeted Iran's nuclear facilities, obviously referring to last summer when we were kind of in a similar situation where all signs were pointing towards a potential war with Iran. | ||
| We saw the strikes, and I think the immediate reaction from everyone was, oh my gosh, we just started another war. | ||
| And then that didn't actually turn out to be the case. | ||
| We conducted an operation which at best incapacitated Iran's nuclear program. | ||
| Iran responded with a strike on our base in Qatar, but this was like premeditated. | ||
| They actually told us the strike was going to happen so we could evacuate personnel. | ||
| It was more of an attack to save face. | ||
| This is actually quite common on the international scale. | ||
| I'll read here. | ||
| The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group and its flotilla of warships are already in the region, and a second carrier group, the USS Gerald Ford, was en route to the Middle East. | ||
| As of Wednesday, the Ford was off the coast of West Africa, according to maritime vessel tracking data. | ||
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Pentagon's Iran Plans Revealed
00:15:14
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| And as we know, today is Thursday. | ||
| The Gerald Ford is now in the neighborhood. | ||
| So things are getting hot. | ||
| And the question really is, you know, what exactly is the goal for the Americans here? | ||
| Well, I actually think Carolyn Levitt is accurate when she says, of course, the first goal here is democracy. | ||
| I'll start by saying I think President Trump and the Trump administration, by and large, really would not like a war in this situation. | ||
| Again, people will point out that war with Iran has been the goal of the United States and a lot of shadowy figures within the government for quite some time now. | ||
| But I think Trump, the admin, et cetera, has the wherewithal to understand that, look, starting a war right before the midterms is not a very good idea. | ||
| There's also something that's worth considering, and people don't actually consider this, but something that is worth considering is that, and this sounds crazy, but this is true. | ||
| This is actually reflected in geopolitics, and it's not being reported about the media. | ||
| There's been zero questions asked about the Trump administration to the Trump administration on this, but this is truly, this does play a role in geopolitics, is the Winter Olympics are currently underway. | ||
| And again, you might roll your eyes at that and say, well, who cares about the Winter Olympics? | ||
| Well, we've actually seen historically that powers do not want to start wars during international events. | ||
| This is just not something that's conventional. | ||
| It doesn't play well. | ||
| Italy is an ally. | ||
| That's where the Winter Olympics are currently. | ||
| And that could potentially throw a wrench into things if a war is started, an international war is started during that event. | ||
| Don't believe me, look back at the Ukraine-Russia war when that broke out. | ||
| Russia actually waited for the Winter Olympics to be wrapped up in China before they actually conducted their military operation, whatever you want to call it. | ||
| So again, these actually, these international events do play a role. | ||
| They do play a role in the decision-making process. | ||
| And again, no one's talking about this, but that's something that should be considered as far as timeline goes. | ||
| This is why I actually suspect that that official that told Reuters the buildup won't be complete till mid-March, I think he was basically saying that's the timeline. | ||
| Where right now, as we speak, I'll just go ahead and pull this up because I think this will be useful. | ||
| It would be sorry, I got my jumbled pieces jumbled here. | ||
| This is from Al Jazeera. | ||
| Iran says good progress made in nuclear talks with U.S. and Geneva. | ||
| So this is why I think it's, I don't think this weekend would be the time where we would see an action taken. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| I could be eating crow at some point in the next few days. | ||
| But I don't suspect that it's going to happen this weekend because we still have many rounds of negotiations with Iran taking place in Geneva right now. | ||
| There's, in this piece, Oman is the one that is brokering these talks. | ||
| I'll just read very quickly here from Al Jazeera. | ||
| Iran's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abbasi. | ||
| People say the name on the news, and I always forget how to pronounce it. | ||
| I'm just used to reading it. | ||
| Has said that, quote, good progress has been made in indirect nuclear talks with the United States, as Washington warned that military action remains an option if diplomacy fails. | ||
| The talks mediated by Oman were held in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday against a backdrop of increased military flexing by both sides in the Gulf region. | ||
| And we were told that the talks were still continuing. | ||
| Ultimately, we were able to reach a broad agreement on a set of guiding principles based on which we will move forward and begin working on the text of a potential agreement. | ||
| This is what he said. | ||
| Good progress has been made compared with the previous round in Oman earlier this month. | ||
| He said, adding, we now have a clear path ahead, which I think is positive. | ||
| And then he said on Wednesday, Iran was drafting a framework for future talks with the U.S. | ||
| So this is interesting for a variety of reasons, but this is why this is important is because if you go back and you look at the nuclear talks prior to the attack on Iran last summer, is the what the Iranian officials were saying, because they had talks in Oman actually, prior to the run-up to the war, Witkoff was meeting them in Oman. | ||
| He met them in, I believe he met him in Italy as well for these rounds of talks. | ||
| And the Iranians were not happy. | ||
| What they were telling the press in the run-up to the attack was Witkoff at some point, I believe it was the discussion in Italy, they claimed that he left early. | ||
| He showed up late and then left early. | ||
| And he actually left the meeting early to meet with the Israelis, which was quite funny. | ||
| And so the Iranians were the messaging that they were telling the press in the last year's nuclear discussions was not good news. | ||
| They were saying there was zero progress being made. | ||
| We weren't being taken seriously, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| Now, this was all reporting from the state media on Iran, so who knows? | ||
| But this is from Al Jazeera, which is a slightly more reputable outlet than Iranian state media. | ||
| But it is encouraging, I will say, it is encouraging that the Iranians, you know, are not sounding the alarm bell. | ||
| Encouraging for the Americans. | ||
| And so I'll read here. | ||
| Messages from the U.S. were mixed. | ||
| Speaking to reporters, Carolyn Levitt said a little progress had been made during the talks, but we're still very far apart on some issues. | ||
| Iran would be very wise to make a deal with President Trump and this administration. | ||
| I believe this was the headline from the BBC: White House pressing Iran to make a deal while ramping up military progress. | ||
| So this is the posture of the White House there, openly saying maximum pressure is being put on the Iranians to make a deal here. | ||
| A lot going on. | ||
| There's a lot of moving parts. | ||
| This is my assessment of the situation, and a few people that are, you know, geopolitical experts, military experts, et cetera, have shared this sentiment. | ||
| This is the point I made on the show last night. | ||
| So Amber Duke was on the show, obviously at the Daily Caller. | ||
| She's fantastic. | ||
| But she made an interesting statement. | ||
| She was saying she was on Facebook. | ||
| And one of her, I guess one of her friends or something had posted that her husband, she was upset because her husband was supposed to be deployed in a few weeks. | ||
| And she was upset because his superiors had told them, actually, you're being deployed right now. | ||
| Like pack your bags. | ||
| It's time to go. | ||
| And it was funny because then Amber caught that. | ||
| And she was making the point that, look, why would he be needing to be deployed suddenly, immediately, when the timeline was set for quite a long time in their anticipation for his deployment? | ||
| So that does indicate that, again, the United States is really ramping up a lot of pressure here on Iran. | ||
| So that's interesting. | ||
| That's a, I would say, a bad indicator. | ||
| But a good indicator from my point of view, and then a few other people have shared this sentiment that I've seen, is that the fact that officials are talking to the press, right? | ||
| You're seeing report after report, you know, the Reuters, even CBS has had some reporters saying that officials are speaking to them. | ||
| That's actually kind of a good sign that we're not going to have a war because think about this. | ||
| Think about at the beginning of the year with Venezuela, the Venezuela operation, happened overnight. | ||
| No one knew it was coming. | ||
| We didn't have a single leak. | ||
| There was no reporting in the press that we were actually going to conduct an operation like that. | ||
| You know, we had seen that there was a carrier strike group in the region. | ||
| Obviously, we had seen the vessels being struck, the drug boats or whatever. | ||
| But there was no indication that we were actually going to conduct an operation in Venezuela because, again, the Pentagon had completely locked everything down. | ||
| You know, there were zero leaks coming out, zero, certainly zero officials talking to the press about what they think is going to happen or what their assessment is, these sorts of things. | ||
| Now we're seeing that this buildup in Iran, every news outlet in America is getting officials speaking to them. | ||
| That's actually a good sign because that indicates that the Trump administration is actually letting information be released. | ||
| Okay, because these officials, perhaps some of them are just speaking out of line and they're reporting confidential information. | ||
| But again, we see with Venezuela that the Pentagon has demonstrated that they've gotten everything pretty airtight and that officials will not speak unless they're sort of allowed to or permitted to or at least like encouraged to. | ||
| So the fact that we're seeing senior officials, or Reuters are saying they had a senior official talking to them, that indicates that the Pentagon is allowing information to be released on what our plans are in regards to Iran. | ||
| And the reason for that is because as soon as it hits the press, the Iranians are seeing that. | ||
| The Iranians are now seeing that the Trump administration is serious about striking them. | ||
| And that will give us leverage in negotiations. | ||
| So all this to say, the fact that we are seeing officials talking indicates that the Trump administration is seeking to maximize pressure to get a deal. | ||
| And we are seeing negotiations are happening in Switzerland as we speak. | ||
| Again, this is the issue, though. | ||
| This is what the issue is. | ||
| Fundamentally, this is what the issue is. | ||
| Let me see if I can find my mouse. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Stumbling blocks. | ||
| Al Jazeera outlines it here. | ||
| I could outline this myself, but I think it'll be useful to use their writing here. | ||
| Iran, for years, sought relief from sweeping sanctions imposed by the U.S., including a Washington-imposed ban on other countries buying its oil. | ||
| Tehran has said that the ongoing talks to focus its uranium enrichment program, insisting that any deal must deliver tangible economic benefits to Iran while maintaining its sovereignty and national security. | ||
| Meanwhile, Washington has demanded that Iran forego uranium enrichment on its soil and has sought to expand the scope of talks to non-nuclear issues such as Tehran's missile stockpile. | ||
| Iran has said that they will not accept zero, they will not accept zero uranium enrichment and that its missile capabilities are off the table. | ||
| So again, this is the issue. | ||
| Where's the brinksmanship here, right? | ||
| I mean, if Iran and if Tehran and Washington are just seeing two completely different situations and what their conditions for a deal would be, I don't really know where the deal is. | ||
| It's very unclear here. | ||
| The Ayatollah Khomeini, he actually came out and he gave a speech where he was saying, you know, under no circumstances are we surrendering our nuclear program. | ||
| If they're not going to surrender their nuclear program, they're certainly not going to surrender their missile stockpile. | ||
| That's very obvious. | ||
| So again, it's just very unclear what specifically we can actually accomplish here at the negotiating table. | ||
| So while I said there are encouraging signs that the Trump administration is prioritizing a deal here, the Trump administration, by all accounts, does not want to go to war for a variety of reasons, including the upcoming midterms. | ||
| What's the deal going to be? | ||
| Because Iran, you know, their line is completely out of step with ours. | ||
| Things are definitely heating up. | ||
| This was, again, in Reuters. | ||
| Russia warns of escalating Iran tensions amid U.S. military buildup. | ||
| This was quite interesting. | ||
| So I made the point on the show last night that Russia, they really provided Venezuela with nothing to no sort of relief whatsoever. | ||
| And I suggested that this would occur again in Iran. | ||
| And I do think that that probably is going to be the case. | ||
| But this is interesting. | ||
| This was reporting from Reuters out of their Dubai outlet. | ||
| Russia warned against, quote, unprecedented escalation of tension around Iran on Thursday and urged restraint amid a U.S. military buildup in the region that a senior American official said should be complete by mid-March. | ||
| That was the reporting that I had seen. | ||
| U.S. threats to bomb Iran with the two sides far apart on talks in Tehran's nuclear program have pushed up oil prices and a Russian corvette. | ||
| So this is really important here. | ||
| A Russian corvette on Thursday joined planned Iranian naval drills in the Gulf of Oman, a vital sea route for global energy. | ||
| About 20% of all energy in the world passes through the Gulf of Oman. | ||
| So that's a very big deal that the Russians are joining the Iranians for joint naval drills in the Gulf of Oman. | ||
| That is a very, very big deal. | ||
| Now, again, I don't think that Russia is going to get involved if this is a military operation. | ||
| But if this becomes a prolonged war, Iran has a lot of proxies. | ||
| They have a lot of proxies. | ||
| They have the Houthis, they have Hezbollah, they have Hamas. | ||
| These are all proxies of Iran. | ||
| Russia is going to provide some assistance here. | ||
| They're going to provide some aid. | ||
| The question is, what do they have? | ||
| Because, again, they're tied up in Ukraine right now, and that's probably not going to stop anytime soon. | ||
| But the munitions and whatnot that would be required for a defense of Iran or that would be useful for their proxies, those are different munitions than the munitions currently being utilized in the Ukraine operation, the Ukraine war. | ||
| So I wouldn't count, necessarily completely count out Russia here. | ||
| Obviously, the Kremlin just would really not like to see a war because this ultimately puts Russia in a really bad situation if the U.S. and Iran go at it because they're going to have to weigh in. | ||
| They're going to have to, again, sort of pick a side here, for lack of a better word. | ||
| If they sit on their hands when Iran is going down, how else is any other country supposed to trust Russia as a potential ally, as a potential partner, geopolitical partner? | ||
| It's very unclear. | ||
| So this was four days ago from Reuters. | ||
| But this was the initial reporting that I remembered seeing. | ||
| And I was like, that's kind of interesting that this is in the news. | ||
| And now we're seeing the context come out. | ||
| This was an exclusive that they got. | ||
| The U.S. military is preparing for potentially weeks-long Iran operations. | ||
| So again, you know, people are suggesting that this could be like last summer where we just conduct a single operation, a single, you know, instance, and then it's over. | ||
| Same thing happened in Venezuela. | ||
| Well, the reporting that we're seeing from Reuters, again, this is officials telling Reuters this, indicates that potentially this could be a prolonged conflict. | ||
| I think this would certainly classify as a war. | ||
| The U.S. military is preparing for a possibility of sustained weeks-long operation against Iran. | ||
| If President Donald Trump orders an attack, two senior, sorry, these aren't senior officials, two U.S. officials told Reuters, and what could become a more, far more serious conflict than previously seen between the countries. | ||
| The disclosure by the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of planning raises the stakes for diplomacy underway between the United States and Iran. | ||
| And then they go into the discussions in Geneva. | ||
| The reason why a weeks-long conflict is kind of concerning. | ||
| Well, it's very obvious why that's concerning, but another reason why this is concerning is because, again, if this is a we're in, we're out, it's done in four hours operation. | ||
| That's one thing. | ||
| But a weeks-long Iranian operation, what that does is that has, again, large impacts for the region. | ||
| That activates the Houthis, that activates Hezbollah, that activates Hamas. | ||
| Again, that draws Israel into the conflict. | ||
| So, Israel is going to get involved here, and that's where it's going to turn into a regional war. | ||
| We already saw Iran and Israel trade missiles last year. | ||
| Israel has unfinished business in Iran. | ||
| Iran feels like they have the capabilities to destroy Israel. | ||
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Concerns Over Weeks-Long Conflict
00:05:26
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| So, we would have to see if that's the case. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| Granted, a few of their missiles did penetrate the Iron Dome, which is worth considering. | ||
| If the U.S. military enters a prolonged conflict with Iran, the Israelis will get involved. | ||
| Now, Levitt, a few others have said we aren't really coordinating with them right now, but that's a little difficult to believe for a variety of reasons. | ||
| One thing that was interesting, this was an interesting tidbit that was in the news. | ||
| And this is what sucks, because anytime you bring up Israel, because the discourse right now is so toxic, immediately everyone just starts reading between the lines. | ||
| I'm just right now, I'm giving reporting, right? | ||
| I'm giving like reporting. | ||
| This is what we know. | ||
| Again, this is far removed from any other context. | ||
| I'm just trying to determine the situation on the ground here. | ||
| I'm not making any grandiose political statements, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| I'm just saying it's an objective reality that Israel would be involved with a war with Iran. | ||
| That is their number one global adversary. | ||
| Of course, they would. | ||
| It's obvious. | ||
| Something that was interesting was Tucker Carlson yesterday went to Israel. | ||
| Apparently, he didn't leave the airport or something. | ||
| But he went to Israel. | ||
| He interviewed Mike Huckabee, that sort of thing. | ||
| Well, what we had heard is that Tucker Carlson was under pressure by the Trump administration to, I guess, tone it down on Israel. | ||
| That was what the reporting was saying. | ||
| Again, this is neither here nor there. | ||
| What is interesting is that the Trump administration is sort of trying to tighten ranks around commentary and whatnot surrounding Israel, which indicates that they know that if we enter a weeks-long operation, Israel is going to be involved and that they want the best possible press as possible pertaining to Israel being a partner in a geopolitical skirmish. | ||
| So that was quite interesting. | ||
| This was a truth social post by Trump last night, or it was yesterday afternoon. | ||
| Again, this indicates that the Iran, Iran, Iran, the Iranian situation is getting serious. | ||
| This was the Truth Social post, and I'll explain why afterwards. | ||
| I have been telling Prime Minister Kier Starmer of the United Kingdom that leases are no good when it comes to countries and that he is making a big mistake by entering a 100-year lease with whoever it is that is claiming right, title, or interest to Diego Garcia, strategically located in the Indian Ocean. | ||
| Our relationship with the United Kingdom has been strong and powerful. | ||
| In our opinion, they are fictitious in nature. | ||
| Should Iran decide not to make a deal, it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia in the airfield located in Fairford in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous regime. | ||
| An attack that would potentially be made on the United Kingdom as well as other friendly countries. | ||
| Again, the UK has assets in the region. | ||
| Cyprus, I mean, they have massive bases in Cyprus, obviously the Chagos Islands. | ||
| This is where Diego Garcia is located. | ||
| You know, we've seen with their missile range that the United Kingdom themselves might be within range. | ||
| I don't know if that's what Trump is suggesting here. | ||
| President Kira, President, Prime Minister Starmer should not lose control for any reason of Diego Garcia by taking a tenuous, at best, 100-year lease. | ||
| The land should not be taken away from the UK. | ||
| And if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our great ally, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| Do not give away Diego Garcia. | ||
| This is Trump going back on initially the reporting was he was actually okay with the deal that Keir Starmer was making with Mauritius, which would turn over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. | ||
| It's irrelevant. | ||
| Mauritius is irrelevant. | ||
| This is a decision made out of wokeness. | ||
| The United Kingdom is questioning their ability to govern any land that is not their own. | ||
| And so they're saying, well, this is a form of decolonization. | ||
| It's absolutely retarded. | ||
| And it has massive geopolitical implications because Diego Garcia is a massive base. | ||
| This is where we conducted a lot of our operations during the global war on terror. | ||
| And this is where, if we were to conduct an operation in Iran, it would be primarily based out of Diego Garcia. | ||
| So the fact that they're trying to give away that land is a massive problem for the Americans. | ||
| Who cares what the implications are on the British here? | ||
| This is a massive problem for us. | ||
| So the fact that Trump initially was sort of like, whatever, it's a stupid idea, but whatever, if you want to give your land away, you can. | ||
| To now, he puts out a statement yesterday saying, actually, no, you cannot give away this land. | ||
| This belongs to the United Kingdom and it should remain that way. | ||
| That tells me that, again, he's this Iran saga is serious here. | ||
| He understands that we are going to need an asset in the region for long-term purposes. | ||
| Again, if we were just thinking in-and-out strike would be pretty irrelevant because the strike conducted last June, I believe, that was, I think, from Leavenworth. | ||
| I believe that's where it's like from Kansas. | ||
| So we literally sent a bomber from Kansas all the way over to Iran, bombed them, flew all the way back to the United States. | ||
| Well, if we're entering a prolonged conflict with Iran, we are going to need a base, and that's going to be Diego Garcia in this instance. | ||
| So very, very interesting from President Trump. | ||
| This is why I think what specifically set him off. | ||
| The UK blocked the U.S. use of R.F. Fairford and Diego Garcia for Iran strike, citing international law. | ||
| And then this is what Trump, this is why Trump put that true social post out. | ||
| This was just a retarded situation. | ||
| The United Kingdom, just total idiots. | ||
| I mean, Starmer's at like 15% in polling, so he's very unpopular. | ||
| So he doesn't even really have the right to turn over this land right now. | ||
| This is what led Trump to withdraw support for the previous deal with Mauritius. | ||
| So senior UK officials privately called the situation bleak. | ||