President Trump has just announced a full-scale, successful bombing campaign on Iran’s nuclear facilities, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. Michael Knowles gives his unfiltered reaction to one of the most consequential military moves in modern history. What does this mean for America, Israel, and the future of the Middle East? - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy
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| Sorry to interrupt everybody's Saturday evening, though if you're watching this, then your evening was probably already interrupted. | |
| For those who haven't caught the news, President Trump has ordered an American attack on Iranian nuclear sites. | |
| The United States is now directly and officially engaged in the war in Iran. | |
| These are the President's words. | |
| We have completed our very successful attack on the three nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. | |
| All planes are now outside of Iran airspace. | |
| A full payload of bombs was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. | |
| That's the one that everyone's been talking about in the last week. | |
| All planes are safely on their way home. | |
| Congratulations to our great American warriors. | |
| There is not another military in the world that could have done this. | |
| Now is the time for peace. | |
| Thank you for your attention to this matter. | |
| There are going to be plenty of conservatives who are thrilled about this, who wanted to engage directly with Iran, but there are going to be a lot of conservatives, maybe even more, who are... | |
| Not so happy with this news. | |
| Because I think there are a lot of people who, even though we wanted to take out Iran's nuclear weapons, or rather, we didn't want Iran to develop nuclear weapons, we were just kind of hoping the Israelis would take care of it and we would not have to be bogged down in another war in the Middle East. | |
| I'm sure President Trump doesn't want to be bogged down in another war in the Middle East. | |
| That is why he says, now is the time for peace. | |
| don't retaliate. | |
| However, We don't want it. | |
| I get it. | |
| I get it. | |
| I've expressed those opinions myself. | |
| President Trump has expressed those opinions on the campaign trail. | |
| However, I think the big takeaway from this decision is no one should be surprised by it. | |
| No one should be surprised by it, one, because President Trump, for 10 years now, He said he will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. | |
| And he said that repeatedly in his old campaigns, in his most recent campaign. | |
| So if people are suggesting that they voted for him because they didn't want the prospect of war in Iran, then they weren't listening because he said it a lot. | |
| He's been very consistent on that. | |
| Two, the other reason why this could have been expected is, one, Trump, even in the first term, was not totally a dove. | |
| One of his biggest foreign policy moves was to take out the top Iranian general, Qasem Soleimani. | |
| On top of that, he dropped the Moab, famously. | |
| But he pursued a policy that he calls peace through strength, coming from Ronald Reagan. | |
| And most of the time, he doesn't want to intervene in the affairs around the world, or most of the time, he doesn't want to intervene in the wars around the world. | |
| But in order to have the credible threat of violence, sometimes you actually have to do it. | |
| You can't just bluff all the time. | |
| But the third reason... | |
| A little line hidden in some of the reporting that's now coming out of the Pentagon about this attack. | |
| Namely, the way the attack was carried out. | |
| All day, people who have been tracking this stuff were tracking B-2 bombers that were being sent into the Pacific, reportedly into Guam. | |
| From Guam, the B-2 stealth bombers could fly over Iran and hit the targets. | |
| People have been waiting for this. | |
| All day. | |
| Really, we've been waiting for it for a week and even longer. | |
| However, one little line in the reporting says that the weapons that were dropped on the Fordow facility were designed specifically with Fordow in mind. | |
| In other words, the United States has been preparing for this military action a lot longer than the past few weeks. | |
| And a lot longer than The recent war in Israel and the Middle East. | |
| And a lot longer than this Trump administration and maybe a lot longer even than the first Trump administration because we discovered the Fordow facility in 2009 or earlier. | |
| It came to the international attention in 2009. | |
| U.S. intelligence probably knew of it much, much earlier than that. | |
| Which is why, whatever you feel about this, I think people are totally right to have trepidation about the United States becoming directly involved in another war in the Middle East. | |
| I share that concern. | |
| I don't know that I'm glad that the American servicemen are now out of Iranian airspace. | |
| I'm glad that Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon anytime soon. | |
| I'm glad that President Trump launched a successful military operation. | |
| But I'm not dancing for joy in the streets here. | |
| I have a lot of trepidation about what comes next. | |
| Which, at this point now, I think it's safe to conclude the most likely outcome probably is regime change in Iran with the Ayatollah down in a bunker somewhere and his chief means of protecting himself blown to smithereens. | |
| But I'm not shocked. | |
| I'm not surprised. | |
| I'm not pulling my hair out or anything like that. | |
| I usually am not in politics because If you're paying attention, you see how these things are going. | |
| President Trump has been signaling for weeks at this point that he was prepared to use military action, but this goes deeper than Trump. | |
| There are grand strategic operations and objectives that are in place much longer than any one administration. | |
| And we can bewail that, and we can lament that, and we can say that's undemocratic, but that's how nations operate. | |
| And so tonight's attack was not just a spur-of-the-moment thing. | |
| It's not as the left-wing critics, or even maybe some of Trump's critics on the right, are going to suggest some, you know, reflexive maneuver because, I don't know, he ate a bad taco bowl at Trump Tower that day and felt like bombing a country. | |
| That's not what's going on. | |
| The attack this evening has been in the works for a very, very long time. | |
| It is in line. | |
| It happens to be in line with President Trump's strategic vision. | |
| It doesn't really come as much surprise. | |
| What comes next is another matter. | |
| President Trump will be addressing the nation tonight, so that's all for now. |