Operation Epic Fury—a U.S.-Israel decapitation strike—eliminated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and 40 Iranian leaders in a coordinated assault, sparking global chaos: Tehran’s fractured retaliation killed nine civilians in Israel’s Beit Shemesh while protests erupted in New York. Trump framed it as justice for October 7, but critics warn of escalation, with Iran’s missile stockpile (3,000+ rounds) now useless without command structure. China’s oil imports from Iran plummeted, and former officials like David Friedman argue the strike could destabilize Tehran’s regime, mirroring Venezuela’s collapse—but risks backfiring if chaos spirals. With U.S. casualties confirmed and war powers debated, the operation tests whether preemptive strikes can end conflicts—or drag America into another "forever war." [Automatically generated summary]
I am Cabot Phillips, live from Daily Wire HQ, and this is a special breaking edition of Wired In Live.
This morning, I'll be speaking with top U.S. lawmakers, diplomats, and intelligence officials to sift through all of the noise in Iran and get to the facts.
But first, let's recap what has taken place in the last 36 hours, because it has been crazy.
Yesterday, President Donald Trump launched Operation Epic Fury, joining with Israel in a historic military operation targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran.
We now know that the U.S. targeted missile stockpiles, anti-air defenses, and nuclear facilities, while Israel primarily went after senior personnel within the regime.
The goal was to score a decapitation strike, knocking out the most senior leaders as possible.
And that is just what happened.
Numerous high-ranking officials within Iran were killed, including head of the country's National Defense Council, the top commander of the Iranian military, their defense minister, the military chief of staff, and most importantly, Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini.
President Trump confirmed the news last night, saying Khamene, quote, one of the most evil people in history is dead.
This is not only justice for the people of Iran, but for all great Americans and those people from many countries throughout the world that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty thugs.
He was unable to avoid our intelligence and highly sophisticated tracking systems.
And working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he or the other leaders that had been killed along with him could do.
This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their country.
Overnight, videos flooded social media showing Iranians around the world celebrating with large demonstrations in Washington, New York, London, and all across Iran, where thousands of people flooded the streets, dancing, honking horns, and setting off fireworks.
Have a look.
In especially remarkable footage, demonstrators tore down a large statue of the Ayatollah.
Just stunning footage there.
And obviously, even more footage comes out every second from this country.
Obviously Uncertain Times00:12:51
And we're going to be playing that throughout the morning as it comes to us.
Now, for their part, the Iranian regime says they will not be deterred by the death of their leader.
They've been adamant that they were prepared for a moment like this and have a succession plan in place.
For now, state media reports that an interim committee will run the country until a permanent leader is chosen.
Overnight, regime spokesmen vowed to enact revenge on the U.S. and Israel, quote, with a force they have never experienced before.
At this hour, the United States and Israel have begun day two of their bombing campaign against Iran.
President Trump issued a statement warning the country that, quote, Iran just stated they are going to hit very hard today, harder than they have ever hit before.
In all caps now, they better not do that, because if they do, we will hit them with a force that has never been seen before.
But to this point, earlier in the last 24 hours, those strikes had been largely effective, though some missiles and drones have found their mark in Israel, Bahrain, the UAE, Jordan, and Kuwait.
We do have breaking news coming in just in the last few minutes.
I'm going to get right to that.
This is from U.S. Central Command reporting the first U.S. casualties in this operation.
They wrote, quote, as of 9.30 Eastern Time, March 1st, three U.S. service members have been killed in action and five are seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury.
Several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions and are in the process of being returned to duty.
Major combat operations continue and our response effort is ongoing.
The situation is fluid, so out of respect for the families, we will withhold additional information, including the identities of our fallen warriors, until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified.
So again, CENTCOM there reporting that three American service members have been killed.
That is a major development here, something that President Trump also warned of when he first announced that the strike was going on.
He told the American people that there was a chance that service members would be killed in pursuit of a safer United States.
And now we know, according to CENTCOM, as of 9.30 a.m., at least three U.S. service members have been killed.
We're also now getting new details on the strikes yesterday that killed the Ayatollah and roughly 50 other senior advisors.
First, numerous reports say that the latest round of nuclear negotiations, which took place in Geneva, were essentially a ruse to keep Iran believing that a diplomatic solution was still on the table.
The U.S. wanted to avoid arousing suspicion that a strike was coming, so they kept the negotiations going.
The president had decided reportedly that the Iranians were simply stalling, that they never intended to make a deal or give up their nuclear ambitions.
And that ultimately is what led to this decision.
Senior White House officials are now saying there were also credible intelligence reports from within Iran that the Supreme Leader knew he was running out of time and also running out of options, and that he planned to launch a preemptive strike on U.S. service members in the region.
So the administration is essentially saying they had no choice but to strike first to ensure that that Iranian response would be more muted.
Now, there are plenty of skeptics, especially those on the left, who do not believe that assessment.
They have drawn parallels to President Bush assuring the American people there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that warranted an evasion.
So do not be surprised if we hear from President Trump and others in the White House in the coming days as they look to assure the American people that this was the best and potentially only option.
And that pushback from the left and from many who are skeptical of a broader military conflict in the Middle East is it's only going to grow as we now have these reports from Central Command that three U.S. service members have been killed.
Again, President Trump warned that could take place, but now we know that it has in fact happened.
Three Americans are now dead.
We now also know that on Saturday morning, Ayatollah Khomeini convened a meeting of his top military and intelligence aides above ground in Tehran.
And at the same time, two other meetings were taking place in the city.
Now, typically these sorts of strikes take place at night, but the U.S. and Israel reportedly felt this was their best shot for a decapitation strike, and they took it.
The obvious question now is who will fill the power vacuum in Tehran?
Could this ultimately lead to the collapse of the regime?
Joining me now to help answer those questions and more to kick things off today is Tim Rice, Daily Wire DC Bureau Chief and Cassie Akiva Daily Wire foreign affairs reporter.
So Tim, I want to start with you.
You're in DC.
What have you been hearing from lawmakers?
What is the mood in the Capitol?
About the same as yesterday, but Congress has shifted into the expected phase two of its response to yesterday's attacks, which is they're now fighting with each other and demanding more information.
So Congress had previously scheduled votes on potential intervention in Iran for this coming week.
Those have obviously been preempted.
Now we have the Democratic leaders of both the House and Senate calling for a referendum vote, essentially, in the next coming days to either condemn or affirm the president's strikes in Iran and also to attempt to, in some levels, curtail future action.
We're also seeing dissident Republicans like Thomas Massey and Rand Paul joining in those calls to prevent another forever war and curtail executive power.
And more than that, though, and this is likely going to change now that we've seen reports for casualties of casualties and fatalities.
But the other thing that the lawmakers are doing is they are grappling for information.
So, as we reported yesterday, Marco Rubio briefed the gang of eight, which is congressional leaders and the head of the classified intelligence committees from both houses.
Now, every other lawmaker wants to get in on the action.
There have been some private meetings, at least on the Republican side, late yesterday and early today.
But I expect to see a lot more public posturing calling for either support or condemnation of the president.
And more than anything, expect to see a lot of anonymous stories of such and such a lawmaker is furious that they weren't briefed on the attacks.
Yeah, we're going to be speaking with Senator Bill Haggerty in a moment, and we're definitely going to get his take on that looming war powers resolution vote in the Senate.
So, Cassie, I want to get to you.
We know that Iran, they were very prepared for a strike that would kill the Ayatollah.
They had an entire succession plan in place.
We now know that there is an interim leadership council who is temporarily running the country until a permanent leader is chosen.
Walk us through that process.
Who is on this interim council, and what does this replacement process look like?
Sure.
So, the first person on the council is President Masoud Pezasan, and then the second one would be Judiciary Chief Gul Malassin Mohsen Engi.
I'm probably mispronouncing some of these names.
And then there's a jurist from the Guardian Council.
So, this is a group of three people.
Obviously, they're probably very hidden right now.
And they're supposed to lead the country.
Now, the Iranians are very prepared for this.
They have succession.
They have IRGC commanders spread out throughout the country.
They knew something like this could happen and they're prepared to deal with it.
So, usually, there is a huge process of how they pick the next supreme leader.
You know, a lot of the mullahs come together and they go through a very legalistic process to figure out who the next leader is, but they're obviously suspending that and having a short-term council to lead.
So, but I did just see that Israel has now launched new strikes on Tehran.
This has happened in the next last few minutes.
Israel has declared air superiority over all of Tehran and all of Western Iran.
So, they are in the skies and they're not getting shot down.
And this is a big breakthrough throughout this conflict.
I'm assuming they'll go to the rest of the country as well and get rid of those air defense systems.
So, again, the big question now: we have this obviously information vacuum coming out of Iran where it's difficult for us to glean too much about their internal processes.
But, what are we hearing right now as to who could be the most likely or logical replacement for the Ayatollah when this is all said and done?
Right.
So, a lot of people, I mean, previously, a few years ago, you would have said it would have been the Iranian president that mysteriously fell down in a helicopter.
Everyone thought he was going to be the successor.
You know, this is up in the air.
It could be anyone.
Israel is currently killing a lot of the senior leaders.
And if you haven't heard of how the work's been kind of divvied up between Israel and the U.S. during these attacks, Israel's been primarily taking out leadership, and America has been primarily taking out facilities and military installations.
So, I guess we'll just see who's left standing because Israel has already killed a huge portion of the chain of command in Iran.
So, I guess we'll see what happens there.
But I also want to point out that we were talking earlier about Iranian strikes on different countries in the region, and the UAE just announced that they had shot down 96% of Iranian missiles.
That is highly successful.
Israel is close to that as well.
So, while the Iranians are shooting their missiles and they're estimated to only have about 2,500, a lot of them are getting shot down.
So, it's only a few more days until Iran might run out of missiles.
Tim, let's get back to the political angle here.
Before these strikes, polling showed that a preemptive operation against Iran, frankly, was not popular.
The majority of Americans opposed such an operation.
But we also saw the same thing before the operation to capture Maduro in Venezuela, where people were not supportive, but then they saw the results and the majority ended up supporting that mission.
Do you think the same thing could happen here in Iran, given the overwhelming success of this move?
It's very likely.
I mean, first of all, you know, the sort of disclaimer is that war polling and polling around military action is kind of notoriously fickle and it always sort of vacillates depending on the mood, right?
I mean, there was a time when the Iraq war was polling not super popularly, but right?
I mean, kind of better than it eventually pulled and these things go up and down.
I think one thing that people are missing in this debate and one thing we're hearing a lot here in Washington from the president's supporters is that it's very easy to fall back into the rhetoric of he said no more forever wars.
He promised no more, you know, regime change in the Middle East.
And yes, while this sort of smacks of that, I think much like we saw with Maduro, the president and this administration are really hitting the message that their goal is not for it to be a forever war.
Their goal is for it to be decisive, successful, and then to hand things over to the Iranian people.
So I would expect to see a lot of vacillations in the coming days.
I mean, two big, the two big news stories out this morning, obviously the fatalities, that's going to make this a little bit less popular, but not an entirely equal counterbalance, but something else to throw into the mix.
The reports that former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmed Dinejad has been killed.
I mean, he was a big villain in American, the American political lexicon for a long time and in the formative years of a lot of people in our prime voting bloc.
So, I mean, this is a man who, much like the Ayatollah's in a lot of American minds, is synonymous with terrorism and tyranny in the Middle East.
So again, I think we're going to see a lot of these one-two punches, something to boost the poll numbers, something to bring it down.
It's also, I think, going to come down to when does Trump really start talking about this, right?
We've seen a couple of statements, a couple of truth social posts, again, mostly geared at Iran and the Iranian people.
But at some point, the president's going to come back to Washington.
At some point, he's going to get in front of news cameras.
And then that's a whole different ballgame.
Let's talk about what that might look like then, Tim, because as you mentioned, where Americans are hesitant to get involved in the Middle East, even if it is a more touch-and-go operation like this one, In and Out, not having boots on the ground.
But the White House was saying off the record to reporters or on background that they had evidence of an imminent strike from Iran.
What are we hearing on that front?
And do you expect President Trump to make that the main thrust of, hey, we had to go do this or else we were going to get hit beyond just saying, well, it's good for the Iranian people to topple this regime?
I think there's a good chance.
One never really knows what the president's going to say.
I think if I were the president's advisors, if I'm getting Caroline Levitt or Marco Rubio or Susie Wiles, I would be telling the president to actually take a different tact because, again, that, as you mentioned at the top of the show, that does sort of people are immediately going to start thinking about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Bush administration, all of a sudden, this entanglement becomes 2003 and everyone's minds are made up.
What I think the president could do instead, and what I do think he will likely do, is go back to the same posture that he usually takes after foreign entanglements, particularly successful ones, which is talking and describing himself as the president of peace.
He's going to talk about all the wars that he's settled.
It's going to be some big number that, you know, will probably leave some head scratching saying 15 wars.
And you start counting on your fingers and trying to figure out what it is.
But he's going to talk about Venezuela.
He's going to talk about bringing home all the hostages from Israel.
He's going to talk about how he's talking tough with Putin.
He's going to talk about peace in Armenia and all these other places that he's sort of brokered talks.
So I think that is ultimately what it's going to come back to, not switching the rhetoric away from we needed to neutralize this threat and more to look at all that I am doing to create peace and stability in the broader world and make America safe.
Iran's Oil and Diplomatic Opportunities00:15:09
Cassie, there have been reports from Israel that it was Israeli intelligence that was telling the U.S. that the Ayatollah would be having this secret meeting above ground.
That was an important aspect there as well, that he would be above ground with his team.
Just tell us about that intelligence operation, because even the fact that they were able to get footage of the Ayatollah's body confirmed out of the country, how are they doing things like that?
And just how ingrained is Israeli intelligence within the regime?
I mean, there was a story a few years ago about how the man in charge of finding Mossad spies in Iran was actually a Mossad spy himself.
So the Mossad is very ingrained in Israel, but they're not the ones taking credit for this.
The CIA is taking credit for knowing where Khomeini was.
And they say that they passed it along to the Israelis who carried out the strike.
So very coordinated.
This is much different than the 12-day war.
The 12-day war, Israel was by themselves until America came in with the B-2 bombers.
This is highly coordinated.
I kept asking because I was offline and the war started.
I kept saying, who attacked first, Israel or America?
And they attacked together.
So this is very coordinated.
And I just want to flag one more thing that we might be seeing the death toll of Americans go up because there were nine Israelis who were just killed in Beit Shamesh, which is a highly American neighborhood in Israel.
We don't know the identities of these people yet.
And the death toll might be going up because there are some severely injured.
But I'm just flagging that because that might be a situation as well.
Yeah, I want to read this tweet again for people who are just now joining us that we have information coming in of American casualties.
I'm going to pull up that post right here from Central Command.
They wrote, as of 9.30 a.m. Eastern Time, three U.S. service members have been killed in action.
Five are seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury.
And that's from CENTCOM.
That is about as cut and dry as it gets there.
So a lot of Americans now waking up to not just a flurry of deaths among Iranian leadership, but also the first deaths among American service members.
Tim, what does this do to change the political calculus?
And how does this change the story?
Because no longer can the White House say, hey, we took Maduro with no casualties and now we took out the Ayatollah with no casualties.
That no longer is true.
How does that change things?
It immediately galvanizes the critics of the operation, of course.
But I think one thing that it does especially is it really galvanizes that handful of, as I called them earlier, dissident Republicans, those sort of isolationist war critics like Thomas Massey and Senator Rand Paul.
She's not in Congress anymore, but former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has also been a very prominent voice on this front.
So you always see the line along, you know, they want to send your sons to die in the Middle East.
If they care about this war so much, why don't they enlist?
You hear that more from Republicans than from Democrats.
Democrats tend to criticize these efforts, you know, more along the lines of tracking executive power.
That's what we hear from Tim Kaine and Rokana, you know, not going into more debt, saving money, focusing on domestic problems, allowing autonomy in other countries.
This is the way that Democrats oppose wars.
Anti-war Republicans oppose wars by saying American men and women are going to die, and we do not want that to happen, right?
They are going to remind people that this is supposed to be an America-first intervention administration.
They are going to say that this is not an America-first policy if Americans are dying.
So I think we are going to see the critics who have already brought themselves out from within the president's party, especially louder after this.
I think we can expect to see some more lawmakers.
I would keep an eye on some folks like Ana Paulina Luna and Lauren Bobert, some of these other kind of former allies of Marjorie Taylor Greene who are sort of stuck very close to that America first, no foreign wars part of the party.
Also, you know, the president's critics externally too, conservative voices, we're going to start seeing a lot of that.
Yeah.
All right.
Tim, Cassie, thank you guys so much for coming on.
A very fluid situation, but we appreciate both of your insights.
Thanks, guys.
All right.
We're going to get now to Brian Hook, one of the leading experts on Iran.
He served as the U.S. Special Representative for Iran.
He was also the senior policy advisor to the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.
Brian, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Let's get right to it.
Because of your work, for years now, you have faced credible death threats from the Iranian regime.
So this has to be a remarkable weekend for you.
How does it feel seeing the death of the Ayatollah?
Well, I think more about American foreign policy than any of my own sort of personal questions around these topics.
And so, you know, the Islamic Republic of Iran for 47 years has been engaged in really an endless war against the United States and Israel.
And President Trump has had enormous success in the Middle East in his first term and now in the second term.
I mean, you saw in the first term the defeat of ISIS and the Abraham Accords.
And then here we are in the second term.
We had another country join the Abraham Accords.
And now you have Iran largely on its back and in a very bad place as a consequence of the 12-day war and now this effort to really change the trajectory of the Middle East towards something more stable, something much more secular, something much more tolerant.
And I think these are all, I think the building blocks are in place for a much more stable and prosperous Middle East.
What do you make of the men currently leading this interim council to replace the Ayatollah?
What should we expect from them?
Is there a chance that they take a diplomatic approach with Trump, sort of like we saw in Venezuela with the new leadership?
Or do you think they're going to dig their heels in and fight even harder?
President Trump has offered all along the diplomatic track, which the regime has consistently exploited.
I think that was a mistake.
And so here we are again, where the president is making very clear that there is an opportunity to have good diplomatic relations with the United States, but Iran has to end its enrichment so that we don't ever face the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.
We also need to end all of this proxy warfare, which has been such a danger to our troops in the Middle East.
And they also need to end these long-range ballistic missile productions, which could be aimed at the United States.
And so regardless of who is in power, whether it's the Ayatollah or this triumvirate that's in place, any sort of government that follows the death of the Ayatollah, there is an opportunity to be at peace, not only with the United States, but also with Iran's Arab neighbors.
And that would be a very good thing because the biggest driver of terrorism and instability in the Middle East has been the Iranian regime.
It has not been the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It has been Iran's revolutionary expansionist regime that has fought proxy warfare for 47 years.
And one thing I've noticed here is that while we're in the middle of this conflict, we haven't seen any of Iran's proxies attacking Israel.
And that is a testament to, I think, the resolve that the United States and especially Israel has shown since October 7th to ensure that October 7th never happens again.
What more does that tell you about the fact that we haven't seen huge operations from these proxies?
The Houthis issued a statement saying that they were prepared to help the Iranians and to push back on the West, but we haven't seen this real flurry of activity from the Houthis.
Do you expect there to be more activity from their terror proxies?
They are so sufficiently degraded and their leadership has been so thoroughly eliminated that I think they have lost command and control of any operations.
And so typically, this was always the fear from Israel and the United States, is that in a conflict like this, you would have Hamas attacking Israel from one side, and you would have Hezbollah attacking from the north, and you would have Shia proxies in Syria and Iraq, and then you would have the Houthis in Yemen.
And all of these proxies would be firing at the same time on American troops and on Israel.
And look at what we see today.
And we really shouldn't overlook the significance of this.
None of these proxies are active.
You're not seeing any sort of response from them.
And what that means is we are seeing the emergence of a new Middle East.
The attacks of October 7th by Hamas have massively backfired on everyone.
And Israel, I'm sorry, Iran, Midwife, the creation of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, all of these organizations.
And today, these organizations are in fragments.
They have lost any sort of power projection or operational capabilities.
And then we have Israel with aerial superiority over Iran.
By the way, in June, they did in three days what Putin has not been able to do in Ukraine in four years.
And then they've done it again with aerial superiority.
It's an enormous undertaking to pull that off.
And so I think this has been a very successful operation so far.
The president very much hopes that the Iranian people are going to fill the vacuum that has been created by the death of the Ayatollah.
And we all very much hope that the Iranian people will have a government that is truly representative of their interests.
You mentioned Putin there earlier.
Let's elaborate on that.
What do you expect to see from the Russians in the coming days?
And what does the success of this operation to date mean for Moscow?
These sorts of conflicts send a message around the world.
When Obama did not enforce his red line in Syria, that sent exactly the wrong message.
But I think President Trump's operations in Venezuela, now in Iran, certainly send a message to President Putin, President Xi, Kim Jong-un in North Korea, in Cuba.
It doesn't matter anywhere along that axis of resistance.
This is a teaching moment.
America has no peer militarily.
And we pull off these spectacular and extraordinarily complicated operations, and we do it successfully.
And so I think if you're President Putin, you have to wonder just how much of an alliance you want to have with the Iranian regime.
And it really should have that effect of causing China and Russia and anybody else to have second thoughts about getting too close, whether it's Iran or Maduro in Venezuela or in Cuba.
President Trump is sending a message to all of these countries.
You should choose your partners very carefully.
Yeah.
I think a lot of Americans are waking up yesterday and today, maybe unsure of how to feel.
You know, there's this sort of secretive regime in Iran.
People don't know a ton about them.
So what are some things that you believe that the average American has wrong about Iran or maybe misunderstandings they have about the way that this regime operates?
Well, ever since 1979, in that Iranian revolution, and they took hostage our entire diplomatic corps in Tehran.
And then whether it's all, I mean, the Iranian regime is responsible for the deaths of thousands of American, thousands of Americans.
And even in Iraq alone, Qasim Suleimani was responsible for the deaths of over 600 Americans.
And America has interests in every region of the world.
We have troops in every region of the world.
And it has been the consistent mission set of the Iranian regime to target American troops and American civilians in every part of the world, not just in the Middle East.
And so I'm old enough to remember people tying ribbons around trees to remember the hostages back in 1979.
And there has just been so much bloodshed.
And President Trump uniquely understands that.
He also understands that the Iranian regime has never won a war and never lost a negotiation.
They're very good at these talks that just go on and on and on.
And I think Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff did their absolute best to try to help the Iranian regime come to the table and come to a deal, come to a deal that would be around ending nuclear enrichment, the things I discussed earlier.
And the regime miscalculated.
And so here we are today.
The Iranian regime has never been weaker in its history.
And I think its proxies have never been weaker.
This will create greater peace and stability in the Middle East.
We talked about Russia earlier and what this means for Putin.
Let's get to China, the other big player, other adversary.
We know they are heavily reliant on Iranian oil exports.
What else does this mean for President Xi?
The Chinese relationship with the Iranian regime has always been very transactional, which is kind of how China's relationship with every nation is.
They engage in predatory economics under President Xi.
And for a country like China, they very much want cheap Iranian oil.
And because of President Trump's sanctions on Iranian oil, he was the first one to do that, by the way, President Obama, under the Iran nuclear deal, the United States was not allowed to sanction any Iranian oil.
And all of the terror proxies that we've been discussing, they're all financed by Iranian oil.
So if you can go after the oil, it changes everything because Iran is the central banker for all of these terror groups around the Middle East.
And so China was able to buy a lot of Iranian crude at a discount because it was illegal to ship the oil.
And so China very much enjoys cheap Iranian oil.
Under the first term, we were able to collapse Iran's exports and took it from something like 1.7 million barrels to functionally zero.
Protecting Middle Eastern Oil00:16:46
And that had a crippling effect on the economy.
I think it's going to be much harder now for China to continue buying the oil.
They're going to have to get it from somewhere else, or they're going to have to get it through ship-to-ship transfers on these shadow tankers that are floating around the world.
And so that's one piece of it.
I don't think it's much of an alliance.
The Chinese spread their risk around the Gulf.
They don't want to go so deep with any one country that they alienate others.
So they play a double game where they'll try to get what they can from Iran, but they'll try to get what they can from other nations in the Gulf or the Middle East.
And so it'll continue being business as usual with the Chinese.
All right.
We will leave it there.
Brian, thank you so much for your expertise.
We really appreciate you coming on and breaking this down for our audience.
My pleasure.
And we are going to keep things rolling here.
We have a ton more guests to come.
And I just want to let all of you know, if you appreciate the live coverage that we're doing here, and if you appreciate the fact that this is commercial-free, you watch this on TV, you're getting three-minute commercial breaks every few minutes.
We're not doing that here.
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So we're going to hear from a number of lawmakers and diplomats in just a few moments, but just recapping where we are today.
Day two of Operation Epic Fury continues.
The big news that we have coming out of the Middle East right now is that we have our first reported American casualties.
CENTCOM reporting just within the last hour that there are three American service members who have been killed.
A number of other ones have been seriously wounded.
That number was at five.
So we now know that we have our first American service members killed as a result of this action to disarm Iran.
And President Trump actually warned yesterday when he announced this operation that there was the potential for U.S. service members to be killed.
let's play a clip of that speech now u.s personnel in the region even so and i do not make this statement lightly the iranian regime seeks to kill The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties.
That often happens in war, but we're doing this not for now.
We're doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.
We pray for every service member as they selflessly risk their lives to ensure that Americans and our children will never be threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran.
We ask God to protect all of our heroes in harm's way, and we trust that with his help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail.
Yeah.
So again, President Trump last night warning when he announced this operation, there was the potential for U.S. service members to be killed.
We now know Central Command confirming three American service members have died to this point, at least five others seriously wounded, shrapnel, concussions, and other injuries.
We're still waiting for the details on how those casualties occurred.
But again, this is going to change the calculus.
President Trump warning of that last night.
We're now joined in studio by Tennessee Senator Bill Haggerty.
Senator, thank you so much for being here.
It's great to be with you this morning.
So let's get to the breaking news and then we'll get big picture.
But Central Command confirming this morning three U.S. casualties.
How does this change the calculus of this operation?
Well, it's heartbreaking.
President Trump warned that this was likely to happen, but I think you need to add this to the long list of murders and mayhem that the Iranians have caused this regime since they took over.
You think back to 1983, what happened with our Marine barracks.
They took over 200 lives there of American Marines.
They've continued to consistently wage war either directly or through their proxies.
You think about what happened on October the 7th of 2023.
1,200 people were murdered and slaughtered there, over 40 Americans included in that toll.
This is something that we are going to have to address.
President Trump was clear about this yesterday that it could happen.
I pray that this is absolutely minimized.
I know the president does as well.
All of us do.
Yeah.
Now, let's get to the Senate.
Democrats largely furious over this operation, despite its success to this point.
A number of Democrat leaders are calling for a vote on a war powers resolution in an attempt to block the president from taking further action.
How will you vote on that measure if it comes to the floor and what do you make of that effort?
I don't think it's going to be successful at all.
First, President Trump has been clear, he's not waging war on Iran.
What he's doing is he's taking out their capability to harm us, to harm our allies.
He's taking out their short-term, short-range ballistic missile capabilities.
He's also taking out their ability to create the launchers that send those missiles in the direction of our allies, also in the direction of commerce in the region.
20% of the waterborne oil exports in the world go through the straight-off moose.
Iran has always used this as a choke point.
President Trump is reducing or eliminating that capability.
This is about American interest.
This is surgical, and I think he's going to try to do everything he can to minimize the casualties.
As we said, sad that we'd have any casualties.
But also, he's opened the door for the Iranian people.
We've seen the picture of people in the streets celebrating.
This is a generational opportunity for them to step up and take their country back.
Yeah.
I'm interested in your take on the objectives here.
So President Trump initially saying that the main goal was to knock out the nuclear stockpiles, to destroy the missile capabilities, the missile program.
If that is successful, but the regime is still in power, would you support the president continuing this operation once that first military mission is successful to try and get the regime weakened so that they could be toppled from within?
This regime has done nothing except shout death to America, death to Israel.
And look at what's happened now in the wake of this most recent episode.
They've actually gone out and attacked their allies in the region.
I think the world sentiment is turning against this regime.
They need to go.
The White House has said they had credible intelligence that Iran was planning a preemptive strike on American forces in the region.
Have you been given any evidence of those preemptive plans from Iran?
You know, I've not had those sort of intelligence briefings, but I can say this.
Iran has consistently positioned and postured itself so that it continued to create and wreak mayhem in the area.
If you think about how unserious their negotiations have been, when Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner left the negotiating table just this past Thursday, there was no willingness of Iran to actually take this seriously.
They still kept taking everything off the table that were our red lines.
So it's clear they had no interest in peace.
They had no interest in negotiating.
All they're trying to do is what they've done for so many times before, which is just tap America along.
This president is unwilling to accept that, and I applaud it.
I think a lot of folks are interested in how long this can continue on.
President Trump has said days to weeks.
What do you know and what can you tell the American people about how long this can go, just from a logistical standpoint?
What sort of stockpiles are we talking about?
And could that potentially open the door for our stockpiles to be drained?
And how long would those take to replenish?
I guess just walk us through the timeline of what you're saying.
I think the stockpile to look at is the Iranian stockpile.
They've got about 2,500 ballistic missiles.
They're going to be draining that stockpile.
President Trump is taking out their ability to launch that stockpile.
He's also taking out the stockpile itself.
What you will see is the Israelis now having complete control of the airspace over Iran.
They will not be able to, the Iranians will not be able to protect or defend their stockpiles or their launching capability.
What's happening right now is that we are going through and searching and seeking and destroying all of that launch capability.
So I think that this is going to be denominated in days or weeks.
It's going to be very short, very surgical.
Again, this is not waging war on Iran.
This is going in and taking out a capability that they have used to wreak terror around the region.
And he's doing that in advance of Iran's stated program.
They wanted to take that 2,500 to 8,000.
They want to increase their ability to create and harass terror in the region.
So this is all about standing up for America's interests, standing up for our allies' interests, and taking out a capability that has been used for far too long, for decades, to kill Americans, to harm and create mayhem in the region.
It's coming to an end.
Could you elaborate on the angle with regard to American interests?
Polling shows that Americans are very hesitant to support wars in the Middle East.
There's this hangover that's looming from Iraq and Afghanistan.
And I think people hear war in Iran and they think or military action in Iran and they think, is this going to be another conflict like that?
What is the case for why this is a beneficial thing for Americans?
Why this is good for folks here in Tennessee, the state where we both live?
Well, I can tell you why it's been bad since, what, 1979, when the regime took over, we have seen nothing but instability and terror throughout this region.
Whether it's their being the number one state sponsor of terror, you think about what they've done through Hezbollah, what they've done through Hamas, the Houthis.
They have continued to consistently create havoc in the region.
We went in, what was it, eight, 10 months ago, using bunker busters and took out their nuclear capability.
Operation Midnight Hammer was a complete success.
We told them that should be the end of the nuclear ambitions.
The Iranians turned right around and started back on that program again.
President Trump could not have been more clear.
They want to create havoc in Mayhem.
And again, listen to what they say.
Death to America.
They need to be dealt with.
The time has come.
And frankly, they're at a weakened point right now.
This was the time to do it.
Have you been surprised by the lack of global support for Iran?
Their proxies not really joining the fray here.
China and Russia both have been fairly silent.
Has that surprised you to see just how isolated Iran has become?
I think our adversaries should take careful note of this.
Same situation in Venezuela.
America goes in and acts.
Our allies step up with us.
These people have no allies.
These rogue nations have no allies.
It's a marriage of convenience.
If you think about it from China's perspective, they've been buying the illicit oil from Venezuela, from Iran.
Those days are over.
If you think about it from Russia's perspective, they should look at this with great concern.
President Trump means what he says, and he delivers on what he says.
Let's come back stateside.
The Department of Homeland Security has warned for years that under President Biden, when we had millions of illegals crossing the border undetected, we don't know who many of those people are, the DHS has been warning that there were efforts, they believed, from Iran to send sleeper cells across our border.
Do you have any reason to believe that there could be a threat here on American soil?
Certainly.
We've had that concern from the very outset of the Biden administration going back to 2021.
When Joe Biden collapsed the border, this is exactly what we were concerned about, the potential of it happening.
I'd say this.
My Democrat colleagues who are pushing for war powers resolutions should also be pushing to reopen the Department of Homeland Security.
They have shut it down without a single Republican vote.
It's time to make certain that we have the greatest capability that we can here in the homeland to protect ourselves.
And it's certainly the time to stop playing politics and keeping DHS shut down just so they can wave a political flag.
Tangibly speaking, how does that shutdown impact America's preparedness to protect her people?
Well, it takes our Coast Guard in a position where, look, these men and women that are serving are continuing to serve.
They're patriots.
They step up and do the job.
But the fact that they aren't getting paid, again, just makes their lives much harder.
And why the Democrats want to exercise their political judgment in a way that hurts and punishes these people when they have nothing to do with the Democrats' frustration that, frankly, they don't have any message except resist Trump and resist anything at all costs.
And what they're doing is putting our nation in harm's way in the process.
Final word to the American people.
What should they be taking away from this operation?
What have we learned about President Trump's foreign policy?
That resolve matters, that the U.S. has the most impeccable capability of any military in the world.
Think about the intelligence that was deployed here.
The precision that was used, the fact that we knew exactly where these people were, the Ayatollah, the chief leadership, they had the equivalent of a National Security Council meeting, and they are gone.
40 of the top leaders are gone.
I think the world should take note that our intelligence and our military capability are beyond compare.
Absolutely.
That is Senator Bill Haggerty from the great state of Tennessee, our home state.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Thanks so much.
Going to keep things rolling, more breaking news coming in every single hour.
We have first uh, from Central Command, the announcement that there were three U.s service members who have been killed, at least five others injured.
So we are going to uh, bring you new updates from there.
And we're now going to get to our next panel.
We have Batia Ungar Sargon joining us.
Uh so Batia, thank you so much for being here.
Uh, also on the panel, we have Elizabeth Pipko.
So guys, let's get to this.
Batia, let's start with you.
Um, when you woke up yesterday, you saw this news.
What was your first reaction?
You're smiling.
You look very happy.
What was your first reaction?
Um, thank you so much for having me.
It's really an honor to be here with you.
Um, i'm smiling because I didn't find out in the morning.
I didn't find out until the afternoon because it was shabbat and so we were logged off and the rabbi happened to mention it, and sure, we barely believed it.
And then, of course, logging on after shabbat at 6, 30 P.m and finding out that the ayatollah was dead.
Um jubilation, that man wanted every American dead.
The idea that he was not an enemy of the United States is ridiculous.
I don't understand what people think they wanted the nuclear weapon for.
They opposed the West with every fiber of their being.
They opposed the idea of freedom with every fiber of their being, and so the world is a much safer place.
Our grandchildren are going to be much safer because of the brave action that the president took and, of course, I understand people who voted for him because he said no new wars.
I'm one of those people, but the idea that this is anything like Iraq is just ridiculous.
It's it's utterly unthinkable that there will be American troops on the ground.
So we're praying for the troops.
We heard about these three troops who tragically, have lost their lives.
I, I truly, truly hope that no more life is lost.
I'm praying every minute for it.
But the president is very keenly aware of where his base is on this and I think that he wants this to be over very quickly.
Elizabeth, let's get to you.
What do you make of the Democratic response that we've seen so far?
We know there's this push in the Senate for a war powers resolution condemning.
We've seen Zorhan Mamdani saying that this was, you know, a terrible day for the world.
Uh, what do you think of that response and how is that going to play with the American people.
Well look, it's not a surprise, right?
I think if any of us could have imagined that we were going to wake up to this news or, like Batia said, actually to turn on our phones with this news because i'm in the same boat, uh and imagine the Democrats would be supportive of that uh, no one would have believed that.
Right, we've seen what they stand for, which is basically just opposing anything that Donald Trump happens to do.
They know that they can rile up their base uh, with this.
That's kind of all they look for at this point is opportunities to rile up the furthest progressive portion of their base and make sure that they're ready to go out and vote in the midterms.
And unfortunately, that base is the same base that's been burning American flags on college campuses, chanting death to America, like the Iranian regime has done.
We've seen these protests.
We unfortunately know what these people stand for, and the Democrats are really laughing in all of our faces, assuming that we don't realize exactly what they're doing, which is standing against America and hoping that it works out for them, because they need those votes uh, this november, and that's kind of all that they have left in their party.
Yeah, Batia, let's get to November here.
We're still eight months away and folks have short attention spans these days, but what sort of impact do you see this operation having on the midterms and on the GOP push and pitch to voters?
It's too soon to tell, right?
It all depends on how it ends.
If God forbid we see, you know, lots of casualties on the American front, that's not going to play to the president's, in the president's favor.
Right now, 54% of Americans already support the strike.
So, you know, the idea that there's somehow a divide in MAGA on this, expect to see a lot of liberal media wish casting about that.
I think it's all nonsense.
You know, 54% of Americans supporting it.
How many of those do you think are Democrats?
Not a lot of them.
So I do think that this is a lot like the first strike in Iran in June to where before it happened, most people said they didn't support it.
Best Chance Israel00:06:12
After it happened and it was so successful, you really saw a lot of support, including up to 90% of Republicans supporting it.
So it really all depends on what happens next.
But again, never doubt the president's understanding of where his base is, regardless of what some high-profile isolationist podcasters try to tell you.
Batia, I know we have to let you go in two minutes, so I want to give you one more word here.
I'm interested in what you expect to see from the Iranian people.
You know, when we talk about regime change, it can be this vague concept, but tangibly, what would it have to look like for the Iranian people to step up and topple this regime?
Do you know what's interesting?
I don't think the president is looking for a total regime change.
I think he wants exactly what he got in Venezuela, which wasn't actually an extreme regime change, right?
That would have been installing Maria Machado.
That's what the Bush-era folks would have done.
And the president and Marco Rubio said, no, we actually don't want chaos here.
And if we do that, we risk a coup d'etat.
We risk the generals getting angry.
We're going to keep Dulcie Rodriguez, who was Maduro's number two, and just say to her, you like this job?
You know, how about being a little bit more pro-America?
That's what we're here for.
And I think they're pursuing the exact same thing in Iran.
They're not trying to install somebody who the West would love.
They're saying we need to get the nuclear threat off.
We need to get rid of the threat to the United States, to our children and grandchildren.
And the rest is really up to the Iranian people.
We wish them well.
We want them to win, but we're not fighting this fight for them.
There is a maturity that this president is bringing to the table with Marco Rubio, where they have a really clear understanding of they're rejecting both the Obama-era appeasement and the Bush-era nation building and saying, we are America first.
We want you to do what's right for you.
We want to see freedom everywhere, but we're trying to avoid chaos and create stability, which is why it was so important for the Saudis to get on board here as well.
All right.
We are going to give you, let's do one more.
I got one more question for you, Batia, and we'll make it a 30-second one.
How does the report of U.S. service members being killed change the president's calculus?
Do you think it does anything to change his strategy or the messaging around this operation?
You know, he said in his initial message to the American people that this could be a possibility, which I thought was really correct to do, not to avoid the fact that this might happen.
He, of course, wants to avoid these kinds of casualties at all costs.
But again, he's protecting our children and grandchildren from having to face a nuclear Iran.
I think that if it does seem that the threat is big, I think that will change the calculus.
But as you pointed out, Keybot, you're not seeing the Russians or the Chinese coming to the Iranian regime's defense.
They've sort of abandoned them.
That all turned out to be, you know, fake allyship.
So I don't know how long Iran is going to be able to hold on.
But I think it does change the calculus.
Not these three poor souls, precious souls who we mourn.
But if this continues and it seems like there is a big threat to mass casualties, I do think that will change the calculation for the president.
All right, Batia, always a pleasure to speak with you.
You can go watch Batia.
Elizabeth, thank you so much.
That's Elizabeth Pipko, former RNC spokesperson and Batia, host of Batia.
Guys, thank you so much.
We're going to continue going with all the breaking news that we have coming in.
Again, the United States launching day two of Operation Epic Fury with Israel.
There are ongoing airstrikes across the region.
The U.S. continues to hit missile sites, knocking out nuclear production facilities and knocking out missile stockpiles.
We believe that the Iranians, latest intelligence says they had 2,500 missiles before this.
They are burning through those stockpiles, launching them.
As we said, for lack of a better word, use them before you lose them because the U.S. is targeting them.
And they are hitting Middle Eastern countries throughout the region.
We've had explosions reported in Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, the UAE.
There were explosions at high-rises in Dubai.
In Israel, there were reports of a bomb that made it through, a missile that made it through, and at this point killed eight people in a residential neighborhood.
And the big news this morning, three U.S. service members confirmed killed.
We're going to read that update from CENTCOM.
At 9.30 a.m. Eastern Time, we're confirming three U.S. service members had been killed in action and five are seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury.
Several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions and are in the process of being returned to duty.
They go on to note that because of privacy for the families, they are going to withhold any further information.
But once we get news on how this took place, we don't know if this was, if these were, you know, some of the missiles that got through to some of these bases.
We do not know how these individuals were killed, but we will bring you the news as soon as we get it.
President Trump has been relatively quiet about this matter.
He posted a number of statements on Truth Social talking about all of this.
He had one where he warned that, quote, Iran just stated they are going to hit very hard today, harder than they have ever hit before.
They better not do that, because if they do, we will hit them with a force that has never been seen before.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
President Trump again going on later on to celebrate the death of Khamini, saying one of the most evil people in history is dead.
This is not only justice for the people of Iran, but for all great Americans.
He went on to say that this is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their country.
So President Trump, again, celebrating the death of the Ayatollah.
We also now know that at least 40 senior members of the Ayatollah's team were also killed in that decapitation strike.
There were three simultaneous strikes by the Israelis.
The Ayatollah was meeting with his top advisors from the intelligence and military community in Iran.
There were two other meetings going on above ground.
Right now, reports from the White House are saying that the Ayatollah did not believe that he was going to be targeted in the morning.
He was not in his bunker.
And the U.S., we believe, preferred to launch this strike in the middle of the night as they have in the past.
But when they saw that the Ayatollah was meeting above ground, they took the opportunity.
Protesters Mood Dour00:04:21
They said this might be the best chance we get.
And we now know that the U.S. and Israel were, again, successful in that operation.
We're now going to get to one of our reporters, Breca Stoll, who has been on the ground in New York City.
She has been gathering some footage from protests.
So let's play some of that footage that we have from her protest that she attended in New York City yesterday, and then we'll bring Brekha on.
Brekha, first I'll say I can smell that protest from here based on some of the individuals I'm seeing.
But what were some of the chants that you heard?
What was the main message from those protesters?
Well, the most concerning chant that I heard was when they were chanting, you know, Donald Trump and the USA are the biggest threat in the world today.
And these protesters were very angry with the president.
And as you saw, that clip was in the middle of the street in New York.
And so right behind me, we walked all the way up 8th Avenue from Times Square to Columbus Circle, where I am now.
And they overtook, you know, one of the biggest cities in the country.
And how on earth are you able to take over a street like that?
Well, we found out it's actually through the mayor's office.
They obtained a permit in seven hours, Kavit, and were able to put on that production.
What do we know about who was organizing this protest?
Yes.
So as, you know, we talked about yesterday, we saw it was the Answer Coalition was part of it.
But then I'm also seeing reports of the People's Forum.
And apparently people are saying that that program has ties to the CCP.
And, you know, I talked to one of the protesters out here yesterday and I asked, how did you find out about this?
And then she tells me about the group chats that they have and the different roles that every protester can play in the group chats.
So they have sign makers, they have chanters, they have organizers, and they have outreachers, flyer printers.
And we saw, you know, before the protest started, people bringing in these large signs, these large wagons carrying supplies.
And you'll notice in that video, several of the signs are the same.
And it just shows that this is ready to go.
And it's very difficult to get kind of something of that scale, a thousand people on the same page so quickly.
So you just know that there is some level of organization behind it.
People can see in the video you captured, this protest is a very dour mood.
People clearly very angry.
We saw a very different reaction from Iranians who were protesting, not just in Iran, but protesting all across Europe.
Or I should say celebrating, not protesting, celebrating.
They were cheering.
There were American and Iranian flags.
People were very happy.
We're going to play some of that footage from Iran of people being excited.
Were there any Iranians there that were trying to talk to protesters, telling them, hey, we're actually pretty happy that this evil tyrant was killed?
Oh, we saw one protester, you know, yell at the group saying, you guys don't know what you're doing.
You, you know, you shouldn't be doing this right now.
But we didn't see that same level of enthusiasm or praise for the president.
And I think we just have to think about, you know, where we are.
We are in.
New York is one of the most liberal cities in the country.
You know, the state hasn't voted for a Republican president since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
And so I think we're just seeing that, you know, that group just may not be here.
And, you know, we weren't in any other areas, mainly just following that group of protesters.
And so that's what we were following yesterday.
All right, Breca, we will leave it there.
Thank you so much for your reporting on the ground.
Stay safe there in the Big Apple.
Thank you so much, Kevin.
All right, again, we are tracking breaking news.
This is a special breaking edition of Wired In Live.
And if you guys appreciate the work we're doing, we're running live all morning.
We did this for hours yesterday.
No commercial breaks.
We just thank all of you who were able to do that because of our Daily Wire members.
So if you want to support the investigative work we're doing, support the live coverage, support our reporters that are all around the country, all around the world, bringing you the truth, go to dailywire.com, become a member today.
Following Protesters00:06:18
You can join the conversation.
You'll get special access on our website as this breaking story develops.
So thank you again so much to our members.
All right, I want to turn now to David Friedman.
He's the former ambassador to Israel who is joining us now from Israel.
David, thank you so much for coming on.
It's a pleasure to speak with you.
Just walk us through the mood that you are experiencing right now in Israel.
Well, you know, it's an interesting question.
The mood, I would say, is overwhelmingly optimistic, grateful to President Trump, proud, incredibly proud of the working together, the collaboration between the U.S. military and the IDF, which I think together has put together probably the greatest military operation in the history of the world.
So there's optimism that this enemy may finally be tamed, that there's pride.
But then, of course, there's concern because every few minutes, there's a siren going off.
There's explosions everywhere.
I'm running in and out of shelters with my wife.
I have some kids here, some grandchildren here.
So it's difficult.
And of course, just a couple of hours ago, there was a, not to make light of it, there was a serious tragedy, a direct hit by a missile on a public shelter in a town called Beit Shemesh, where at least as of this moment, at least nine people were killed, including children, and there's about 20 wounded.
So the mood overall is optimistic.
Israelis have been through this before, but then there's also that component, which is incredibly sad and tragic.
You know, we'll just say, David, if you need to leave, if you need to go to seek shelter at any moment, please do that.
Our audience will understand.
So talk us through the dynamics.
Appreciate that.
Of course.
How is this different from the 12-day war?
What's the biggest difference?
The biggest difference is Israel has a true partner.
The Americans were very helpful in the 12-day war, but they adopted a defensive posture.
So they were there, as they have trained for many, many years in the past.
When I was ambassador, they were training these operations.
But those were training with regard to defense, to intercepting ballistic missiles.
And they performed a very valuable task, although in those days, Israel did intercept most of the missiles on its own.
Now, offensively, the big brother is coming to help Israel.
I mean, this is two carrier strike groups, the full weight of CENCOM, the U.S. military intelligence.
So it's a completely different operation, completely different goals, I would add as well.
And I think we're going to see very, very striking results as a result.
President Trump is not going to let this drag.
This is not going to be a war where they're trading volleys.
It's not going to be a war of attrition.
Trump wants to end this, and he's going to end this just as quickly as he can.
And the Israelis are going to play an important role.
But this is America's show.
It's not Israelis.
It's not the Israel show.
This is the America show.
The big question now is how this interim council is going to respond.
Will they dig their boots in the ground further and launch even more strikes as a result of the Ayatollah killed?
What do you think we should expect to see from Tehran in the coming days?
Well, the first thing is to understand is, is there really anybody there minding the story?
That's been such a decapitation of leadership?
It's not clear to me that there is anybody really fully in charge.
Um, but beyond that, look they I.
I think the first day or two of responses has been fully baked into the.
You know military.
You know, for for six months, as long as these discussions have been going on, they've had a plan for what to do on the first couple of days um, we're quickly coming to the end of that period and now the question is what they got left.
You know the between the Americans and the Israelis.
They're targeting, uh the launchers.
They're targeting the ballistic missiles.
Uh, they're doing everything they can with with, by the way, you know exquisite uh intelligence that you know no other, no one else in the world has um as to where the targets ought to be.
So America is continuing to pursue these targets.
Uh again, not not a, not a risk-free operation as a.
As you just announced, there were three unfortunate uh deaths and some additional casualties.
Heartbreaking that American soldiers, you know, would lose their lives here.
But they are uh, they're still.
They've still got a lot of offense left and I think you know the Iranians are are going to run out of gas.
I mean it's I don't know whether it's three days, four days, five days, but um, you know the?
The American goal is to?
Uh is to is to get Iran as quickly as possible to a place where they're they're harmless.
They're harmless to uh their own people, they're harmless to to Israel, to uh to the Gulf countries and and I think that's uh a time that's quickly approaching.
We've seen a number of instances in The last few decades in the Middle East, in particular in Africa, where tyrannical leaders were taken out, either deposed internally or killed by foreign militaries, and there was this period of, you know, cloudiness.
We weren't sure what was going to happen, and then there ended up being more instability as a result and there was more of a need for the?
U.s to remain involved.
How do we avoid that happening this time around?
Well, it's a great question.
I?
I think Iran is different than um let's, let's say, for example, than Iraq.
Right, Iraq is a was a place where there were uh it was, it was, it wasn't, it was never really uh a nation with a kind of a cohesive culture and an identity.
It was very tribal, very different groups that combined, you know, to kind of be kept under control.
Uh, Iran is a very different population.
I mean, they're not Arabs they're, they're Persians, you know whatever that means.
I mean they are culturally different.
Holocaust Museums and Gaza00:03:29
Um, they are um, they're many of them are very well educated.
Uh, there is a, you know, an advanced movement already there, you know, for freedom and for uh, and for democracy.
They've been held back only by the regime.
That's been their, that's been their.
You know their block, their blockage now um, you know, will a complete annihilation of the Iranian military result in any loss of the regime?
It's unclear, but this will be the best opportunity, you know, in the history of the since the beginning of the Islamic revolution in Iran in the 1970s.
This will be the best opportunity for the Iranian people to rise up, take back their country and and and reform their government and become allies of the west.
I don't know if it's going to happen, but the upside of that happening, if that does happen, even if there's, you know, some turbulence along the way, which I would expect, that opportunity for the future of that region and the world itself is so great it really is worth taking the chance.
I mean the consequence of not doing this, of doing nothing, is it is a brutal Theocratic, dangerous Iranian regime uh, that will threaten our children and our grandchildren.
Do you believe that the ayatollah would still be alive today if october 7th had not taken place?
Well, this is, you know, these are great, you know, philosophical questions that we can sit around and debate.
The answer is, of course, I don't know.
But I think October 7th changed everything.
I mean, we're too close to October 7th to really understand its role in history because, you know, it's, you know, from a historical perspective, it just happened yesterday.
But what it means, I think, is going to prove to be just as important, I think, as the Holocaust.
There'll be museums that will be dedicated to October 7th in the same way that we have Holocaust museums, at least in Israel.
October 7th, I think, was the time that Israel realized and America realized that there were just certain governments, certain regimes, unfortunately, certain people with whom there would be no reconciliation.
There would be no peaceful coexistence.
Israel learned the hard way by seeing how Hamas had elected, Hamas was elected by the people of Gaza.
Wasn't a single Jew living in Gaza, not a single Israeli IDF soldier on the ground in Gaza.
And yet, with all the money they got, all the aid they got, all the support they got from around the world, they took their money and used it to build terror tunnels and weapons that they could shoot into civilian populations in Israel.
So that was a harsh realization, especially since the people that were most affected by October 7th were people on the South, who had a very left-leaning perspective on life.
They really wanted to live with the Palestinians.
They wanted to help them.
They wanted to coexist with them.
And so these were the people who the Palestinians unceremoniously murdered, raped, destroyed.
So that realization that sunk in in Israel and then kind of began to sink in elsewhere in the West, especially in America, I think made everyone realize that, you know, of course, Iran was behind this.
Iran was funding it.
Iran was supporting it.
Surprising Pentagon Reaction00:14:36
Iran was praising it.
I think it caused those of us who were clear-headed to realize that you can only negotiate to a point with radical Islamic terror.
And at some point, you either succumb to it or you destroy it.
And I think the president has come to that view.
And he gave every opportunity for the Iranians to avoid this.
I mean, just give up nuclear enrichment, uranium enrichment.
The only purpose of that was for nuclear weapons to just give that up and reduce or eliminate your ballistic missile stockpile.
No one's attacking you anyway.
They could have done that.
They could have joined the community of nations.
Their economy could have been brought back.
I mean, they had enormous opportunities.
And the people of Iran saw that.
And it must have been heartbreaking for them to see how this played out.
But now they're celebrating.
I mean, I don't know if you saw some of the events in London.
In London, there's a huge Iranian population that's celebrating.
They're celebrating in Los Angeles.
They're celebrating in Great Neck on Long Island, where there's a huge Iranian population.
The people of Iran, apart from this regime, are quite happy right now.
One final question.
There has been a very vocal faction of folks on the right, podcasters, former TV hosts, some Republican elected officials who have urged President Trump to sort of abandon Israel and stay out of the Middle East entirely.
And certainly they've been pushing the president to not get involved in this military conflict in Iran.
What does it say about that faction's standing within the White House that President Trump, for the most part, ignored them and still moved forward with this operation?
I think President Trump has seen for months what they're made of.
The ugliness, the lying, the willingness to adopt a position contrary to their prior positions just for clicks or to appeal to the lowest, the lowest form of human life.
He knows what they are.
And I think it's, I'm not surprised.
I've known the president for a very long time.
Look, I never thought he would pay much attention to any of them.
I think he'd prefer not to see a divide within the Republican Party, especially in an election year.
But short of that, he's not going to compromise his views because of these lowlifes.
And I think they were largely irrelevant before, but I think, you know, as they say, we can safely relegate them now to the dustbin of history.
All right.
We will leave it there.
David Friedman, former ambassador to Israel, coming to us live from Israel.
Thank you so much for your time, Ambassador.
Thanks, Cabot.
Thanks for having me.
All right, we're going to keep going with the breaking news.
Again, the big story for those just now joining us, Operation Epic Fury continues in the last few hours.
Strikes moving forward from the U.S. and Israel on Tehran and other sites across Iran.
Iran continuing to launch a barrage of missiles at a number of Middle Eastern countries targeting U.S. bases and also civilian populations in Israel.
At least one missile has made it through the Iron Dome Defense System and has killed right now latest reports saying nine civilians in a heavily populated residential area of Israel.
And the big news, Central Command confirming this hour that three U.S. service members have been killed in action.
Five more have been seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury.
They say the situation is fluid.
Out of respect for the families, we'll withhold additional information, including the identities of our fallen warriors, until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified.
That will be dominating the headlines today.
Understandably, three U.S. service members killed.
President Trump warning that could happen.
And we now know that it has indeed happened.
So our thoughts and prayers with the families of those service members, our brave heroes who are engaging in this operation.
We're going to turn now to Brent Sadler, former senior Pentagon official and Heritage Foundation senior fellow.
Brent, the last few hours, this operation has continued.
What has surprised you most in the first 36 hours, though, of this Operation Epic Fury?
Perhaps the timing in early morning or daylight hours.
As the Mullah and his 40 or so of his closest and most senior leaders were gathering, that's the most surprising.
We'll see how much of a strategic impact it is making.
But that one, and then followed closely by the just completely misguided or I guess confused lashing out by the regime and its missile launches at all of its neighbors, many of them going after civilian apartment buildings and others.
Just a poor lack of discipline is surprising to me with their missile forces.
Do you believe that some of the attacks that the Iranians have launched, we saw in Dubai, for example, a number of high-rise apartments and other buildings that were struck that had seemingly nothing to do with the military.
Do you believe that they're trying to put pressure on those countries by saying, hey, if you're going to ally yourselves with the U.S., we're going to just strike indiscriminately and try and pressure you into telling the U.S., hey, wrap this thing up?
Yeah, that's one way of reading it, but I think it's more chaotic and more of a fear of like use it or lose it kind of syndrome.
Because as these attacks were coming in and surprising the IRGC, which was pretty much had the finger on the trigger, I think they thought we're next.
So let's shoot it before we lose it.
Because again, hitting these civilian targets is just going to galvanize, and it already is, the countries in the Gulf to ally with the United States and Israel and enter into combat, which appears that we're on the track too because of this very misguided approach by the Iranians.
But not as surprising when you start to realize how fractured their leadership's become.
To this point, we have seen, again, three U.S. service members killed.
We've seen a number of civilians in Israel also confirmed dead.
But from a relative standpoint, when you take into account what we believe to be the thousands of missiles the Iranians have fired off so far, have you been surprised by the relative lack of success that Iran has been able to have and the relative lack of damage that they've been able to inflict as a result?
Again, I kind of go back to the lack of targeting discipline is really what's equating to this very ineffectual missile barrages.
They're not launching the large massed attacks that they did last summer because their command and control has been decapitated.
And in that confusion, they're making attacks as they see an opportunity rather than coordinating with drones and large mass missile strikes against, say, Israel or one target, but it's scattered across.
So I think this is the real reason behind the ineffectiveness.
That could change.
Hopefully it doesn't.
But this is going to last with this level of intensity, at least for the next few days, as the targets and the threats are actually taken out.
And hopefully in the interim, the Iranian people stand up.
You spent years working within the Pentagon.
Walk us through what the options you believe are that are being presented to President Trump now from his military advisors.
Yeah, most of my time was operational in the Pacific, but dealing with providing the president many options, military options, is the key goal of the Pentagon and the military.
It's not to dictate or make the recommendation which to take, but to maximize the options.
And so by having two aircraft carrier strike groups, one in the eastern Mediterranean, the other one in the Arabian Sea, both within striking distance and very likely conducting very intensive operations, gives the president a rhyostat that he can adjust and maneuver his forces to send a signal, but also to affect certain military operational impacts like we're seeing right now in the pictures.
I asked this question to Ambassador Friedman just a moment ago, and I want to repeat it because I think it's on the mind of a lot of Americans right now.
We've seen so many times throughout history, even the past few decades, where tyrannical strongmen were taken out and there was this celebratory period, but then years later, there was even more instability as a result, and it ended up maybe making the region worse.
How do we avoid that happening again in this scenario?
Well, it appears that the folks and leadership in this administration are taking two recent historical events to mind.
One is the liberation of Iraq.
You're talking about the statues of bringing down Saddam Hussein, his eventual hanging as a war criminal.
But that was overshadowed by too rapidly vilifying and purging all of the Baathist.
Very similar type of circumstances in post-war Germany and the end of World War II.
Rather than just remove all the Nazis, we kept those that were needed at a lower level to keep the lights on and policing the streets until they could be transitioned out and fully vetted.
What we ended up doing by the depathification in Iraq in 2003 and 4 is we turned all of them into enemies and into insurgents.
And that's what bought us a very long war.
There's a smart way to go about that.
We didn't.
Afghanistan's another lesson that I think is being heeded.
Afghanistan is never going to be a replica of American democracy, but we thought, along with many Western European countries, that we could.
So you have to take the country for what it is and what its people, their aspirations and desires and culture, and apply your interest to that and making sure that Americans and American interests are being safely pursued.
I think in both cases, when I say both, I'm talking Venezuela and what could unfold in Iran is give the space for the people to decide a government that is one that's responsive to their wishes, but also one that's not going to be a threat to American and American interest.
And it does take a degree of patience and a highly well-informed insight to the local politics and the local groups.
We'll see if we've got that in Iran.
It appears we've got that going along fairly well in Venezuela so far.
Final question, Brent.
What do you expect to see over the next few days?
Well, I expect we're going to see more of these sporadic and not clearly focused on a strategic insight missile launches.
The Iranians have upwards of 3,000.
They were in the process of rebuilding.
Some of their shipments from China were intercepted, but we have to assume that they had recovered all that they had lost and spent in the last summer during Operation Midnight Hammer.
That's probably going to continue for the next few days.
The Iranians are going to name new leadership.
There'll probably be a new target set unless they change dramatically the nature of the regime and go from one of hostility and violence and terrorism to one of peace and prosperity for their people and their neighbors.
Big if, quite frankly.
Yeah, that's all the time we have now.
Brent, thank you so much for coming on.
Appreciate your insight.
Thank you.
That was Brent Sadler, former Pentagon senior official.
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Well, as we get ready to wrap up our show, we're just going to repeat the top lines because so much is coming in.
This is a rapidly evolving situation.
Again, last night, we got confirmation that Ayatollah Ali Khomeini had been killed.
A successful Iranian or Israeli strike on the Iranian compound took him out along with 40 or so other top officials.
The country's minister of defense was killed.
The country's chief of staff to the military was killed.
Top general to the head of the IRGC was killed.
So this was a decapitation strike.
The big question now, how will Iran move forward?
Is this the beginning of the end for the regime?
That is what we are waiting to find out.
Now, the regime currently has a succession plan in place that they have implemented.
There are three men who have survived these strikes who are now on the interim leadership team, sort of a triumvirate leadership team right now.
So the United States is trying to ascertain how they are going to react.
Will they dig in even deeper?
Will they continue to fight?
They vowed that if the Ayatollah was targeted, it would be an existential threat on the livelihood of their regime and that they would launch war like they've never launched before.
Will they do that or will this regime take the similar approach to what we saw in Venezuela with Dulce Rodriguez saying, I don't want the same fate that I saw Nicholas Maduro have.
I will play ball with the president.
That is what we will be tracking very closely over the next coming days.
And you can follow along with us at the Daily Wire.
We have a live 24-7 blog that is being updated on dailywire.com.
You can learn more about this developing story and you can learn more about the three U.S. service members who were killed this operation.
We learned that this morning, just a few hours ago, Central Command posting that three service members had been killed.
So we have our first casualties.
Once we learn more details on those casualties, and if there are any more developments of that nature, that will be up on the live blog.
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This is a historic weekend.
We woke up yesterday knowing that the world in the Middle East would never be the same.
And today, we now know the Ayatollah is dead.
So too are three American service members.
We thank them for their sacrifice.
We pray for the safety of our military.
And thank you to all of our Daily Wire members for tuning in.