Iran’s Retaliation Strike Just Backfired on Them in a Huge Way | Caroline Glick
Caroline Glick exposes Iran’s 47-year "death cult" strategy—using proxies like Hamas (October 7) and Hezbollah to extort the West via mass murder, from the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing (241 Marines) to the USS Cole attack, while its nuclear and missile programs deter retaliation. Despite killing American soldiers in Iraq and striking 10 countries, Iran’s January 2024 crackdown on protesters (tens of thousands massacred) reveals its fragility. Israel’s defensive war, backed by 90% public support, targets Iran’s "murder machine," with U.S.-Israel coordination reshaping alliances—potentially freeing Iraq and Gulf states while enabling trade corridors like India-Persian Gulf-Israel-Europe. Glick warns setbacks risk failure but insists irreversible damage is already done, urging Americans to see Israel as a resilient "Startup Nation" defying extinction. [Automatically generated summary]
A lot of these countries, they were sort of neutral.
They were sitting, you know, they didn't want to get involved.
And Iran involved them.
And why did Iran do this?
Iran did it because they're a one-trick pony.
You know, all they know is terrorism and trying to terrify people into changing their policies.
It's all about trying to extort people into submission, whether it's the people of Iran who they mass murder and torture and humiliate and subjugate, or it's the peoples of the region, including Israel, who they threaten and attack with mass murder, and people throughout the world.
Europe has almost every country in Europe has suffered from some sort of a terrorist attack by Iranian forces and their proxies, down to South America, Argentina, you know, the tri-border area, that whole area is filled with Iran.
And so we've seen them operate in Africa and every almost every, I don't think they've operated in Antarctica, you know, but I mean, this is this is a one-trick pony country.
What they want to do, it's a death cult.
They want to kill.
And so that's what they're doing now.
They're under attack.
What's their strategy?
Oh, let's terrorize all the other countries around us and then, you know, attack an EU member state, Cyprus.
And this is two weeks after they declared war on the EU because they declared the Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization.
So as we're taping this, we're going to put this up just in a couple hours, but about an hour ago, Pete Hegseth gave a press conference, and he really was talking about the level of coordination that's happening with Israel, the professionalism, the fact that as an ally, Israel is reliable and brave and used all the adjectives right there.
Are you even, or I suppose you could probably speak for Bibi, are you guys even surprised at the level of coordination and success, you know, say four or five days into this operation?
You know, we've been working very closely with the Americans, particularly since June with Operation Rising Lion and Midnight Hammer that we did together.
So it's not a surprise, but it's amazing.
You know, there really is seamless cooperation, seamless sharing of information, of intelligence, and operational cooperation.
So it's an extraordinary partnership.
It really is.
It's an amazing alliance that we have with the Americans.
We've been at this for many, many years, you know, with the missile.
We've been living under missile threat for a long time, even well before October 7th.
You know, the southern part of Israel, the one that was invaded on October 7th, they were under the guns of Hamas for 15 years before they were invaded.
And we've had attacks from Lebanon, going back to the 1980s with the Katusha rockets.
And so, you know, we're talking about something that Israelis are used to.
Obviously, it's not easy.
And it's the entire country.
It's not areas that are sort of used to having to live under these conditions.
It's everybody in the country that has to get up in the middle of the night and in the morning and then during the day and stop on the road when you're driving somewhere and lie down.
I mean, there's a lot of, there is a challenge here.
But Israelis are really unified behind the need to see this through.
I mean, the polls are extraordinary.
Almost the entire public is saying, yes, we have to finish this off because everybody understands that Iran is an existential threat to this state of Israel and to the nation of Israel.
This regime is a bunch of, you know, it's a death cult.
And they have emblazoned on their flag practically, I mean, it's a Houthi flag for sure.
I mean, for real, but the slogan, the guiding light of the Iranian regime since the revolution in 1979 has been death to America, death to Israel.
And they have been using proxies that they've built up, armies of terror that they've surrounded us with, that they've scattered all around the world to advance the achievement of that goal of to destroy the United States of America and to destroy Israel.
And we've been in an active state of war with Iran since their Palestinian proxy, Hamas, invaded us on October 7th.
And then since then, it's been seven fronts, all controlled by Iran and Iran directly.
So, you know, I mean, we want to see this through.
We understand that this isn't a war that you fight to withdraw.
This is a war that we have to fight to victory if we want to ensure our security and our future here.
Well, you know, I mean, first of all, Iran is a big country, and it's a strong regime.
I mean, it's been in power, it's been ruling an enormous population under its jack boot for 47 years, you know, and it's been carrying out its idea of governance, which is building terror armies around the world and developing a massive ballistic missile arsenal and working towards the nuclear arsenal for decades.
So, this is, you know, this isn't an easy task.
It's amazing what we've done.
It's amazing what we've achieved.
But we have to end their threat on missiles, on nuclear, on terror.
So, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that we're working on.
And obviously, all of this is in order to reach the point where the Iranian people, who were just massacred by the tens of thousands by this regime, when they tried to rise up and demand their freedom in January, just in January, you know, not two months ago, and they were killed by the tens of thousands by these evil, evil, what did the president call them, lunatics who are in charge there.
And we want to create a safe environment for them to go out and seize their futures, seize their country back, get their country back from these people who have been holding them and the entire country of Iran and all of its peoples within it hostage.
And so, you know, I think it's very important to set those conditions.
I mean, they've fired rockets into, I believe it's now 10 countries in the area.
So it's not just Israel, even though Israel is getting the brunt of it and dealing with it accordingly.
But they fired rockets into several Arab Muslim nations.
It seems like the alliances are being redrawn right now.
And my hope, and I suspect your hope and Bibi's hope and everyone in Israel's hope will be that most of the people living in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and certainly UAE is obvious and some of the others will realize, boy, it's not Israel that's our enemy.
It's Iran that's firing rockets into our backyards.
Look, I mean, I think that, you know, you had the president said it, I think, last night in his conversation, his presser with German Chancellor Meritz.
You know, I mean, a lot of these countries, they were sort of neutral.
They were sitting, you know, they didn't want to get involved.
And Iran involved them.
And why did Iran do this?
Iran did it because they're a one-trick pony.
You know, all they know is terrorism and trying to terrify people into changing their policies.
It's all about trying to extort people into submission, whether it's the people of Iran who they mass murder and torture and humiliate and subjugate, or it's the peoples of the region, including Israel, who they threaten and attack with mass murder and people throughout the world.
Europe has almost every country in Europe has suffered from some sort of a terrorist attack by Iranian forces and their proxies, down to South America, Argentina, the tri-border area, that whole area is filled with Iran.
And so we've seen them operate in Africa and every almost every, I don't think they've operated in Antarctica, you know, but I mean, this is a one-trick pony country.
What they want to do, it's a death cult.
They want to kill.
And so that's what they're doing now.
They're under attack.
What's their strategy?
Oh, let's terrorize all the other countries around us and then attack an EU member state, Cyprus.
And this is two weeks after they declared war on the EU because they declared the Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization.
First of all, most people in the world are like that.
Israelis are like that.
We just want to go about our business.
We don't go out into the world seeking countries to be at war with.
To the contrary, we want peace.
And Americans want peace.
Everybody wants peace.
Americans didn't ask for 9-11.
The 9-11 Commission was showing that many, many of the 19 terrorists, I think 11 of them were going through Iran.
Iran had ties to al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Abu Musab Zarqawi came into Iraq from Iran.
I mean, there are lots and lots of connections, and Iran has been going after Americans since the revolution.
What was the first thing that they did?
They seized control of the American embassy and took the American diplomats hostage for 441 days.
They took Americans hostage in Beirut in the 1980s.
They tortured the CIA station chief in Iran, Buckley, to death.
I mean, that's what they've done.
They killed 241 Marines in their barracks in their sleep in 1983.
They've attacked Americans.
They attacked the USS Cole.
I mean, you know, the list goes on and what they did to the American GIs in Iraq and in Afghanistan with their IEDs.
I think it was General Petraeus who said the 600 American soldiers were killed by IEDs that were produced by Iran, and they were carried out by militias that to this day, you know, are very loyal to the Iranians, the Shiite militias in Iraq.
So, you know, you're talking about a country that's been in active state of war with the United States since 1979, and they're developing the means to be immune from attack, from anybody being able to stop them, stop their machine of murder from mass producing 100 ballistic missiles a month, all right, and using those ballistic missiles as a shield to walk, to just sort of,
you know, meander to the nuclear finish line under the immunity of their massive missile arsenal.
You know, we had a missile that fell on the town of Beit Shemesh on a synagogue a couple of days ago.
One missile, one missile killed eight people.
Imagine what would happen if they could shoot a thousand of them and they could overwhelm our missile defenses.
They could overwhelm the missile defenses of Saudi Arabia.
You know, they have missiles that, intermediate-range missiles that are capable of reaching Europe.
You know, they already reached Cyprus.
So, you know, what are we talking about?
We're talking about a regime that is developing the means to take their war against the United States, their war against the free world, and obviously their war against the Jewish state to the next level.
And what is that next level?
It's annihilation, because that's what they want, because that's what they've been calling for since 1979.
They're lunatics, but they're fanatics, and they believe that this is what they're supposed to be doing, and they're unreformable, as Prime Minister Netanyahu said the other day.
So if this continues to go well militarily, and if the Iranian people are able to reconstitute a country or however you want to word that, do you think in some sense this rewrites the map of the Middle East in a way that would be almost unimaginable?
I mean, there would basically be no source for terror anymore.
Nobody, you know, even the Lebanese now, the Lebanese prime minister is saying suddenly, hey, we're done with Hezbollah, which has been Iran.
And, you know, Iran's been basically running Lebanon.
So do you view that horizon as something that really would be possible?
You know, the plates of this earth are shifting because of what's happening today in Iran.
You know, I mean, people never imagined that something like this could take place.
There's something miraculous about what's happening right now.
And you're absolutely right.
I mean, imagine an Iraq that isn't controlled by Iran, right?
Imagine what that would look like.
Imagine an Arab, the Arab Gulf that isn't under the gun of Iran and how different they would feel about cooperating.
We just had an amazing visit a couple, like a week and a half ago from Prime Minister Narendra Modi from India.
She's an amazing, amazing man, and India is an amazing country.
And we can join the entire Middle East and Europe together in one big highway that goes from India through the Persian Gulf across into Israel, from Israel, straight to Europe.
It revolutionizes the transport of goods and materials to the West in a way that nobody imagined.
And instead of just having one or two countries that it can go through, it can go through so many countries because people are going to want to be part of it.
They're going to be wanting to be part of that prosperity and peace because the biggest threat to everybody, again, the country that just extorts submission through terrorism and mass death and the threat of even larger annihilation, it will be fundamentally shifted.
I mean, imagine 80%, 80%, according to the polls that we've seen over years, of Iranians cannot stand their overlords, cannot stand this regime, do not identify with this regime, want nothing more to do with this regime.
They want to be free of this regime.
And they want to move on.
You saw the incredible, incredible bravery of the Iranians who were out in the streets totally unarmed and just getting mowed down, mowed down by machine gunning, wielding thugs and murderers who were supposedly, they're supposed to protect them.
Can you imagine your own policemen just turning on you and opening up on people demonstrating in Miami?
That's what happened in Tehran.
And that's what happens all the time.
You saw those incredible women of Iran who didn't want to have their, you know, didn't want these mandatory hijabs that they have to wear.
And they went at women, life, freedom.
That was their slogan.
These are the Iranian people, and you know how smart they are.
I mean, these are an incredibly, incredibly talented people.
They're peaceful people.
They want an opportunity.
People talk about, oh, ground forces, boots on the ground, whatever.
It's the Iranian people, but they can't go out.
I mean, the president said, don't go out yet.
It's too dangerous.
There are bombs going off all over the place.
They need the safety to go out and seize their destiny.
And that's a larger goal of this operation.
If it works, I mean, the sky's the limit in terms of what we can wish for for the Middle East, for the nations of the Middle East, obviously for Israel.
But if it doesn't happen, if God forbid something happens, you have to remember that the amount of damage that we're doing now, the United States and Israel, to the murder machine of this horrible, horrendous, horrific regime is enormous.
And so at least you know you're buying time, you're setting them back, and you've exposed their weakness.
I know my answer to this, and I suspect it'll be similar to your answer to this.
But, you know, so much of what people who've never been to Israel see about Israel, it's related to war, unfortunately, wars that Israel usually did not choose.
What can you tell people about Israel and Israeli life that maybe somebody who's never been there doesn't really understand?
I mean, last time I saw you was in Tel Aviv.
We were right on the beach, an unbelievable bar.
It was post-October 7th, and people were still out there living life and celebrating and all of those things.
Yeah, that was pretty, but that's like the spirit of Israel.
But I was just going to say, you know, the amazing thing about Israel is where I live, it's a town that King David grew up in.
That's where he was from.
And that's, you know, it's the land of the Bible.
And you go there and you're walking literally in the footsteps of everybody from King David and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob to Jesus and Mary and John and they're real people and they lived here and that's amazing.
And, you know, everywhere you go, you're in some site where something miraculous happened, where something in the Bible happened, and that's amazing.
And we're like this bridge between past, present, and future with, like you were talking about with Tel Aviv and Startup Nation.
We have so much stuff going on.
Our economy is booming despite two and a half years of war.
And nobody imagined that that was going to be the case, and it is.
And we are the innovation capital of the world outside of Silicon Valley.
I think the Prime Minister said that there's more investment.
The Americans have the largest investment in, I think it's their high-tech industries and their technology sector in the world.
And number two in absolute numbers is Israel, a country of 10 million people.
It's crazy.
So I think we're a country that's so exciting because we bridge the past, the faraway past, the not so far away past to the present and into the future.
And it's an amazing place to live and it's an amazing place to visit.
And let me tell you, Americans are beloved here like they're beloved nowhere else on earth.
So anybody who wants to come out here from America, you're welcome.
You know, you're welcome.
Israelis love America and we love President Trump, who's just been the most extraordinary president that Israel has ever experienced since we were established.
He's really turned a long-time alliance between our countries into an alliance like nobody's ever seen before.
Nobody could have imagined.
And like you were talking about at the outset of our conversation in terms of our cooperation, our military-to-military cooperation.
It's just it's seamless and it's amazing.
And he's the leader and he's leading this whole miraculous mission in Iran.
And we're very thankful.
We're very thankful for him, for his leadership, for his entire administration, and for the U.S. military, U.S. Air Force that's working shoulder to shoulder with our leadership and with our military and intelligence services, obviously.
And it's just, it's an amazing, it's an amazing thing.