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June 17, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
32:24
Maximum Pressure Campaign - June 16th, Hour 2
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This is an iHeart Podcast.
Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel's very survival.
This operation will continue for as many days as it takes.
Democracy is under assault before our eyes.
This moment we have feared has arrived.
And you compare them to those nondescript thugs.
It does look like a Gestapo operation.
Freedom is back in style.
Welcome to the revolution.
Yeah, we are coming to your city.
Gonna play our guitars and send you a contrace on Sean Hannity to the new Sean Hannity show.
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All right, hour to Sean Hannity Show, 800-941-Sean.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Fox with Special Report and Brett Bear being very, very clear that they launched this operation because Iran was rushing to weaponize enriched uranium.
We see, and you know, when I was, I keep going back to one of my trips to Israel, the small town, border town with Gaza, Starot is what it's called.
And they had, when I had gone back there, this is a long time ago, they had been hit with 10,000 missiles in 10 years, one little town.
How many missiles would it take to be fired into the U.S. before you would want your government to do something?
Anyway, here's why he says he launched this operation.
Why did you launch this operation now?
Because we were facing an imminent threat, a dual existential threat.
One, the threat of Iran rushing to weaponize their enriched uranium to make atomic bombs with a specific and declared intent to destroy us.
Second, a rush to increase their ballistic missile arsenal into the capacity that they would have 3,600 weapons a year, new weapons.
Within three years, 10,000 ballistic missiles, each one weighing a ton, coming in at Mach 6 right into our cities, as you saw today.
And then in 20, in six years, 20,000.
That's no country can sustain that, and certainly not a country the size of Israel.
So we had to act.
It was the 12th hour.
We did act to save ourselves, but also, I think, to not only protect ourselves, but protect the world from this incendiary regime.
We can't have the world's most dangerous regime have the world's most dangerous weapons.
We're protecting ourselves, but by doing so, we're protecting many others.
Now, the prime minister rightly has pointed out, yeah, they've got, you know, thousands, at least 2,000, according to reports, ballistic missiles.
We see them being fired.
The Iron Dome has done a great job, but it's not perfect in terms of stopping it.
But the production, I kind of view this as their increased production in ballistic missiles with the hope of doubling how lethal they are from 2,000 pounds to 4,000 pounds as plan B, because the Iranians, there are a lot of things.
They're evil for sure, but they're not stupid.
And they knew the likelihood of their nuclear program existing was diminishing by the day.
And I'll just quote President Trump.
For those people who say they want peace, you cannot have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon.
So for all those wonderful people who don't want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon, that's not peace.
I've often said that you don't define peace as the absence of conflict or the absence of war.
You define it as the ability to defend yourself.
And in this case, it's a preventative measure before you are literally the world would be held hostage by a nuclear-armed Iran.
But yes, it's very consistent with my ideology and my philosophy.
You can no longer have these forever wars.
There's not a single country in the Middle East that wants the Iranians with nuclear weapons.
And they have rained down through their proxies and themselves hundreds of thousands of missiles on Israel.
At what point does Israel have the right to say enough is enough?
How many missiles would it take fired into the United States before every American would demand, rightly so, that we neutralize any country that's involved.
Now, we are in a new era, and I keep talking about the next generation of weaponry, and I keep talking about how future wars will be fought in air-conditioned offices and not on a battlefield.
And we see this unfolding in real time, which means that for those people that worry about, quote, the quagmire argument or forever war argument, well, the Israelis already own the skies over all of Iran.
This is a one-sided fight at this point.
Now, that doesn't mitigate the danger, the danger to our troops in the region.
That doesn't mitigate the other dangers associated with the ballistic missiles that they have, both short-range and long-range, and the lethality of all of that.
But what is it going to be like six months from now, a year from now, if they have the 10,000 weapons that the prime minister is talking about and maybe nuclear capability?
Anyway, Ambassador Nathan Sales is with us.
He served in the first Trump administration as ambassador at large for counterterrorism, acting Under Secretary of State.
Is there anything I'm saying here that you disagree with?
Sean, it sounds like you're angling for an appointment at the States Bar, but I'd love to have what you just said reflected among America's diplomatic corps.
I think you're spot on.
Iran is a threat, not just to Israel, not even just to the region.
They're a threat to the United States.
And that has to be the guiding star of U.S. policy over the next couple of weeks.
We're starting to see some of Israel's on-again, off-again friends in the West starting to waver.
There's some chatter as the G7 summit up in Canada kicks off today that the G7 might call for de-escalation.
And President Trump rightly has said, not signing that.
And good, because our policy should be help Israel do what it needs to do to finish the job with a minimum of henpecking and ankle biting from other countries in the West.
It's always been important for Israel to be able to neutralize the threat that Iran poses, but especially so now.
You've got to finish the job because imagine how motivated Iran will be after this war ends to get a nuclear weapon because that's going to be their insurance policy.
So you can't leave any element of the nuclear program behind because the Iranians are going to take that seed and then grow it into a huge tree if given the opportunity.
So whether it's through military force or whether it's through tough diplomacy, this war needs to end with Iran completely disarmed.
Well, and look, it's an existential threat not only to the region, but to the world.
And this, you know, a lot of people seem to have forgotten, but if you go back to April of 25 this year, you know, it's a little ironic President Trump is, you know, There was one report that he pulled the plug on Iran's supreme leader to take him out.
I'm not sure if I actually believe everything I read, but putting that aside, considering if you go back, you know, according to the Persian language article published by one of their local papers, Trump is out of line any day now in revenge for the bloody martyr Soleimani.
A few bullets are going to be fired into that empty skull of his, and he'll be drinking from the chalice of a cursed death.
And so I'm not sure if I believe the report that he vetoed a plan to assassinate Iran's supreme leader.
Israeli airstrikes did target one of Iran's largest oil refineries.
I think that was a message that we can take out your entire ability to make money also, not just your nuclear sites, not your missile battery systems, which they've gotten about a third of.
There still is a threat to the region, and that includes American troops in the region.
I don't want people to think that this is a cakewalk because it's not.
But it's a matter of do you act now or do you risk what we as a world might be facing later?
And I'm not willing to take that risk for our children and grandchildren.
Well, that's exactly right, Sean.
For the past 20-plus years, Israel has lived with a sort of Damocles hanging over it.
And not just Israel, but the Saudis, the Bahrainis, the Emiratis, others in the Gulf, and ultimately the United States.
And that sort of Damocles is the risk that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon that it will use to hold the entire region hostage.
You know, they keep chanting death to America.
They've been chanting that since the revolution back in 1979.
We don't want to find out if it's just rhetoric.
We have to assume that they mean it when they say it.
And from that realization follows a really important point.
They can never have, the world's most dangerous regime can never have the world's most dangerous weapon.
And that's the only reason they could have a nuclear enrichment program.
They've enriched, so far, up to 60% purity.
Nobody who has a peaceful nuclear power program needs that kind of concentration of the uranium.
The only reason you could have that is because you want to preserve a pathway to a bomb.
And so when the mullahs sit down at the negotiating table and say, well, we just want a peaceful program for power purposes or better.
They were offered that in negotiations.
I know that for a fact.
They were offered.
They could have the enriched rods for a peaceful power nuclear program, which it's nowhere near 60%.
But when they're enriching the uranium and they don't have anywhere, any place, anytime, American inspectors, we know that they've always been further along in their program than is publicly known.
And we see how they terrorize the entire region.
You know what's surprising to me is like, I'm like, you know, but break this down to a very simple equation.
How many missiles would have to be fired into an American town or city by a foreign entity before you'd want America to react?
You know, how many times does a neighbor have to punch you in the face and break your windows and attack your house before you're going to want to retaliate?
And it's really that simple.
Does Sean Hannity want a forever war?
Absolutely not.
Do I want this specific threat with this evil regime that has shown a willingness to attack innocent men, women, and children repeatedly and fund proxy wars ended?
And I want that threat removed for the safety of our children and grandchildren?
100%.
Don't apologize at all.
A standby.
I think the president has been right the whole time.
Yeah, and, you know, how much risk would the United States be willing to accept?
And I think the answer is not nearly as much as Israel has already had to accept.
And this is an important point for your audience to understand.
This isn't just Israel versus Iran.
This is the civilized world against Iran, because Iran really is a threat to all of us.
You know, a lot of people remember that the Iranians killed 600 or more American soldiers on the ground in Iraq.
They've also been plotting assassinations right here on American soil.
They're trying to kill President Trump, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and others.
They tried to blow up an Italian restaurant in Georgetown a number of years ago to kill the Saudi ambassador.
And imagine the collateral damage that would have involved.
So now imagine that regime with a nuclear weapon.
And you have to see why President Trump is so firmly and resolutely behind Israel's efforts to disarm this regime.
We can't afford that risk any more than Israel can.
Oh, I totally agree.
All right, quick break.
We'll come back more with Ambassador Nathan Sales.
He served in the first Trump administration as Ambassador-at-Large for counterterrorism and acting under Secretary of State.
We'll get to your calls also on the other side, 800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
We will update you also on the insanity that took place, including people quoting James Comey, 86-47.
And we have those chants.
We continue now.
Ambassador Nathan Sales with us served in the first Trump administration as an ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism, acting under Secretary of State.
At this point, it seems that there is one reactor left and that the Israelis have two options, either to use an American bunker buster bombs, because it's buried, my understanding is miles underground, or a tactical nuke.
I would prefer the bunker busters, but that's going to be between the president and Israel, and they're going to ultimately make that decision.
But I don't think it can remain at all.
Yeah, this is the Fordow plant, and it's the hardest target that the Iranians have.
It's buried under about a half mile of mountain, and it's really, really difficult to get it unless you have a bunker buster bomb, which the United States has and which we have a platform for delivering it, namely the B-2.
So I think there's probably some very serious conversations going on right now about whether the United States will provide those capabilities to Israel or whether the United States will join the fight ourselves.
I don't know where the president is on this, but this is a question that bears watching very closely because we can't afford to eliminate a couple of nuclear sites here and there, but leave Fordow intact.
If Fordow survives, the Iranian regime's nuclear program survives, and that's a loss for Israel and a loss for us.
I think that's well said, and I don't think that's a risk.
If you've come this far and we're at the end of the process and you own the skies, they've not been able to build back their missile defense system.
The only risk we now have, and it is a real risk, and anytime you're involved in any military effort, I don't want to mitigate that risk.
I don't want people to put their guard down.
There is a risk and a risk to American lives.
They've already killed many Americans in the past, and they do chant death to Israel, death to America, and they've threatened to hit the continental U.S. with missiles also.
But it's either you deal with it now when they're weakened and finish the job, or you run the risk that they would empower themselves and build up their military might even further.
Yeah, I think the lesson the Iranians are going to take from this war is we're a lot weaker than we thought we were.
Israel has the ability to hurt us a lot more than we thought they did.
So how do we protect ourselves from that?
What I think and what I fear is the lesson they're going to draw is we need a nuclear bomb now more than ever.
And so if you give the regime that ability without destroying their program completely, my fear is they're going to race harder than ever.
Appreciate you being with us.
Thank you, Ambassador Nathan Sales, 800-941 Sean is a number if you want to be a part of the program.
Hey, it's Scott Shannon here.
And if you're like me, you're scratching your head trying to figure out why Sean Hannity would get up on stage with a professional comedian.
Comedian Jimmy Phaler.
Yep, it's happening later this month in Clearwater in Fort Lauderdale, June 28th and 29th.
It's cool to be here.
Find out why and how he's going to pull this off.
They're calling it Punchlines and Patriots.
It's Sean Hannity on stage with Jimmy Phela.
He's a professional comedian.
Woo!
They're doing two shows, one in Clearwater and one in Fort Lauderdale, June 28th and 29th.
Tickets are going fast.
Check it out at Hannity.com.
Sean Hannity.
All right, 25 now to the top of the air.
I'm so looking forward to it.
You know, it is, we're two weekends away from this, Linda.
I think you should come down.
That's what I think.
Oh, I'm going to be there.
I'm in the front row.
And I look forward to the front row of you.
I am absolutely.
All right, I got a guy.
He got me some tickets.
I'm going to be in the middle of the season.
What do you mean you got a guy on?
What am I, chop liver?
His name rhymes with Shmimmy.
Anyway, Ruth Eckard Hall.
That's Clearwater, Tampa.
That's, you know, Fort Myers, Sarasota, the Panhandle, Orlando.
We're almost sold out in Clearwater now.
Ruth Eckert Hall, Saturday, June 28th, coming quick, 7 p.m.
The next night, Sunday, June 29th, Fort Lauderdale.
That includes Boca, Miami.
That includes Del Rey Beach.
I was in Del Rey Beach this weekend.
And also Manalapam, Palm Beach, West Palm Beach.
We hope you can come, grab your tickets while they're left.
Just go to Hannity.com.
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Well, you know, I watched some of it.
There's only so much of it I can take.
But one thing that is clear is the left in America has absolutely, positively lost it.
And you can see the attacks on John Fetterman just get louder and louder and louder.
And how dare that he take on the radicals in his own party?
So you have the no-kings protests over the weekend.
They claim millions of people showed up all around the country.
Okay, you have the radical left-wing lunatics, but the bigger part of the equation is they've taken over the Democratic Party.
But here are the Democratic Party's top supporters.
Listen.
We are here to say, in the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America.
The fascist Trump regime must go now.
I am here today against authoritarianism and in support of Palestinian liberation and safety.
I am here today with my comrades in solidarity with all of you because none of us are free until all of us are safe and free.
This administration and the agents of state power have used every lever to use the pro-Palestine movement as pretexts for violent and comprehensive repression.
From targeting students on campus to pushing theories for deportation and denaturalization to the empowerment of ICE and its mass stormtroopers to disappear our neighbors.
Make no mistake.
These cases are a test of what we will accept and we must not accept them.
Let freedom ring.
We don't want to king.
Let freedom ring.
We don't want to king.
Trump wants democracy looks like.
This is what democracy looks like.
Tell me what democracy looks like.
This is what democracy looks like.
Tell me what democracy looks like.
This is what democracy looks like.
No justice, no peace.
No comfort, no peace.
No comfort, no peace.
Donald Trump's regime is not illegally deploying American troops on U.S. soils because he's strong.
He's abusing his authority as commander-in-chief, trying to pick a fight on America's streets because his agenda is incredibly unpopular.
His political positions and his claims are weak and failing and contrary to our moral value.
Now, that's the insanity that took place over the weekend.
Where are they getting this rhetoric from?
Well, look, we got Mr. Feng Fang, Eric Swalwell.
Trump is America's Hitler.
Democrats, you know, have never said that about Trump.
Huh?
He said that at one of the No Kings rallies.
Well, they tried.
He's Hitler of Stalin, Mussolini, and a Nazi and a fascist and a racist leading into the election on November 5th in 24.
And that didn't exactly pay dividends for them.
But they're still sticking to that talking point.
Here's what he said.
Donald Trump is America's Hitler.
That was Mr. Fang Fang himself, Eric Swalwell, and other Democrats.
Again, the talking point went out.
Call Trump Hitler.
It is deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous that Donald Trump would invoke Adolf Hitler, the man who's responsible for the deaths of six million Jews.
All of this is further evidence for the American people of who Donald Trump really is.
Donald Trump's got this big rally going at Madison Square Garden.
There's a direct parallel to a big rally that happened in the mid-1930s at Madison Square Garden.
Trump actually reenacting the Madison Square Garden rally in 1939.
I write about this in my book.
President Franklin Roosevelt was appalled that neo-Nazis, fascists in America, were lining up to essentially pledge their support for the kind of government that they were seeing in Germany.
So I don't think we can ignore it.
Are you seeing he's not president yet?
I mean, are you visiting another Hitler?
Is that what you're saying?
That's exactly what I'm saying.
I said the 1930s in Germany.
Yes, you did.
What I did was compare the times that we live in to the times that existed at the time Hitler gained power.
I mentioned the fact that he gained power through democratic elections, same way Trump did.
I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler's Third Reich to any other movement.
It was uniquely evil, full stop.
The Trump administration is insisting on trying to create their own preferred version of reality.
I don't think this is going to work.
It didn't work the last time.
But if you want to double down on Dumb and Dumber and not have any introspection, no course correction, and just keep repeating the same mantra as Donald Trump actually does things that make the country better and safer and the world safer, you keep doing that.
Let's say hi to Dale in the United Socialist Utopia known as Gavin Newsom's California.
What's up, Dale?
How are you?
I'm good.
Not all of us who like to look at the ocean are crazy.
Well, I love the ocean part.
I never said that it's not majestic and beautiful there.
Yeah.
I was calling just to comment on the fact that the Iranian response said it's like watching one of those Battle of Britain movies.
You know, the Luftwaffe is bombing the cities in response to the military attacks.
And the indiscriminate bombing of civilians seems to be the same game plan that the Iranians have, that the Germans have.
Well, you know, you've got to ask yourselves, there was, look, how do I say this in a nice way?
This is Donald Trump's America First policy.
And part of America First is being smart.
And Donald Trump often uses in his rallies and speeches the word common sense.
It's just simple common sense.
And when the president says, you know, for those people that say they want peace, you cannot have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon.
He's right.
And, you know, for all these people that don't want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon, that's not peace.
The world will be held hostage.
And he's correct there.
America First is not, and I always got along with Pat Buchanan, and he was very smart.
But in many ways, I viewed him as isolationist.
And even before World War II, there was an isolationist movement in this country that was actually very strong that it took the bombing of Pearl Harbor to drag us into World War II.
Winston Churchill was begging FDR to help because they needed the support of the United States to defeat the forces of Nazism and fascism and then, of course, Imperial Japan.
I want to be an isolationist too.
Yeah, I agree with Donald Trump also of America First, the end of forever wars.
This doesn't look like a scenario of a forever war to me.
This looks like a wipeout with great danger.
With every military move, there's always danger.
I am not mitigating that.
I'm emphasizing it.
There is significant danger.
We do have troops in the region.
They have shown a willingness to kill our troops and target our troops.
And desperate countries and desperate evil people like the Mullahs in Iran will do desperate things.
However, the far riskier scenario to me is a nuclear-armed Iran.
Right.
Well, like they say, those that don't learn from the lessons of history are bound to repeat them.
Exactly.
I mean, and identifying evil now and taking it out at a point where we can control it before they have 10,000 ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.
You know, what do we do at that point?
Then we're stuck with a nuclear-armed Iran.
At that point, there's no option.
And when you get to 60% enrichment, you can be at weapons grade 90% in less than a month.
That's where, you know, again, I don't have the intelligence, but that's what all the intelligence has shown.
So basically, it became a minute to midnight, and we had to make a decision.
Actually, it was Israel that made the decision.
And then you see how Israel fights versus how the Iranians fight.
The Iranians try to terrorize and hit population centers like they've been doing in Tel Aviv.
And the Israelis, they just keep hitting one military target after another.
And they've got two of their sites out, but they need to take the third one out to neutralize the threat forever.
And their ambition of ever having a nuclear weapon must go away.
Anyway, I appreciate you, sir.
Thank you.
All right, quick break right back to our phones: 800-941 Sean is on number if you want to be a part of the program as we continue.
Back to our busy phones, toll-free this Monday, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to join us, Maine, Jim, on the Sean Hannity show.
Happy Monday, Jim.
Glad you called.
Yes, hi.
Jim from the not-so-first-sighted event.
I wanted to talk to you about the Middle East.
You know, we have this one problem about fallout because wherever the prevailing winds go, you would think that Jordan and Egypt and the Arab Emirates and all of them actually would say to themselves that Iran cannot get a nuclear bomb because if they do and they use it on Israel, they're using it on themselves.
It's a little more complicated than that, but I can assure you there's not one of those countries that wants a nuclear-armed Iran.
That's why during Trump's first term, when his sanctions were working and they weren't anywhere nearly as advanced as they are in terms of the nuclear program, because he prevented it from happening, we had this alliance between the U.S., Israel, the Saudis, the Emirates, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, and intelligence sharing against Iranian hegemony.
So it's really just advancing that to the next level.
What I learned when I went on the trip to the Gulf states with the president is all of these countries want President Trump and Israel to be successful.
They all do.
Why do you think some of these countries are helping Israel take some of these missiles out of the sky and Jordan and the Saudis and others?
Because they know it is an existential threat to them.
And so there already is an alliance there.
And I'll predict one other thing.
When all the dust settles here, and again, I always have grave concern whenever there's a military effort of this type, but I believe it's a necessity.
We're not talking about a ground war.
We're not talking about a forever war.
We're talking about neutralizing Iran because they refuse to do it voluntarily.
But at the end of the day, my prediction is this: that all of the countries that we're talking about that you're mentioning here will then seek to join the Abraham Accords, recognize Israel, and hope to bring peace to that region once and for all.
I do believe that that will be the natural outcome of this, although it takes a lot to get there.
But what is the alternative?
Allowing them to get a nuclear weapon?
Then there would never be peace or any possibility of peace in the region.
Then we'd have a nuclear arms race because every other country would want one as a deterrent against Iran.
It gets very complicated, very fast if they, in fact, got that weapon.
And that's why I think the president is right.
And, you know, I love people trying to lecture Donald Trump on the Make America, what MAGA means.
It's kind of humorous to me.
But I think the president's policies, you know, again, are rooted in simple common sense.
When you have the number one state sponsor terror and you marry them with nuclear weapons, that is an existential threat to the entire world, and they've threatened the United States as well.
I wish there was an evil in the world, but there is, and you have to face that.
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