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June 17, 2025 - Sean Hannity Show
32:19
Maximum Pressure Campaign - June 16th, Hour 2
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Israel launched Operation Rising Lion.
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.
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This moment we have feared has arrived.
And you compare them to those nondescript dogs, it does look like a Gestapo operation.
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All right, hour two, Sean Hannity Show, 800-941 Sean, our number.
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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 bordered town with Kazov Starut is what it's called.
And they had when I had gone back there, this is a long time ago, uh, they have been hit with 10,000 missiles in ten 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 uh threat, a dual existential threat.
One, the threat of uh 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 mock six right into our cities, as you saw today.
Uh, and then in 20 in uh 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 uh this uh 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 two thousand, 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 I kind of view this as their increased production and ballistic missiles with the hope of doubling their uh uh the how lethal they are from two thousand pounds to four thousand pounds uh as plan B. Because the Iranians uh 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 uh 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 b preventative measure before you are literally the world would be held hostage by a nuclear-armed Iran.
Uh, but yes, it's very consistent with my my ideology and my philosophy, you can no longer have these forever wars.
Is 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 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 have we 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, you know, argument or forever war argument.
Well, the Israelis already own the skies over all of Iran.
This is this is this is a one-sided fight at this point.
Now that doesn't mitigate the danger, the dangers to our troops in the region.
That doesn't mitigate, you know, the the other dangers associated with the ballistic missiles that they have, both short range and long range, and the lethality of all of that.
Um 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's talking about, and maybe nuclear capability.
Now this uh anyway, if for ambassador Nathan Sales is with us, he served in the first Trump administration as ambassador at large for counterterrorism, acting under Secretary of State.
Uh is there anything I'm saying here that you disagree with?
Sean, it sounds like um you you're angling for an appointment at the State Department.
I'd love to have what you just said uh reflected among America's diplomatic corps.
I I think you're you're spot on.
Um 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 um on again off again friends in the West starting to waver.
Um there's some chatter as the G7 summit up in Canada kicks off today, um, that the G7 might call for de-escalation.
Um and President Trump rightly has said, not signing that.
Um and good, because our policy should be helped 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.
Um 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, uh this war needs to end with Iran completely disarmed.
Well, and uh look, it's an existential threat not only to the region but to the world.
And this, you know, but a lot of people seem to have forgotten, but if you go back to April of twenty-five this year, you know, it's a little ironic.
President Trump is, you know, uh, you know, there was one report that he pulled the plug on Iran's uh Supreme Leader uh to to take him out.
I'm not sure if I actually believe everything I read, but putting that aside, uh considering if you go back, you know, uh 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 uh martyr Solomani, 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 supreme leader, uh 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 not your missile battery systems, which they've gotten about a third of.
There still is a threat to the re region, and that includes American troops in the region.
I don't want to people to think uh that this is, you know, a cakewalk, because it's not.
Um, but it's a matter of do you act now, or do you risk, you know, w what they 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.
Um, 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 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.
Um we have to assume that they mean it when they say it.
Uh 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.
Um that's the only reason they could have a nuclear enrichment program.
They've enriched so far uh up to 60% uh uh 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 MULAs sit down at the negotiating table and say, well, we just want a peaceful program for power purposes or better.
They were they were offered that in negotiations.
I know that for a fact.
They were they were offered, they could they could have the enriched rods for a peaceful uh powered nuclear program, which is it's nowhere near 60 percent.
But when they're enriching the uranium and they don't have anywhere, anyplace, any time American inspectors, uh, we know that they've always been further along in their program than is publicly known, and we see what the we see how they terrorize the entire region.
You know what's surprising to me is like uh 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 how many times does a neighbor have to punch you in the face and break your windows and attack your house before before you're gonna want to you're gonna want to retaliate?
And it's really that simple.
Does 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 uh ended, and I want that threat removed to the safety of our children and grandchildren?
A hundred percent.
Don't apologize at all.
A stand by it.
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.
Um this is an important point for 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, uh 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 uh a number of years ago to kill the Saudi ambassador.
And 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 we can't afford that risk any more than Israel can.
Oh, I totally agree.
All right, quick break, welcome back more with Ambassador Nathan Sells.
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.
Uh, we will update you also on the insanity that took place, uh, including uh 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 bunker buster bombs, because it's very my understanding is miles underground or a tactical nuke.
Um I would prefer the bunker busters, but that's going to be, you know, 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 this is the Ford Al plant, and it's the hardest target that the Iranians have.
Um it's buried under about a half mile of 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 B2.
So I 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 I don't know where the president is on this, uh, but this is uh is a question that that bears watching very closely because we we can't afford to eliminate a couple of nuclear sites here and there, but leave Ford Al intact.
If Fordell 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 you know the only risk we now have, and it is a real risk, and any time 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 uh hit the continental U.S. with missiles also.
But um 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 and 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.
Um 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.
So if you give give the regime that ability without destroying their program completely, my fear is they're gonna 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 Phaela.
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 gonna pull this off.
They're calling it Punchlines and Patriots.
It's Sean Hannity on stage with Jimmy Phaylor.
He's a professional comedian.
Woo!
They're doing two shows, one in Clearwater and one in Fort Lauderdale, June 28th and 29th.
Take us there going fast.
Check it out at Hannity.com.
Sean Hannity.
All right, 25 now to the top of the hour.
I'm so looking forward to it.
Do 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 gonna be there.
I'm in the front row.
And uh, you are absolutely all right.
I got a guy.
He got me some tickets.
I'm gonna be in the case.
What do you mean you got a guy?
I'm what am I?
Chop liver?
His name rhymes with Shminy.
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 uh Del Ray Beach.
I was in Delray Beach this weekend.
And also Man Alapam, Palm Beach, West Palm Beach.
We hope you can come.
Uh grab your tickets while they're left.
Uh just go to Hannity.com.
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Um, well, you know, I was 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 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, you know, 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.
And in support of Palestinian liberation and safety.
Woo!
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 pretext 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 be.
Let freedom ring.
we don't want to be This is what democracy looks like.
Donald Trump's regime is not illegally deploying American troops on U.S. souls 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 insanity that took place over the weekend.
Where are they where are they getting this rhetoric from?
Well, look, we got Mr. Fang 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 and 24, and that didn't exactly pay dividends for them.
Uh, 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 is 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 uh 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 uh reenacting uh the Madison Square Garden rally in 1939.
I write about this in my book.
Uh 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.
I mean, I are you envisioning 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 uh to the times that um uh that existed at the time Hitler uh 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 gonna 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 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.
Uh 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.
Um not all of us would like to look at the ocean are crazy, so uh Well, I love the ocean part.
I never said that it's not majestic and beautiful there.
Yeah.
Um I was calling just to comment on the fact that the Iranian response that it's like watching one of those Battle of Britain movies, you know, the Luflaffa's bombing the cities in response to the military attacks and you know the indiscriminate bombing of civilians seems to be the same game plan that the Iranians have that the Germans have.
Well, you know, I I've you you've got to ask yourselves.
There was look, how do I say this in a nice way?
Um 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 is 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.
American America first is not and and I I always got along with Pat Buchanan, and he was very smart, but in many ways I viewed him as isolationist.
And and even before World War II, there was an isolationist, you know, movement in this country that was actually very strong.
That, you know, it 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 be to defeat, you know, the the forces of Nazism and fascism, and then of course Imperial Japan.
Uh 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, if uh those that don't learn from the hist 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, I I 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.
And 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.
Uh anyway, I appreciate you, sir.
Thank you.
All right, quick break right back to our phones.
800 941 Shawn is our number if you want to be a part of the program as we continue.
In fact, we're busy phones, toll-free this Monday, 800-941 Sean, if you want to join us.
Maine Jim uh on the Sean Hannity show.
Happy Monday, Jim.
Glad you called.
Yes, hi.
Uh Jim Funer, not so free stated of me.
Um I uh was going to talk to you about uh the uh Middle East.
You know, we have uh um there's one problem about fallout.
It goes wherever the prevailing prevailing winds go.
You would think that uh Jordan and Egypt and uh uh Emiratinali, all of them actually would say to themselves that uh that uh 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 it's 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.
Uh 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, you know, that to the next level.
What 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 and so uh there already is an alliance there.
And I I'll predict one other thing.
When when all the dust settles here, and again, this I I always have grave concern whenever there's a military effort of of this type, but I believe it's a necessity.
I 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.
And but at the end of the day, my prediction is this is that all of the countries that we're talking about that you are 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's it takes a lot to get there.
And you know, but what is the alternative?
Allowing them to get a nuclear weapon, then they 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.
So it's it gets very complicated, very fast if they 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.
Well, what MAGA means is 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 of terror, and then you marry them with nuclear weapons, that is a existential threat to the entire world, and they've threatened the United States as well.
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