Best of Hannity: Iran Can't Go Nuclear - July 4th, Hour 3
In this "Best of Sean Hannity", Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and author of, Trump’s Triumph, America’s Greatest Comeback, has an article out on the President’s decision to enter the war with Iran. Many in Washington are debating whether America should step in to help Israel finish eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat. I don’t know of any serious person who wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons, but there is much concern over the possibility of creating a new American forever war in the Middle East. Part of this debate stems from confusion about who President Trump is — and the huge difference between war fighting and war winning. Tragically, the American military has spent far more time thinking about, investing in, and practicing for war fighting than developing strategies and systems for war winning. This was an issue during the Vietnam War and most recently during the 20-year Afghanistan War.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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If you want to be a part of the program, as we have been explaining all throughout the afternoon and updating you is three Iranian officials familiar with the plan, said that Iran gave advance notice to the six missiles that were fired at our air base.
This is the one I happen to be at, by the way, in Qatar, and officials were given a complete heads up.
It was a symbolic strike back at the U.S. in a way that it would give them some propaganda to feed their population.
It is not dissimilar to what happened in 2020 after the killing of Sole Amani.
And the Iranians not only gave the Iraqis a heads up, but gave America a heads up that before firing the ballistic missiles and telling the United States they were purposely aiming them to miss.
And then they go out to the public and they tell them, you just, you really can't make it up.
Let me play.
Here's the president over the weekend announcing the bombing of these Iranian nuclear facilities, and Iran must now make peace.
They didn't listen to him the last time.
Will they listen this time?
Time will tell.
A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime, Fordo, Natans, and Esfahan.
Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise.
Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror.
Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success.
Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.
Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace.
If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.
With all of that being said, this cannot continue.
There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.
Remember, there are many targets left.
Tonight's was the most difficult of them all by far and perhaps the most lethal.
But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed, and skill.
Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes.
There's no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight.
Not even close.
There has never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago.
Anyway, joining us now to weigh in on all of the events from Saturday night and earlier today.
And as we continue to monitor the skies over Qatar and Or Qatar, you can say it either way.
Both are acceptable.
Former Speaker of the House, New Kingrich, I think as the historian, I may be wrong.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, that the world will one day look back on this courageous effort of President Trump.
I mean, so many past presidents had said they would do it.
They never even, there was never even an option.
I mean, it went as far in the other direction as Obama with billions of dollars in cash and other currency to try and somehow appease the Iranian regime under Biden.
The Iranians were allowed to sell their oil on the world market without, even though Trump sanctions were bringing them to the brink of bankruptcy, even giving specific waivers for billions and billions of dollars, which funded their war machine, their terror machine, and their nuclear program.
But by every measure, it is clear the Iranians fear Donald Trump.
Well, look, here's the core problem.
The religious dictatorship has, since 1979, literally said death to America and death to Israel.
As recently as a few months ago, the Ayatollah Khomeini went on national television to say that he wanted to reassure the Iranian people that death to America was not a slogan.
It was a policy.
Iran is a pretty big country.
It's twice the size of Texas.
And it's a proud country.
Its history goes all the way back to the Persian Empire.
He's caught now, and his entire religious leadership is caught because Trump has made it.
Well, what's remaining of it, a lot of it's been taken out.
Well, a good bit's been taken out.
But remember, you kill the 60-year-old leader, and the 55-year-old leader shows up.
You kill the 55-year-old leader, the 50-year-old leader shows up.
I mean, there are a lot of folks there still.
And I'm not being negative.
I mean, I think what Trump did over the weekend was courageous.
No president, remember, they have been saying this stuff since 1979.
That's Carter, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, and Biden.
None of them have had the guts to take head-on a regime which said openly it's the one to kill us.
I take death to America pretty seriously.
The challenge is we may have to break the regime.
I mean, what Trump has done is very, very measured.
He went in and he said, we're just going to take out your nuclear facilities, and we're going to prove that we have absolute, total military dominance.
You know, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs reported on the briefing Sunday morning that not a single shot was fired at the Americans as they went in and out.
Now, that's total dominance.
There has been a relatively unreported story that somehow, some way, and I have multiple sources that have confirmed this, the Americans were able to somehow trick the Iranians into believing that airplanes were in the sky that didn't exist and that they fired on these phantom planes while the real planes went in completely undetected.
Probably that involves cyber warfare and us literally infiltrating their capabilities.
There's a fascinating TV series called Tehran, which is basically about Mossad operating inside the city of Tehran.
And you see a lot of this very heavy reliance on cyber capabilities where you infiltrate the other guy's capabilities and you can put on his screen not what is reality, but what you want him to see.
And, you know, I think we used every asset we have to make this totally one-sided.
Now, the challenge is that a rational regime at this point would say, okay, we can't possibly beat the Americans, and Trump has proven that he is prepared to really fight.
And at that point, the logical thing would be to say, let's sit down and talk, except they know that what Trump is going to say is no nuclear program, no strategic missiles, period, ever.
And they're not willing to say that because that in its own way is the end of their dictatorship because they have spent all these years and all this money trying to acquire these capabilities.
They've impoverished their own people.
They have taken money away from everything that could have gone to help people live better.
And they have a pretty large infrastructure of fanatics.
Probably 5% to 10% of the population is fanatically committed to being the dominant power in the region, to wiping out Israel and to damaging, if not totally destroying, the United States.
So the Ayatollah is sitting there, and I think he's going to test us again, both by firing missiles.
And also, as you know, the Iranian parliament voted to close the streets of Harmuz, which will be a direct threat to the whole world because so much of the world's oil supply goes through there.
Now, when they tried to do that to Reagan, he simply destroyed the Iranian Navy and made it impossible for them to function.
So we'll have to see whether that was a political gesture by the parliament or whether they were, in fact, actually try to close it.
But I always try to remember people, when they do military planning, always say to yourself, okay, and then what?
Because the other side gets to vote too.
And they don't always do what you want them to do.
And we may be faced with a decision to have to use a great deal more force, which we can do, without ever putting a single soldier on the ground.
And you could take apart their oil infrastructure.
You could take apart their electricity and infrastructure.
I mean, you could gradually break the country, which I think Trump doesn't want to do, because that will have a direct, painful impact on the people of Iran, not just on their government.
The president, interestingly, and I have a very different take than most people on this, when he mentioned regime change and make Iran great again, M-I-G-A, I think he was really speaking to the people in Iran, just like he warned the people in Tehran that, in fact, you need to get out and get out immediately prior to the strike that took place on Saturday.
I think he's making it very clear that the United States does not have a problem with the people of Iran.
It has a problem with their leadership.
That's right.
And frankly, in the last two days, the Israelis have shifted their targeting to really go after the Revolutionary Guard at a level that we've not seen before.
And they're making it very clear that they're going to try to destroy all the instruments of terror that have kept the regime in place.
And my hunch is in the next few days, you'll start to see the population of Iran openly rebel against the leadership because, frankly, its capacity to communicate is collapsed.
Its capacity to enforce the rules is going to collapse.
And the minute people fully understand that, every poll I've ever seen says 80% of the people of Iran hate the regime.
And I think once they feel that they can mobilize without being killed, you're going to see a massive overthrow.
And I think these things happen in East Germany.
The collapse was almost overnight.
And I think so these regimes can be very fragile once they lose the ability to kill you.
It looks like we're on the brink of that.
Quick break.
More with former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.
Then your call is coming up, 800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
Continue now with former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, is with us.
I learned a lot, and I spoke to a lot of people when I was with the President on his trip to the Gulf region.
And when I went to Riyadh with him, and we went to Qatar, and we went to the UAE and Abu Dhabi, and I spoke to a lot of people at high levels within the government.
There's not one of them that didn't want this day to occur.
There's not one of them that didn't recognize that Iran was an existential threat to the entire region and the world.
And I know that at every single stop, Mr. Speaker, the president said that they have two options.
I hope they choose the peaceful option.
And this was in the middle of the 60-day window that they were given to give up the nuclear capability.
And they chose not to.
And on day 61, the Israelis struck.
And the Israelis have been tremendously effective.
I don't think anyone expected that they would have the Mossad and they would have drones and they'd have the locations of the top scientists and top military personnel and their top generals and Revolutionary Guard members in their sites the whole time and take them out on day one because that's what they were able to pull off.
Well, we've watched them do this with Hezbollah.
We watched them do some of it with Hamas.
Remember, the Israelis have spent at least 20 to 25 years focused on Iran.
The very first meeting I had in late 1994, after I had become Speaker, but before I was sworn in, I got a call from the then Speaker who said, would I be willing to sit down with Ilsaq Rabin, the then Prime Minister of Israel, who wanted to come over and sit down personally with me even before I became Speaker.
I said, of course.
So Tom Poly and Ian I bet, who's the speaker then, we met with Prime Minister Rabin, and he said, look, we can handle the Palestinians.
We can even handle Egypt and Jordan.
What we can't handle is Iran.
It's too big.
It's too dangerous.
And we've got to clear the deck so that we can deal with Iran where we're going to need your help.
Now, this is December of 1994.
And finally, I think that history will show how heroic this effort was, and it prevented incalculable amount of death in the region.
I think it also gives us and opens up the door for an opportunity of a golden age of peace.
I would imagine when all the dust settles that a lot of these countries will sign the Abraham Accords, will recognize Israel, and we might have peace in the region that was unimaginable maybe a week ago.
That's my hope for the region and the hope for the world.
And the president would get, in my view, all the credit for it.
And I also think there's going to be a new doctrine, if you will, a Netanyahu doctrine out of Israel.
You fire one rocket, you'll be obliterated.
They cannot withstand hundreds of thousands of rockets anymore being fired into their country and their population living in bunkers.
It has to end.
Well, I think the courage and the discipline that President Trump showed and his ability to lead a team, which I really commended the night he came out to brief all of us, that he had the vice president, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, because it sent the signal to the world.
This is not a Lone Ranger.
This is not a guy by himself.
This is a team.
And I thought it was very smart the next morning for the Secretary of Defense and the Chair of the Joint Chiefs did the briefing, not the President.
And when you look at the level of the team it took to pull this off, the world needs to come to understand Donald Trump leads an enormous team.
And he's not just the guy who shows up on Truth Social, but in front of the guy who does a rally, but in fact, he is the leader of an enormous movement and an enormous government with great capabilities.
And I am amazed to say in all the time since 1979, it finally took the courage of Trump and the discipline and determination of Trump to pull this off.
And it's truly historic.
Mr. Speaker, thank you as always.
We appreciate your time.
800-941 Sean is on number.
We'll get to your calls on the other side.
I know many of you want to weigh in on all the events that have been unfolding.
We'll have full coverage of this tonight at nine on Hannity.
All right, let's get to our busy telephone, shall we?
Rick is in Rhode Island.
Rick, hi, how are you?
Glad you called.
It's a very slow news day.
We're trying to get through.
Glad you're checking in.
Where in Rhode Island are you?
I live in Riverside.
I'm the one that used to live in Warren.
I'm the redneck from Rhode Island.
Well, you know where I lived in Warren.
I lived on Child Street.
I know you did.
I grew up in Warren.
Yeah, amazing.
And wonderful people there.
You know what?
It's a hardworking, middle-class town.
And everybody that I knew in that town, they worked hard, just salted the earth, great Americans.
And I'm very grateful for the time that I spent there.
I went up there at a time in my life when I had no money.
I had a great landlord.
He let me do extra work so I could pay my rent every month.
I was struggling at the time.
But you know what?
It was a great time in my life for so many reasons.
I can't even describe it to you.
We've talked before.
My dad was a head electrician at Blount Marine where you used to live.
This is a Richter.
We've spoken a few times.
Yeah, I worked there for a few months and nobody believed me.
And then finally, Blount Marine is still open.
And Linda called over and they checked their records and they said, yeah, he worked here.
We have the records.
Hey, Sean, I just wanted to ask you for years now.
Yeah, for a while now, you've been telling us that you're worried about these sleeper cells that Biden let in and how many are from Iran in this country right now.
Well, now that United Donald Trump has pulled off one of the greatest military campaigns in the history of the world and shot it to Iran, I'm just wondering what you think about the likelihood of one of those doing something drastic, chemical weapon, biological weapon, who knows?
Or if you think that by Trump blasting them like he did, he put the fear of God into them.
And maybe they're going to think twice before they want to poke that bear again.
What do you think?
I think you've got to worry about it.
I mean, I think more than anybody, I've been the person that has been warning that it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
And I think that the Iranians, it's very, very dangerous that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Alejandro Mayorkas and all of their friends and cohorts that are complicit in the Democratic Party allowed this to happen.
And that is that we have all these unvetted, you know, Biden-Harris, Mayorkas, illegals in the country.
Now, there's reports today that more than 700 Iranian nationals that we know of, and we don't know how many gotaways there might be, illegally entered the U.S. and were released into the country.
We got them.
But then they were released into the country by Joe Biden and his administration, according to the Center Square obtained Sunday from Board of Patrol agents.
Anyway, and that includes 48 Iranian illegal border crossers apprehended in fiscal year 21, 197 and 22, 462 and 23, and 797 apprehended in 2024.
And these Iranians are in our country, and we don't, you know, we have known terrorists in the country and we don't know where they are.
Now, one of the arguments of people that said, oh, no, you can't, don't make them angry.
I'm like, what do you mean don't make them?
Well, they might ignite a sleeper cell in the U.S.
Well, I'm the one that's been saying it's probably a fait accompli, but I pray to God that I'm wrong because these terrorists in this country, they're not here for any other reason but to bring harm to the United States.
And this event, whether it took place or didn't take place, is insignificant in terms of what their motivations may have been.
And we've got to understand here, this threat was the most preventable national security threat in history.
Yeah, but I'm glad people are finally paying attention to what we have been warning about now for years, that it's not when it's if, but I pray to God I'm wrong.
I always add that because I mean it.
It is a real prayer because we live through 9-11.
It is a real, clear, present danger to the U.S., and it has been since the day they got in the country.
You know what will happen if they do?
If something terrible happens, they're going to say, it's Donald Trump's fault because he bombed Iraq rather than it's Joe Biden's fault because he let him in.
It would have happened anyway.
I mean, yeah, of course.
I mean, I know from all of the planning that went into this, there was so much discussion about the actual mission and the diversion and the deflection and the planning.
And I mean, what they've been able to pull off here militarily was unbelievable.
But there wasn't enough attention paid to before this mission was greenlighted.
They had already been very quietly removing many Americans from the region.
They had been fortifying their bases.
They have been putting into place missile batteries, air defense systems, and knowing and preparing for retaliation.
They knew what the main targets were.
They knew that the main targets would be in the region, our military bases, including the one in Qatar, but others in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere, that they'd want to hit our bases, that we could have sleeper cells that would do exactly what you were referring to.
And the possibility that, for example, they're talking about closing the Straits of Hormuz and upsetting and disrupting the world's oil supply, but even mining the Straits of Hormuz, you know, all of that, they gamed all of that out before they ever put a plane in the air.
They were already protecting, they were already anticipating every possible potential retaliatory move by the Iranians.
And that was in place long before those planes ever took off.
Absolutely brilliant.
Hey, Sean, I know you got to let me go, but real quick, I heard Donald Trump's going to build a golf course in Iran now because he's got the first three holes already.
Ouch.
I got to laugh.
I mean, I will say this: the people, all of you people on social media, and there are the crazy people that have the anonymity in their bunker, in their basement, in their underwear, just a bunch of psychos.
But then there's some very brilliant, clever, genius people out there that I got to tip my hat.
When you make me laugh out loud and it brings tears to my eyes, I mean, the times that I look on social media, which is only rare because my accounts are monitored heavily.
I have very limited time available to me on them because my team doesn't want me on it full time because it's a clear and present danger in terms of me starting a fight.
But there's so many smart people in this country.
I love the clever, smart, funny people that are online.
They're amazing.
Appreciate the call, my friend.
800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, let's say hi to Mike in Georgia.
Mike, how are you?
Glad you called, sir.
Hi, Sean.
Pleasure to talk to you.
What's going on?
I am just like so proud to be an American today, so proud of the military and so proud of Donald Trump for sticking up for this country and our military and bombing the crap out of Iran the other night.
Such, I mean, the Department of Defense, the Air Force, and then everything that was involved.
It's just, it was true brilliance.
I mean, no radio contact, and they were able to meet up and take care of business and fly home.
And it was like unbelievable.
I'm proud of them.
And it's basically 36 years of frustration taken out on Iran by the United States.
I mean, it's been going on since 1979.
So you want to talk about a long-term war.
This has been a long-term war with them.
Yeah, this has been there forever, war against us and against Israel.
Yeah, you're right.
100% right.
And it's, I mean, thousands of Americans have died at their hands one way or the other.
And hundreds of thousands of people have died all over the world from their proxies.
And it's just, it's about time that it's been finally shut down.
And if I could see Donald Trump, I'd shake his hand and give him a big hug.
He's a man.
And I got a question for you about what's the Chinese involvement in this?
We don't know.
We don't have a full picture on that yet.
You did have these Chinese planes flying into Iran in the days leading up to this.
Nobody seems to know what was inside those cargo planes.
They were Boeing jets.
We know that they were cargo jets.
We don't know what was in them.
If I had to venture a guess, whatever it is is not good.
But I don't even, I've got to imagine deep down, even the Chinese know that a nuclear-armed Iran is dangerous for them, too, because they're too crazy.
They're nuts.
And one more thing, Sean, being from Florida.
How about them Florida Panthers?
I know you're a fan.
Oh, you kidding?
I love my fly.
I have seasons tickets, except I never, I barely get to use them.
My kids use them.
And my business partners use them.
But I did go.
So they were a game six.
And I mean, I got to see a lot of the game.
I missed most of the second period because I had to do my own live show.
But I did go to a number of playoff games.
I got to go to a couple of regular season games this year.
I love my Florida Panthers.
Back-to-back Stanley Cup winners.
I love them all.
I love Braboski.
I love Matthew Kachuk.
I love Barkov.
How great was Mershond in all of this?
Reinhardt.
I mean, I can't even begin to name these guys.
This is a team that's going to be a contender for many years to come.
All together.
Yes, they will.
And, you know, I'm a fan of all South Florida teams being from South Florida originally.
But I was at their very first game against the Pittsburgh Penguins back when they first started.
So I've been around them a long time.
I've been a big fan.
And I know you were a fan of them.
And I had to give them a shout out on your show.
There's nothing more exciting than Stanley Cup playoff hockey.
It just is the greatest sport.
No other sport is close.
And I'll stand by that.
You'll see.
That's it.
We're going to do it, Sean.
Thank you much.
Thank you, my friend.
Let us get to our phones.
Sherry is in Texas.
God bless Texas.
Sherry, how are you?
Glad you called.
Hi, Sean.
Thanks for taking my call.
I want to say that the number one job of the president above all else is to keep the American people safe.
He had no choice but to take out Iran's nuclear capability.
They are a terrorist nation that cannot be trusted, even if he had made a deal.
You can't trust them.
They would have continued to go after Israel and they chant all the time, death to America.
And believe you, they mean it.
So anyway, first of all, I'd like to say on Friday, a caller called in and said that he believed that it was Biden's fault that they got their hands on nuclear capability.
Well, Biden's in office by name only.
We know he wasn't calling the shots.
We know he got there and was put there through voter fraud on purpose.
And we know that he even said himself, we got away with the biggest voter fraud in American history.
He didn't realize it because he had mental decline then.
You were crazy if you couldn't see that.
But they wanted him to be blamed and people keep blaming him.
Yeah, he was there in name only.
But let's not forget, Obama was the one, and he was the one calling the shots, the head of the state.
He was the one who delivered money at night to Iran, a terrorist nation, to use against us.
Yeah, billions in cash and other currency.
And, you know, we have a word for that.
It's called appeasement.
And appeasement doesn't work.
And the Iranians, when Joe Biden became president, they were on the precipice of bankruptcy because of the Donald Trump sanctions that he put in place.
And Biden turned a blind eye to those sanctions.
And he even granted waivers to those sanctions.
And that literally enriched their nuclear program and their ability to foment terror and provide the weaponry to their proxies.
And you can blame them, just like I blame Western Europe for buying Putin's oil because that is funding his war machine.
And then they wonder why, you know, Donald Trump insists that they pay their fair share with NATO.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
Full, complete coverage.
Iran telegraphs a, frankly, pathetically weak and, you know, non-response response for propaganda purposes at our base in Qatar.
None of the six missiles that they fired hit the ground.
They were all taken out of the air.
But they did tell both the Qataris and the U.S. ahead of time that it was coming.
Full coverage, Jennifer Griffin at the Pentagon, Peter Doocy at the White House, Lindsey Graham, Mark Wayne Mullen, Katie Brits, Stephen Miller, Charlie Hurt, Mark Meadows, best coverage coming up tonight, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
