Sean Hannity and Paul Morrow dissect the U.S.-Israel military strategy against Iran, emphasizing capability degradation over ground troop deployment while condemning a nuclear-armed state as an existential threat. The discussion critiques NYC Mayor Eric Adams for dismissing an ISIS-inspired IED attack near Gracie Mansion as a "snowball fight" despite NYPD evidence linking it to radical Islamists, contrasting this with Commissioner Jessica Tisch's findings. Hannity also addresses the asylum plea for Iranian women's soccer players in Australia and exposes alleged encrypted communications from Iran triggering sleeper assets, ultimately arguing that the Biden administration's border failures allow terror ties to flourish unchecked. [Automatically generated summary]
Write down our toll-free telephone number this Monday.
It's 800-941 Sean, if you want to join us.
Just a week into this campaign, and it is unbelievable the shock and awe and overwhelming power of the U.S. and Israel, their military might over Iran.
And we've got a lot to get to in the course of the program, including these homegrown domestic terrorists, ISIS-inspired, Tish, what's her name?
Jessica Tish, the NYPD commissioner, acknowledging these two kids in New York that had these IEDs about to blow them up near Gracie Mansion.
Thank God nothing happened.
Apparently watching online videos of ISIS, which is a cancer that we've got to deal with this too.
And there's so much that you need to know and understand about this online network.
And President Trump, for example, said Monday, if you go online, you will read that Donald Trump's about to send boots on the ground.
That is not the history of Donald Trump.
That is not the Trump doctrine.
That's not how he defeated ISIS, took out Solomani, Baghdadi and associates.
It's not what he did by dropping the mother of all bombs on Afghanistan.
14 bunker busters in Operation Midnight Hammer.
It's not what he's been doing with Epic Fury.
He's leaving open the possibility.
He doesn't want to put handcuffs on himself, but that's not his goal, not his history.
He wants to degrade them, but ultimately says that the Iranian people will decide.
Can I see Americans on the ground helping the Iranians build back their oil manufacturing capabilities soon?
Yeah, I can.
Maybe protected by a small force.
Maybe, yeah.
A lot has to happen.
None of this is easy.
And this is the frustrating part to me.
And I'm not going to waste a lot of time trying to convince stupid people out there that delve in the world of online conspiracy theories.
He's acting at the behest of BB.
No, he's not.
That is not Donald Trump.
He's not acting at the behest of Bibi.
He is acting in America's best national interest.
I've explained this over and over again.
You know, if you don't learn from history, you are doomed to repeat it.
How often have you heard that in your life?
And the last hundred years, human history, what do we know?
Mao, China, Stalin, Russia, Hitler, Germany, Italy, fascism, and Tojo, Japan, Pol Pac, killing fields.
We learned over 100 million human souls can die.
It's called a modern-day holocaust.
And the big tell came in an interview with Steve Witkoff, who was negotiating with the Iranians.
The president kept saying over and over again, like he did before Midnight Hammer, I'd rather have peace.
I don't want to have a conflict.
However, the president understands that a nuclear-armed Iran, and I won't argue with stupid people that if you don't see the nature of this threat, I will never convince you, but you are dumb.
You are really dumb.
And because you don't understand radical ideologues that have been fomenting terror as evidenced by being the number one state sponsor of terror and killing Americans over the years, it can't happen.
And the president has repeatedly said for future generations, you've got to see emerging threats.
And sometimes it's in your national security interest to act now while it's easy rather than later when it is going to be much harder and meaning or impossible, like in the case of North Korea.
And now we have, you know, little Rocket Man with his arsenal of nuclear weapons.
It is a clear and present danger.
Hasn't done anything.
However, I don't even put him on the same level as the supreme leader and the Ayatollahs and radical Islamists convert or die in the sick, twisted, you know, Islamo, radical Islamo-fascist ideology of these radicals.
They're nuts.
They are absolutely, and they're dangerous.
But the president said, in spite of what you might, he's nowhere near ordering boots on the ground.
His history has not shown that.
And it comes, you know, amid reports about, and this is where the online lying comes in.
And let me just educate everybody out there so you are very keenly aware.
There are groups of people out there that are trying especially to influence, and they're targeting mostly young people.
And understand not everything you read online and every comment you read online is even real.
If you've not experienced or experimented with artificial intelligence, you need to become well-versed in it and you will see how sophisticated it is.
But you have countries that don't like us, our top geopolitical foes.
That would include China and Russia and Iran and even some Arab Gulf countries that are paying for bots to be built and they are so human-seeming that it is, you would never know the difference.
Then you have another group of people.
You have the online anonymous keyboard warriors that live in their parents' basement and have nothing to do all day but send out incendiary texts about whoever this person or that person.
That's why I tell people in our industry, don't ever read this crap unless you want to feel horrible about yourself.
A lot of it's not real.
And people read this and they think it's real.
Then you got another group of people that I, you know, you have to wonder whether their opinions, if they're, quote, influencers, where their money's coming from, you know, follow the money.
Well, is it coming directly from a particular country that they're advocating for?
In all likelihood, absolutely not.
Is it coming from some shell company?
Ah, you can convince me that conspiracy theory may be very real.
So, but they are targeting, especially on the issue of anti-Semitism.
It is louder.
It is not as real as the online marketplace would have you believe.
And understand, there are radical Islamists that are fueling this fire and targeting our young people.
And I urge every parent, pay attention to what your kids are doing online.
The president offering a stark warning to the Australian government today.
And I can't believe we're even discussing this.
This should not even be an issue.
This is a humanitarian issue.
And that is the Iranian women's soccer team.
They're slated to return home following the Women's Asian Cup.
The team faces real risk and uncertainty because the war broke out while they were in Australia for the tournament.
And amid concerns for player welfare, the Australian-Iranian Council wrote to Australia and their home affairs minister urging the government to protect the squad members while they are in the country.
Trump weighed in.
He said Australia is making a horrible, terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iran national women's soccer team to be forced back to Iran where they will be most likely killed.
Don't do it, Mr. Prime Minister.
Give them asylum.
The U.S. will take them if you won't.
Australian Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs was asked about whether the country would grant the Iranian players asylum, said the government could not go into individual circumstances for privacy reasons.
Five Iranian women soccer players reportedly defected with the help of police, but the team would not stand.
They refused to sing their national anthem, which was tremendously courageous on their part.
And I'm sure they made that decision together.
I hope for their sake they're not sent back there.
The odds will be very high that they're dead.
All for, you know, I want to go over these Iranian war assumptions.
You know, Iran's supreme leader is untouchable.
Ah, not the case.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard would deploy its terrorist proxies to ignite a regional war.
Now, we're going to get into domestic terror threats, which is why I've been a broken record about Biden's unvetted illegals from over 200 countries, including countries with known terror ties.
Israel is going to be isolated and vulnerable for attack.
Nobody wants to mess with the Israelis or America right now after what they have witnessed with Operation Midnight Hammer and Operation Epic Fury.
They don't want to mess with us.
Trump is warning Iran's new leader is not going to last long now that they have picked the son of Ali Hamani to replace his father.
You know, count the days.
It's like a countdown clock.
And there's a whole issue online about betting markets.
You can actually bet on this stuff and they're going to end up getting people killed.
I don't like online betting anyway.
It just is creating a dopamine hit for people that, you know, maybe have dull, boring lives in some ways.
And, you know, it's fracturing people.
They get addicted to this.
It's worse than cracker heroin, according to addiction experts I've talked to.
Anyway, the president, the first lady together at this dignified transfer.
Everybody hates to see an American die ever.
We don't ever want that.
But let me tell you something.
If you don't believe that a nuclear-armed Iran is a clear and present danger to this country, you don't understand radicalism.
You just don't.
You don't remember what happened.
You know, Trump says, you know, our battleships are 100 times more powerful than the 1940s, and he's building out a new fleet of ships because he understands freedom is but one generation away from extinction.
How do we know that?
Ronald Reagan taught us that.
Ronald Reagan was right.
Anyway, so this new supreme leader, the son of the former supreme leader, we really don't know if this guy has any power or who's really in control anyway.
You know, Iranians foreign minister rejecting Trump's demand that he pick the next supreme leader.
Have a say.
It's going to be at some point when the bombing begins to slow down and it's just ratcheting up because they are taking no chances.
And the idea here is: if you don't understand Trump's mentality, he obliterated the ISIS Caliphate.
He obliterated these nuclear sites so they couldn't enrich any more uranium.
Steve Witkoff offered them civilian use, low-enriched uranium, but they couldn't enrich and turn it into weapons grade for free in perpetuity.
They said no, which tells you everything about what their motivation has been and continues to be.
But between the IDF and the U.S. military, IDF, you know, new wave of strikes targeting 400 Iranian military infrastructure sites, this has been, you look at the before and after satellite imagery, it is unbelievably spectacular.
Report this weekend, it was raining oil on Tehran.
Unreal.
Iran's proxies, yeah, they're waging war on Israel, but they're all getting their asses kicked too, including, you know, you have in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and then the House are threatening to engage, but they're afraid to engage because they know what's going to happen to them also.
And it's sad, but we have to, are we going to learn the lessons of history or are we going to repeat them?
To me, that's what this whole thing is all about.
I don't think this is going to be a forever war.
Hopefully, we won't need any Americans ever on the ground, except maybe, you know, maybe we'll need oil experts to help them extract the oil and they can pay for their own liberation and also create great wealth for the Iranian people so that this once great Persian culture can re-emerge.
By the way, President Trump was great.
The United Kingdom, our once great ally, maybe the greatest of them all, finally giving serious thought on sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East.
That's okay, Prime Minister Starmer.
We don't need them any longer, but we will remember.
We don't need people to join wars, you know, after we've already won them.
It didn't mean win, as in finished, but meaning, you know, too little, too late.
Then they had a phone call about Iran today.
And Starmer, thanks, but no thanks.
I mean, between him, Macron, and others, it's really pathetic.
I've been telling you that Europe is gone.
I'm not wrong.
They have unfettered immigration without assimilation.
Whoever thought Great Britain would have 87 Sharia courts, whoever thought there'd be no-go zones in France and elsewhere in Europe, they have neglected their national defense.
They've adopted radical socialism and radical climate alarmism.
Anyway, by the way, this just came in, and we're going to get into this homegrown terrorism issue at the bottom of this half hour.
ISIS-loving the ISIS-inspired, loving Gracie Mansion bomb thrower, apparently, it just was reported moments ago, grew up in a $2.5 million home.
Oh, grew up a rich person.
You know, maybe Mamdani might be a little more sympathetic to the police that were ambushed, and it was not a kid's snowball fight.
And we'll get into Mamdani's wife apparently liking as many as 70, you know, 70 pro-Hamas posts on Instagram and other social media right after the October 7th attack.
Wow.
Unreal.
Mamdani declined to mention that the bombers were radical Islamists.
I'm not sure.
Trained by ISIS in these online videos, as Jessica Tisch, the commissioner, said.
Now, it is infuriating to me as we, you know, that I have now been warning for the four years of Biden and ever since that there is a threat to our homeland.
Wide open borders, 12 million plus unvetted Biden-Harris mayorcas illegals, among them not only murderers, rapists, child molesters, other violent criminals, but known terrorists.
Ignoring the Terrorist Threat00:08:53
Remember, they came from over 200 countries that we are aware of, many with terror ties.
That is a clear and present danger to the country.
It's that simple.
Now, in this case in New York over the weekend, well, first of all, we learned over the weekend, too, that this, and this got very little play.
Miranda Devine picked up on it after a week-long trial that was barely noticed because of Operation Epic Fury.
He had prosecutors arguing that, you know, this guy in this case who was found guilty of terrorism and murder for hire, and he claimed during the trial that the Iranians, you know, were behind this assassination attempt on Donald Trump, but also claimed Thomas Crooks and Butler PA was.
And then he claimed during the trial that that was in fact the case.
I don't know that to be true, but I'm just reporting what came out.
Anyway, we found out, too, the parents of the alleged ISIS-loving wannabe terrorists.
Again, they're homegrown.
They're not from abroad in this particular case, but that does not mitigate the threat from illegals, unvetted from countries with terror ties.
The two men charged in federal court today with attempting to carry out this ISIS-inspired attack.
And anyway, near New York's Gracie Mansion, the home of New York City Mayor Mamdani, very scary.
And it's, you know, one of the trained terrorists who hurled these shrapnel bombs.
Thank God they didn't go off.
The carnage could have been great.
Outside of Gracie Mansion yelled, Allahu Akbar.
And one of the terrorists that launched the bombs says that is Allahu Akbar while being arrested by police.
Now, this is important for a reason I'll explain on the other side.
Get somebody on the other side.
All right.
Now, why is this more important as he says this?
Because this morning in a press conference on this attempted bombing outside of his own home, and putting aside the issue of his wife liking, you know, all the anti-Israel post that went up after October 7th, which is so sick and twisted and ugly considering she's the first lady of New York City.
Well Amdani today gives a presser, refuses to condemn this pair of ISIS-sympathizing, loving, radical Islamists who are, again, said Allahu Akbar with tossing these IEDs near Gracie Manshing during this protest on Saturday.
This was a vile protest rooted in white supremacy.
None of that is true.
Goes on to say, I'm the first Muslim mayor of our city.
Anti-Muslim bigotry is nothing new to me, nor is it anything new for the one million or so Muslim New Yorkers, adding, while I found the protest appalling, I do not waver in my belief that it should be allowed to happen.
He said they are suspected of coming here to commit acts of terrorism.
We know a lot more.
We know that one of the kids grew up in a $2.5 million mansion.
One top New York City Democrat tried to blame the attempted terror bombing by these ISIS-inspired jihadis on white Christian nationalists, the Manhattan Borough president.
Said Sunday, he blamed the wrong protesters for hurling these devices.
Anyway, here to weigh in on all this friend of the program, our friend Paul Morrow, also a Fox colleague.
He formerly ran counterterrorism operations for NYPD Intelligence.
Can you explain this?
Why can't he just say what this is here?
If it was white nationalism, if it was anything other than this guy yelling Allahu Akbar, fine.
Why can't he condemn his wife liking those posts, some 70 of them, according to reports?
Yeah, I mean, Sean, thank you for having me.
It just does feel indefensible, does it, Did?
And, you know, even in the press conference today, this morning, where he had the opportunity to sleep on it and sort of clean it up, he still led very strongly with the counterprotesters and went very deep into how abhorrent it was, etc.
Now, look, I'm not defending an idiotic stunt like bringing a roasted pig to a protest in order to antagonize.
Nobody is defending that.
Nobody.
Of course not.
But this protest was originally, correct me if I'm wrong, wasn't it designed to honor the late Ali Hamani, the leader of the number one state sponsor of terror?
Absolutely.
And that's what the focus should have remained on for the counterprotesters.
You play into the hands of these people by pulling stunts like that.
But that said.
No, I agree with you, and I think that's an important point.
To equate that, though, in any way, even in rhetoric, to the hurling of two IEDs that would have been the equivalent, had they detonated, of firing shotguns into a dense crowd is abhorrent, especially when the reporting came out quite early that, and Fox broke it, that they were loaded with TATP, which is a fingerprint of the biggest jihadi entities out there, as in Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban.
Can you make it at home?
You can try.
And if they did, very clearly they didn't succeed because it's a tricky business.
They're lucky they didn't blow themselves up.
But very clearly, this became something that punched at a very high weight very quickly.
And he has advisors around him, as in people from the NYPD Intelligence Bureau, who would have told him all this.
And yet the reflex was exactly what you say was him, Manhattanborough president, the New York State Senator, Liz Krueger, and others who immediately went to the idea that this was white supremacy.
Well, I find that abhorrent in and of itself.
The guy yelled Allahu Akbar.
I mean, it can't be any more transparent.
We learned from the NYPD commissioner today, Jessica Tish, that in fact, these guys were deep into this and inspired by these ISIS videos that are online.
And I urge parents, pay attention to what your kids are watching online.
Here's what scares me more.
On top of what I said, again, this is not a case of illegal immigrants.
However, we have known terrorists in this country, Paul.
Known terrorists from over 200 countries, many with terror ties.
And they were not vetted and they're in the country, but we don't know where they are.
Now, ABC News is reporting at this hour, the U.S. has intercepted encrypted communications believed to have originated in Iran that may serve as, quote, an operational trigger for sleeper assets outside the country, according to a federal government alert sent to law enforcement agencies.
And anyway, ABC reviewed this and said preliminary signal analysis of a transmission likely of Iranian origin relayed across multiple countries shortly after the death of Ali Khamani.
That is pretty scary.
That means that would be a trigger for any sleeper cells that are in the country, which I would not doubt one second exist.
Of course they do.
And all you have to do is look at Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is Iran's tatspaw.
They always have been.
And I'm going to tell you, we're in uncharted territory right now, Sean, because the 15, 16 years that I was doing counterterrorism work, Iran was fairly stable.
They never had the mullahs in a position where they could be wiped out for good.
This could be the end of this regime.
And that puts us into uncharted territory.
And when you consider that Hezbollah gets about 50% of their funding from Iran, they're capable of doing anything that they can to survive here, spread the battlefield to the home front, or just lash out just as an act of revenge as they feel themselves going down for good.
So while I am skeptical that Iran has the ability to situate and fund longtime sleeper cells in the way we sort of think of them, as in like the way the Russians did in counter espionage and that kind of thing, where you had what they call illegals here for three decades waiting to be activated or collecting intelligence, this is a very different thing because Hezbollah is a criminal organization.
A lot of people don't realize that.
They're a global mafia.
And that puts at your disposal thousands of potential operators, many of whom undoubtedly came into our country through the southern border.
We've got gotaways.
The Architect of the Ambush00:04:39
We got the numbers.
Tom Holman can cite them.
And so the idea that we allowed that to happen and now we have this just shows you what an abdication of security and responsibility we saw.
And I'm going to put it on my orchestra, man.
You don't hear much about that guy anymore, but he is the architect of this.
And I was the worst for it.
The borders closed, the border's secure.
He just flat out lied to us.
There were two big lies in the Biden years.
One, the borders closed, the border's secure.
It wasn't.
We know we showed it every night on TV.
Number two is Joe is more energy and is more cognitively aware than anybody I know.
All right, that was a lie, too.
We were pointing that out since 2019.
Let me ask you this.
You know the inner workings of the NYPD better than anybody listening to this program.
So we have an ambush against police officers.
Phone calls made, draw the police in.
They're ambush with iceballs to get facial lacerations.
And Mamdani calls it a snowball fight.
I call it an ambush.
It was a disgrace that he said that.
Now, the police commissioner called it for what it was, an attack on law enforcement.
He was right.
Now, we have Mamdani, you know, claiming this attack was by one group, and you have the NYPD commissioner telling the truth that this was an ISIS-inspired attack.
And we have the tape of Allahu Akbar now at odds with the mayor again.
I don't see this relationship lasting long.
Do you?
You know, unfortunately, I don't.
Look, the big rumor about her is give a little insight baseball that I don't think is that inside anymore.
She has big political aspirations herself, and this is a way to stay in the public eye.
But how long can she last, even if she expects to run against him in three years?
So they're very, very much at odds.
I worked with her.
You know, I know her.
Oh, I knew her a bit.
I haven't seen her since.
But look, she's competent.
It's undeniable.
I know she takes some criticism from.
She's telling the people of New York the truth.
Exactly.
At least she's standing up for law enforcement.
I mean, these guys had facial laceration.
Did you see that video?
They're coming up behind cops and taking boulders of snow with ice in it and smashing it over their heads.
I mean, it was disgusting.
Oh, it's only a snowball fight among kids.
No, it wasn't.
It was an ambush.
Yeah, well, and irrespective of injuries and whether or not it was just snow or just ice, which is ridiculous on its face, but the disrespect that he essentially signed on to is just nothing we've seen.
We haven't seen anything like that in this city in my experience.
Even back when I was a kid, in this city.
Paul, what's the matter?
You got to get with the program.
I mean, defund, dismantle, reimagine the police and then the social workers, Paul.
I'm sure they're equipped to deal with crazy people saying they're going to kill everybody on a subway trade.
Yeah, and you know, he's in a tough spot as well because he's painted himself into this corner with the DSA who put him there.
But yet, as the saying goes, you run in poetry, but you got to govern in prose.
And he still has to make the trains run on time.
And you and I both know that if he adheres to what is essentially communism, he talks about the warmth of collectivism.
The city can't run.
It's going to continue to decline as it did under de Blasio.
And he's going to be in a very tough spot.
And good luck getting re-elected.
But on the other hand, de Blasio did.
Oh, I mean, we affectionately referred to him as Comrade de Blasio.
And it's just mind-numbing to me.
I don't know why he would lie at such a spectacular level when the tape is there.
We have the tape of the guy.
Why would he do that?
Yeah, and, you know, the people that I name-checked earlier, the borough president and some of the other politicians, they were reacting online in real time, as I was, to the video.
So you had video out.
It's not like, well, I got the early facts wrong.
You had the video of the two guys, one of which very clearly shows the Lat lighting the fuse and yelling a Lahu Akbar.
Not hard to interpret if you've been a sentient human being in this country over the last decades.
We know what that was.
You know, it's interesting.
My governor, Ron DeSantis, down here in Florida, he allows people to get trained by the NYPD.
They have pretty good training and then offers people a $5,000 bonus to come to a state where they're going to be appreciated.
And they're coming in droves.
They don't want to work there because they know they're not going to have the support of the mayor.
Paul Morrow, we do appreciate you, all your years of service.