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June 26, 2025 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
01:00:08
20250626_it-aint-gonna-be-you-lady-dave-smith-refuses-to-be
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Iran's Nuclear Program Lies 00:09:09
You wanted to debate me because I'm so wrong about everything and I'm so influential and you wanted to smack it down.
It ain't gonna be you, lady.
What you're talking about here is a regime whose fundamental motto is death to Israel and death to the United States.
Everybody is fully, fully aware that the regime has always been months away from developing nuclear weapons.
Just total bullshit.
I do not think it's a legitimate justification for them to launch a war because they claim someone else is making nukes when they're not.
Should Donald Trump get the Nobel Peace Prize?
Well, I guess grading on the Obama curve, everybody deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.
If you're so against what Israel is doing, why are you so happy to fund this regime in its domestic and regional terror?
It's almost like I'm opposing war across the board.
You are the most demoralized, brain-rotted idiot alive.
Just a moment, we'll have an exceptional debate on the Iran crisis with two uncensored favorite guests, Dave Smith and Eleka Lebanon.
We'll begin with a view from Tehran.
Dr. Fawad Izadi is a professor of world politics at Tehran University, an influential pro-Iranian regime commentator.
Mr. Izadi, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
Thank you for having me.
I'm Puro Iran, not Puro-Iranian regime.
I understand.
First of all, just, if you may, paint a picture for what life at the moment is like in Tehran.
What is the mood of the people there?
It's becoming normal gradually.
This was a surprise attack.
People were thinking that if there is a military confrontation, it would come if negotiations fail.
The negotiations were scheduled on Friday, and the attacks came two days before the next round of negotiations.
So everybody was surprised.
Some people left major cities, some people stayed.
In the last couple of days, since the ceasefire, people are gradually coming back.
We have had more than 600 civilian casualties, mostly women and children.
So there are going to be funerals.
People didn't do funerals during attacks.
But I think the city is getting back to its normal way, and people who have been lost are going to be remembered by their family members.
People are stunned that this is seemingly all over after just 12 days, and that Iran is prepared to maintain this ceasefire, given what was obviously a very humiliating 12 days for the regime.
First, with Israel attacking and controlling the skies above Tehran seemingly with impunity.
And then, of course, the United States launching the bunker buster bombs on three nuclear sites, again, with apparent ease.
You know, people felt from the rhetoric coming out of the regime leadership that the retaliation would be significantly more prolonged and more in scale than we've seen.
Why is the regime prepared to honor a ceasefire so quickly?
And do you think it will hold?
I think one reason is because of the surprise.
Nobody was expecting this attack.
When a government is surprised, when the government and the nation is attacked in this manner, it will take time for them to go back to normal.
So if there is a ceasefire offer and it came from the United States, Israelis asked for it because of the hits they were getting from Iran.
Iran accepted.
But I don't think anyone in Iran has this line of thinking that Israelis will follow through with the ceasefire.
I think people expect Israelis to do to Iran what they are doing to Lebanon.
They attack Lebanon anytime they want.
And I think they are going to do the same thing with Iran.
So the Iranian government is going to take some measures to make sure that the government and the people are not surprised again.
What would those measures look like?
Because there's lots of conjecture about how damaged Iran's nuclear program has been by these strikes.
Do you have any information about that?
Because certainly from the Iranian side, they're making noises that there was significant damage.
US intelligence, slightly less so.
I don't think the Iranian government is going to make that knowledge public because if they say it wasn't damaged, that would give Israelis and Americans reasons to attack Iran again illegally.
And if they say it is damaged, it is not damaged.
If they say it's damaged, then this is not going to be good for a country that needs deterrence.
So I think one of the ideas that the Iranian government had was to keep its nuclear program going so the other side would realize that Iran is not defenseless.
So I think this is going to be kept secret and the other side can use the mechanism that they have to find out what the reality is.
You, I understand, do not believe that Iran was engaged in a nuclear program in the way that's been reported.
So just explain that to me, because certainly from the last Atomic Agency report, independent body, obviously, they said that there had been a rapid increase in the enrichment of uranium by the Iranian regime from about 3.5% to 60%, which, as you know, is about 30% shy of weaponizing into a nuclear bomb.
And that is the pretext on which Israel attacks and then America attacked.
And obviously, many people have views that Israel planned this for a long time.
That may well be the case.
But they certainly used this report as evidence of a rapid expansion of the enrichment of uranium with bigger stocks enriched to higher levels, way higher than would be needed for civilian usage.
What is it that you don't agree with about that?
You know, that report came out, and the way it's supposed to work is that the International Atomic Energy Agency would refer that report to the UN Security Council.
And if they want to pass a resolution on that, they can pass a resolution, put Iran under Article 42 of Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, then you can attack Iran.
Just because IEA published the report doesn't give anyone any permission to attack Iran.
So that's point number one.
The second point is that the US intelligence community had this report on Iran's nuclear program in March.
And it had three points.
It gave three points about Iran's nuclear program.
The first point was that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon.
The second point was that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon program.
And the third point was that the Iranian leaders have not decided to have a nuclear weapon program.
Tulsi Gabert, the head of the US intelligence community, took that report, went to the US Senate Intelligence Committee, presented that report.
The video is available online.
I put it on Twitter.
And that was the conclusion of the US intelligence community.
The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Gorossi, has been doing a lot of interviews in the last few days, saying the same thing, saying that with all the inspections that IEA had, they never found any nuclear weapon program in Iran.
They said that Iran is enriching at 60%, but that doesn't mean that you have a nuclear weapon program.
But they did also, just to jump in there, they did also say that the Iranian regime had gone out of its way to hide information and was not being fully cooperative in inspections and so on.
So again, if you're Israel or the United States, you have a situation of everyone agreeing the Iranian has been enriched to a very high level with no real explanation as to why other than it appeared to be on the progression path to weaponization to a nuclear bomb.
And secondly, you've got the Iranians who are in charge of this obfuscating, hiding, not being completely transparent about it.
And it was that, I think, double-pronged element to this report, which was what triggered the alarm bells.
Exposing Israeli Hypocrisy 00:17:46
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Yes, if you're Israel, you don't have any respect for international law, you're killing 25 children on a daily basis in the last 20 months in a genocide.
Yes, if you're Israel, you would find an excuse to attack Iran.
But you are not Israel.
You are a British journalist, a very famous one.
And violating international law in this manner is not going to be good for anyone when you attack another country.
Two nuclear states attacked a non-nuclear state because of a report that the director of the organization that provided the report says that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon program.
And, you know, the budget of IAEA is $35 million.
$22 million out of that is used to inspect Iran.
Iran is the most inspected country in the world.
But you know the reason for that, don't you?
And the reason for that is self-evidently because Iran has for a very long period of time been the main sponsor in terms of money and weaponry for Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, a variety of terrorist groups who are wedded to the elimination of Israel.
With pride, Iran has been a supporter of the Palestinian cause with pride.
They are resistance organizations.
But terrorism isn't resistance, is it?
They don't do terrorism.
They don't do genocide.
They want to free their land, the same thing that British people.
You've accused the Israelis of genocide, but actually, Hamas openly talks in a genocidal way of wanting to get rid of Israel.
That is the purest personification of genocide.
If Israelis had followed the Oslo agreement, the agreement at this time, you would not have October 7th, you would have peace.
The problem that Israelis have is that they want to eliminate the nation.
It is not possible.
It's not going to happen even if you do genocide.
The Palestinian nation will live and Natan Yehu will go to jail because he's under an indictment by international courts.
But you don't dispute that Iran has supported those three groups.
With pride.
With pride.
It's an honor for Iranians.
You know, when there's a genetic...
Were you proud about October the 7th?
We are proud of supporting Hamas because there are liberation.
No, I understand that.
But were you proud of what they did on October the 7th?
Yes, I think.
You were proud of what they did?
Murdering Holocaust survivors, grandparents, babies, incinerating people, attacking hundreds of people at a music festival.
You were proud of that?
These are Israeli talking points.
A lot of civilians are not...
They're not talking points.
They're facts.
No, it's not a fact.
It's fake news.
A lot of civilians were killed by the Israeli army because they were shooting at anybody that was moving.
3,000 members of Hamas came over the border in multiple waves, at multiple points, and attacked any Israelis that they came across.
They set fire to people in their homes.
They brutally murdered hundreds of music goers at a festival.
The bodies were found.
It's undeniable.
They kidnapped 255, six people, including Holocaust survivors and babies.
I mean, these are not disputable facts.
Just because you survived Holocaust, that doesn't give you permission to occupy other people's land.
We have very few civilians in occupied Palestine, both male and females serve in the Israeli army.
And when you do to Palestinians what Israelis have done, then you shouldn't be surprised if the Palestinians fight back.
This is very normal.
But terrorism isn't resistance or fighting back.
It's terrorism.
Whoever's doing it.
And I've been very critical recently of what the Israeli government has been doing in Gaza in the last few months.
I think it's crossed any line of self-defense.
However, the idea that you are prepared to say on camera that you are proud of what Hamas did on October the 7th is frankly disgusting.
Thank you very much.
It's disgusting for the British government to be supplying the genocidal regime with weapons.
That is disgusting.
Okay, we'll leave it there.
Professor Azadi, thank you for joining me.
Thank you.
Well, we'll return now to the VEX debate about U.S. involvement, Israeli influence, and the moral case for war on Tehran.
She's a lot of Dave Smith on our sensor recently.
Not there's anything wrong with that.
Dave's always welcome here.
He's back for another debate today because his co-panelist, while discussing debate ideas with our producers, said these words.
It has to be Dave Smith.
The man has so much influence and he's so wrong on every level.
The world needs to understand why every one of his points is garbage.
So I may as well take the next hour off.
But join me for what I think will be a fascinating discussion on an imperative subject.
Elika Laban, the Iranian-American attorney and activist, and Dave Smith, libertarian commentator and the host of Part of the Problem.
Let me just start before we go any further, Elika, just with a response to my interview there with Professor Izadi in Tehran, which was actually reasonably, you know, civilized, normal, until the end when he brazenly said he was proud of what Hamas did on October the 7th.
And at that point, I realized he was a complete lunatic.
But what did you feel listening to it?
I'm glad the world's finally realizing what we've been knowing for the past 46 years.
But ultimately, you know, you just have to look at their talking points and realize the ridiculous hypocrisy of it.
Wasn't his whole thing that Palestinians have been oppressed and therefore it is their moral obligation and everyone's moral obligation to attack Israel.
Well, by that same logic, what they're doing to Iranian people, lynching them, torturing them, blinding them, then by that logic, the entire world should be bombing Iran right now.
So, how can you speak out of both sides of your mouth saying that this type of oppression justifies not just military intervention but terrorism?
But you don't think anything should happen to you while you're doing this to your own people.
And that's how you know it's a bluff.
That's how you know it was never about Palestinian people.
It was never about oppression.
These are not people who care about oppression.
These are the enforcers of oppression who weaponize oppression in order to gain legitimacy in their attacks on Israel.
Dave, we're going to come to the main debate in a few moments, but just your reaction to that interview with Professor Rizzani.
Because, like I say, it was like a game of two halves, right?
Where for most of it, he seemed perfectly reasonable, really, albeit it wouldn't be arguments I would put forward or agree with.
But I could understand where he was coming from, and he seemed quite reasonable.
And then, right at the end, I mean, for somebody just to on camera say they were proud of what Hamas did on October the 7th, what was your reaction to that?
Very similar to yours.
I thought there were a lot of reasonable things said up until that point.
But of course, I think this isn't that uncommon.
Regimes and supporters of regimes are often guilty of just the most outrageous hypocrisy.
And you think of historical examples like Joseph Stalin used to put out propaganda about how horribly racist America was and how Jim Crow was terrible and they treated the black people so terrible in the United States of America, which like it was true, but what a hypocrite for Joseph Stalin to be pretending like he was concerned with human rights as he, you know, oversaw the gulags and stuff like that.
And so I think, listen, the claim that Hamas and Hezbollah have never engaged in terrorism is just ridiculous and stupid.
And, you know, but then again, I would say, I also think the claim that the IDF has never engaged in terrorism is kind of equally ridiculous.
And so, you know, it is in a sense the hypocrisy of all of the regimes allows somebody like that to point out your hypocrisy, to say, to say, oh, yeah, Pierce, well, you're criticizing Iran saying that they're a state sponsor of terrorism as a citizen of a government that is sponsoring Israel's destruction of Gaza.
And, you know, so again, there's awful, all of this is just horrible.
And there's awful hypocrisy all around.
I, you know, I think there were some fair points that he made in there, but yeah, I mean, listen, October 7th.
And even if you want to go with the idea that there was friendly fire or even some type of like Hannibal directive issued, there's been people who have done deep dives into this, and there is some evidence that some people died that way.
But there's just no question that Hamas crossed the border and killed a lot of innocent people.
And as I've been saying to you since I've been on your show, Pierce, I just think it's horrible when people downplay that and it does nothing but undercut their focus purely on the GoPro footage that Hamas broadcasts to the world, if that's all you do, you see exactly the horror that they perpetrated.
All right, Elika, you wanted to come on, but specifically with Dave Smith, you think he's wrong about absolutely everything.
So just outline your main complaints about Dave Smith.
You know, I don't have an outline, but I think I can just go off of everything that he says.
You know, in this example, you correctly pointed out what the Soviet Union was doing.
You correctly pointed out that they would use these kernel of truths as part of their disinformation campaigns.
But the question is, what were their disinformation campaigns rooted in?
Well, we know what the entire communist agenda was, and that was demoralization of the West in order to sort of gain this traction internally within the West so that they would overthrow their own government.
So the whole point of Soviet disinformation and ideological subversion was to convince people that the West and Israel was the source of all evil in the world.
All of the KGB defectors have said the same thing.
Yuri Bezmanov, Mokhai Pachepa.
But the way they talk about how this is achieved, they talk about demoralization.
And demoralization is the point where you can no longer tell truth from fiction.
You can no longer tell right from wrong.
And what happens when you reach that stage?
You start making moral equivalencies between liberal democracies and terrorists and autocrats.
So when you say there, yes, yes, I do see that the Islamic Republic are terrorists, but I don't see how other liberal democracies are not terrorists as well.
That is exactly the ideological subversion which you correctly identified, but don't see how it's a part of your own talking points.
Dave?
No, that's, I mean, that's just a talking point yourself there.
I mean, it's just not true.
I know.
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That the defenders of Israel often like to use this term moral equivalency, but it's just made up and doesn't apply to what I'm saying at all.
I mean, if I were to say that I no way ever said that the society of Iran is identical to the society of Israel, or that the people, the citizens of that country, both enjoy the same amount of liberty.
I've never said there are massive differences.
List, I would not, I would say that American society, certainly within America, was far superior to Iraqi society under Saddam Hussein.
But you can say that and also say that George W. Bush launched an illegal war in Iraq.
These things aren't contradictory at all.
And so what I'm talking about, let me finish.
What I'm talking about here is that the IDF is committing acts of terrorism.
And so you can say it doesn't count when a government does it, but there's no objective moral standard to that.
So I'm not making an equivalency between anything.
I'm just pointing out that these two groups both have committed terrorism.
And so in the same sense that you could point out how two people have both committed the same crime, that is not the same as saying those two people are identical in every way.
So when you, yeah, so you are drawing these moral equivalencies and you're doing exactly that.
You're saying, I'm just saying, how is the IDF different to Hamas?
How is the IDF different to the Islamic Republic?
I didn't say that.
No, you're making, you're saying that.
There are, I could list off right now.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
Because you're starting with completely strawmanning my position.
So let's just before you just argue.
Hold on, hold on.
So before you argue with what you made up, instead of arguing with what I'm saying, I could name a thousand differences between Hamas and the IDF.
I'm not saying there's no difference between them.
Clarify what you're saying.
I don't think it could be any clearer.
I'm saying they both commit horrific acts, both kill innocent people.
You have said now, and you've said online on Twitter when you were debating people, you asked this exact question, which is exactly what a demoralized person would ask.
How is this different to that?
How is Israel doing this different to that?
Now, let me just start by saying this is like a basic IQ test.
I could say, how is this act different from this act?
That's not saying how is this entity identical to this other entity?
The point is that targeting innocent.
Sure.
It's exactly like saying, how is it different between a cop and a robber when they're both pointing guns at each other and they're both making each other feel threatened?
Isn't that the exact same thing?
Yes, sure.
It is the exact same act, but it is a different motivation.
Okay, that's what the difference is.
Because when you have a regime like the Islamic Republic or Hamas, that's literal inception and existence is based on the destruction of Israel and death to America, and basically just killing everybody who disagrees with their ideology, and another entity whose focus is on protecting its people, yes, the actions may look the same.
And in fact, the actions may be just as wrong as each other.
They may be just as brutal and terroristic as each other, but the motivation is different.
And to be demoralized means to not understand that.
Hang on a second.
All right, let me jump in there because actually, what difference does it make to the innocent civilians who are made to innocent civilians who are killed?
Whether one has a better motivation for doing it?
Because my problem with what Israel's doing in Gaza is that in direct contrast to what it did in Lebanon with Hezbollah, in direct contrast to what it did in Iran, both very precise, very targeted, very successful operations, minimal civilian casualties.
In Gaza, well, hang on, in Gaza, the strategy has been completely different.
It's been a strategy of sort of nihilism where they just destroy everything in Gaza.
Almost every hospital is either now, well, hang on, let me finish, is either destroyed or damaged in some way.
We know this actually because we have to listen to British doctors who've come out and told everybody what is actually going on there.
Because, of course, international journalists are still banned by the IDF, even though they were allowed in previous conflicts in Gaza.
They're not allowed in to verify anything in this one, which I find very suspicious.
But here's my point, Elika.
I defended Israel's right to defend itself after October the 7th, not least because the Hamas spokesman went public almost immediately and said, We want to keep doing this.
So I completely understand Israel's not just a need or a right, but a duty to defend its people.
However, what we've seen in the last few months with a three-month blockade of starvation of already war-torn, impoverished people, and then this constant bombardment, including in the last six weeks, endless bombardments of people who are desperately lining up to get food.
Now, they are dying.
It seems very mysteriously.
The IDF says we shot in the air as warnings.
Sometimes they use other language, which means they may have shot towards people they saw as a threat, or they are now investigating what happened.
I read out earlier in a previous debate about this, all the different times this has happened in the last six weeks.
It's endless.
Motives Behind the Violence 00:15:25
And the idea that the IDF are not killing people in this way when everybody else involved says they are is ridiculous.
So the point I think Dave is making quite straightforwardly is that what the IDF's been doing over the last three months to me crosses any line of self-defense and could absolutely be categorized as terrorizing the innocent people of Gaza.
Now, it doesn't mean they're not in their heads going, in their heads, they're going after Hamas.
Their motivation is we want to kill the bad guys.
But they have lost all sense of proportion and they are now behaving in a way that if other people were doing it to them, they would categorize as terrorism.
Okay, so let me just answer you in two points.
First of all, let me ask you this question.
If Hamas was entirely separated from the civilian population, let's say it was totally down north and everyone else, sorry, up north and everyone else was down south.
Do you think that we'd see these civilian casualties?
No, no enemy in modern warfare has ever been entirely separated from civilian populations.
It's for the birds.
It doesn't happen.
My brother and my brother-in-law were both army colonels, right?
It's just for the birds.
This idea you get some clean war where civilians are nowhere near any of it.
It doesn't really happen ever.
Yes, it does happen because you just used the example of Iran.
You saw an example where no civilians have been killed in modern warfare.
Not no civilians, it's the amount of civilians.
And it is the fact that Hamas doesn't just embed itself, it embeds as many civilians in Lebanon.
The fact there are more civilians in Lebanon than there are in Gaza.
How was it that Mossa was able to target 3,000 members of Hezbollah with a pager device that exploded?
But in Gaza, the only way to deal with it, apparently, same situation in Lebanon, Hezbollah live amongst civilians.
The only way they can apparently do it in Gaza is to obliterate Gaza and kill tens of thousands of civilians as they go after Hamas.
I don't understand the difference.
Okay, let me answer the question and then you'll understand.
What you're doing right now is you're not just legitimizing Hamas's strategy, you are encouraging it.
No, because the whole thing, let me explain.
No, people are listening to this, right?
I mean, they know what I've said.
If you let me finish my sentence, and then at the end of it, you can tell me if you agree.
Shall we agree on that?
Sure.
Okay.
When Hamas intentionally embeds itself amongst civilian populations, the whole point of that strategy is that there'll be so much civilian casualties that the world will look at Israel and say, what an abhorrent pariah state that has lost all legitimacy.
Okay, so let me finish.
So let me finish.
So every time the world does that, every time the world reacts in that way, it reinforces Hamas's behavior because it tells them this works.
So in this moment that you're saying this, you are encouraging Hamas to the people.
So we shouldn't talk about.
We shouldn't talk about the 50, 60, 70,000 civilians.
We don't actually know how many have been killed.
We believe 70,000 have been killed, of which perhaps 25 to 30,000 are Hamas.
We don't know because no one can ever give me actual figures.
You should talk about it and you should frame it within the context of look how much destruction there is when terrorists embed themselves in civilian populations.
Let me get Dave to respond.
Let me get Dave to respond.
Listen, we should talk about it, but only in the framework that it's not the fault of the people who are dropping the bombs on the innocent people or shooting the people who are the ones.
Hey, you know what?
You just had, excuse me, you just had your whole thing about let you finish and then you can respond to that.
So why don't we do the same?
You understand me and you stopped me when you were being opened by saying that Pierce, you got interrupted when you said Pierce was running cover for Hamas by pointing out that Israel is going too far.
I'm making a lot of people.
Quiet quiet.
Let me let me.
No, you didn't.
Your point stopped.
Listen, all right.
Let's talk over each other.
Eleka, let Dave respond and then you respond to it.
I listened to the garbage.
Let him respond, then you respond.
Let me get in.
No, but I didn't.
All right, but stop talking.
Lady, let me just honestly, let me just save you all the time in this debate.
You wanted to debate me because I'm so wrong about everything and I'm so influential and you wanted to smack it down.
It ain't going to be you, lady.
You're not the one who's going to stop me.
This is just ridiculous.
Lady.
Okay, I'll call you whatever.
Oh, okay.
Good one.
Oh, yeah.
You really smacked down my bad ideas.
Anyway, again, all this.
You can't get to realize it.
You're too stupid to realize how bad your ideas are.
There you go.
That's the argument you got.
Anyway, can I talk now?
Sure.
Okay.
So, Pierce, as always, it's just the same thing on repeat here, right?
So, the defense is to go, but look, the motivation of Israel is pure.
The motivation of everybody else is evil, even though obviously what Israel is doing is objectively torturing women and children to death as they die with their bones crushed under rubble.
But still, but also, Pierce, don't let it mess with you that at the highest levels of the Israeli government, they've kind of told you what their motivations are here.
I mean, the South African case that they brought to the International Court of Justice was like 90% just direct quotes from Israeli leaders.
The prime minister himself referred to them as Amalek when talking to the military.
You got the finance minister, the defense minister bragging about how nobody's getting any food for a three-month period, bragging that not one ounce of grain will get into Gaza.
I mean, I'm sorry.
This is just, this is obviously terrorism.
It borders on genocide.
It's horrifically wrong.
And for you to use your example of saying like, oh, this is what I'm saying is that a guy who robs a store and a cop who comes to stop them are committing the same act because they're pointing a gun at each other.
Yeah, but of course in that example, right?
But in that, no, that's what you said.
That's what you said about my point.
And it was really dumb because in that example, there aren't innocent people being slaughtered.
Yeah, yeah, kind of.
Okay, so.
Elika, let me ask you a question, which is this.
Are you comfortable with everything that Israel's done in the last three months?
No, I've always said that there should be dual criticism.
And that's exactly what my problem has been this whole time.
Everybody's criticizing Israel, which is fair.
But why isn't anybody criticizing the reason why Gaza looks like this?
Because Hamas has decided to advance.
They are, though.
I mean, I couldn't have been more critical of Hamas going back 20 months.
I mean, I still am now.
I think they're a despicable, despicable terror group.
Well, they're a despicable terror group.
They're committing one of the worst terror attacks of modern times.
I mean, it's not a problem.
Your earpiece maybe wasn't working for the whole first five minutes of this where me and Pierce both agreed that the previous guest was ridiculous to downplay Hamas's crimes and that they had committed horrific acts of terrorism.
What I was responding to in terms of what Pierce said to me, he was talking about why is it that we can do targeted military strikes in Iran, but we've decided to entirely desecrate Gaza.
And my response was that, not saying that it was right, but I'm saying that when Hamas embeds itself in all of Gaza, it is going to result in ruin.
And it reinforces the point that I've been making this entire time, not just since October 7th, but for the past three years that I've been talking about terrorist regimes, which is that they bring mass death and destruction everywhere they go.
Most of the time, that is true.
I agree with that.
But I also know that Israel, through Mossad, have supposedly the most sophisticated, experienced intelligence operation in the world.
And it was brilliantly seen with the Hezbollah Pager attack.
It's been brilliantly identified by the way they managed to identify where all the military leaders and nuclear scientists and nuclear sites were going to be in Iran for Israel to attack.
From a purely military perspective and intelligence perspective, Israel did an extraordinary job both with dealing with Hezbollah and the Iranian regime.
However, it does just beg the obvious question.
Why were they not able to foresee in any way, apparently, that Hamas were going to spend 20 years spending the billions of dollars which Netanyahu had encouraged them to have because he believed in divide and rule with the Palestinian Authority, that they had these billions of dollars and were spending it on creating one of the world's biggest underground tunnel systems to operate from.
And then, how did Mossad not know anything about 3,000 Hamas terrorists pouring over its border when they're literally on their border and they're guarding it all day long?
So I just cannot understand how this could have happened.
And then I don't understand why Israel is responding in a way which it's never responded to anything like this in this way before.
Why is Gaza?
And then you had the Swadridge.
Then you had the Swadridge quote, Zanika, where he brazenly talks now last week on camera that the plan now is to cleanse Gaza of Palestinians.
That is ethnic cleansing.
That is a war crime.
That's obviously wrong.
That's obviously wrong.
So we need to agree.
We need to agree certain things like that.
Because honestly, it's important to me.
It's like when people don't condemn Hamas, I sort of tune out because it's like, you know, the last guy, the moment he just said he was proud of what Hamas did, I tune out of him as a credible guest.
But if you're prepared to admit what very, very few pro-Israelis right now will admit, which is that some of this strategy is completely wrong, I think we may get somewhere.
It's so foundational to acknowledge that fact.
It is so foundational to say that just because you have the right to defend yourself, it doesn't mean that you have carte blanche.
It is so foundational to acknowledge all of these things, to acknowledge the death, the destruction, all of it.
This is not what my conversation is about.
This is not about has there been damage or destruction or whatever.
The whole point of this conversation is that you're making moral equivalencies.
And these moral equivalencies blur the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil.
Now, you can say that, but some of these actions look like they are evil in themselves, but the entire, entire conversation always goes down to intent.
That is what our entire criminal justice is.
But I don't agree with that.
I honestly don't agree.
You've just said, well, there's something wrong.
You've just said that some of the things Israel's been doing are evil, right?
You've drawn your own moral equivalency.
You said both sides.
Hang on, hang on.
Both sides are doing evil things.
That's surely the point Dave Smith was making.
No, let me tell you why.
Let me tell you why it's different.
Because there is one side that kills ideology to protect its people.
And there is one side that kills people to protect its ideology.
That is the difference.
I'm going to give you an example so you understand the nuance of what I'm trying to say.
Let's say that there's a room of 100 people, okay?
And in that 100 people, you're told that 10 of these people want to kill your people.
Now, if you were to shoot and kill everyone in that room, that is objectively immoral and wrong.
Objectively, right?
But you are doing it out of protection.
It's still disgusting and abhorrent and wrong.
Now, let's say at the same time, you know that 10 people in that room of innocent civilians are against your ideology.
And you murdered the entire room to protect your ideology.
Both actions are equally immoral and evil as each other, but the motivation is completely different.
And you cannot make equivalencies of those motivations.
Right, Dave.
But in your own words, you just said that both actions are equally immoral.
I mean, this is, it sounds right, right?
Okay.
It sounds a lot like kind of the rationalization that your first guest was saying there, Pierce, that like, well, you know, everybody serves in the IDF in Israel, and therefore we really just got to go after everybody because you never know who here might be one of our oppressors or something like that.
It's all just ridiculous logic.
And look, there's, there's not, there's the, what is the intention of an ethnic cleansing campaign?
Is that an unintended consequence as Israel is floating this out?
Huh?
It's not an ethnic cleansing campaign.
This is just regurgitating buzzwords.
But I clearly see.
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Listen, this is what just so no, I'm not regurgitating buzzwords.
I'm talking about what one of the most powerful people at the absolute top of the Israeli government, their finance minister said.
Look, the people, the Palestinians in Gaza in the West Bank, are there largely because they were ethnically cleansed out of where they were living for generations before that.
So, no, I'm sorry.
It's just what's ridiculous.
What's really worth it?
You're talking about the Nakba?
Yes.
Yeah, you're talking about the fact that when the war broke out against Israel, that some of the camps were exiled because some of them were collaborating with the Arabs that were engaging in the war with Israel.
And other of them, others of them were not, which is why they were gratified.
Yeah, 750.
We're not going to get into this conversation.
Oh, no, actually, we are.
And you don't get to just say we're not going to get into this conversation.
You're not answering the point that I've made.
I clearly said in that example that I gave you that both of those situations were completely wrong, but that motivation was different.
And that is how you know.
And you haven't addressed that.
No, sorry.
Maybe you're not getting me.
Yes, I think it's completely ridiculous for you to just get to claim that the Israeli motivations are pure.
I'm sorry, especially when so listen, Benjamin.
Who said pure?
Okay.
Who's whatever?
Okay, you get, you're just breaking up.
You don't get to just claim this is nonsense.
You don't get to.
Oh my God, you just have nothing except nonsense and interrupting me.
Okay.
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So when Benjamin Netanyahu goes to the United Nations a couple of weeks before October 7th and has Greater Israel on a map where all of Gaza and all of the West Bank are Israel, I'm sorry.
Why is it that you just get to give him the assumption that the motivation here wasn't to destroy Gaza, ethnically cleanse it, and annex it, as they're openly talking about doing right now?
Now, I'm sure there's some people in Israel who don't have those motivations.
I'm sure there are some people in Hamas who maybe just wanted to have a two-state solution.
But still, when the overwhelming motivations of the leadership are this impure, I don't think you get to say, oh, there's a major difference between because one side's motivation is purely just to get the bad.
Okay, let's just hang on a sec.
I want to pivot to Iran because, Dave, you on 22nd of June, and I've obviously talked to you on the show as well around this period, you posted on X, Donald Trump's now launched an illegal war of aggression against Iran.
The False Imminent Threat 00:14:45
The risk of an absolute catastrophe is very high and the benefits are non-existent.
Worst of all, he did on behalf of a foreign government against a country who posed no threat to us.
Now, as things stand, it looks increasingly like Trump brought all this to an end with targeting three nuclear strikes with the B-2 bunker buster bombs.
We don't know the scale of the damage, but even the Iranians are saying significant.
And the war appears to be now at a ceasefire stage after 12 days, which is being kept in hell, which I'm astonished by.
Trump has no desire.
He's made it clear to put any boots on the ground or to affect any America-driven regime change.
I think he was misinterpreted when he first talked about that.
I think he meant an organic regime change possibly happening a la Syria in December, but we don't know.
But that was my take on what he said.
But he certainly clarified that now as he doesn't want Americans to force it.
What is actually wrong with what has happened and unfurled here?
I mean, given what the Atomic Agency report made clear, that the Iranians have been enriching uranium from a safe civilian usage of 3.5%, 4% to 60% in rapid time.
And they were hiding information.
They were obfuscating.
They weren't allowing proper, full, transparent inspections and so on.
You know, is there really anything ideologically on putting aside Gaza, putting aside everything else, purely on the apparently imminent threat, and by imminent, I mean in the next few months, that the Iranians would have had an ability to weaponize their uranium quite quickly to 90% and potentially create up to 10 nuclear bombs, having assured the world they wouldn't do that.
They are supporting and promoting every terror group going from Hezbollah to the Houthis to Hamas to destroy Israel.
If you're Israel, why would you not preemptively strike?
And if you're the United States and you've got the leaders of the Iranian regime saying death to America and encouraging that chant, why would you also not want to neutralize the nuclear sites?
Well, let me start by saying that I really am just absolutely thrilled that, number one, that the Iranians gave that warning and that their response was kind of like one of those Iranian responses where we want to seem tough, but we sure do want to make sure we don't kill any Americans that could get us destroyed.
And I'm thrilled that Donald Trump took that off ramp and immediately started pushing a ceasefire.
I mean, who knows what's going to happen, but thank God that he did that, because I think all sane people around the world should be thankful that he took that off-ramp and this didn't lead to a catastrophe.
But no, I mean, I think that I think essentially your question is all flawed.
I mean, even in the IAEA report that you're referring to, they also reiterated that Iran doesn't have a nuclear bomb and that they have not made the decision to start pursuing one.
And so there was no imminent threat.
Listen, even Benjamin Netanyahu in his interview with Brett Bayer, who always, Piers, as you know, has a long history of just making up how long the Iranians are to developing a nuke, even he said maybe a year, 13 months.
But the point is that in order for them to do that, they would have had to kick the inspectors out.
And then it would have taken them at least a matter of years to develop a nuclear bomb if they had made the political decision to start seeking one.
And then it would have taken.
Do you think they should have one?
My point.
Do you think Iran should have a nuclear bomb?
No, I don't think anybody should have nuclear weapons.
But do you think in particular Iran should have one, given how much it supports terrorist groups?
Well, I will answer that question.
Let me just say the point I was making there is just that there was no imminent threat.
We had more than enough time to do what the American legal system requires in this situation, which is that you bring it to Congress so that the people theoretically can have a debate through their representatives in a declaration.
I mean, I saw AOC making that argument and I replied to her, almost every military strike ordered by an American president this century has been done without prior congressional approval.
Yeah, but what type of argument is that, Pierce?
Every war since World War II has been fought undeclared.
That doesn't mean it's the property.
But the argument is if you go for congressional approval, inevitably it will leak out and you lose the element of surprise.
Yeah, okay, but then the argument also is that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and the founders very intentionally placed war-making power in the Congress because they didn't want it to be, they didn't want the president to have the war-making powers of a king.
Now, they can make military strikes as well.
They just can't declare war.
Yeah, well, there's some debate about that amongst constitutional scholars, but yes, but that refers to like an imminent threat, which by all accounts, this wasn't.
Now, listen, I don't want Iran to get a nuclear weapon.
I think that everything that U.S. foreign, basically all of U.S. and Israeli foreign policy seems to have been geared around incentivizing them to make one for about as long as I've been alive, which I think is very counterproductive.
But I will say that I think there is a couple thoughts here that I think people should really consider.
And number one, that I don't, you know, I still think that Donald Trump, as great as it is that he walked us back from this, I think it was totally reckless and wrong for him to launch it to begin with.
But think about this.
The whole foundational claim for the Hawks' justification about Iran getting a nuke here, because obviously lots of really, really bad people have had nuclear weapons in the history of the world.
And that's not a good thing.
But like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong and like, you know, today, current Vladimir Putin, China, I mean, there's lots of really bad regimes that have nuclear weapons.
It's almost never been on the table among serious people that we ought to launch a war of aggression and choice because a regime.
But the claim here is that Iran is so crazy.
They're these religious fundamentalists and self-preservation simply isn't a motivating factor for them.
And therefore, they can't be allowed to get it.
You wouldn't dispute that.
Hang on, hang on.
Hang on.
You wouldn't.
You wouldn't dispute, though, the central argument that Israel has about it, which is that Iran has been the main sponsor for Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah for a number of years, all of whom are terror groups wedded to eliminating Israel.
You wouldn't dispute that.
I don't dispute that they have supported those groups, and I don't dispute that that's the existence of the.
So isn't that right there the existential threat to Israel?
Well, I mean, I'm sorry, but Israel.
No, listen, if Israel is the only country in the Middle East who secretly has nuclear weapons and is not a member of the non-proliferation treaty, and they also funded Hamas.
So I'm sorry.
I do not think it's a legitimate justification for them to launch a war because they claim someone else is making nukes when they're not.
And also they also funded Hamas or something like that.
So no.
Can I respond to this now?
Can I respond to this now?
First of all, this claim that there's no evidence that the regime is making nukes is totally false.
It's totally false.
We know that they've enriched to 60%, which means they're 90% of the way there.
There's no reason to have anything above 3% to 5% for civilian use.
Everybody understands that 60%, the only purpose of it, is for nuclear weapons.
Now, for a long time, the US and the Western world have been trying to delay the breakout time.
That was the whole point of the JCPOA and all of these other deals was that we know that they're months away, right?
That's why you keep saying, oh, they've been months away for years, right?
But they've been trying to extend the breakout time from months away to at least a year away for the past 10 to 15 years.
So actually, everybody is fully, fully aware that the regime has always been months away from developing nuclear weapons.
Now, second of all, again, it's making these moral equivalencies between the United States or different countries or Israel or whoever having nuclear capabilities.
What you're talking about here is a regime whose fundamental motto, its entire basis of existence, is death to Israel and death to the United States.
That is what it stands for.
That is what its leaders chant on a daily basis.
That is what school children have to chant in the playground before they start school every day.
Death to America, death to Israel.
Every day, their strategy is how do we destroy the United States and how do we destroy Israel?
Now, when you have an expansionist ideology that has eschatological beliefs about the end of the world and the end of Israel, and the desire is to proliferate and export its ideology of Velayatifagi, not just to the Middle East, but to the entire world.
And you say, I don't understand what's the difference between them having nukes and others having nukes.
Is just profoundly misguided.
Second of all, second of all, I didn't say that.
Second of all, this isn't just about the threat of the nukes themselves.
I don't think anyone's thinking to themselves that Iran, that the Islamic Republic's just going to drop a nuke as soon as it has one.
The whole point of it reaching nuclear capabilities is that it becomes a deterrent state.
Once it becomes a deterrent state, how are you going to deter its bad behaviors?
How are you going to prevent its alliances with its regional proxies?
How are you going to prevent more October 7ths when everything you try to do to sanction them and contain them is met with what are you going to do?
We've got nukes.
And it also prevents the containment of the region because now UAE, Egypt, all of these other countries are so under threat that they also have to develop nuclear capabilities.
So it is actually allowing them to get that far that would be the cause of regional and global instability.
So it's just preposterous to say that we should have just done nothing about that or got into another deal that just kicked the can down the road again.
We are in the position that we are in because nobody contained this for as many decades as it's been a growing threat.
We've passed the Neville Chamberlain moment.
Okay.
Totally, totally, it's just total bullshit.
I mean, just listen, the reason why now this 60% enrichment, which obviously, for anyone paying attention, was there is another reason besides they were developing a nuclear weapon, which again, all of the intelligence says they were not.
They had not even made the political decision that they wanted to develop a nuclear weapon yet, let alone weren't doing it.
It was a chip to bargain away, which is actually what they were trying to do.
They were in the middle of negotiations when Israel snuck attacked them.
That means you concede.
Hang on.
That means you concede that what they were doing was creating the impression that they were going to build a nuclear bomb.
Oh, listen, there's no question that they upped the enrichment, but listen, here's the point.
They weren't allowed to under the JCPOA.
Okay.
Under the JCPOA, when America was involved, they weren't allowed to enrich to this level, but they were allowed to do it if America pulled out.
That's in the JCPOA agreement.
And so when Donald Trump tore that up, and so when Donald Trump tore that up and walked away, they brought their enrichment up.
What were the negotiations, Pierce, that were happening right before Israel launched their surprise attack?
It was for Iran to bring the enrichment back down and America to get back in some type of agreement.
They weren't going to call it the JCPOA because Donald Trump would have had to make it his own thing and not get anything.
They gave them 60 days to negotiate.
Tom said he got 60 days and day 61, Israel attacked.
Right.
Okay.
Now, but what was happened, and this was widely reported, and Donald Trump himself acknowledged this, is that the Hawks insisted that you put a poison pill in the negotiations.
This is what Mark Levin was freaking out about, and that the standard has to be that Iran must give up all nuclear enrichment altogether.
This was always a poison pill.
So that the negotiation, the point is that Iran was willing to negotiate.
And so if you really wanted to get back into that deal, Donald Trump honestly just never should have torn up the JCPOA and we'd all be in a much better situation.
It ushered in a new inspection regime.
And so we know this is why we know that they're enriching up to 60% because they're still in the agreement and they still have the inspections.
Unlike Israel.
Let me ask you this.
I'm sure if since you know about the JCPPOA, I know, I'm sure you know that it was replete with sunset provisions for up to 10 to 15 years, where all of those containment would be expired and they would have more than $150 billion to continue developing their missiles and nuclear programs.
It was never, the JCPOA was never a solution.
Not only that, not only that, but not only did they inherit more than $100 billion, they were also able to expand their regional terror.
They were, and Khomeini repeatedly came on television and said, we are going to use that money to fund our allies.
So, there was actually a backdoor to the JCPOA where the regime, the Islamic Republic, was able to expand its regional influence and fund its allies, which eventually led to October 7th, which eventually brought us to where we are now.
So, yes, the JCPOA did intend to temporarily constrain their nuclear abilities, but it was always understood that by the time it expired, they would be $150 billion richer.
Their proxies would be fortified.
They would have been responsible for significant regional destabilization, and then they would be able to enrich if they wanted to.
And the only way to prevent that was to get into another nuclear deal, which would require unfreezing hundreds and billions of more.
So, they would just keep getting enriched, rich, and empowered.
So, the question is: how does this end?
Just a lifetime of JCPOAs?
Well, let me ask a question just to end this because we've run out of time.
Dave, I just want to pay the hang on.
Let me put a question to Dave, which is that if it turns out that all this activity in the last two weeks drives Iran to the negotiating table, they do agree to give up a lot of their enriched uranium and so on, reduce it back to civilian levels and so on.
And there is a period of sustained peace in the region, and the Gaza hell is brought to an end as well.
And in six months' time, all this is over.
Should Donald Trump get the Nobel Peace Prize?
Because Barack Obama got one eight months into his tenure for basically just doing a bit of chat, fancy chat about world peace.
Well, I guess grading on the Obama curve, everybody deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.
I mean, literally, the three of us are much better candidates than Barack Obama was.
So, I don't, yeah, judging on that curve.
No, look, I mean, I think that would be great if that's the result of all of this.
I think that what Donald Trump's policy was so reckless and it had such a risk.
And this is what I was trying to get at before that I hope people appreciate.
Trump and the Nobel Prize 00:02:30
Look, if Iran had not made the calculation to give advanced warning and had just fired off missiles the way Israel, well, but this is the whole point, Pierce.
I think Trump called that.
I think Trump called that blast because he realized that what Israel had done over a period of days is expose the Iranian regime as having a military that was a double-blooded.
Pierce couldn't even be able to do that.
They don't want to be destroyed.
They would rather rule than be destroyed.
But the point is that we put this in the hands of the Iranian government.
If they hadn't done that, we may have had to launch a full regime.
What would Donald Trump have done if 50 or 100 Americans had been killed in an Iranian attack?
Well, thankfully, this has not been.
We risked a catastrophe.
Thankfully, that has to happen because Iran was so panicky, they actually gave prior warnings to everybody to make sure that so maybe they're not such a scary threat after all.
Well, that's an interesting point if you take away their nuclear weapons.
Alec, a final word to you very quickly.
Yes, okay.
You, your whole point, this whole conversation and everything that you've been saying online is that Israel is engaging in terrorism, ethnic cleansing, all of these things that you claim to be against.
And yet, you are so happy to engage in these deals that enrich the Islamic Republic and its machinery of oppression to hang and lynch and torture women.
So, if you're so against, if you're so against what Israel is doing, if you're so against funding what Israel is doing, why are you so happy to fund this regime in its domestic and regional terror by the same means of empowering them with money through the diplomats?
I know that's crazy.
It's almost like it's almost like I'm opposing war across the board.
You're opposing all of these wars.
Okay, so you're opposing war.
Okay, opposing war, like by first of all, instigating more war down the road.
Okay, that's the Neville Chamberlain moment.
Just asserting that.
Just asserting that.
nonsense second of all you are a prediction of the future is not a fact please happy for iranians to be slaughtered raped killed and hanged so long as in your fantasy world you're opposing war but you're not okay with it but you're not okay with it maybe you got a friend who's better Okay, there's no everyone's better than your stupidity.
You are the most demoralized, brain-rotted idiot alive.
Thank you.
Opposing War Instigates Conflict 00:00:30
All right.
Take a deep breath.
Thank you both very much indeed.
I appreciate it.
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