Is the US planning surgical strikes against specific capabilities and powerful men? Or is this a longer, riskier, more complex operation? Is the aim to bully the current regime into compliance? Or is it to change the regime altogether? Piers Morgan puts these questions to Ambassador John Bolton, before speaking to his panel of Palestinian-American journalist Omar Baddar, US special forces veteran and host of Speak The Truth, Matt Tardio, Israeli-American journalist Emily Schrader and The Grayzone commentator Aaron Mate. Piers also speaks to Virginia Democrat and Senate Intelligence Committee member, Senator Mark Warner and Tehran University’s Professor Mohammad Marandi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Will War Bring Answers00:02:18
The Iranians are also trying to assassinate me.
So for me, the question is who gets me first, the Iranians or Trump?
The leader, Haifa Lahameni, he was martyred because he stayed at home.
And he said, I'm not leaving my office and my home because many Iranians have nowhere to go.
And so I cannot leave.
If you've got such freedom of speech, criticize your regime right now.
Go on.
Let's give the people an entire picture of what's actually taking place on the ground and not just blow smoke up their butt.
Nine days ago, I spoke to former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton about the looming possibility of a U.S. war on Iran.
In my opening monologue, then, I laid out some big practical questions, which had to be answered in order to make the case for war.
I'm going to repeat them so that you can judge for yourself whether they've been answered now the war has begun.
Is the U.S. planning surgical strikes against specific capabilities and powerful men?
Or is this a longer, riskier, more complex operation?
Is the aim to bully the current regime into compliance, or is it to change the regime altogether?
The Iranian protesters don't have the guns.
There's no opposition militia.
So who is going to sweep in and govern a new Iran?
And the biggest question most U.S. voters are now asking, why are we doing this?
Well, in my view, all of those questions remain unanswered.
Ambassador Bolton has made the case for war on Iran for at least 25 years, and he joins me now, hopefully, with some answers.
Ambassador, welcome back to Ancensor.
Glad to be with you.
It seems to me we just don't know how this is going to play out.
Donald Trump doesn't know.
Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't know.
I assume you wouldn't be bold enough to say you know.
But from what we've seen in this first week of this war, what is the most likely end game here?
Well, I think the hope and the intention is that by striking the instruments of state power that threaten the U.S., threaten Israel, threaten the Gulf Arab states, and also repress the Iranian people, that we can degrade and ultimately destroy them in a way that brings the regime into serious crisis.
The Case for Regime Change00:15:20
It already has a succession crisis on its hands and see fragmentation at the top of the regime that the opposition and elements of the regime that would defect to the opposition take advantage of and bring the government down.
The reason for this action is that Iran's nuclear threat and its terrorist threat are policies the regime will never change.
In other words, their behavior is not going to change.
And therefore, for the interest of U.S. national security and Israeli national security, the only alternative is regime change, which is what the objective is, whether the White House says it or not.
Right.
I'm sure that is the objective.
And Donald Trump has certainly suggested as much, albeit with the caveat of a number of other suggestions.
And it seems to me that the least likely result here is actual regime change.
What is more likely, given the size of the regime and the way its tentacles spread through every aspect of Iranian society, and given the failure so far to really witness any big uprising by the people, probably because just a few weeks ago, up to 30,000 of them were slaughtered by this regime.
Unless the Revolutionary Guard turn on the regime, again, no sign of that, or the paramilitaries and regular army below them, numbering well over a million, unless they turn on the regime, this regime is going nowhere.
It might have different people at the top, but the Hydra remains intact.
Wouldn't it be more honest of America and Israel to say that actually the intention all along has been to degrade the regime to a point where it's no longer as big a threat?
Because that seems to me to be the most likely way out of this.
Well, I think the regime is at the weakest point it's been since it took power in 1979.
And I would have said that on Friday before the strikes began.
Among the people who matter somewhat, I suppose, the regime is as unpopular as anybody can ever measure.
It's unpopular because its economic policies have wrecked daily life for most Iranians.
It's unpopular among the young people.
Two-thirds of the population is under 30.
It's not popular among the women who almost three years ago when the regime killed the young Kurdish woman, Masi Amini, who refused to wear the hijab.
And their protest strikes directly at the legitimacy of the Ayatollah's claim to power, the idea that they speak the word of God.
The women said, when it comes to the dress code, you do not speak the word of God.
And that calls into question the legitimacy of the Ayatollahs across the board.
And then finally, the ethnic groups, the Kurds, the Azeris, the Balukis, the Arabs are unhappy with the regime and beginning to take steps on their own.
So if there were ever a time when the regime was weak, this is it.
And the degradation of the instruments of state power should be saying to people, certainly in the regular military and perhaps in the Revolutionary Guard, the days of this regime are numbered.
It cannot protect its supreme leader.
It cannot protect its key assets, the nuclear weapons program and the ballistic missile program.
It cannot protect itself.
And if it cannot protect itself, it's only a matter of time before it falls.
Which side do you want to be on?
Now, critics will say, listening to that, well, come off it, John Bolton.
Let's go back to 2002, 2003.
You would pretty much have made exactly the same speech in an interview like this about Iraq and about Saddam Hussein and about the threat from his weapons of mass destruction and the repressive impact he had on his people and women and so on.
It's the same playbook 23 years later, but we've learned nothing.
And that surely the lesson from the Iraq war was if you don't really have a plan for after you topple the leader of a regime like this, then all hell can break loose.
And actually, you end up with 20 years of mayhem and ISIS and everything else.
Well, in fact, we did eliminate Saddam Hussein.
We can debate the weapons of mass destruction issue.
He kept 3,000 nuclear scientists and technicians together.
He called his nuclear mujahideen, who had the intellectual capability to put the nuclear program back together.
And I would say that our mistake in Iran was not that we didn't have a plan, is that we had a plan that put the U.S. in the position through the coalition provisional authority of being part of the Iraqi political scene.
I think that was our mistake there.
The issue for the United States is the threat of nuclear weapons and the threat of terrorism.
I'd like to see a transition to some kind of system that the Iranians are satisfied with.
It seems impossible to believe we could get a worse government than the one that's there now.
But it's not possible to lay out a 500-page plan of what the day after will look like.
And that's been true throughout human history, not just in Iraq in 2003.
When the Americans declared independence from your ancestors, they didn't have a post-monarchy plan either.
Yet we were able to work it out.
Why do you think the Iranians can't work it out?
Well, I think it's very complicated.
You've got a country of 90 million people with so many different factions.
When I read things like the CIA are going to encourage the Kurds to rise up, I'm thinking, well, that could, if it's not very, very careful, that's the kind of thing that could precipitate quite a widespread civil war with all sorts of factions jumping in and causing many years of chaos.
But, you know, it's all very unpredictable.
Do you feel, John Bolton, there's a sort of weird situation here for you personally.
On the one hand, the Trump administration is trying to put you in prison.
And on the other hand, you're emerging as one of the leading cheerleaders for its war in Iran.
Well, the Iranians are also trying to assassinate me as they are trying to assassinate Trump and others who they attribute the strike against Qasim Suleimani to.
So for me, the question is who gets me first, the Iranians or Trump?
I mean, that's a pretty, when you put it like that, I mean, there's a truth to that, isn't there?
How do you feel about that on a personal level?
Well, not wonderful, but I think from a perspective of American national security, I think the case was true for 20 years that the answer was regime change in Iran.
I'm only sorry I didn't persuade Trump to do it in the first term.
Many people are looking at Donald Trump now, and even if they voted for him, they're thinking, does he know what he's doing here with Iran?
Will this define his presidency, his legacy?
Will it define how he's looked back in 100 years in terms of the history of this?
You, in your memoir, The Room Where It Happened, obviously you worked with him in the first term.
You said that Donald Trump was stunningly uninformed and lacked basic knowledge of major foreign allies.
Given that assessment that you made, how much do you trust him with what's going on now?
Well, there's no telling what he's going to do.
I think the objectives are correct.
I think he's already made mistakes that may be fatal.
I think they're correctable, but he needs to correct them.
He didn't make adequate preparation in American public opinion to make what I think is the extremely strong case that regime change is the answer.
Indeed, today, because of subversives within his own White House, starting with the vice president, who don't agree with this policy, you can be sure of it.
He's impairing his own ability to make the case.
Likewise, and closely related, he didn't make the case to Congress in advance.
He didn't prepare the groundwork with allies in advance.
And as I mentioned a moment ago, my gravest concern is that he hasn't cooperated efficiently or sufficiently with the opposition.
They're the ones that have to make a lot of key decisions and take key actions on the ground to help fragment the regime, without which the odds of success decrease significantly.
Ambassador Bolton, always good to have you on censor.
Thank you very much.
Well, thanks very much for having me.
Well, I'm joined now by my panel, Omar Bada, the Palestinian-American journalist, Aaron Marte, investigative journalist with the Grey Zone, Matt Tadio, the U.S. Special Forces veteran and host of Speak the Truth, and by Emily Trader, the Israeli-American journalist.
Well, welcome to all of you.
Matt Tadio, from a purely military standpoint, you know, we're all watching this, I think, in the civilian world with kind of a mixture of shock and horror and awe and wondering what the hell is going on on the battlefield.
It looks like Israel and America have attacked Iran and America, and Iran has now responded by attacking pretty much everybody.
And, you know, when you see hotels in Dubai being hit and so on, people understandably are in the grip of panic.
But from a military perspective, I saw Pete Hegseph today, the Secretary of State for War, arguing very strongly that this war was going extremely well for America and Israel.
Is that your assessment?
I mean, I guess we've got to figure out and define what victory would look like for the United States and Israel to determine whether or not it's going extremely well, right?
It's like you were talking with Ambassador Bolton.
Are we looking for a regime change or what is our objective actually on the ground?
Because it's changed over and over.
But from right now, from what I can tell, yes, I would say that, you know, there's several different measures that we could use in order to say that it's going pretty well.
Even though Iran's getting off a lot of ballistic missiles and a lot of drones, vast majority of them are, in fact, getting shot down.
Casualty numbers are extremely low for the amount that they have actually fired, which tells what a great job the United States and the coalition forces are doing over there inside the Middle East.
I'm sorry, not the Red Sea, but the Strait of Hormuz, we can take a look at that.
I was actually just looking at that right before I come up here.
There's plenty of ships that are still sailing through there, despite Iran claiming that it's been shut down.
And the Iranian Navy has been decimated.
U.S. just announced we sank another submarine, first submarine sank since World War II with a torpedo.
So, I mean, by those measures, sure, we're decimating a lot of infrastructure.
We're taking out vast amounts of the IRGC and their military capabilities.
But people also have to understand that Iran's got tunnels just dug into these vast mountainsides.
And they're storing a lot of their drones.
They're storing a lot of their ballistic missiles.
So when they're above ground, sure, we can attack them.
But when they're dug into those mountainsides, you've got to give credit where credit's due.
They did a good job planning ahead.
It's very hard to target those.
Aaron Marte, what is your overview here?
Because it seems to me there are a lot of people who have like extreme views either side.
Let's take the most people in the middle, like most regular people I've talked to, we're in London, in New York, in Sydney, wherever it may be.
They kind of think, look, the Iranian regime is awful.
The Ayatollah was a terrible, tyrannical person.
He repressed his people.
Clearly, Iran has sponsored terrorism throughout the region.
There's kind of unanimity about that aspect of this.
But they're not necessarily buying in, according to all the polling.
And I'd be worried if I was Donald Trump about this, that they're not buying into the imminent threat that Iran was posing, not least because last summer we had a 12-day war in which we were informed afterwards Iran's ability to develop a nuclear bomb had been pretty well decimated.
Yet here we are, just eight months later, with apparently an immediate pressing need to go into full-blown war with Iran because of the impending imminent threat of them creating a bomb, a nuclear bomb.
And people are like, well, how can those two things be true?
I think it's hard for people to buy into the case for war when it's such a transparent crime and the pretext is so incoherent.
The Trump administration in recent days has given us so many different explanations.
First, they claimed that there was intelligence of an imminent threat to U.S. troops in the region.
Then when the Pentagon briefed Congress, they had to admit that that was not true.
Then Marco Rubio said the other day that, well, we knew that Israel was going to attack.
And if Israel attacks, then Iran would retaliate against our forces.
So to protect our forces, we had to strike first.
And then that was immediately walked back because who signed up to go to war for Israel?
And Trump even admitted that that was a lie when he said that he struck first because he thought that Iran was going to attack, which is also a lie because the Trump administration has been lying the whole time.
They lied when they went to these negotiations last week in Geneva.
They told the Iranians, and I know this from sources who were there, the Omani foreign minister who brokered this has also confirmed this.
They told the Iranians that they were okay to just discuss the nuclear issue.
And on that front, Iran was totally accommodating.
Just as Iran respected the Iran nuclear deal that was reached back in 2015, which even the Trump administration in his first term had to certify that Iran was respecting, Iran also was willing, once again, to have a new JCPOA that would have resolved the nuclear issue.
And Wickoff and Kushner pretended as if that was okay.
Meanwhile, though, the Trump administration's real goal, which they've been planning for months with Israel, is regime change because Iran insists on the right to defend itself from Israeli aggression.
That's why the issue of Iran's ballistic missiles has been such a big issue is because Iran can defend itself.
And Iran is among a small number of states that stands up to U.S.-Israeli hegemony in the region.
That's why, from the point of view of the Trump administration, they had to go.
And that's why they led us into another disastrous regime change war that threatens, just as the Iraq war did, to blow up the region.
It's already caused so many casualties.
We have to stress one of the first victims of this assault, this aggression, was a girls' school in Iran where around 165 children were killed.
And we all know the U.S. and Israel did it.
They haven't denied doing it, which to me is confirmation that they were behind this.
And there's many more people who will lose their lives simply because Israel and the U.S. couldn't accept diplomacy.
They couldn't accept a peaceful way to resolve an issue that really wasn't an issue because Iran didn't even have a nuclear weapons program.
It's Trump's own intelligence community asserted just one year ago.
Okay.
Let me respond to that.
I would say...
Well, yeah, you can, yeah.
Yeah.
So, first of all, you brought up the JCPOA, and I understand that Donald Trump ended up backing out of the JCPOA, but let's be honest for a second here.
The United States and Iran weren't the only countries that were in the JCPOA, were there?
We actually had the entire EU.
We had the UK.
We had Germany.
We had Russia.
We had China.
And all of those countries were also beholden to the JCPOA with Iran.
So they weren't actually keeping up to that over time after the U.S. backed out.
So if you're going to blame the United States of America for the reason Iran decided to start enriching uranium, we're not going to hold any of these other countries to account.
You also accept it was the correct.
I didn't interrupt you.
Hold on.
No, no, no.
I'm not holding up.
I didn't interrupt you.
And then we'll take it up a step further.
We'll say that he lied to the Omanians, the mediators over inside of Oman.
Why?
Why would you say that?
Because the fact is that Iran refused to discuss anything but the nuclear program.
That's it.
Just uranium enrichment.
Just uranium enrichment.
That's the only thing they wanted.
And the Trump administration told them time and time again that that is not going to do it.
Comparing Iran to Ukraine00:15:35
That's not going to be enough.
Further, you said that there was no imminent threat to U.S. troops.
When was the last time you were in the Middle East wearing a uniform carrying a rifle?
Well, I was in the Middle East just a few months ago.
When was the last time you were in the Middle East wearing a uniform carrying a rifle?
No, no, no.
It was a simple question.
If you can say never, that's great because I have been.
I have been for both my country and yours.
And so when I'm over there, I'll tell you what the number one cause of U.S. casualties over inside of the Middle East was, and that was the IRGC.
One out of every five to every six U.S. service members wounded or killed in the Middle East came from the IRGC.
I'm sure you're aware of this.
You just chose not to.
No, I know.
So yes, there's always an imminent threat.
No, no, no.
I'm not done.
There is an imminent threat to U.S. troops over inside of the Middle East, and there always has been, and there's going to continue to be.
They have killed thousands, thousands.
So don't sit here and pretend like they're not an imminent threat to U.S. troops.
Then we can address your Israeli aggression and they've got to have ballistic missiles for Israeli aggression.
Remind me again: is it the IRGC that funds Hezbollah, the largest non-state terror organization in the world?
Is it the IRGC that funds the Houthis down in Yemen?
What about Hamas?
Do we want to talk about those?
Because those, my friend, are a direct threat.
And that, my friend, is aggression, whether it be through proxy organizations or not.
So if you want to actually sit here and speak, let's give the people an entire picture of what's actually taking place on the ground and not just blow smoke up their butt.
Okay, let's take that.
Let's take that.
Can I address his points or not?
You know, I want to come back to you because I want to give the other two panelists a chance to say something.
I will come back to you and give you a chance to respond.
Emily Schroeder, let me just talk to you here about, you know, I remember when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine four years ago, there was a lot of general consensus that this was a despicable, illegal invasion of a sovereign democratic country, and he should be repelled.
Right.
But don't the validity of that argument, doesn't that get damaged if Israel and America just decide to unilaterally attack Iran?
Doesn't it send a message to China that if they want to go and take Taiwan, well, they can now do so.
They just have to present a case that they feel in peril.
They feel under threat, as Putin said about Ukraine.
In other words, if international law just gets completely ignored and shredded, as it has been here, clearly, then where does that leave the world?
Where does it leave us when people that America would view as very bad actors in the world stage use the same arguments to get what they want?
Well, I obviously understand your point, but I think it's a bit insulting to Ukraine to compare them to the Islamic regime in Iran.
This is not a democratic state.
It's a terrorist state.
Well, I'm not comparing the regime.
It's about 47 years.
I'm comparing the decision-making by those that attack and the way the world responds.
Fair point.
Fair point.
I'll give you that.
But I don't think it's at all the same thing.
I think it's comparing apples and oranges.
I think that this is in coordination in adherence to international law under Article 51 of the UN.
And I think that this regime has posed a clear and present danger to U.S. troops for many, many decades.
I mean, their entire ideology is built on this concept of death to America.
One of their first actions that they did was to take over the U.S. embassy and hold hostages for 444 days.
Now, you could say, oh, well, that was just during wartime.
That was something about revolutions.
No, that's something they've continued throughout that time since then.
And I think more importantly, you know, when you want to talk about hegemony, look at what the Islamic Republic has done in this region.
They are the expansionist power.
They are the ones who are destabilizing the entire region.
That Islamic regime is responsible for more deaths of Arab Muslims than any other single entity or organization in the Middle East.
They're responsible for Hezbollah.
They're responsible for the terror proxies in Iraq.
They're responsible for the destabilization and terror proxies, including building IRGC bases in Syria.
They're responsible for the Houthis in Yemen and launching a terrible, bloody civil war that happened there.
Of course, they're responsible for Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza that have completely destabilized Palestinian society and kept it stagnant from progressing.
So there's a lot of things on the table here, a lot of examples of how this regime has expanded their influence, and that is by design.
The ideology of the Islamic Revolution, the concept of it was to export the revolution.
Those are their words, not mine.
And that is exactly what they have done through their terror proxies and their efforts overseas.
And it's not just the Middle East either, which is something that presses, or rather, makes the case for the military operation now.
This is also in Europe.
We know that the UK, for example, has been used in a way as a playground for money laundering for the IRGC.
They have carried out assassinations and attempted assassinations, as well as attempted kidnappings on European citizens on European soil.
And they've also done the same in the United States with the attempted kidnapping of Masiya Linejad.
They've also attempted to carry out assassinations in Washington, D.C.
It is not contained to the territory of Iran.
And that precisely is the problem.
Every action that Israel has taken has been in defense to the aggression and the attempt to eradicate the state of Israel, but also the entire West.
And so this idea, this fantastical notion that everything they've done is somehow just in response to whatever the West has done or whatever the United States has done, it's delusional.
It's absolute nonsense.
Okay, let me bring in Omar Bada.
I mean, Omar, you posted this.
Well, I just want to read to you something you posted, Omar.
You said when it was four Americans have been reported dead.
You said four Americans whose families have been devastated just because Trump wants to help Netanyahu play emperor of his region.
Hundreds of Iranian families have also been destroyed for the same reason.
Thousands more to come, unforgivable.
I would say before I let you respond that in relation to what Aaron said, we still don't know for sure what happened with the girls' school.
And I think until we know for sure, then we should at least preface it by saying we don't know yet for sure.
Because there are counter-arguments about how that may have happened.
But Omar, your response to what Emily said there.
Sure.
I mean, I'll address a couple of things.
On that note, I think that's absolutely important, just to put things in perspective, of the fact that at this point, six Americans have been killed, and they did not die honorable deaths defending their own nation or homeland.
Their lives were wasted by Donald Trump because he is fighting this war of choice, this illegal act of aggression, in order to help his buddy Netanyahu, who is, by the way, a wanted war criminal, wanted by the International Criminal Court, to help him play Emperor of the Middle East.
That's what American lives are being wasted for.
And frankly, when it comes to the school as well, all available evidence right now points to the fact that this was a strike either by the United States or Israel.
There's been multiple investigations, including by Al Jazeera on it, that I think is worth checking out.
So we're dealing with a reality where right now, more than a thousand Iranians have been killed, their lives completely destroyed, where you have these girls in that school will never grow up to become teenagers and their parents will never see them again.
And for what?
In order for Netanyahu to play emperor of the Middle East.
That is what we're fighting for.
And there are endless lives that are going to be taken in the near future, not just in Iran, but in neighboring Arab countries and in Israel and American troops.
This war is a moral abomination and there is no way to defend it.
And I just have to comment on the chutzbah that Emily just displayed, talking about Iran as an expansionist country at a time when Israel is illegally occupying the Palestinian territories, the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, illegally occupying a massive part of Syria that has expanded since the Syrian government has fallen, even though the new government is bending over backwards, telling Israel that they're going to protect them and do whatever they want, and occupying parts of South Lebanon, refusing to end them.
Israel is literally physically expanding on the ground in contravention to international law.
And they are the dominant, most significant terrorist regime in the entire region.
And just on that note, I want to address Matt's moral confusion here, is that he seems to be under the impression that an Israeli regime that is engaged in illegal occupation, has a system of apartheid, engaged in genocide in Gaza, is allowed to have illegal weapons, including nuclear weapons.
But how dare Iran on the other side have conventional weapons because he views them as a threat?
International law doesn't mean anything unless it applies to everybody equally.
Rules don't mean anything unless they apply to everyone.
And if you judge by that double standard of saying people that we like get to do whatever they want, commit whatever crimes they want, and have whatever weapons they want, but people that we don't like don't get to, then that is just an elementary moral hypocrisy and it is not a roadmap for stability.
You play in a world in which might make stride and you can do whatever you want.
That is a recipe for eternal conflict and eternal death.
It is simply not morally coherent to want to live in that kind of world.
So I appreciate your question.
Hang on, no, hang on, hang on.
Sorry.
Where was your answer?
I'm going to come back.
Wait a minute, Emily, I'm going to come back to the panel for your response to that because I want to take a short break now to be joined by one of the most strident critics of the argument that the U.S. faced an imminent threat.
Senator Mark Warner is a Virginia Democrat and a Senate Intelligence Committee member.
Senator Warner, thank you very much, indeed, for joining me on Uncensored.
Congress is due to vote on a war powers resolution to curb President Trump's use of force in Iran.
It would call for an end to military operations in Iran within 30 days unless Congress provides authorization for use of military force or a declaration of war.
So let me just first ask you, how will you vote on that?
I will vote yes.
This is a war of choice.
I am one of the strongest supporters of Israel in the Congress.
But I think when we put American troops in harm's way, it should be based upon imminent threats to America.
There was no imminent threat.
As a matter of fact, down in the part of my state, Virginia Beach and Hampton Roads, where the vast majority of the sailors who are deployed on the Ford, who are in combat right now and hearing from their family and loved ones saying, why are they there?
What is our goal?
The administration has said initially this was about nuclear weapons, although the administration claimed those were obliterated six months ago.
Then it was about ballistic missiles.
Then it was about recently they even said, you know, the Iranian Navy.
And then the president has called for regime change.
And again, I shed no tears over the death of the senior Iranian leadership.
Awful.
It is an awful regime, 47 years of tyranny.
But I worry, particularly on the last one, if the president is calling for regime change, and if the Iranian people respond and there's 100,000 Iranians protesting on the streets of Tehran and the IRGC then goes out and murders 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, what is America and our few remaining allies obligation then?
So I think if the president wants to make a war choice and Iran are bad actors, and if he wants to say we want to start a war with Iran, he needs to come to the Congress and the American public and make a case.
So far, we've had three or four different cases made.
And I think most of the explanations have fallen short.
I agree about the mixed messaging.
It should also be said that two Democratic presidents in history, modern history, have bypassed congressional prior approval for shorter or limited missions, Bill Clinton in Kosovo in 99, Barack Obama in Libya in 2011.
They argued these didn't constitute hostilities under the Act's definition.
But, you know, to most laymen, they would look at this and say, well, it's hypocrisy by the Democrats.
When it's your president's doing the same thing, then everyone signs up to it.
When it's Donald Trump, suddenly it's a terrible thing that has to be stopped.
What do you say to that?
What I'd say to that is, Pierce, you know, normally, in the case both in Libya and Syria, if my memory holds, it was in reaction to incidents that were taking place.
And we were, our hand was forced.
Matter of fact, if the president had decided to strike in early January, where literally millions of Iranians were on the streets urging regime change, I might have agreed or disagreed, but there was at least a logical point in time.
And the reason he couldn't at that point, and this story needs to get out there more, was one, because our military presence was not there, because we had our key aircraft carrier, the Gerald Ford, off the coast of Venezuela on another of his military adventures.
And our European partners in particular were obviously consumed by the president's, I think, kind of crazy folly to try to take on Greenland.
So our ability to bring our Europeans who have ties with Iran into the conflict were limited.
So he didn't act then.
We've then seen a build out.
There was no surprise on any of this.
He's been building up forces for months.
So if this is a war of choice, and the president has the ability to make the case, he should come to Congress, make the case that this is in America's interest to try to take out the Iranian leadership, not have this dictated frankly by the Israeli government's timeline.
Say this again as a strong, strong supporter of Israel and one of the things that shows somewhat of the chaotic approach.
If we knew this was coming, why hasn't the United States been better prepared to get our literally hundreds of thousands of American citizens out of the region?
I think the Brits, other countries, are getting their people out of the region while we are still leaving literally thousands of Americans trying to reach phone numbers to find a way out when nobody's answering.
Why we were not better prepared?
Listen, when America screws up, and we have many times, let me acknowledge that.
And, you know, I think, again, in many ways about the disastrous withdrawal under Biden, which I criticize from Afghanistan, but unfortunately, this is starting to take on some of those same characteristics.
And I think America deserves better.
And my fear is, you know, we would all agree we don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
We all agree the Iranian regime is awful.
But the president made no effort to build a coalition to say, you know, this is such a problem, we need to act.
I will stand by my statement since day one, though.
There was no imminent threat to the United States.
But it's interesting.
It's interesting listening to the fact that there needs to be an imminent threat.
I'm sorry.
I understand that, but it's interesting that you conceded there that had Donald Trump done this in January, which is literally six weeks ago, you might have supported it.
So it seems to me that you are intrinsically in favor of regime change.
And I would argue that if you take that as your position, that actually the slaughtering of up to 30,000 protesters by the Iranian regime, which followed that, would have been an even more reason for America to get involved by your logic.
Timing and Selective Strikes00:14:57
I'm not sure if I'm not rising.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Well, no, what you're saying is you might have supported the Iranian regime.
If you're not in January when they rose up, then wouldn't the slaughter of nearly 30,000 protesters, wouldn't that have been an even more compelling reason to do it?
Well, I would argue there was at least the case, and I would not take your characterization.
Do I think the Iranian regime is awful?
Yes.
Do I think, do I lose any sleep over the fact that the Supreme Leader and others were killed?
No.
Do I think that would mandate a regime change right away without a plan?
I would only make the argument that the logic of acting when there were millions of Iranians on the street and the president said to those protesters, don't worry, we have your back, a selective strike might have pushed things forward.
What I feel we've had now is because he drew that red line, then brought an armada to the region, an armada that couldn't have been there before because he was focused on Venezuela and he didn't have support of our allies, to take this action now, not based upon an American timeline or an imminent threat, means presidents in American history have chosen to go to war.
If they choose to go to war, they have to come to the Congress and make their case.
He has not done that.
And my fear now is, again, from not just humanitarian, but from a practical standpoint, he once again has said to the Iranian people, rise up, take back your government.
If they do rise up and hundreds of thousands of protesters appear in the streets, does that obligate America to put troops on the ground to protect those protesters?
I think you have to think these things through.
And what I see from this administration is this chaotic approach, thinking about all these things in isolation rather than the interconnectedness.
And again, part of the proof of that is not only what will we do if the Iranians do rise up, do we have an obligation?
But it also goes to the point of why has there not been a better plan of trying to evacuate the literally hundreds of thousands of Americans, not just in Israel, but in Dubai and Saudi and elsewhere.
My office has been overwhelmed by calls of people pleading, how do I get out of the region?
And I think Secretary Rubio is trying to beef up additional planes.
But why was that not put in place?
Because unlike some of the other actions where the president, Democrat or Republican, reacts to something that was caused by another power, this was timing-wise dictated by the Israeli government, but we knew it was coming.
Why not have all these pieces in place?
I guess the answer would be that if you prepared for the mass evacuation of Americans from all over the Middle East, it sends a pretty big signal to the Iranians what you might be up to.
I just want to wait for me, Senator.
Sending a giant armada to the region, I think it wasn't like this was all being hidden.
We have amassed the greatest amount of forces since I believe the Iraq war.
You know, that's a perfectly valid point.
People knew something was.
That's a perfectly valid point.
I just want to end just quickly.
It's interesting to me because on the right, you have people like Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly and others, very prominent right-wing conservative voices who are hammering Trump over this.
But on the Democrat side, you have many that share your view, but you have people like Senator Federman of Pennsylvania who say this.
Do you see increasing support from Democrats on President Trump's efforts with regard to Iran?
I don't know, but my support's there because, you know, especially when our military's been engaged, you have to go country over party.
You know, like I know what parts of my base demands, but I'm always, it's easy.
It's always, I'm always going to stand, you know, with our country and they're going to stand with our military and the heroes as well.
And how can't you celebrate that the Iranian leadership has been eliminated?
Doesn't that make the region more safe, more secure, more just, more free?
And now, of course, there's other things that's possible right now, but right now, why can't you just acknowledge that?
I mean, just very briefly, Senator, what would your response to that be?
Well, my reaction is I am glad the Iranian regime leadership has been eliminated.
I think that is good.
The question is, what happens next if we are engaged in not weeks, but months or years?
What obligation do we have if the Iranian people rise up to support them?
What happens if the straits of Hormuz will be closed and oil prices go up to $150 or $200?
I will always stand with my country's interest over any party.
And I have a long record of being criticized by my party for doing that.
But I think there is always a smart, thoughtful way.
And I'm not sure we have seen that smart, thoughtful way.
And I do believe the President of the United States, he has taken this action by choice, needs to explain what the goal and the outcome will be.
I pointed out here, you know, was it nuclear weapons?
Was it ballistic missiles?
Was it bombing the Iranian Navy?
Was it regime change?
The American people deserve an answer when we now see it.
Yeah, and when you have Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, basically, you know, giving one version one day and completely the opposite version the next day, that doesn't instill much confidence either that they all have agreed what the reason for doing this is.
Senator Warner, thank you very much, Indeed, for joining me.
Piers, thanks you much.
Let's go back to the panel for the reaction to that.
Emily Schrader, you know, he's not wrong, is he?
I mean, when you hear Marco Rubio say, you know, day before yesterday, well, you know, the reason we had to act preemptively is because we knew that Israel were going to attack them and Iran was then going to probably attack some of our bases, so we had to attack them.
And then the very next day, they clearly all got the memo, well, this isn't going to fly, so we're going to have to pretend we never said it.
You know, I just think forgetting which party it is, forgetting which president it is, none of that adds to public confidence that there's a clear narrative here about what the intention is.
Yeah, absolutely.
I understand why people might not be clear on the reasons for that.
I do want to take issue with what the senator said about Israel's timing.
Actually, it was revealed today that Israel had planned to do this much later in the year.
There was no plan to strike Iran as of now.
The only plans that were discussed initially were back in January, shortly after Trump said, take to the streets to the Iranian people.
Israel had not been planning something, so that part is inaccurate at best.
I also would take issue with the claim that it's a war of choice.
I do believe it's a war of necessity.
We know how this Islamic regime has been operating, how they've been targeting American troops, how they've been operating on foreign soil, how they've been trying to export the revolution.
As I mentioned, it's something that we cannot miss when it comes to this issue.
And when it comes to the concept of forever wars, I just want to point out to this audience that every year, the United States, excluding any involvement financially with Israel, any aid to Israel, anything related to Israel, they are spending up to $60 billion per year only on deterrence related to the Middle East, which is, of course, as Matt emphasized, completely related to the Islamic regime in Iran and the IRGC's activities.
Now, they've already spent approximately $5 billion on this conflict just in a span of a few days.
And they estimate that if this war continues, meaning that if it goes longer than what President Trump has stated he wants it to, it could be up to $65 billion.
Well, up to $65 billion is approximately what the United States is spending every single year.
So the idea that this is so much more expensive or so much more difficult than what we're already doing.
I mean, the status quo is not free.
The status quo is extremely high risk.
That sounds a lot more like a forever war to me than actually dealing with the problem once and for all.
And the reason that there is some confusion about the things that Marco Rubio and the other officials have mentioned is because all of these reasons are true.
They are developing.
They're in the process of developing ICBMs.
They are in the process of rebuilding a nuclear program.
And let's not forget that they've held on to that 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium at 60%, which is 90% of the way to a newspaper.
We can't forget that they're not going to be able to do that.
And sorry, one more thing I want to mention about Omar is that he seems completely outraged about schoolgirls dying, yet he said nothing about the fact that IRGC poisoned schoolgirls in 2022 or the more than 30,000 protesters, including children, who have already been executed or shot in the streets during the protests in January.
Happy to say that for you.
It is not just a question.
Listen to what the Iranians are saying.
Emily, you need to let me finish my sentence.
You can't just jump down my throat every time I say something that you don't want the audience to hear.
So let me finish my sentence.
There were largely peaceful protesters who are against their own government.
And you know what Israel did?
It's Mossad armed people within Iran to set fire to schools.
There is zero evidence.
They turned this into riots for the sake of making this violence.
And you know what I question?
47 years ago, they're not going to protest against their regime, and you take all agency away from them.
You take all agency to appeal to the people.
So let me finish my sentence, but everybody knows that you don't have any.
So let me just say you need to be quiet.
This is not your show and let other people finish their sentences.
What happened is that every time this happens, by the way, Emily is so out of touch.
She's got her friends who are, you know, supporters of the former brutal dictator of Iran, and she thinks that this is having her finger on the pulse of the Iranian people.
Every time what happens is there is a swell who is not afraid of the level of their own government.
Are we talking about the dog?
He's not allowed to go.
And every time Israel bombs Iran, what happens is that these people shrink and what you end up seeing is massive protests in support of the government, while people who are critics of the government say, we want no association with the Israeli assault on Iran.
That's not what they want to be associated with.
My social media feed is filled with people who do not like the Iranian government, but say this is not the time to speak out because we definitely will not be in support of a foreign country that, by the way, is committing crimes throughout the entire region, coming into Iran and bombing civilians.
That is not something that they're going to stand behind just because they don't like the Iranian theocracy.
Okay, let me ask Matt Sarah.
Let me ask Matt Tadio.
Matt, how long is this going to play out?
Everyone keeps asking me in the civilian world, what do you know?
How long is it going?
I have no idea.
You're a military guy.
You've seen what's gone on this week.
Give me a likely timeline for this.
Yeah, so realistically, how it's going to play out, it's sad that that senator doesn't even know our own constitution.
Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution actually allows the President of the United States to conduct limited operations.
Same thing with the War Powers Resolution of 1973, but in there we get limited strike capabilities up to 60 days without anything else that's going to be dragging us in a little bit deeper.
And he's got to be able to bring that before Congress.
How this is going to play out in the future is going to vastly depend on what's taking place on the ground over there.
Over inside of western Iran, we see strikes over in Kurdish regions, vastly targeting IRGC forces.
We also see reports of airstrikes that are taking place along the Iraq-Iran border.
Additionally, over inside of Iraq last night, we saw targeted strikes against Iranian-backed militias, Shiite militia organizations that were and have been targeting U.S. troops, which is something else I wanted to bring up to the senator, which is we lost three U.S. service members on January 28th, 2024.
Sergeant William Rivers, specialist Kennedy Sanders, and specialist Breonna Moffitt over in the tri-border regions inside of Jordan.
They were targeted by an IRGC-backed force.
Our troops have been under attack.
So how long this is going to take is until the regime ends up giving in.
And I believe our president, commander-in-chief, the United States military, actually came out and stated that the other day, that your time for negotiating is up because they're not negotiating.
So it's just going to be whenever they give in.
Okay.
I'm about to speak to Professor Mohammad Morandi, who's in Tehran.
I've spoken many times in the last few years.
I'd be fascinated to see what he has to say.
Before I go to him, I just want to give you, Aaron, just a very quick chance to summarize.
You know, if you were the Iranian regime right now, what would you do?
Well, first of all, if we're talking about Iran, what the people want, the history, we have to have some basic facts straight.
The U.S. has been at war with the people of Iran for decades.
Go back to the coup of 1953.
We overthrew their government because they wanted to control their own oil.
Fast forward to the 80s after the Iranian regime comes in because they overthrow the Shah, who we supported along with Israel.
The U.S. turns to supporting Saddam Hussein, one of the worst criminals in recent memory, as he kills hundreds of thousands of people in Iran, including with chemical weapons, which the U.S. assisted.
Then the U.S. turns to trying to overthrow Iran via crippling sanctions, not aimed at the government, but at the people to make lives miserable so that the society can't function and think and life is intolerable.
Now, Matt made a number of points.
I can't get to all of them, but the JCPOA, the whole premise of that, the reason that collapsed is because the U.S. pulled out, because the premise was the U.S. offers sanctions relief.
We've got Iran captured.
I'm sorry to jump in, but we're going to lose the line to Professor Mirandi.
So I just wanted to focus specifically very quickly just the advice for the regime.
I can't give the advice to a government that's under assault from the most powerful governments in the world.
Iran has tried diplomacy.
They went to Geneva.
There was progress there.
The Omani foreign minister who was brokering said that Iran basically agreed to stockpiling zero uranium.
Iran was willing to redo the JCPOA, which it stuck to.
Why the Deal Collapsed00:02:48
Iran has accepted.
Excuse me.
Iran has accepted per se.
Which Steve Witkoff once said was fine until neocons in Washington freaked out because neocons in Washington.
Okay, listen, guys.
I can't.
I can't throw everything again because I corrected your facts as you're lying.
Yeah, not to mention they also have 460 kilograms of enriched uranium.
If you're not going to be able to do it, I'm just sorry, which they enriched.
Not the 440 that the IAEA found.
So they've been enriching uranium.
You don't want to admit to it, though, do you?
60% is rich.
They gained an extra 20 kilograms.
Yes, what do you do with 60%?
They broke the Iran nuclear deal.
That's why.
That's why.
I'm going to have to end this.
I'm going to have to end the panel.
I'm sorry, because we have Professor Morandi waiting.
I'm going to have to end it there without opening it up.
So thank you all very much to my panel.
I am joined now by Professor Mohammad Morandi of the Tehran University.
Professor Morandi, welcome back to Uncensored.
What is your reaction to what has happened in your country?
Well, just like nine months ago, when the Iranians were negotiating with the Trump regime, the United States was secretly collaborating with the Netanyahu regime to carry out a blitzkrieg attack.
And Witkoff, who was negotiating with the Iranians, initially said that enrichment is acceptable.
And but he was lying, obviously.
And he said that on Fox News.
And then we ultimately saw after round five of negotiations and before round six, the murderous war, the illegal war, which apparently since now the West has imposed the law of the jungle across the world is okay, according to your leaders and pundits.
And what we saw this time around was the same.
The Omani foreign minister who was mediating did not say anything similar to what Witkoff claimed just recently.
He said progress was made.
And ultimately, we saw what happened.
Again, the United States, being a sinister regime, it carried out an assault.
But this time around, the Iranians were prepared.
They knew that they were lying.
But when you say Iran was prepared, 40 senior leaders, including the supreme leader, 13 top defense officials, were all confirmed dead on day one of the attacks.
And if you actually look at the respective military power of the United States against Iran, on pure personnel, the United States has 1.3 million service men and women, Iran, 600,000.
Propaganda vs. Reality00:02:34
Defense budget, United States, $895 billion, Iran, 15 billion.
Aircraft, United States, 13,300, Iran, 550.
Aircraft carriers, U.S. 11, Iran, 0.
If it comes to a shooting match, as it currently is, how can Iran possibly expect to withstand the United States military before we involve the Israelis?
So do you accept that militarily, this can only end one way if Iran continues to react the way that it's done, particularly if as it brings in all the other Gulf states and is attacking all its neighbors, as Iran has been doing, actually it's achieving the opposite of what it would have hoped to have done.
It's rallying the Gulf states behind Israel and America.
Well, first of all, these Gulf Arab family dictatorships, they host U.S. bases, and those bases are being used against Iran.
So they are complicit in the murder of Iranians.
They can't have their cake and eat it too.
They cannot be a part of aggression and say that we are neutral.
With regards to the number 40 that you say, that is American propaganda.
The White House is always saying all sorts of nonsense.
Far less people were killed this time round than last time round.
The leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, he was martyred because he stayed at home.
And he said, I'm not leaving my office and my home because many Iranians have nowhere to go.
And so I cannot leave.
And he chose to stay, even though everyone knew that he would be a primary target.
Unlike your leaders and the Epstein class in your country, which do all sorts of things to ordinary people, he stood with his people and he stayed with his people.
And that's why he's so popular.
And unlike the propaganda that we see on your show all the time with these insane pundits who've never been to Iran, who know nothing about Iran, who just repeat these Epstein class talking points, the Iranian people are steadfast and standing beside and behind the Islamic Republic.
And as we speak across Tehran under missile fire, you see huge crowds of people in different parts of the city protesting against the United States and calling for the armed forces to resist.
Freedom of Speech in Iran00:02:38
And might does not make right.
As I learned from school, children know this.
We are in the right.
Your regime, your government, the American regime, they supported the Holocaust in Gaza, the ongoing Holocaust in Gaza.
We stood against it.
The point I would make is that no matter how you try to frame it and pretend that we kill in Iran tens of thousands of people on the streets and all that fake media propaganda, the reality is the reason why Iran is hated is because we're against ethnic cleansing.
We're against ethno-supremacism.
And that is something that the Epstein class that rules over all of you cannot tolerate.
Well, no Epstein class rules over me.
And the difference between me and you is I'm able to look at our leadership from our prime minister to our former UK ambassador to America to the former Prince Andrew.
And I'm able to publicly criticize them and say I find all of them, frankly, pretty deplorable and shameful to their country in the way they conduct themselves.
You would never say that about your supreme leader because had you said that on the airwaves.
Well, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Because had you called your supreme...
Let me explain to you.
Yeah, if you let me just, I'll let you speak.
Let me speak.
Had you criticized your supreme leader while he was alive publicly, had you done it publicly in the way that I can do about my prime minister or my royal family or my ruling political class, then you would have disappeared from the airwaves extremely quickly.
You and I know that.
And when it comes to the reaction of the people on the streets in your country, you would like everyone to believe it's all one way.
Everyone's on the side of the regime that you've propped up for years.
But I would show you this scene.
Look at this and tell me what we're looking at.
It looks like people to me celebrating the toppling of a statue of your dead supreme leader.
Wow.
Look at those millions of people on the streets.
Stunning.
Why don't you show the crowds that are 100 times larger in small cities than these crowds?
Challenging State Television00:08:44
Because you cannot do that.
Because in order to remain on air, you have to pursue certain narratives.
But if you were at my university and you were in my classroom, you would see students with all sorts of views saying whatever they want.
Student, a student would say, Iran is worse than North Korea.
And I would laugh at him and make fun of him in a friendly way till the end of the semester.
But you are, you have this alternative Iran in your, somewhere in the universe in your mind.
And based on that, all your assessments are made.
You're criticize your regime then.
Okay, well, criticize your regime then.
If you've got such freedom of speech, criticize your regime right now.
Go on.
Pierce.
Yeah, you can't be full of hot air.
You remind me of comical Ali in the Iraq war, who kept just talking about nonsense about his ruling.
I'm about his regime and ruler.
I'm, I don't, you know, the problem is, I don't know how to do it, can you?
Be quiet for a second.
Let me respond.
Criticize your regime.
Go on.
I know you're afraid.
Be quiet.
Let me respond.
I'm not afraid of anything.
Don't be so afraid.
In Iran, we talk against the government, against policies day and night.
You sit in a taxi.
They're criticizing.
You're on campus.
They criticize you.
I wanted you to criticize your regime right now.
No, I'm not going to.
When you give me five minutes.
No, you're not going to, are you?
Because you're a coward.
And you're a paid up stooge of the regime.
And you know, if you do criticize them, they'll take you off the airways.
Your job is to get on the airways and promote the regime.
That's why you can't criticize them.
Yeah.
And if you could criticize them, you would.
Are you going to let me talk or are you just too cowardly to let me talk?
You're afraid.
I've asked you a question.
You wouldn't do it.
You're a coward.
You can't do it, can you?
You're a coward.
I'm not a coward.
I could criticize my regime.
I can tell you I think Prime Minister Starmer has been a complete dude.
What are you going to say about your regime?
My country is under airstrikes from your criminal regime, your Epstein regime.
My country, the people in my city are being slaughtered by your garbage regime.
And you want me to see you.
The people in your country were slaughtered by your regime.
No, only a few weeks ago, after 30,000 of your people were slaughtered by your regime, weren't they?
Okay, forget it.
If you don't want me to talk, I'll just sit down.
You do the talking.
Well, I'll tell you what.
I'll tell you what, we'll end it like this.
I've had you on my show many, many times, right?
When do I get invited on Iranian state television?
Oh, you've gone.
I invited you to Iran, Pierce.
I invited you to Iran.
I'll do it like you do.
I'll do it like you do.
Down the barrel of a camera.
You put me on Iranian state television and let me say what I think about Iranian state television in the way that I let you come on my show and criticize my country and the United States and the West.
Fair is fair, right, Professor?
Because you've got freedom of speech in Iran.
There should be no problem in me, Piers Morgan, going on Iranian state television and hammering your regime.
Only you won't let that happen and the regime won't let it happen because amongst the many things that you repress, the biggest thing you repress is freedom of speech.
That's why you can't talk out against your regime and that's why you wouldn't let me go on state TV in Iran and talk out against your regime.
And that is the difference between us.
So you can try and take the high moral ground, but the reality is that is the difference.
You are a genocide supporter.
You supported it in Israel and Palestine, and you refused to come to Iran.
And I invited you to the Prime Minister.
I literally did the opposite.
I literally did the opposite.
You should watch that census more often.
On your regime TV, you don't even let me talk.
You don't even, you don't know anything about Iran, and you just talk and talk and talk.
And you're afraid of me saying a single sentence.
Iran is being bombed by your regime.
Our children are being slaughtered.
As we speak, your regime is bombing my country.
And your regime sent in intelligence.
The Israeli Mossad, the CIA, according to the former head of the CIA, according to the Mossad itself, they sent infiltrate people to infiltrate.
According to Channel 14 of Israeli TV, which is close to Netanyahu, they brought in weapons that killed hundreds of police officers and volunteers on the streets.
So the 3,117 people who were killed, and all of them have their ID and information, they're well known.
If you have any extra names, give them to me and let's see what your evidence is.
All of those people are recognized.
And wait a moment.
Wait a moment.
And if there was one police officer killed in your country, what would the reaction be?
Some young woman was turning to the right.
They shot her in the face.
Here they killed 200 police officers and well over 100 volunteers on the streets.
And you call that peaceful protest, but you ignore the millions of people on the streets as we speak in Tehran right now.
Let me tell you.
And if I can tell you, just one final sentence.
I wanted to bring something for you to see, but forget it.
Just one final sentence.
For 47 years, you have been, your government, your regime, your media has been saying Iran is unpopular.
Iran is about to fall.
The regime is collapsing.
And it never happened.
And do you know what?
That is exactly the same thing that your media and your governments would say about Moshaddirk.
When he was in power, they were saying he's evil, he's criminal, he's corrupt.
Go and look at the New York Times, the Washington Post.
It's always the same.
Your problem is that we are independent and that we do not accept the Epstein class that rapes and murders.
I may respond.
We will not allow your regime to kill our kids and get away with it.
Okay, I understand.
But I would say in return that your regime, the Iranian regime for the last 47 years, has waged systematic, barbaric repression against its own people, suppressed free speech.
It has killed thousands of protesters.
You say what would happen if it happened here.
Let me tell you, if thousands of protesters got shot dead in the street of Britain, the people responsible would be brought down from power extremely quickly.
And the Iranian regime has also sponsored terrorism all over the Middle East, from the Houthis to Hezbollah to Hamas.
But you consistently deny that because you're comical Ali.
You're the guy they put up on TV to say the sky may look blue to you, but you know where I am, it's green.
And that's the problem.
But Professor, it's always good to have you on state TV.
And the truth is, the truth is, I let you come on here and you can say what you want to say.
But you never ever let me on state TV.
I look forward to my first invitation.
Why don't you get me on, have a word with the regime and get me on state TV tomorrow, down the barrel of a camera like you, and I'll say what I think of the regime on state TV in Iran.
Have we got a deal?
Come to Iran.
Don't be cowardly and come to Iran.
Oh, well, you come to London then.
Get on a plane.
You come here.
You want to see TV?
I thought so.
Come to Iran.
Let the record show.
Let the record show I can't go on state TV like this like you do because you won't let me.
And secondly, that I've given you repeated chances to criticize your regime and you have bottled it because you know what would happen if you did.
Professor Mirandi.
No, I'm going to leave it.
Come to Iran and you and I will debate on Iranian TV.
Yeah, you come to London and we'll do that.
Good to talk to you, Professor.
I will do that, Pierce.
I will do that.
Come to London or Iran00:01:15
Great.
You come to Iran.
I'll see you in the next video.
I will show you around the buildings that you help justify the slaughter of all these women and children.
But after that, I'll take you to press TV and have a debate with you in studio where it will be broadcast and everyone can see it.
Perfect.
Is that perfect?
Yeah, but I'll do it the way you do it down the barrel of a camera.
Professor Mirandi, thank you for joining me.
I appreciate it.
Well, make sure you check out this week's episode of History Uncensored with Bianca Novolo.
She's put together a gripping account of Iran's remarkable history and how it will shape the success or failure of the war now raging today.
History Uncensored, wherever you listen to podcasts and, of course, on YouTube via the link in our show notes.
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