‘This Is SURRENDER’ Trump Iran Ceasefire Threat As Israel Bombs Beirut | With Megyn Kelly & Joe Kent
Megyn Kelly and Joe Kent debate the Iran conflict, with Kelly arguing Trump was misled by Netanyahu into a strategic failure causing 15 American deaths and fracturing his coalition. They condemn threats to "end Iranian civilization" as genocidal bluster that undermined U.S. moral authority, while Kent defends the destruction of 13,000 targets as a historic victory despite Strait of Hormuz disruptions. Will Knighton and Professor Mohamed Morandi further contend that Israel likely holds nuclear weapons under a double standard and that the war failed politically, leaving Iran's regime intact and Gulf states liable for allowing their territory to be used against Tehran. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Nobody Thinks It Was A Victory00:14:17
The reality is, nobody thinks this was a big victory.
The Iranian people are arguably worse off than they were before, and it's all based on baby Netanyahu's special intelligence, which cost at least 15 American lives, the fracturing of the Trump coalition, probably at least the next two elections for Republicans.
So great job.
The Israelis have been slaughtering the people of Lebanon all morning.
Carpet bombing cities just out of rage.
The first thing that President Trump has to do in order to make sure this lasts is actually restrain the Israelis, take away key components of the military aid that we give them.
We would restrain our ally, who, by the way, just helped us achieve one of the greatest military victories of the modern era.
We would restrain them instead of trying to use the threat of continued belligerence from them to extract more punitive terms from the Iranians is silly.
The fury about President Trump's vow to end Iranian civilization was not about a fear he was about to do that or a hope that he would.
It was about the foundational idea that the United States is a bulwark against exactly the kind of atrocities he foreshadowed.
If the U.S. is capable and willing to eradicate an entire population, how does it have the moral authority to be a global arbiter of right and wrong?
But Donald Trump doesn't seem interested in that.
Clearly, he sees the U.S. as a muscular superpower which can throw its weight around to get what it wants.
And to be clear, many people support him about that.
So amid the shrieking noise and spin about the 11th hour ceasefire agreement, it's worth asking a simple question.
Did the US get what it wants?
Well, the Strait of Hormuz is open, just as it was before the war began.
But nobody is in any doubt about the fact that Iran controls it.
In fact, some versions of the text refer to guaranteeing Iran's dominance.
The Iranian regime is wounded and weakened, but there's no doubt that it's the same regime.
Several branches have been hacked off, but the trunk and the roots remain.
Many of Iran's military targets have been destroyed, but Iran still has its uranium, its ballistic missiles, and its proxies across the region.
The Iranian plan, which Trump now calls a workable basis for talks, includes reparations for the damage caused, the lifting of all sanctions, and the release of Iranian funds seized by the United States.
It's a multi-billion dollar windfall.
What does he think they'll do with it?
And on the question of cost, the U.S. has now spent more than $30 billion on the war so far.
15 U.S. soldiers are dead.
Thousands of Iranian civilians are dead.
Trump's approval ratings are a record low.
And his base is at war with itself, all as the U.S. prepares for elections, which could handicap or even end his presidency.
We should all keep an open mind about what happens next.
We should all be grateful for a pause in this war.
But if this is what a historic victory looks like, well, Mr. President, I wouldn't be so sure to claim that.
First tonight, I'm joined by Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show.
Megan, what's been the point of it all?
You got to say, the deal sounds very much like surrender on our part, which I'm in favor of.
I mean, great.
This needed to end.
Ugly or any other way, it needed to end.
It was folly to begin with.
It was folly throughout.
It remains folly.
I'm sure Mark Levin and Lindsey Graham were feeling really, really good until the end part where we had to end it.
And now they're very, very angry.
Mark Levin was practically in tears on Fox News last night because we didn't see it through, I guess, with a nuclear bomb that we were going to drop on Iran.
We didn't go in commando style and seize all the uranium.
We allowed, according to the Israelis, according to the Iranians, that is, the war against Hezbollah to stop, which he wants seen through.
He would love to see Lebanon completely bombed and to be made to look like Gaza.
And there was really no point to going forward other than more death and destruction.
The Iranians proved to be tough MFers, and they realized that they had something far more powerful than a nuclear bomb.
they had control over the Strait of Hormuz.
And Trump was warned prior to getting involved in this conflict by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs that they were not likely to collapse easily and that they probably would maintain control of the Strait and could cause a global economic panic.
And he didn't listen.
What he did with the Dan Kaine warnings was rush to Truth Social, Trump did, saying, all Dan Kaine knows how to do is win.
And if I tell him to invade, he's going to win.
Well, that's not really what happened.
There was never any question we could decimate their Navy or their Air Force.
Of course, no one would ever second guess the power of the U.S. military.
It's pristine and it's impeccable and it's truly awestriking.
But these battles in the Middle East have been fought now for 20 plus years and we continue to learn the same lesson over and over.
It is not their overwhelming air power or their incredible navies that keep us mired in quagmires.
It's their insurgencies.
It's this disparate way of fighting that we don't know how to handle.
We can't tamp down with the amazing power of an aircraft carrier, which by the way, we had trouble getting anywhere close there after they figured out how to attack it.
And, you know, we've already learned this.
Trump watched us learn it.
And so what led Trump, what, at 79 years old to sit in there in that situation room when Bibi Netanyahu was seated as an equal?
Trump didn't even sit at the head of the table.
Trump sat at the side of the table and Bibi was across from him as an equal in the American situation room.
What led him to sit there and buy what that guy was selling, hook, line, and sinker, when every other president was able to see through that liar?
What was it?
Because he was told the next day by our own top advisors, from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the Secretary of State to the Vice President, that these are lies and that these objectives are not going to be attainable.
Don't believe him.
We might be able to wipe out the Ayatollah, not regime change, Ayatollah.
And we might be able to decimate some portion of their missiles and their military.
Okay, that's true.
But the goals as stated by Trump when we actually did pull the trigger were all over the board and to this moment.
He's pushing the BS claim that we affected regime change.
No, we didn't.
It's the same regime, just different players.
There isn't somebody more moderate in there at all.
We have no reason to believe that.
In fact, it looks like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is in control now, which is far more radical.
And the fatwa that had allegedly been issued by the Ayatollah on developing nukes is gone.
Iran is more powerful economically.
It controls the strait and now is demanding the lifting of all sanctions against it.
And what Trump did with that 10-point plan was go from Monday saying no, not good, to Tuesday saying, very workable.
We can do it.
As a means of saving face to bail off of his insane threats about annihilating an entire civilization.
So I don't know how we got here, Piers.
I'd like to know just as much as anybody else, but all I can think in my head, based on what I've read in the paper, is we got here thanks to B.B. Netanyahu, Lindsey Graham, and Mark Levin.
And ultimately, President Trump.
That's not to take agency away from the president who was bamboozled.
I don't know why.
He was too weak to say no.
He was too gullible to see through the lies.
One way or another, he allowed himself to be pushed into this insane conflict that caused, forget the blood and treasure we spilled, as you point out, at least 15 service personnel.
I believe we're being lied to about the total number of dead and wounded.
But we don't know what the accurate death toll in Iran is.
How many civilians in Iran died?
How many died in our allies around Iran who now don't trust us?
What penalty do we pay other than the cost and the 15 lives that we expended, which count for a lot.
But we didn't take the brunt of Iran's response.
Our allies did, with whom we did not consult prior to starting this war, who are very, very angry, many of them, about what was done to them.
What's going to happen to the trillions of dollars Trump was touting that they donated their offered to donate to the United States just to be nice guys and have great relationships.
You think they're going to spend that on us now?
They're going to spend it on themselves.
They've got to rebuild massive portions of their own countries thanks to the bombing campaign unleashed against them because they were within reach by Iran who couldn't reach us.
So we've upset our allies.
We've pleased Israel, although now they're upset there's a ceasefire.
We've upset the American base, the Trump coalition that got him elected is completely fractured and in smithereens.
And he doesn't care, Piers, because he doesn't care about the Republican Party.
He cares about himself.
If Trump had to get re-elected, he probably would have handled this a little differently.
But he doesn't care that the Republicans are going to lose the midterms.
I think he thought that was a foregone conclusion.
And I don't think he cares that JD Vance or Marco Rubio wins the presidency next time around.
I think there's a piece of Trump that would like to say, I'm the only one who could do it.
The Republican Party's nothing without me.
And the rest of us are going to be around to pick up the pieces.
I mean, a fascinating assessment.
I mean, I remember early on you picking up, as I did, on what Rubio had said about the reason why America went in.
And then the immediate backtracking the next day when they panicked and realized they'd let the cat out of the bag.
This was clearly a Netanyahu-driven operation.
He had persuaded Trump to come with him.
Then we had Anthony Blinken saying, well, actually, he tried to do this when Biden was president, when Obama was president.
And both times those two guys said, no, we're not going to come with you.
And then he didn't attack.
So he clearly got third time lucky with an American president that would come with him.
But I remember early on, you know, you and I and others who suggested, dared to suggest that we take Rubio at his word, that actually this was all at Israel's behest.
Once again, we were anti-Semitic if we said that.
This was a hatred of Israel that was driving our warped craze minds.
And then you read this deep dive in the New York Times.
Fascinating.
I mean, what's most fascinating to me, they've got somebody on the inside telling them exactly what happened in that situation room, which is fascinating.
But when you see it all laid out, it's crystal clear.
That's exactly what happened.
That Netanyahu got in that situation room at the White House.
Like you say, unprecedented.
The way he had the guy from Mossad on the big screen, he had him there with his, it was like two equal partners.
And he persuaded Trump in that room to go in.
And I think Trump will regret this.
Well, you're right.
He may not care.
He may want to just say, moving on, it's a big victory, blah, blah, blah.
But the reality is nobody thinks this was a big victory for the United States.
Nobody can see anything but actually a bit of a humiliation.
Not militarily, because America can beat anyone when it comes to a military punch-up.
But what Iran has now discovered is that as long as it can control the straightforward moose, it can control the global economy.
And therefore, it can, if it has enough patience, play out the long game with President of the United States, who will have to cave, because ultimately, it's going to cause him so much economic and political damage.
He has no choice.
That's what's happened here.
Trump hasn't brought this to an end out of some great desire for peace.
He's brought it to an end because he could see that the economic and political damage was getting worse by the day.
Because the Iranians wouldn't fold.
They realized what the pressure point was and that it was working.
And they watched Trump's poll numbers spiral downward in every piece of the coalition that elected him.
And they realized that their ability to just withstand the beating was working, was getting them to where they needed to get.
Because look, there was never majority support behind this war.
There wasn't some groundswell of support behind this war, right?
There was a Republican-based support for the award, but the Democrats didn't support it.
The Independents didn't support it.
And very soon into the war, the Republicans stopped supporting it too.
MAGA supported it.
As MAGA dwindled, by the way, it was already only about 15% of the population.
It's getting smaller by the day.
President Trump three weeks ago declared that to be MAGA, you have to support Mark Levin.
Upon which multiple formerly die-hard MAGA, people who are dedicated to it said, I'm out.
I'm out.
If those are the stakes, I'm out.
Why would I support that warmonger who's frothing at the mouth over the idea of lives being cost in Iran, civilian or otherwise?
He's a disgusting fool who's well past his prime.
We should not be listening to him.
But President Trump is obsessed.
On Sunday, he tweeted out that we should be, the Supreme Court should be listening to Mark Levin.
I know, I told you.
Allied justices.
I don't get it.
Which would double his viewership.
Yeah, I don't get it because you've been loudly calling out the folly of this war from day one.
I have.
Tucker has.
Candice Owens has.
Joe Rogan has.
Theo Vaughan has.
I mean, there is a massive cross-section of people in our world, which is what I call the unfiltered world, where you're not controlled perhaps by other forces that own networks and so on that sort of send out a directive about what you should and shouldn't be saying.
So in the free spirit world, where you can say what you really think, pretty much everyone has been agreed.
This looked like madness.
There's a very interesting piece, I think, where Stephen Chung pops up in the New York Times piece, who emerges as one of the smarter characters actually that Trump has around him, who said, well, how does all this sit with we're not going to go and wage war in the Middle East, which is what we campaigned on?
You know, how does this sit with America first?
You know, this will have an obvious effect on prices, on inflation, on gas pump costs and so on.
How does any of this work?
And there's no real answer, according to the New York Times in the room to that.
He just raises this specter of this is the elephant in the room.
Betrayal Of The Working Class Base00:03:33
This is exactly the opposite to what we campaigned on.
So I think politically, it's been disastrous for Donald Trump.
And I just don't understand, other than he got bamboozled by Netanyahu, why he took such a gigantic risk.
I don't either.
And it wasn't just Steve Chung, who is a master messenger and saw the storm coming.
It was JD Vance, who, according to the New York Times, was in there specifically saying it's going to fracture the coalition.
And boy, is that an understatement.
Trump is now underwater, and he wasn't before, with men.
Don't forget the gender divide that happened in 2024.
Women went overwhelmingly for Kamala Harris, and men went for Trump.
Now he's underwater with men, including with young men and young people.
The young person coalition that Charlie Kirk delivered to the president is gone.
They've abandoned Donald Trump.
The working class, peers, the latest poll that just came out showed he's two points underwater with the working class.
That's Ben Trump's base from the beginning.
They were the unshakable foundation that got him elected over and over.
And they're gone.
They're very angry.
They care about what's happening in Iowa, not Iran.
They don't want days and days and more weeks of debates over the Strait of Hormuz.
No one cares.
They care about their own lives.
They care about the fact that they can't pay for health care.
They can't buy a home.
Young people cannot get a home, even though two people are working nonstop round the clock with no vacations in this country.
President Trump promised he would do something about that.
Now we see the leaked soundbite saying, eh, can't really worry about anything at the federal government level other than military.
Everything else has to be done at the state.
Then they pulled that down off the internet because they didn't mean to share it.
He said it at an Easter breakfast that was supposed to be private.
Well, it's going to be the campaign ad for every Democrat in these midterms.
So he's lost working class.
He's lost men.
He's lost young people.
He lost Hispanics by some 50 points.
Every single gain with Hispanics is now gone.
It's eradicated.
Blacks.
He had made some inroads with black voters.
Done.
You name it.
They're all gone.
The question is now not who has he lost.
The question is who remains?
And sure, it's the diehard MAGA.
Trump can do no wrong.
He's some savant.
Whatever he says is right.
That's great.
He'll always have those people.
You can't win national elections with some fraction of 15% of the electorate.
The vast majority of Republicans would call themselves America first, but not necessarily MAGA.
Certainly not the way Trump is now defining that term.
And he misunderstood his own base twice critically in the past year.
And both times are really undermining him right now.
One was Epstein, thinking he could just say, Epstein, who still cares about that?
No one's talking about Epstein.
He misread the base, which very much cared about Epstein, not so much because they care about Jeffrey Epstein, but they care about elites being able to get away with murder and protect each other when the common man cannot.
And the unwillingness to turn over stones that the base had been demanding be turned over so we could figure out, is there some sort of child predator sex ring?
Is there an elite cabal working to hurt people that gets protected because they have money and we don't?
And Trump could not get rid of that with a shrug of a shoulder.
And ultimately, it resulted in legislation he had to pretend he favored that was crammed down his throat and he had to sign, though it had enough loopholes in it to drive a MAC truck through.
But in any event, it was a step forward on Epstein that he didn't want to make and was forced to.
Trump Must Restrain Israeli Actions00:15:01
And this is the second one.
And this is a much, much bigger and more serious betrayal of what he ran on and of what was important to his base, which does include the America firsters and not just MAGA.
Or as Marjorie Taylor Green has been saying at this point, she's not America first.
She's America only.
And I think a lot of us are getting to that point.
We are sick of being the policeman of the world, of being dragged into conflict after conflict by Bibi Netanyahu, by Israel, who's supposed to be our special ally.
But what they're special at is getting us to fight their wars and get involved in their conflicts that they can't fight by themselves.
That's what Dan Kaine said to President Trump the day after Netanyahu came for the seventh time and was sitting in that situation room like an equal.
He said that they're great on intelligence.
That's supposed to be the area in which they're so special to us.
They share their intelligence, agreed on it.
But that intelligence doesn't always seem to pan out.
Like the regime will fall easily.
The Iranian people will revolt in the streets and take over.
With how?
They don't have guns.
Bombs would be raining down.
Wasn't this thought through?
There isn't regime change.
Iranian people are arguably worse off than they were before.
And it's all based on Bibi Netanyahu's special intelligence, which cost at least 15 American lives, the fracturing of the Trump coalition, probably at least the next two elections for Republicans, not to mention the amount of lives and blood and treasure that was spilled in the Middle East.
So great job.
Megan, got to leave it there.
Wish I could talk to you for another hour because it's blistering stuff, but you're so right.
You said at the start one word, folly.
What a folly it's been.
And I think the repercussions are going to be enormous.
Thank you very much, David, joining me.
Good to see you.
Just about everybody on all sides of the Iran War debate is taking a victory lap today.
Everybody was right, it seems, and everybody has won.
The notable exception is Israel, as we speak, is continuing to pound Lebanon.
Israeli officials say the ceasefire doesn't include Lebanon and the war must go on, a direct contradiction of the Pakistani and U.S. position.
Today, the Leader of Israel's opposition said that if this ceasefire is as good as it gets, it will amount to, quote, one of the most severe strategic failures in Israeli history.
None of this bodes well for a permanent end to the war, unless that is, President Trump is about to break with Bibi Netanyahu.
Somewhat lost in the excitement of Trump's vow to end Iranian civilization yesterday, the New York Times released an extraordinary report on how Netanyahu made the case for war in the White House.
The Israeli premier, it says, planned a simple mission with swift regime change, but it had to be now.
Well, General Kane, the top U.S. military official, reportedly told the president: service is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis.
They oversell and their plans are not always well developed.
They know they need us, and that's why they're hard-selling.
All of this appears to echo the position of Vice President JD Vance and the former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
For several weeks now, we've been told it's an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to say that Israel dragged the U.S. into this war.
Perhaps the only people who can plausibly declare victory today are those who said the evidence suggested otherwise.
To debate all of this, I'm joined by Joe Kent, the former director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, and Will Chamberlain, the senior counsel at the Article 3 project.
Well, welcome to both of you.
I mean, Joe Kent, a lot of what you said when you resigned appears to have been pretty much confirmed by that New York Times report, which is extremely detailed and paints a picture of Netanyahu in the White House, in the situation room, with the head of Mossad appearing on a screen next to him, in which he laid out a four-point plan for why this would work, decapitating the regime.
The people would rise up, they would be too powerless to shut the Strait of Hormos and so on, most of which has not happened.
What do you feel about the fact there's now this ceasefire, albeit it seems quite perilous one?
Is it a recognition, do you think, by President Trump that he's got to get out of this?
Well, I think it's a good thing that President Trump took the opportunity to enact a ceasefire and to get both sides to the negotiating table.
I think what's key, though, is that President Trump has to realize in order to accomplish our strategic goal, which is ending this conflict, reopening the Straits of Hormuz, and maintaining the alliances that we have in the Gulf, he has got to restrain the Israelis.
The Israelis have a different strategic goal than we do.
They want to take down the entire regime.
They don't care how long it takes.
They don't care how much we have to commit in terms of blood and treasure.
So the Israelis and us have parted ways in terms of strategic objectives.
We have to be honest with ourselves.
It sounds like, considering the fact that someone shared that, shared the origins of this war with the New York Times, that that is recognized now by this administration.
So the first thing that President Trump has to do in order to make sure this lasts is actually restrain the Israelis, take away key components of the military aid that we give them so that they lack the capability to go on the offense and to spoil this ceasefire.
Will Temberlin, your response to that?
I mean, I think that's a completely incoherent idea, not merely wrong, but just incoherent.
First off, it presupposes we have the ability to take away their offensive capabilities.
Newsflash, they already have them.
We can't just seize them.
Are we going to invade Israel and take their planes?
We can't.
They have the F-35.
They have these capabilities.
Remember, they launched the 12-day war on their own.
So, I mean, on that point, the Americans could withdraw their funding.
Sure, but the billions of dollars, the billions of dollars that go to the Israelis, which they use to fund their own military, that could just be withdrawn.
So America isn't powerless.
It can exercise that power.
Right, but the offensive capabilities they would need to strike Iran, they already have.
They're the second biggest air force in the world today.
Even if we said we're not going to give you $4 billion a year going forward, that wouldn't stop anything.
And then the second point is that this is an unbelievably silly approach to foreign policy because we haven't hammered out final terms with the Iranians yet.
We're still in the middle of negotiations.
The idea that we would restrain our ally, who, by the way, just helped us achieve one of the greatest military victories of the modern era.
We would restrain them instead of trying to use the threat of continued belligerence from them to extract more punitive terms from the Iranians is silly.
It's just completely antithetical to how things should work.
And the idea that we need to be worried about our Gulf neighbors who would be upset if we didn't restrain the Israelis is also absurd because our Gulf neighbors are on our side.
This war has not only solidified our position militarily, it's solidified it diplomatically because all those countries are furious with the Iranians and are on our side and want to strengthen cooperation with both us and Israel.
But what is clear from that New York Times report?
It seems to be incredibly well sourced.
So somebody's been talking who was in that room.
What is clear from that is that the Israelis, you know, maybe this was an honest mistake on their part, a misreading of the situation, but they certainly appear to be of the belief, if you took out the Ayatollah and some of the top people with him, that this would then lead to an uprising by the people and that amid all this chaos, there would be no ability to close the Strait of Hormuz.
Well, none of that has really happened.
Yes, they got rid of the Ayatollah, but he's just been replaced by other similarly minded people.
And then there's been no uprising by the Iranian people whatsoever.
And of course, the Strait of Hormuz has been held in a kind of stranglehold by the Iranians in a very powerful way.
It has to be conceded, which has caused enormous damage to the global economy.
They've basically controlled that strait now for four or five weeks, and it's caused hell.
And none of that appears to have been predicted by the Israelis in their sales pitch to Trump to join them on this war.
Well, so I think you're overstating a number of things there.
First off, I mean, you know, the Iranian Navy is gone, right?
They're controlling the strait by threatening to shoot at people, but they don't have any naval forces meaningfully in the area.
And the idea, remember, they were thinking that card, which is their only Trump card, that's the maximum.
But it's a very powerful card.
And it's one that the Israelis were saying to be.
The Israelis did not think they had the power.
According to the North African.
The Israelis might have made a slight misjudgment on that effect.
It's war.
I think the Iranians made a much bigger misjudgment overall when you talk about the complete destruction of their military capability.
Right, but if you take away the Strait of Hormuz issue, then you've got overwhelming military dominance by the Americans and Israelis.
Yes, the Iranians would have still attacked their neighboring Gulf states, but that would be a military conflict part of it.
The fact that the Strait of Hormuz has been shut pretty much for five weeks, that has been an asymmetric war, which, you know, with the best one in the world, has been wielded very successfully by the Iranians.
I don't believe so at all.
I think that's actually been wielded quite poorly.
Two weeks ago, let me finish my point, Joe, and then you can speak.
Two weeks ago, the Iranians were saying we're not going to give up the Strait of Hormuz unless we get a permanent peace deal, a permanent commitment to non-aggression and reparations.
What are they trading it for as of yesterday?
Two weeks' ceasefire, no promises.
They can't even extract a commitment from the Israelis to stop fighting Hezbollah.
That's how badly they're beaten.
Okay.
Well, Joe, he called you silly and incompetent, I think, earlier.
So this is your chance to respond.
So, prior to this war, the Straits of Hormuz were transited by anybody trading oil for free.
Post-war, the Iranians are going to be able to extract a fee.
That's one of their negotiating chips they have now.
Prior to the war, the Ayatollah, the Ayatollah that we killed, was actually at the negotiating table with us.
The reason why none of this was taken into account is because the Israelis didn't really care about what would happen to the Straits of Hormuz.
They didn't care what would happen to our Gulf allies.
Our Gulf allies right now still technically are with us, but the fact that we were unable to provide them with security guarantees lowers our status in the region, potentially could threaten the petrodollar in the region.
And so, right now, we're in a weaker position because we listened to a foreign government that had a different strategic goal in mind than we did.
So, it's great that we got the ceasefire.
We need to maintain that ceasefire, and we have to actually withhold things from the Israelis, which we can do.
The Israelis do have a modern air force, but they rely on us for a lot of the logistics, the refueling, in order to be able to reach into Iran.
So, we very much are in the driver's seat of what we do.
Well, that's not true, Joe.
That's just obviously weak.
We didn't help them with the money.
No, it's 100% true.
They can't reach into, they cannot reach into Israel.
I was actually, I've actually been in the military, man.
I've been part of these operations.
Then, explain how they did the 12-day war without refueling.
Like, if we helped people, we helped operations with the people who struck the hell out of it.
Well, we helped them out a good deal with logistics.
They can't sustain operations without us.
They wouldn't be able to continue to sustain operations all the way into Iran with conventional military forces in any meaningful way without our support.
We have to pull that back.
We also have to pull back their ability to go on the offense outside of their borders because it's going to interfere with the peace that we're trying to achieve.
Right now, we're paying for their defense, we're paying for the offense, and also in terms of our status in the region and our ability to keep commerce and oil flow going out of the Straits of Hormuz and the Middle East.
All of that is being negatively affected by us listening to a foreign government.
So, we have to put Israel back in the junior partner role if we're going to accomplish our strategic government.
Why couldn't you persuade Pete Hegzeth of any of this?
Well, I tried.
So, therefore, I didn't agree with you.
He has better intelligence than you.
You weren't privy to any of this stuff.
Like, you just don't know.
That's why you're now on the outside doing podcasts instead of inside the administration trying to shape policy.
You don't know.
Well, you didn't persuade him.
From the inside, like, look, man, my letter of resignation has been out there.
What's important right now is that we support President Trump in getting this peace deal and making sure it actually sticks.
The problem is, as confirmed by the New York Times, that was well-sourced from within the West.
No, it wasn't.
The Israelis were in the driver's seat for all of this.
Well, if you read the article, I think it's pretty much it.
Well, we're well in D.C.
Okay, well, with the New York Times.
Well, if you say if you say it wasn't well-sourced, Will, which part are you contesting?
Oh, no, it was well-sourced.
You guys are just mischaracterizing how much influence Israel had based on what was written in that article.
What?
Which was Israel gave a presentation.
Yeah, I read it completely.
And then, after the Israelis were offline, right, then you had the meeting between the U.S. principles, in which John Ratcliffe and others were talking about, yeah, the Israelis are overselling their ability to achieve regime change.
That's probably not going to happen.
But they said, you know, on what we've and what we've thought for a while is when it comes to missiles and when it comes to their ballistic shield, when it comes to their Navy, we have the capability to do that and we should do that.
And so the idea that, you know, we didn't get suckered into a regime change war.
From the outset, American goals did not include regime change.
From Trump's very first time, Donald Trump literally taken by Hegeth.
Early on, literally.
Donald Trump literally said that.
He said regime change was an objective of the war.
Fact-check me on that after.
He never did.
You don't think Donald Trump ever mentioned regime change?
Incorrect.
I didn't say that.
I said it wasn't a military objective of the war.
He said, but it's not.
He's claiming today he's affected regime change.
What are you talking about?
He's affected it.
That's because he's basically saying we killed all the senior leadership, which we did, by the way, in an unprecedented fashion.
So who's running the country?
That doesn't mean it was an original military.
Who is running Iran right now?
Check me on this, man.
Go look at his original statements.
It would be nice to have, but it's not an objective.
He changed his goalposts every 10 seconds.
That's been modeled.
I mean, this has been remarkably consistent from Hegseth, Rubio on down.
Go look at their public statements.
Did they say an official objective?
Why did Puri's regime change?
Why did America launch a preemptive strike against Iran?
Will.
Oh, to essentially prevent them from building up a further ballistic missile capability as a shield behind the ball.
That was not the reason given by the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
Go look it up, man.
He said it over and over and over again.
On camera, he said when he was first asked, the reason the United States launched a preemptive strike against Iran was because another country, brackets, Israel, had indicated they were going to attack Iran, and therefore the Americans knew there would be attacks against some of their interests in the Middle East, so they got in first.
Marco Rubio was the reason for the camera.
Not the reason for the strike.
The strategic reason for the strike, which Rubio explained in that very same press conference.
Preemptive Attack On Iranian Regime00:15:36
I remember the exact one you're talking about.
It's like a gaggle.
I think he's in Congress after having a meeting with people.
This is very early in the war.
He says the reason for the strike is to prevent them from developing their ballistic missile shield further.
The reason for the timing, like why today, why February 28th, was the fact that they had this intelligence about the meeting of Ayat Khameni and everybody else, and that Israel was going to go ahead with that under any circumstances.
So we should start, we should do it now.
But, I mean, again, go back and look at that.
I know exactly what press conference you're talking about.
And I don't think your memory, you are remembering one piece of it, but you're not remembering.
It's a pretty significant piece when the Secretary of State of the United States on record says that the reason for the preemptive strike by the United States was because Israel was attacking Iran.
And then we hear from Anthony Blinken, one of his predecessors, that Netanyahu had tried to sell this to both Biden and Obama.
And when they both rejected the opportunity to join him in attacking Iran, guess what?
Israel didn't attack.
So it looks like he got third time lucky with Trump, who went along with it.
But had Trump said no, I don't think Israel would have attacked.
Well, but then why did they strike in the 12-day war?
They did that without warning.
Well, let's talk about the 12-day war.
Let me bring Joe back in this.
The 12-day war is fascinating because I distinctly remember, and I'm sure Will will remember it differently to me, but I remember Donald Trump at the end of the 12-day war saying that this had put back any aspirations by the Iranians to build a nuclear weapon decades, that we had obliterated their nuclear capabilities.
It was done, done, gone.
And here we are, nine months later, having to launch a full-fledged war in Iran because the threat remains apparently not just the same, but so imminent that America had to act immediately.
Now, try and make sense of that for me, Joe.
Well, this is what the Israelis do.
They've always wanted this regime change war.
And so they continually use their influence through official channels and then also through their echo chamber in the media to move the red line.
They did this with the enrichment issue.
President Trump initially said our policy is no nuclear weapons for Iran.
The Iranian Supreme Leader agreed.
There was a lot of space there for negotiations.
There was negotiations that were taking place for several months.
Then the pro-Israel lobby basically came in and convinced President Trump that the new red line was zero enrichment.
12-day war happens.
Operation Midnight Hammer happens.
We take away the ability for them to enrich.
The Iranians withhold their proxies.
They don't retaliate in any meaningful way.
They get right back to the negotiating table.
And then we're hearing basically what Will just said, oh, now we have to go in and attack Iran because of this ballistic missile capability.
So, the red line moves again every time Israel needs a new justification for the war and they get the outcome that they want by using their pressure network and their media echo chamber and their official engagements with the U.S. government.
They were still worried that we were going to get a deal with the Iranians.
And so, therefore, they went ahead and said, Hey, we're going to preemptively go into Iran and attack, knowing that this attack would be against the regime.
Iran's reaction to an attack directly against the regime would be to enact their contingency plan, which would be targeting our bases in the region.
So, the only actual imminent threat that Iran posed was, or that was posed, was the attack threat by the Israelis against Iran.
There was no imminent Iranian threat attack against us.
No, I don't think there was for a moment.
Will Chamberlain, I mean, as we sit here today debating this, the regime remains in place.
Trump wants to argue it's different people, therefore it's a new regime.
But it's the same people, it's the same regime.
It's just the faces of minus the hundred senior leaders who are so a few of the leaders have gone, but they've been replaced by others, but they've been replaced by others from the same regime with the same ideology.
It would be like saying you've, you know, you've decapitated the Trump regime, but he's replaced by a bunch of people called Trump.
It's like, you know, it's kind of like, I mean, we have to have the president of Venezuela.
Now we have a lot of people.
The regime hasn't changed in Venezuela.
All that's changed is the president got picked up in the middle of the night and put in a New York prison cell.
But the regime's continued.
His own number two is running it.
The regime is still there.
So I think we should be clear about what regime change means, right?
With my quaint old head-on, regime change means you change the regime.
Not that you just at the top of it and they get replaced by other people from the same regime.
Secondly, the enriched uranium remains in Iran.
None of that has been secured by either the Americans or Israelis as we speak.
Thirdly, the Straits of Hormuz remain under the control of the Iranians, which they weren't.
It wasn't in control of it before this war started.
And it is, despite what you say, they are now charging money.
Apparently, they want to charge a dollar a barrel, was the last thing I read.
And Trump's all for it because it's going to make everyone rich.
So they've got the control of that.
They've continued to fire rockets, it seems, at some of their Gulf State neighbors.
So I'm looking at this historic victory and I'm thinking, well, where's the victory?
What is the victory?
Because I don't see it.
And forgive me if I take with a pinch of salt this idea that's trying this by historical analysis.
Let me finish my point.
You can respond.
Apparently, we're now supposed to believe that rather like eight, nine months ago, Iran's capability of building a nuclear weapon has been destroyed like it was nine months ago.
Well, why can't they just pop up again in nine months?
They've still got all the enriched uranium.
What's going to stop them?
So look, I put it to you that the charge sheet against the claim of historic victory is pretty big.
All right.
So I'll deal first with that minor point on the enriched uranium, right, President Francis.
No, no, no.
I mean, in relation to you saying we lost the war, right?
I didn't say America's lost the war.
I'm disputing.
So that we didn't win.
That you didn't think it's a big victory.
I'm disputing the claim to historic victory, given the checklist I just presented.
Well, let's imagine, if you will, it's January 1942, a month after Hitler declared war on the United States in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.
And the current military state of affairs is the entire German Navy is at the bottom of the sea.
The Luftwaffe is destroyed.
There's complete Allied air superiority over Germany.
Hitler, Gehring, Bormann, and Himmler are all dead in a massive military strike.
And yet the German press is claiming the Germans have managed to shut down trade via some rockets in the Danish Straits.
Who's winning?
Is that like not?
I mean, people have lost context about what it means to win.
I've lost a plot with that.
I'm sorry.
In five weeks, we have decimated Iranian military capability.
We struck 13,000 targets, and they managed to hit a single plane, and they couldn't even capture the soldiers that fell out of that plane.
It's one of the most lawful attacks on the neighboring Gulf.
And the fact that you have a temporary restraining trade and increasing gas by a dollar a gallon for a month does not change that in the slightest.
Really?
Yes, 100%.
So you want to be able to do it.
It's a massive military victory.
Okay, Joe, this is a great victory, and I've lost the plot.
The great victory is the fact that we have a ceasefire, and this could have been much, much worse.
However, as opposed to making some like obscure World War II reference, because everything always has to be about World War II, let's just compare the situation between now and just a month ago before the war.
The Straits of Hormuz, before this last iteration of war kicked off, the Straits of Hormuz were open for commerce.
People and companies could transit that for free.
Iran didn't have a stranglehold on that.
Our GCC alliance was completely intact.
There was still a guarantee of American security.
That hadn't been fractured.
We had a regime inside of Iran, although they were not the best.
It's not exactly what we wanted.
They had a prohibition on building a nuclear weapon, and they were involved in active negotiations with us.
They were closely adhering to a strict escalation ladder.
Their proxies were not attacking us.
No, that's exactly what happened.
They had 60% of Urich uranium.
What do you think they were using that?
For medical purposes?
If they wanted a bomb, they had decades long before President Trump ever became the president to develop a nuclear weapon.
There was a prohibition by the Ayatollah, which was a reasonable and calculated approach.
They didn't want to become like Libya.
They didn't want to become like Saddam.
They had reached a point where they would keep the capability, but not in negotiations with Witkoff's.
And they were in negotiations with us and we were not give up our enrichment rights.
And we won't give you up anything diplomatically.
But we were at the negotiating table with them.
There was a potential for obviously fake Iranian nuclear organizations.
So we'll fast forward to where we're at right now.
Look at the GCC.
Let me ask Will a question, which is, Will, does Israel have nuclear weapons?
Yes, almost certainly.
I mean, they haven't officially claimed it at all.
Why don't we know for a fact?
Because they don't want to say so, because there's American status.
Why do they get a view that they're not going to be able to do that?
Why do they get a pass about that?
Well, because they're our ally and Iran's our enemy.
Ah.
See, we're the good guys.
Okay, but we see a very interesting admission.
So our friends don't need to be transparent about their nuclear capability, but our enemies.
They're not going to be America's friends.
But our enemies do.
Yes.
That's exactly how it works.
Because we have the B2B.
It's only hypocrisy, isn't it?
No, it's only hypocrisy if you don't have a normative view of whether the United States is good and Iran is bad.
I don't think there's a problem.
If you have a normative view of that, there is no single good reason why Israel should be allowed to refuse to admit whether it has nuclear weapons.
There's no reason.
They should be.
We've called the international law police.
They should be.
Again, they're a core ally of the United States, and the United States is the most powerful country in the world.
This whole multi-polarity talk is just silly.
There's a unipolar hegemon in the world.
It's the United States.
And we're also very benevolent.
And so Israel, our friend, does it, you know, gets a few things that the Iranians don't.
Okay, that's the way the world is.
When you say America is benevolent, how does that sit with the president of the United States two days ago talking about the imminent destruction of an entire civilization?
Oh, you mean like death to America, death to Israel?
Right?
Like 40 years of their crop in the middle of a negotiation and signs a ceasefire within eight hours.
You're talking about Donald Trump threatening to annihilate 90 million people.
McFarland had it right yesterday.
Do you not care about that?
I just see it as negotiating bluster.
Trump's been doing this stuff for 40 years.
I mean, that's exactly what the Iranians have been doing to us.
They had a clock in the middle of their downtown.
So America should be as the entire country of Israel.
America should be amoral, if not as immoral, as its enemies.
Is that what you're saying?
We should be sufficiently ruthless to get our negotiated pieces that actually make sense, which we seem to have done here.
Apparently, this focused the Iranians' mind and made them realize they should come to the table.
Are you aware that threatening to commit an act of genocide in itself could be presented as a war crime?
I think that would be frivolous.
Again, send the international law of police to the White House if you want.
Joe Kent, what's remarkable is there's a kind of arrogance to the way Will is talking.
Like, none of this matters.
I think it does matter.
I've known Trump a long time.
I consider him a friend, but on this, I think he's lost the plot.
And I think the idea that from the White House, you issue a statement in your own words threatening the annihilation of an entire civilization, an entire country of 90 million Iranians, I thought was disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful, and could well be a crime.
I'm glad that President Trump's tactic worked out and we have a ceasefire.
I think what's critical is that we make sure that we keep the Straits of Romans open, get the negotiating table.
We have to hold back Israel to make that happen.
If our goal was to make sure that Iran didn't get a nuclear weapon or that other states that we're adversarial with get a nuclear weapon, we just set a horrible example here because Iran showed that they were going to play ball with us, that they were in the negotiation process, that they just wanted some enrichment.
And yet we came in and we killed the leader that put that prohibition on.
The lesson that the other people who are coming up in the ranks and the Iranian regime have learned is that they better get a nuclear weapon.
Otherwise, this is going to happen to them too.
Actually, one of the most vindicated countries in this whole exchange has been North Korea, who obtained a nuclear weapon for this very reason.
So if we want to make sure that countries that we're adversarial with or rogue countries don't try to develop a nuclear weapon, the second one of them gets the negotiating table, the last thing that we should do is go and launch a regime change war, a decapitation strike against that leadership.
So I think the lesson learned here is that now this galvanized, harder generation of IRGC officers and Ayatollahs are going to take over Iran.
They better get a nuclear weapon.
And that's going to be a major problem for us going forward.
So that's why we need to take this round of negotiations very seriously.
I hope President Trump used that talk, that bolster, that bluster to get them to the negotiating table.
But there's only so many different times that you can use that.
So the next time if these negotiations don't go well and President Trump says, like, I'm going to annihilate you, that might not have the exact same effect.
So it won't happen.
I think we have to be very careful with our language.
That's the point, Will.
You know, I made the point yesterday.
You become the boy that cried Wolf, the emperor with no clothes.
And if you say we're going to wipe out an entire civilization and then nothing happens, well, you know, you become a bit of a lame duck in terms of your threats.
I mean, I would put to you this.
So did you want him to follow through?
No, of course not.
Okay, good.
Just checking.
Of course not.
But here's what's interesting.
Trump welcomed the 10-point plan as if it was somehow brand new, which it wasn't.
But the 10-point plan, which he says is very workable in terms of the negotiations.
Let's just go through this and I'll ask you, how many of these do you think are acceptable?
Number one, the Iranians want commitment to non-aggression.
Number two, Iran's control over the...
This is just totally misconceived.
Like, from the outset, he said that the 10 points, he just truthed about this.
The 10 points that the reporters are saying, the ones you're quoting from, are not the basis on which he said.
Well, these are the 10 points according to the Iranian media.
Yeah, it's not what Trump has agreed to.
And he's repeatedly said this is not the thing he's workable.
And he put out a slew of truth today saying he's going to continue to insist full dismantlement of the Iranian nuclear program, return of the highly enriched uranium, which, again, this whole idea that there was a peaceful fatwa, remember, they had 60% enriched uranium, 11 kilograms or 450 kilograms worth of it, enough for 11 bombs.
So when Trump says he welcomes the 10-point plan, in fact, he doesn't at all.
What?
He's looking for, I think, the basis for the negotiations is something that's much more favorable to the United States.
Okay.
So, future profits.
So, why would he say that he welcomes the 10-point plan?
Well, I think he was thinking of a different plan in his mind.
That's the simple answer.
You don't want to say that.
The worst thing is that he's not going to be able to agree to that.
The torturous knots that people have pulled with their own.
You can literally just read his truth feed.
He's like, and the fool White House rapid response on this.
They've been like, obviously, it's not true because if Iran was making, getting these kind of concessions out of the United States, they'd have also been able to save Hezbollah, but they can't even do that.
Okay, well, actually, it turns out that right now, Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz again and says it will not reopen as long as Israel's attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon.
So, who is sounds like they've put a new condition on the deal?
Perhaps they'll get struck again.
That's probably very unwise of the Iranians.
Is it?
Iran In Stronger Strategic Position00:02:05
Or is it wielding the most powerful tool in this whole war, which turns out to be a little piece of waterway which they can exercise control over and strangle and paralyze the global economy?
That didn't stop the United States from striking 13,000 targets over a period of five weeks, completely decimating the American military.
None of that was none of that involved.
If it was that powerful, it should have been able to stop that from happening and force an earlier ceasefire.
It wasn't.
Okay, but the Strait of Hormuz remains close.
So, how successful is it?
I mean, honestly, you guys, everybody's just overblowing the Straits of Hormuz closure vis-a-vis the United States.
We're the largest producer in the world.
It's good for us before prices go up.
Just to be clear, Will, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, by most experts' analysis, has been the single greatest shock in a negative way to the global economy ever.
Ever.
Well, that can't be true because oil prices were higher in the Ukraine at the beginning of the Ukraine-Russia war.
So that just can't be true.
This has had a greater negative impact on the global economy, specific to energy, of anything we've seen ever.
And it's going to get worse.
Again, why did the price spike even more at the beginning of the Ukraine war?
I know you're a facts guy.
Go and check the facts.
Okay.
I mean, I'm sure somebody said that.
I'm just saying you can't explain that it's not overstating things.
All the economic analysts have said the same thing.
This has been the worst energy shock that we've ever seen, ever.
But look, I'm sure you're right.
I'm sure it's kind of a trivial detail.
The complete destruction of the Iranian military.
All right.
I've got to leave it there.
Joe, last word to you.
I'm just saying, yeah, now the Iranians are in even a stronger position than they were prior to this war.
The last 20 plus years of GWAT has shown us that we can basically take out targets, we can strike targets all day, and our enemies will endure simply by not losing, and they will use the leverage of the geography that they have at their disposal to have an effect that we can't sustain.
And that's the position right now.
That's why exactly I hope that President Trump is a lot better.
They've lost their military capability.
They can be as mad as they want.
US Did Not Win Militarily00:09:38
If they're throwing rocks, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, but if they're actually, if they're actually all they have to do is be able to affect the straits and they can have a strategic effect.
They understand that now.
They probably didn't understand that or weren't willing to use it prior to this iteration of war.
And that's why President Trump is at the negotiating table right now because he realizes the effect that was having on the American economy.
And he made the right decision.
I think President Trump made the right decision to get to the negotiating table.
So now we have to pursue our objective, which is getting the straits opened and maintaining this ceasefire and holding together the alliances that we have in the Gulf.
And so to do that, we've got to restrain our junior partner, the Israelis.
Okay, I've got to leave it there.
Thank you both very much for your time.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The U.S. could not be clearer.
Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of State for War, says Iran begged for a ceasefire under overwhelming pressure.
My next guest may have a different interpretation with a view from Tehran.
I'm joined again by Professor Mohamed Morandi.
Professor Morandi, welcome back to Uncensored.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
So the United States claiming overwhelming victory, but with a slight caveat on the battlefield, my take on this is that I think the United States and Israel have had overwhelming military success on the battlefield,
but there's been an asymmetric war going on, which has involved the Straits of Hormuz and also the neighboring Gulf countries, Gulf states, where Iran could legitimately lay claim to have been very successful in responding to the military threat by effectively paralyzing the globe economically in terms of the energy coming through that strait.
What is your take on this?
My take is somewhat different.
I don't think the United States won militarily.
And of course, the Israeli regime has a much smaller military.
The United States focused mostly on civilian targets.
And since it failed to destroy any of Iran's underground missile bases and it failed to destroy its underground drone bases or the factories that produced them, and that's why for 40 days Iran's missiles and drones were being fired 24 hours a day.
Because of that, they were frustrated and they were constantly bombing civilian targets.
In fact, yesterday they bombed a synagogue.
And I think that that has not been reported anywhere in the Western media, but they completely demolished the synagogue in Tehran.
And that's just one of thousands of places that have been targeted very near my home.
They destroyed a building with a bank, just apartment buildings above a branch of a bank.
And they've been doing that across the city and across the country.
So I think it's a military failure.
I think it's a political failure.
And of course, they forced Iran to shut down the Strait of Hormos because those Arab family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf, they were complicit in this war.
They provided the United States with bases.
They allowed them to use their airspace.
They allowed them to use areas outside the bases to attack Iran.
So Iran obviously would not allow their ships to go through the Strait of Hormos.
And when Iranian oil and gas and critical infrastructure was struck, they'd be hit in response.
And of course, Iran was striking the Israeli regime 24 hours a day, as we all know.
So I think that the United States and Israelis, the Israeli regime, failed catastrophically.
It was they who changed their position.
Trump said initially that he wanted unconditional surrender.
Then, after evolving his position, he gave a 15-point plan.
Iran rejected it.
And then he ultimately, last night, accepted that framework, the 10-point plan that Iran gave as a framework for negotiations.
That doesn't mean we'll have a deal.
Iran is not naive.
And Trump already attacked this twice as we were negotiating.
So Iran is prepared for renewed war.
But it is a major achievement.
I mean, the major achievement is that the regime that rules in Iran remains intact.
And the issue I would certainly have with Pete Hegseth and the others, including President Trump, when they say that it's a different regime because it's different people at the top, I would imagine it's crystal clear that it's IRGC.
They remain the regime.
It is just a question of different people, but they're all part of the same regime.
Would you agree with that?
No, I think the Islamic Republic of Iran is quite clearly a, it has a constitution.
The leader is the person in charge.
In fact, he was the person who made changes to Iran's proposal and ultimately turned out to be the 10-point plan.
We have a president.
We have a chair for the Supreme National Security Council.
All of these institutions are very important.
And I think the most important thing, though, Pierce, which will ruffle your feathers, is that the Islamic Republic of Iran, whether you like it or not, has a high degree of popular legitimacy.
And during the first week of the war, after Ayatollah Khamenei was martyred, it was basically the people who were on the streets who kept everything running.
It took a week for us to elect a new leader.
Of course, during that week, the Constitution provided us with a three-man leadership, but it was the people who were holding things together.
There are no SKUs or lines at the gas station.
No one went and rushed into, none of the people rushed into supermarkets.
Everything was as normal.
And every night we've seen millions of people on the streets throughout the country, on the streets, defending the armed forces, defending the leadership against this aggression.
Can you envisage a situation as part of a deal where Iran voluntarily gives up all its enriched uranium and where it cedes control of the Strait of Hormuz?
No, Iran will continue to enrich uranium within the framework of international law.
It will be willing to have a deal.
We already had a deal to have extra supervision if anyone is truly worried.
But remember, Joe Kent, when he resigned, he wrote in his letter, and he wasn't a Trump appointee, a senior intelligence official.
He said that Iran was no threat to the United States.
He said that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon.
And he said this war is about Zionist pressure in the United States and the Israeli regime putting pressure on the United States.
This is a completely, it was a completely unnecessary war where the Americans murdered many, many Iranians.
Donald Trump has said that these are red lines, particularly the enriched uranium.
If what you say is true and the Iranian regime will not give up that enriched uranium, it sounds like there may not be a deal.
So what happens then?
Well, the Trump regime has said many things in the past, and we have been a victim of two wars due to the Trump regime and the Netanyahu regime.
And we have come out on top on both occasions.
And the world sees that.
And we are prepared to defend ourselves in future again.
And Trump, by carrying out this war at the behest of the Zionists and Israeli regime, they have badly damaged the global economy, which is going, and it's going to get a lot worse.
And as we speak, in fact, Pierce, although Lebanon is a part of the agreement, and that is something that the Pakistani prime minister has said openly and in a tweet, the Israelis have been slaughtering the people of Lebanon all morning, carpet bombing cities just out of rage.
And yet Trump then goes out and says Lebanon was not a part of the deal, where in fact it was and the Pakistani prime minister said so.
So we're dealing with ruthless people.
We're dealing with people who are utterly immoral, who have constantly said they will destroy Iran, obliterate Iran, send Iran back to the Stone Ages, and of course delete or erase an entire civilization.
This is what we're up against.
But ultimately, the Trump regime recognized that this war is going nowhere and it is devastating the global economy and it's going to devastate the U.S. economy if this continues.
Of course, all the things you've just said, many people would apply to your own regime, the Iranian regime.
But Tehran has apparently said today in the last few hours it will withdraw from ceasefire if attacks on the Lebanon continuous from Iranian state media.
Can you confirm that, that if these attacks in Lebanon continue, then Iran will withdraw from this agreement on the ceasefire for two weeks?
Yes, Iran has already said that it is shutting down the Strait of Hormos and it will also punish the Israeli regime if this continues.
And the talks won't go anywhere if the terms of the ceasefire are not implemented.
Ceasefire Withdrawal If Attacks Continue00:03:45
You know, I invited you a few times before to come to Iran, Pierce, and you rejected to come for whatever reason.
Well, I've invited you to come to London.
You've rejected that as well.
I've lived in the UK.
I've been there.
Maybe I'll go one day.
I'll come one day.
But you should come for the first time.
But my advice to you and to analysts in the UK and the United States is to read a book called Going to Tehran, written by two Americans who worked in the White House.
One was the head of the Middle East under Condoleezza Rais of all people, and the other was the head of the Persian Gulf at that time.
Flint and Hillary Lebert, they wrote a book called Going to Tehran.
If U.S. analysts had read books like this and dealt with Iran realistically, instead of listening to Zionists and Netanyahu, the world would be in a much better place.
And probably Iran and the United States would have had normal ties.
And there would be no war, obviously.
How are relations now, do you think, going forward between Iran and the neighboring Gulf states, given that Iran has obviously been bombarding many of them with missile attacks, using the fact that they themselves have been attacked as the excuse to do this, and that's carried on post-the ceasefire.
What is going to happen between these relationships going forward?
Well, they should not have allowed their territory to be used to slaughter thousands of Iranians.
They wanted to have their cake and eat it too.
They wanted to be friends with the United States and allow their territory to be used to slaughter Iranians.
And they probably thought that Iran would capitulate within a day or two.
Something that I told you would never happen.
In fact, once upon a time, you told me that all the things that I was saying was bluster.
But we saw during the past 40 days what happened.
These family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf misread the situation, misinterpreted Iran's capabilities, and they made a major and catastrophic mistake.
They will have to pay reparations for what happened to Iranians.
And from now on, the Strait of Hormos will be used to ensure that happens and also to ensure that the Persian Gulf will never be again used as a platform for aggression, whether it's against Iraq or Iran or Yemen or Syria.
These regimes have to behave like normal countries.
Across Africa, we see countries that neighbor one another.
They don't have foreign bases there to be used to bomb their neighbors.
These regimes have made this mistake and they have to pay for it.
We want good relations with them, but they helped wage a war against us.
Without their territory, this war could not have happened.
And when it comes to paying reparations, what about reparations then to countries like Israel, for example, who have been peppered with missile attacks from Hezbollah, from the Houthis, a barbaric terror attack from Hamas, all funded by Iran?
Is there any accountability and responsibility at your end and your regime for the mayhem that's been wrought against Israel by those three terror proxies?
I think if we look historically, Pierce, and I think you've had very good guests who can explain this better than I, but if we look historically, if there are going to be reparations, then it would have to be the UK, it would have to be other European countries, and the United States that helped with the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, with the colonization of Palestine, with the slaughter of the Palestinians,
Suffering Lebanese And Israeli Civilians00:08:13
by pushing them into the slums of Gaza, the concentration camp of Gaza, by gradually taking more and more territory from the West Bank, where the refugees from Palestine have gone to, along with Gaza, and all those millions of Palestinians that are in refugee camps around the region, I think those countries are the ones who have to pay reparations to the Palestinian people.
And as long as we have ethno-supremacism, Pierce, and as long as people other than Zionists are considered to be Amalek and inferior, this problem is not going to be solved.
The Israeli regime yesterday, as I said earlier, bombed a synagogue in Tehran.
Why did they bomb these Jews?
Because they are non-Zionist Jews.
Professor Morandi, I'm going to have to leave it there, but thank you for joining me again on Uncensored.
Thank you, Pradhi.
Well, as we've been discussing, Israel's assault on Lebanon continues despite a ceasefire deal, which is supposed to cover every conflict in the region.
The Iranians are warning that if Israel continues, the US-backed ceasefire is in jeopardy.
I'm joined now by Danny Zanon, he's Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.
Danny, welcome back to Uncensored.
Thank you for having me again, Piel.
There's a lot going on.
As we're talking, the Iranians have closed again the Strait of Hormus and citing specifically that it's because Israel is continuing its attacks on the Lebanon, contradicting what we were told by the Pakistanis and by the Americans that as part of this ceasefire, that would also include Lebanon.
Why is Israel continuing to bombard Lebanon when there's a ceasefire in the wider war?
Well, first, I beg to differ with you about the narrative.
We are not bombarding Lebanon.
We are targeting Hezbollah that actually started this cycle of violence against Israel after Iran started to attack Israel.
So it's not that we are bombarding Lebanon, actually on the opposite.
You know, the Lebanese government, they're saying it in the last few weeks that they want to get rid of Hezbollah, but they're not capable of doing it.
And we are actually doing it now.
We are dismantling the president of Hezbollah next to our border, and we are making sure that they will not pose a threat to Israel anymore.
And, you know, it's interesting to see that the Iranians, they look at Lebanon like the old Lebanon.
But that's not the case.
Lebanon is a sovereign state.
So Iran is not in a position to actually dictate what will happen.
And we should look at the UN resolution that called for the Lebanese to take responsibility and to make sure that Hezbollah is not next to the border of Israel.
Numerous resolutions passed on that.
Okay, but if you believe that this is not an attack on Lebanon, why is Lebanon's prime minister condemning what you're doing, saying it disregards all peace efforts and humanitarian laws in the Middle East?
Nawaf Salaam said on X, Israel continues to expand its aggressions that have targeted densely populated residential neighborhoods.
These strikes were, quote, heedless of all regional and international efforts to stop the war and showed a quote utter disregard for the principles of international law and international humanitarian law.
That's the Prime Minister of Israel directly accusing Lebanon.
The Prime Minister of Lebanon directly accusing Israel of flagrantly breaching all international laws.
Well, we can agree on one issue, Piers, today, that the Lebanese government is a weak government.
You know, in the morning they would call Hezbollah to get out of southern Lebanon, and in the afternoon they would call Israel to cease fire.
It doesn't work that way.
Who is actually going to dismantle Hezbollah?
Who is going to do that?
You know, the UN president's uniform, they are not capable of doing much over there.
The Lebanese government, you know, despite the fact they have a military of 70,000 soldiers that are not deploying them to the south, and this military is a very weak one.
So basically, you know, all the responsibility is on our shoulders.
We have to send our boys and girls to fight again and again in Lebanon in order to push the threat from our border.
And I want to remind you that, you know, thousands of rockets were fired from southern Lebanon into Israeli cities.
We didn't attack southern Lebanon just because we wanted to.
We had no choice.
And now we are dismantling the presence of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
And we hope that there will be quiet for the people of Israel and for the people of Lebanon.
The death toll in Lebanon has reportedly now exceeded 1,500.
That's more than the number of Israelis killed on October the 7th.
A million people.
I don't know where you got this number, but maybe you can let me know how many of those people are Hezbollah terrorists.
Because we actually...
Will you tell me?
So I think most of them, I'll tell you why, because we are...
Do you know how many?
Do you know how many?
I would tell you that most of them, and I tell you why, because we asked the population to move out north of the Ritani River.
And they did.
It wasn't easy for them, but the population moved to the north.
So actually, the one who stayed in southern Lebanon are Hezbollah terrorists.
So I would estimate that most of the numbers you just quoted are Hezbollah terrorists.
Well, Lebanese authorities estimate that 250 are women and children.
Would you dispute that?
I have no knowledge of that number, but I can tell you that the fact that people moved to the north, it saved their lives and we encouraged them to stay up north until the end of the year.
But out of interest, Danny, out of interest, why is it that Israel always knows exactly how many enemy combatants you've killed, but you never know how many civilians you've killed?
No, I don't know to answer both questions.
You know, it's hard for us to know.
You told me most of the dead are Hezbollah.
The Lebanese authorities say 250 are women and children.
You're now saying you don't know, but at the same time, you're telling me most of them are Hezbollah.
Well, how can those two?
Actually, the number that you just presented proves my case.
If it's 250 civilians, and we regret the loss of life of Hebrews.
250 women and children, to be specific.
Let's make it clear.
We regret the loss of life of every civilian.
And out of 1,500 that you mentioned earlier, so the majority, the vast majority, were Hezbollah terrorists.
How do you know that if you say you don't actually know?
You said it.
You just say that 250...
No, I said the Lebanese authorities said 250 were believed to be women and children.
That doesn't mean they're the only civilians killed, obviously.
But you seem emphatic that the majority were Hezbollah, but at the same time, you admit you've no idea how many have been killed.
So, you know, we have a discussion like that in the past many times about Gaza.
Yes.
We regret the loss of life of any civilian.
You know, Israeli civilians are suffering and Lebanese.
But the running theme in Gaza was always the same, which was always that Israelis would come on the show, representing the government in some capacity, and they would know exactly how many Hamas they said they killed.
But when I said, well, how many civilians have been killed?
No idea.
So I'm just wondering, well, who does the counting?
And why is it that only the deaths of terrorists get counted, apparently, but not civilians?
Seems weird.
Actually, we don't have the exact numbers, not for the terrorists and not for the civilians.
But we know one thing: that the overwhelming majority of civilians left southern Lebanon.
It's not easy for them.
Now, most of them are in Beirut and they are waiting for us to finish the job so they can go back to their communities.
And I would say one more point.
You have Christian villages in southern Lebanon and they stayed there.
We didn't stay there because you don't have Hezbollah presence in those villages.
The Shiite villages, those are the ones that evacuated, and they know very good if you stay in those villages, they are in danger.
Let's turn to Iran because we've got this ceasefire, and yet there's this dispute, obviously.
The Pakistanis who seem to have facilitated this and the US both say that their understanding was that the ceasefire included Lebanon.
Clearly, Israel has taken a different view.
Regime Change Likely Now00:07:03
At the same time, we have this big piece in the New York Times that's come out, clearly very well sourced from inside the situation room at the White House, where your Prime Minister Netanyahu has been there with the head of Mossad joining from remotely on the big screen.
And they've laid out a four-point plan for what they believed would happen in this war, most of which has clearly not happened.
It included regime change.
Well, there hasn't been regime change.
There's been a decapitation of the Ayatollah and some of the leaders of the country, but they've been replaced very quickly.
Secondly, they believed the Israelis, according to this report, that if that was done, then there would be an uprising from the people, which has also not happened.
Thirdly, that because of the double-pronged effect of these two things, that would mean it would be highly unlikely that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed.
That has obviously not happened either.
So it seems from the reporting on this from inside that situation room as your Prime Minister sold this war to Donald Trump that a lot of the intelligence, presumably from Mossad, that was presented about the likely chain of events has simply not materialized.
So did you guys just massively miscalculate?
Absolutely not.
You know, everything is political.
You know, I hear those voices here in the US and I hear some of those voices in Israel.
You know, people who want to criticize the Israeli government or Trump's administration.
I choose to look at the results and the achievements of this operation.
And I think we can be very proud of what we achieved so far.
And the main point is that we send a lesson and a clear message to the Iranian regime that we will not allow them to achieve nuclear capability.
You know, for years we spoke about it.
We threatened and we spoke about it.
But people say, yeah, you know, it's only a declaration.
And we decided to be serious about it.
And we learned the lesson from North Korea.
When North Korea was playing the same game with the international community, you know, they were signing agreements, inspectors came in and out.
One morning we all woke up, peers, and we saw that they actually achieved the nuclear capabilities.
So we decided it's not going to happen with Iran.
And that's what happened in the last month.
We decapitated that capability.
And I think the Iranian regime, they know very carefully that we are not going anywhere.
If we have to go back, we'll go back against them.
And we have the capability.
Okay, but okay, but look, from where I'm sitting, the regime remains intact, albeit with different people at the head, but they're all the same ideology, same regime.
The enriched uranium remains under the ground.
None of that has been secured.
The Strait of Hormuz is closed again, specifically because you guys are bombing Hezbollah in Lebanon.
So I'm at a loss to understand where this claim of historic victory, which America is trying to claim this all is, is coming from.
Yair Lapid, who's the leader of the opposition in Israel, said there's never been such a political disaster in all of our history.
The military carried out everything that was asked of it.
The public demonstrated amazing resilience.
But Netanyahu failed politically, failed strategically, and didn't meet a single one of the goals he himself set.
It will take us years to repair the political and strategic damage that Netanyahu wrought due to arrogance, negligence, and a lack of strategic planning.
What do you say to that?
Well, as I told you earlier, you know, you have a lot of politics in this game, but I would agree on one point.
We haven't finished it yet.
We haven't finished it yet.
You still have the negotiations.
You have to evaluate it when you finish the process, not in the middle of the process.
But let me ask you one question.
Do you think Iran is stronger today?
And if you compare it to the point they were actually negotiating, I think it's a very interesting question.
I'll be let me finish the question.
They were negotiating with the US.
They were very arrogant when they came to Vienna and met with the Special Envoy Witkov and Mr. Kushner.
I think when they will come to the negotiation room in Islamabad on Friday, they will not be arrogant.
They know the fact.
It's a weakened Iran.
They don't have the same capabilities.
And they understand that if they will continue to lie and play games...
Well, let me answer you.
Okay, well, let me answer you.
I would dispute your characterization of it on this ground specifically.
I think militarily, clearly, they have been weakened.
I think that's beyond any doubt.
The American and Israeli forces have pulverized Iran for four or five weeks and caused a lot of damage to their military hardware.
I think that's indisputable.
However, there's been a serious miscalculation, I think, driven by Israel in its negotiations with Trump to join this war, in which they have miscalculated the impact of decapitating the head of the regime and then thinking that the people would rise up, which they haven't, and then not understanding, which the Iranians have clearly understood, that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz could be so disastrous to the global economy and to energy prices,
and the fact that Iran's been able to indiscriminately attack its neighboring Gulf states in a way that's paralyzed the economies in those countries for the duration of this war, driven many people to leave, caused enormous damage to the future business model of getting tourists to go there, people to go and live there, safe, sunny, you know, tourism, sport, and so on, enormous damage to that.
So, if you're the Iranian regime, yeah, you've had your military hardware significantly weakened.
That is beyond doubt.
But you've now got a very powerful belief, because you've proven it over five weeks, that by controlling the Strait of Hormuz, you can control the global economy.
And by attacking your neighboring Gulf states, whether it's oil refineries or it's tourism areas, you can actually paralyze their economic business model too.
And that can end up making you stronger, not weaker.
I have to make two points.
First, you know, when you imply that we actually drag the US into this war, you know, with all due respect, we both know President Trump.
No one can drag him anywhere.
He knows exactly what he's doing.
He made it very clear when he pulled out from the JCPOA more than a decade ago that he will not allow becoming a nuclear power.
And I give him credit for standing behind this important position.
And the second point about regime change, you know, we never promised a regime change.
We always said we want to create the conditions for a regime change.
And my personal opinion, I think it will happen.
You know, maybe you want it to happen tomorrow or in a week time and you want me to tell you when it will happen.
But I think today when the regime is weakened, it will be easier to see a regime change.
But when you look back in history in different cases of revolutions, no one can actually anticipate the exact moment that you will have the revolution.
It doesn't work that way.
It erupts.
And I hope it will be sooner than later we will see the Iranian people rising up.
Timing Of The Coming Revolution00:00:32
Danielon, I always appreciate you taking time to come on Uncensored.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Pierre.
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