very very inland. I hope people understand. I mean, that is incredibly inland. We saw this developing throughout the night. Well, you know, their night, but our afternoon we were like, "This is happening. This is happening." And it's amazing how many people who think they actually know what's going on are like super surprised on chats like what's happening. I'm like, "Guys, this is the last couple hours if you weren't paying attention, this is what was happening." So, walk us through the map. Uh Blake Blake, why don't you do this? We have the map of Iran on screen here. Just the geography of the entire region. This was a multi-hour flight from Israel to Iran. Blake, this is a major operation. Please, um, Blake, walk us through it. Yeah, exactly. So, Iran's not as big as the United States, but it is a a fairly large country. I think if you overlaid it, I think it'd be about the size of maybe one quarter of the United States, maybe even one-third of the of like the continental United States. So, it's a it's a large country, and it doesn't border Israel. In fact, you have to fly over at least two additional countries to get there. Uh they probably flew over Jordan and Iraq and it's a long flight. Uh if you look at that map, you can see little kind of red cylinders, red pillars. Those are their uranium enrichment plants. So that's where they're taking uranium and they're running it through centrifuges to make it enriched uranium, which is what you would use for a nuclear weapon. And so those are almost certainly the primary targets. There are already reports of explosions there. We will see if those are confirmed. Uh maybe we'll actually get video of it eventually. Uh but those will be the places that you want to hit if your desire is to take out a nuclear program, but they're in the mountains. Uh I believe at least one or both facilities. They're built underground, so they're difficult to get to. So there's been a lot of talk about how this would unfold because the US has some very heavy, we call them bunker busting munitions. They're designed to pulverize very deep underground facilities, but Israel doesn't have access to those weapons and we've been hesitant to supply them or give them any access to them. And so, if we're not involved in this, there's been talk that Israel may have to modify its plans. They may have to strike it several times so they could strike it, see if there's any damage, do follow-up hits, and so on. But these are difficult places to reach. They would be flying several probably about two or three hours to get there and then a similar amount of time to get back. Uh they're deep inside Iranian airspace. They are presumably well defended. So we may learn maybe whether any planes were shot down or whether there's any attempt to shoot them down. We're going to be seeing this all unfold very quickly. Uh you know this is breaking news all within the last 20 minutes. And so, so Jack, help help everyone in the audience understand kind of the timeline here. I mean, on on Sunday, there were supposed to be more talks. Why did Israel strike even though there were more talks between the United States and Iran and kind of short circuit that? Please. I mean, Jack, tell us this is a little confusing to our audience. Well, Charlie, as we've seen from President Trump, uh, President Trump was very explicit on this and al even back in April when Prime Minister Netanyahu came to the White House and was really pushing for strikes on Iran to be conducted jointly between the United States and Israel. Uh, this those strikes of course were rejected by President Trump. that plan was rejected and it was reported that there were some other elements of the uh of the administration or at least the US government at large that were also working on planning those potential strikes. Uh this has been something that Israel has wanted for a long time. Strikes on the nuclear program. Obviously they've been targeting their nuclear programs uh for a decade plus at this point ever since they embarked on it in the first place. Of course, this is all about uranium enrichment. And this has become the sort of a jump ball between what you're seeing with the neocons and the more uh I would say the the anti-war crowd out there. One crowd pointing to saying, well, wait, there is no nuclear weapons program in Iran. The neocons's pointing to well, there's this continued uranium enrichment which could potentially be used for nuclear weapons even if there isn't a nuclear weapons program. And so this being the impetus for wanting to have a preemptive strike as we're seeing right now. And of course the political situation in Israel obviously quite chaotic given everything that's gone on since the end of the ceasefire back in March between Israel and Gaza, the situation with the Hamas terrorists going on, the ongoing war there. So a lot of chaos in their internal politics as well. even a uh a vote on potential early elections that took place just last night in the Knesset in Israel which Netanyahu survived but I believe by less than 10 votes out of the 120 member here's what I don't understand is that I'm not an expert though so but I we we don't yet know where all the strikes are we are seeing here on understand is that an expert though they why am I hearing myself back like five seconds later hold on okay so why why are they striking tan on the map. There's no nuclear facilities in Tran. Am I mistaken here? Oh, there are there's a research reactor. Reactor. Okay, got it. So, and who knows, but striking the capital seems to be a major escalation. Blake. Yeah, I don't want to presume. There could be any number of reasons. It could be that there are military facilities there they want to hit. So, that could be like elements of their military command structure. Maybe that's where some of their like fighters are based or their like air defenses. So there's any number of reasons they could hit it because presumably they're banking on even if they want to strike the nuclear targets, there's so many potential complications to this depending on how Iran chooses to strike back, whether they choose to strike back, that it'd be highly unlikely that the only thing they would hit would be just the nuclear sites. And so I don't know what they would be aiming at, but there's any number of possible reasons they would go for it. Okay, so this is happening uh live right now. For those of you that just tuning in, uh Israel has launched preemptive military strikes on the interior of Iran against nuclear reactors. So Jack, I want to throw this to you as from an intel standpoint. Um you could kind of see this building yesterday. You saw Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham say, "Hey, you know, are they close to a um a bomb in Iran? Are they close to a bomb in Iran?" The skeptics would say that well we've been hearing that for the last 30 years that Iran is close to a nuclear weapon close to a nuclear weapon. So so Jack as from an intel standpoint was Iran close to nuclear weapon. Now the way it the question of is doesn't really mean anything. So tell us you know what what is really going on here and can we trust the intel agencies? Well, Charlie, this of course has been a one of the most uh fractured debates that's gone on from the intel community and uh members of the US political community as well as the Israeli political community as I mentioned before with uh Prime Minister Netanyahu really pushing for these strikes of course for quite some time uh years in many cases and has directly targeted these facilities uh with variety of cyber attacks and other attacks over the years. The question comes down to and the intel community's official assessment. Everyone I've talked to in the intel community has always and and even from my time there has said that Iran did not have an active weapons of mass destruction program in the sense that uh you know in in the sense of having a a actual nuclear weapons program. But what they were doing was this uranium enrichment and this the end of question of course and even by the way even DNI Gabbard who many people pointed to say that's obviously she's no hawk even she pointed out that their uranium enrichment was much higher at a much higher yield than anyone would need for only a uh a fuel program or only for nuclear energy. And so a lot of the war hawks have been pointing to that saying, look, it's clear that they're going to do this in order to uh in order to try to ratchet up their their ability for um their ability for escalation. And so one of the things though that people have pointed to is say, well, Iran, you know, back the back and forth has always been, well, Iran was doing that because there is no Iran deal. Trump of course ended Obama's Iran deal that which was a total uh total handoff to them back in 2018. he ends this thing after the pallets of cash and he had run on it of course back in 2016 the Obama uh deal and and so after ending that deal that's really when Iran pushed towards this enrichment to say we're going to essentially kind of have a middle ground of saying well we're not start restarting the program but we are enriching this uranium which of course puts them in a situation to say well they could would potentially be able if they chose to use that in a weapon at any time. That being said though, um you know, that's that's my distillation of the intel on both sides there. That being said, we do know that Iran had been and it seems in good faith conducting these negotiations with Steve Whit uh having meetings with him as appointed by President Trump. We saw President Trump earlier today saying that he had directed all members of his administration to pursue negotiations and diplomatic means of working with Iran to end this uh to end this potential threat and prevent of course prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. And something where you've also seen in reports I believe the Guardian had actually put out at one point that there were there was a potential for Russia to come in and be the guarantor of this program. And Russia, of course, being the country that finished the building of the Busher nuclear power plant, which we had on the map a minute ago, that's there on the coast. That is their completed nuclear power plant, the only one uh functional within Iran right now. It needs that water source. Can't really be in the mountains or the desert. And so this had been a potential triangulation, if you will, of the negotiations between Ukraine, Russia, Israel, and Iran to say if the Russians were able to come in, uh this would be something that Obama's Iran deal had never considered. Although it is kind of similar to one of the Syria deals prior to the red line back in 2013 where Russia came in and was the guarantor of Syria's chemical weapons. Uh China also played a small role in that. And so there was a really a lot of potential for talk regarding this. Now of course it remains to be seen what what will happen because we don't know what the fallout will be both locally from again whether or not these facilities were destroyed. Uh I think there are a lot of questions as to whether or not Israel had the capability of actually being able to really take out the program given the fact that they are underground. Blake was mentioning that Israel doesn't have the bunker buster bombs that the US has to be able to go after those underground facilities. And then of course whether or not Iran decides to blame the United States or claim this is some kind of proxy attack and cancel the negotiations. So a lot of that is going to be up in the air uh just as the Israeli jets are up in the air right now over Iran. This is this has such incredible geopolitical implications here. Blake on the ground. what is going on in Israel and do we know the the the breadth or the depth or the scale of these military strikes and walk our audience through exactly the technical side of what just happened probably what's happening right now there are probably jets still right now we know this certainly in the air that are coming back from Israel and we kind of saw this happening real time in our group chats were like oh there are sources that hear jets over Iraq there are sources I mean and we kind of had a little bit more of a heads up than that and Blake Before you do that, everybody watching, I want to hear from you. Freedom charliekirk.com. Do you support Israel striking Iran preemptively? I want to hear from you. Freedom at charliekirk.com. We're very interested. Freedom charliekirk.com. Blake, your thoughts. Okay. Yeah. So, first of all, for if you want the absolute breaking stuff, I'm monitoring um Israeli news sites uh the Jerusalem Post Harts. Those are going to be where you get any info from the Israeli government, the IDF as quickly as possible. Also, of course, on X, it was very funny how, you know, we were seeing on X, oh, reports of planes flying, reports of explosions, and then I'm looking at the New York Times, I'm looking at CNN. It takes them ages to catch up to the basics that something is happening. Are you kidding me? And yeah, yeah, we were I think we were live before CNN even had a little, you know, thing up top. But I want to read what's uh Jerusalem Post has kind of a breaking steadily updated thing where they're getting the info from the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces. And so what they say is first of all, there are warning sirens have been set off to get the public ready for a potential Iranian counterattack. No ballistic missiles have been fired yet, but there are thousands of them according to the IDF. So this is their justification for action. They said that Iran had enough uranium to weaponize it to nuclear levels to make 15 nuclear weapons within days. This is what the IDF says. In recent days, they say Iran developed a plan with Hezbollah and Hamas and other proxies to destroy the state of Israel, potentially including attempts to attack via all borders, including Egypt and Jordan. The IDF says this was quote a point of no return. Uh Benjamin Netanyahu has entered the security cabinet. They're having some high stakes meeting of the cabinet. It says the I this might be uh answering your question about why they would hit Tran. IDF targets uh include commanders, bases as well as nuclear sites, though the main goal is the nuclear sites. Uh the IDF claims they believe Iran was taken by surprise and was attacked in places they did not expect. that would potentially answer the question of why they would do it now rather than waiting through the weekend. There there might have been an element that they had already given up on the process but they didn't want to tip their hand that they had given up by waiting for negotiations over the weekend to fail. Uh and then Jerusalem Post continues here. Israel has had strong coordination with the US, but Israeli military officials refused to say whether America was pre-updated or fully coordinated into the current attack. Um, and that's all the relevant info we have now. And, uh, they're just they're constantly adding to this. So, I think this is statements that are coming from an IDF person as we speak. And it's middle of the night there. So, this is all unfolding. But, help help me understand though. I I want Blake help me understand this. So negotiations were going on. This is the just the news headline. This is not Charlie Kirk's opinion. This is just the news from John Solomon. Just the news headline is this which is Israel launches attack on Iran in defiance of Trump's urgings. So help me like understand. It seems like negotiations were going on. Do we even know enough about that? So help like basically fill in the blanks here. So, I believe Trump Trump had said like there was some sort of deadline to make a deal I think a few months ago and that deadline was right around now or maybe it even just passed. But Trump has always been I mean we know Trump is a pro peace guy. He'll always say Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. He is not willing to allow that to happen. But he's he's Trump the dealmaker. He's always going around saying I am want to make a deal. I'm ready to make a deal. I'm hopeful for making a deal. and we saw it just today, he's saying, "I'm committed to reaching a diplomatic resolution of this." Now, him saying it today, there's a couple possible interpretations. One is he genuinely was still seeking that deal and, you know, was trying to message, "Please make the deal before something happens." Or there's the possibility they already knew this was going to happen, but they wanted to signal communicate that America is not directly involved. And we've seen several attempts to communicate that uh just before the strikes happened. I believe um Axios I think was reporting that there was communication someone in the White House I think Wickoff said you know the White House has disassociated itself from any Israeli attempt like they might know about it but they're not cooperating with it. So whether that's true or not, I think we're certainly going to see the US government claim that we were not involved in this because obviously once this has happened, our biggest concern is our biggest concern is are American troops in Iraq, in Kuwait, in Saudi Arabia, and whatever bases we have in the Middle East, are they going to be in danger of of being hit? And and so what what does what does the retaliation then look like? But we got Tyler Boyer in the chair here, which I actually want to ask the political question of Tyler next cuz I am I'm also this is going to schism terribly online. I mean, you are going to see I don't want to say a MAGA civil war, but it's going to be a MAGA online food fight in the likes of which um is going to be very very hard to navigate. We we saw this coming, but apparently that was not um as important and that's fine. Maybe there's stuff that we don't know. But but Jack, what how could Iran respond? And what do you have to say, Jack, to this idea that there might be Iranian sleeper cells in America that Joe Biden allowed in the country? We had 10 million people come into the country. Are there Iranian sleeper cells right now in America that then could be activated by the Mullis? Well, Charlie, of course, the the answer is yes. That that could Iran have gotten sleeper cells in the United States? I think that's increasingly likely and and almost certainly they have operatives within the United States. Also, Iran is famous for uh having the IRGC or Cuds force. This was uh formerly head by headed by Sulammani. Uh that they will pay operatives who are already in areas uh that they can't get into themselves to conduct uh conduct attacks or conduct sabotage type operations. Look, we just saw the Ukrainians uh launch this huge kamicazi drone kamicazi style drone attack deep within Russian territory. It would be very easy for Iran to do something like that or to have smuggled such types of things across the US border in the Biden years where there was no operational control of vast swaths of the US border other than by the cartels. Uh so it'd be it'd be very simple for them to just pay the cartels to allow them to do such a thing. Um, when it comes to direct retaliation though, I think more than likely at this point unless unless more information comes in at this point. It seems as though their retaliation will be directly and solely against Israel. Uh, remains to be seen. Of course, if they wish to strike any US forces within the region, they certainly can. They have the capability to do so. Uh, they have a robust ballistic missile program. They have two, by the way, they have two militaries in Iran. the uh regular the nominal Iranian forces, their regulars as well as the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Those are the forces that are directly uh directly subordinated subordinated to the Ayatollah. So those are the Ayatollah's forces and the country's forces. It's a little bit different uh than we do in the United States as it would be, but uh certainly they have ballistic missile capability and I would expect that that is what they use again in strikes on Israel. Um, obviously we'll see. You know, I think Israeli Air Force bases potentially, whatever bases were used to conduct this strike would probably be the most likely attacks. So, Tyler, let let's talk. I mean, we're we're monitoring the situation in real time. Actually, let me just check one of my sources here. Okay, this is one of my sources who has Jack, how right were my sources today? Uh, Charlie, you you they were I would say down to the minutes. Down to the exact minute. Um, so if you guys you guys can watch all the chattering people on TV, but we have good sources here. Yeah. Um, this seems to be like an allout attack and possibly the start of another regional war. That is what I am. Um, that's what again you guys can say that's not true, but this is from very very good intel. I mean, I'm seeing here that uh Jerusalem Post just continues to update and they say there are mixed reports of a possibility that Israel has targeted Iran's chief of staff. That would be presumably uh I think I've got his name here, General Muhammad. General Muhammad Baryi, chief of staff. That would be the basically the top general, you know, like Millie was chief of staff uh under Biden. I can't remember who our chief of staff is right now. Um but like top general. So if you're trying to decapitate the top of their military, you've moved beyond just a limited strike on their nuclear sites and you are attempting to hobble their entire military. We need to confirm that. We need to confirm that. Yes, we don't know that for sure. This is a report, mixed reports from Jerusalem Post. So they're presumably drawing on Israeli sources what the IDF is saying. Not confirmed. There's going to be, let's just say from from the get-go, we're in a fog of war situation. Uh we're receiving this information as much as anybody else. Uh people know people know who Charlie is. People know who I am. People know who we know. But that being said, uh everyone is in the fog of war on this situation. So just caveat everything and and we'll do our best. We'll do our our level best. And if there's anything that we put out that ends up being uh being corrected, we'll certainly make sure to be able to update that as well. So we're drinking from the fire hose just as much as everybody else trying to make sense of this out there. So yeah, the senior Israeli officials said high probability that Iran's chief of staff was eliminated and that Israel began this attack with direct elimination of many IRGC commanders. This is not just a targeted attack against nuclear facilities based on what we are reading. This seems like uh Israel that is calling the bluff against Iran. And the question is guys, is this going to drag America into a war against Iran? And who wants to take that one? And that's and that's the real question. I mean that I think the debate's already started. It's it's pretty much a wildfire on X which is you know if there's one thing if you could probably sum up President Trump's campaign uh from 2024 it was that electing me is going to prevent World War II that I mean is that fair to say with the the conversation with Kamla? And so this was one of the biggest promises if not the biggest promise of the campaign is with me you get less war. I'm I'm an anti-war president. I'm I'm a guy that makes sure that conflict does not happen across the world. I'm looking for the best and most reasonable uh deal to make. I'm the deal guy. And you know, right now, we kind of went into this week going, "Well, if President Trump isn't strong enough with the the riers in LA, that's going to be problematic." If President Trump is not strong enough on the border, we've known this all throughout um and and and provides any kind of amnesty to illegals and to the anti-American protesters that we've we've seen in California, that's going to be a problem. Uh but war with Iran, I would I would argue, is going to spin out into something here that's much bigger than what I think we even are are realizing right now. But they're going to try to blame Trump for war regardless of how hard he fights against it. Uh Israel has also struck in Iran in Yemen just so we are clear. So this is uh multi-reional is what it looks like. Oh boy. Great. Speaker Johnson yesterday uh announced he's actually going to be addressing the Israeli Knesset on June 22nd. Uh so so let me ask the audience just 10 days from now. Email us freedom@charlarliekirk.com if it's true if it's true and if it's true that Israel is striking Iran more than just nuclear facilities and they're going after chief of staff. According to air safari who's very very well respected and is very well sourced. He says quote high probability that Iran's chief of staff was eliminated. Iran began this attack with the direct elimination of many IRGC commanders. So, if it is more than just um targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, does that change your level of support? Uh, email us freedom charliekirk.com. Breaking news from Reuters. Iran's leadership holds top security meeting, senior Iranian official to Reuters. Uh, they are planning an all-out response. And now I have the second person that is predicting uh this is going to be a regional war. quote, "But Gary is second in command after Quaameni." Uh, and it's very possible that um the Israel attacks took him out tonight, man. Holding a meeting. I hope they're holding it via Zoom because I feel like I always read about these meetings getting blown up. Uh, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, second in command under and like they're saying second in command under the Supreme Leader who is a religious cleric. He's not a military commander. Um and just because we've repeated it, IRGC is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. So main the big main unit of their military I believe. So just so we are clear um like taking out um Berry Bajerry sorry would be the equivalent of assassinating JD Vance and Susie Wilds together. That's essentially how the Iranian government works to the best of our understanding. that would be like the combined um lethality. So uh the IDF spokesperson has just said quote the IDF launched a preemptive strike to damage the Iranian nuclear program. Dozens of air force aircraft recently completed the on opening strike opening strike. Um the public must obey the homeront commands. Iran has been a threat for quite some time and uh looks like oh they they they went after that more than just nuclear facilities. So, how do we how do we think the Trump uh Netany and Yahoo relations are where we are right now? Do we look there's there's going to be I mean there's going to be hell to pay. Yeah. If this was done in defiance of Trump. Well, that's the question. We're seeing that that's he came out very publicly today and said negotiations, negotiations, negotiations. And so the question is, is BB Netanyahu thinking of his political calculus in terms of his survival as prime minister of Israel? And is he putting that ahead of the security interests of the Middle East, his own people, by the way, uh, all of Israel, and the entire stability of the region, not to mention what it would do to the fallout of oil price. Here we are at the beginning of of summer, folks. beginning of summer and we've got a war kicking off in the Middle East which has and if these indications are true has all the hallmarks of something that could incite a wider regional war. What do you think that's going to do to gas prices to supplies to everything else as we look at the very beginning of the summer? Uh certainly this is not uh this is not what and and yeah, Israeli media is now again Israeli media is saying that this was coordinated with the United States. Uh let's I'm going to wait to hear from our own president of the United States when it comes to something like that. But of course that is what they're putting out right now. Again, we just saw President Trump a few hours ago say negotiations and of course there was a lot of reporting. Uh P. Yeah, that's true. They're just getting this as IP, but it could be. So this is this is Secretary of State Marco Rubio who says the following. Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in the strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Israel advised us that they believed this was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the administration taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with regional partners. Let me be clear, Iran should not target US interests or personnel. All being said, that is a very very neutral statement from Marco Rubio. I um that was not a a supportive statement at all by the way. That was in fact that is not a distance. So what he's trying to do is put distance between the United States. Look, the United States has 40 to 50,000 uh troops in the middle the Middle East at large. Uh so not Yes, we of course we have combat troops on and and a variety of troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria, but of course we have troops all over the Persian Gulf. Of course, DoD calls it the the Arabian Gulf, but I'm not in uniform right now, so I'm going to say Persian Gulf because that's what most people know. And uh and a variety a variety of t of targets right across the Gulf. when you're talking about Qatar, when you're talking about our troops in Bahrain, our troops in Jordan, our troops in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, um just just all over the place. All over the place. Not to mention, I believe the Carl Vincent aircraft carrier, the carrier battle group is there and uh the Truman is certainly within the region as well. Plus, we know that back in April during these uh the Houthi strikes when all that was going on, there were B2 bombers that were flown to Diego Garcia. Now, that's not within range of Iran, but of course, there were a lot of people saying that those bombers could potentially be used if a wider regional war were to break out. And well, we could be looking at the very beginning of a wider regional war right now. And you got to believe with that there's uh Yeah, Tyler, go ahead. I was just going to say that response from Marco Rubio. I mean, Marco Rubio historically has not been a person to shy away from, you know, in over his the course of his long career from neoy type, you know, excitement. It's happened in the past with him. And so for him to come out and, you know, obviously he's a changed man. He's he's a lot of a different guy today than he was then. But for him to come out and and and make that very clear statement, I think is reassuring for a lot of Trump supporters who are listening to this. And I hope that that's the case for most that are watching this is that the president has made a commitment and I don't think they would come out that rapidly that that fast with that statement if that wasn't true. Sorry, Charlie. So, no, it's fine. Um, I I want everyone to email us freedom charlariekirk.com. So, here's the sequence that I'm most afraid of. Let me walk you through it. Israel strikes. Iran retaliates big time. There is a regional war. The US is then pressured to send more aid to Israel. MAGA will likely resist sending more aid to Israel based on the emails that I'm getting right now. And I want to hear from you guys. Freedom charlariekirk.com. By the way, there are initial reports, it's fog of war, that a high-rise apartment um has seen partially collapsed in the Iranian uh capital of Tran. Initial reports of missiles launched by Iran towards Israel. So the question is, do you guys support sending US money and military aid to Israel? Email us freedom@charlarliekirk.com. We're getting thousands of emails. I want to read I want to read them. I want to analyze what you're thinking in real time here. And do you believe that this was an act of self-defense by Israel or an offensive position? Again, we're the emails are so largely overwhelmingly against the um Israel doing this. I'd say it's probably 99 to1. So, but email us freedom charliek.com. Jack, your thoughts? Well, Charlie, we we did the same thing with emails earlier uh for human events, and it was it was a similar ratio. Um there were a lot of people calling for saying saying, "Why is this something that should be done now when we're in the midst of negotiations? Why not trust President Trump? Why not trust the work that Steve Witoff is doing?" And uh try to find a way where certainly we know that President Trump has been committed to peace. This this obviously is not the path towards peace. This is the path towards a wider regional war. And of course hearing uh with if whether or not it's true that there were uh strikes in some of these other regions uh whether it be Yemen on the Houthis who are Iran's uh proxy force there or other areas. The goal of course would be to incite a wider regional war or perhaps provoke a unified response from the Arab countries against the non-Iranian aligned Arab countries, the Saudis, the Jordanians and others against Iran and create a basically a a united front uh from the GCC countries, the Gulf Cooperation Council. And so, uh, the question is, of course, I think on everyone's mind, uh, how large will Iran's retaliations be? And quite frankly, how far are these strikes going to go? Is this the first round or is this the opening salvo of strikes? And if it's simply this, uh, and we can all go to bed, um, perhaps that's one thing, but I don't think that's what how it's going to be. I just saw an interesting also Tyler uh I I think Tyler there's going to be some major uh protests and riots in the country coming up in the next couple days. Yeah, that's going to be the interesting breakdown, Charlie, is like how how is the country going to fall on this thing? And one one interesting comment that just came through from a person I really trust just said, "Hey, please don't forget, you know, we just saw the statement from Marco Rubio. Um that's fantastic. We don't forget that Kla Harris could be president right now. Imagine a world in which this happens today and Kla Harris is your president or does this happen much faster much earlier which I think you probably would have something of of this nature is probably they're probably a little bit bummed actually that Trump got elected because they were wanting to strike much more quickly and and again depending upon where you're at on the spectrum with that but I I'm just so grateful that Kla Harris isn't president right now. Can you imagine the amount of instability uh that we would have across the world? She would come out and she would be like, "So Iran is this big country." Oh, can you imagine in the Middle East and they have a nuclear program. A nuclear program is what enriches uranium to make big bombs. And yeah, you'd want to die the whole time. the whole time. She'd be in front of Congress right now trying to talk down to Speaker Johnson. It would just be a terrible, terrible situation. And to Charlie's point, there's going to be protests and there's going to be backlash. And the Democrats are in a really bad precarious position right now because they've been the antagonizers of war uh across the world. And so, you're not going to have prominent Democrats coming out and, you know, doing it the same way that they did it to Trump, to Bush. that it's not going to be the same uh you know recourse that they they will have with members of Congress. So, it's going to be really interesting politically how this is going to play out. That's why I think it's so important for MAGA to stay firmly on the side of opposing war. And I think that that's probably majority of expectations from Republicans. The probably 8020 I would guess 7525 somewhere in there. Uh so the politics of this are quite interesting but I'm trying to I'm trying to understand the situation on the ground. So Iran has declared a nationwide state of emergency. Netanyahu says quote this operation will continue for as many days as it takes. Uh there are multiple reports of residential buildings uh that are being collapsed. multiple residential buildings in Thran on fire or collapsing after Israeli air strikes on Iran's capital. So, Jack, uh, and then this Israeli planning multiple waves of attack. So, this is just the beginning, but help me understand, Jack, if this is just going after nuclear reactors or nuclear weapons. Are they striking the apartment buildings because maybe there were generals there? This seems a lot broader than just a targeted strike against Iranian nuclear reactors. Well, Charlie, that's possible. Also, they could another possibility could be and and I think you you see this quite quite a bit in Ukraine where they may have been uh conducting attacks and potentially targeting uh command structures, command and control structures within Tyrron. Of course, that's where Iranian leadership is. And the reason that you're seeing these hits on uh apartment buildings and residential buildings rather than on command control centers for of the higher leadership. Um this is what happens potentially when you see when you see missiles that are shot down, when you see interceptors, when you see debris, when you see these various types of munitions, you get blowback. And so that blowback ends up hitting the you know it might hit the tower but not take it out uh conduct debris and that's where you're hitting civilians on and give getting that collateral damage. Unfortunately as as uh the parlance is the civilians do become that damage if it is one of those situations where there's a missile shootown from Iranian air defense missiles or potentially if a missile malfunctioned as well. I I I don't think that they would be targeting directly civilian apartment buildings, but of course, as you say, if there were a general or some high level official, some cleric inside, then that was being targeted if they were the second in command. Um, potentially, although the question is, would they really be living in a civilian high-rise like that? And so, a lot of this is going to shake out. We're still in the fog of war. But this is war. This is what war is like. Uh wars are never they never go the way you think they're going to go. Uh everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face and the enemy gets a vote. The enemy gets a vote. And so this has always been the nature of warfare from the very early days. And so we will see. We will see what happens. Are they able to ratchet up the escalatory ladder before Iran can respond with significant attacks, the ballistic missiles? Will will Israel be able to shoot down ballistic missiles with the Golden Dome? Uh what do Iran's allies do? What does Russia do? What does China do? Uh what will is or will American forces in the region face retaliatory measures? Again, all of this really coming into question here as we determine the initial battle damage assessments from uh from these what we're being told at least is the opening salvo of strikes. Okay, let's go to cut uh 519. This is the official statement from the IDF 519. For years, the Iranian regime has called for the destruction of the state of Israel, planning and advancing concrete military plans to do so. Over the past few months, intelligence has shown that Iran is closer than ever to obtaining a nuclear weapon. This morning, the IDF began preemptive and precise strikes targeting the Iranian nuclear program in order to prevent the Iranian regime's ability to build a nuclear bomb in the immediate time frame. We have no choice. We are operating against an imminent and existential threat. We cannot allow the Iranian regime to obtain a nuclear weapon that would be a danger to Israel and the entire world. This operation is for our right to exist here, for our future and for our children's future. The state of Israel has the right and the obligation to operate in order to protect its people and will continue to do so. The IDF conducted significant preparations for this operation. We are well prepared both in defense and offense to defend ourselves. The IDF will continue to defend the state of Israel. So Blake, I want to throw this to you, Blake. Is it, and I'm not even taking aside here, is it self-defense to strike another country that is threatening you? Is that a is that a in the rules of war, in the kind of way that we look at the doctrine of self-defense? Is striking another sovereign country self-defense? I mean, the answer, the frustrating answer is it depends. uh if if like an attack is imminent. I think there's general agreement. Like if you know with certainty an enemy is about to attack you, then striking in advance is is I think most people would concede that it's acceptable. It's just it's probably the right move. But the line of course is when do you actually know that sort of thing? And when are you actually just sort of recklessly provoking wars with anyone you perceive as a threat or if you're elevating threats in your own mind and creating them where they wouldn't necessarily exist otherwise. Um, and I think something that's influencing how people feel about this is, as we've mentioned, you can go all the way back. I think in 1992 or 1993 is the first time Netanyahu, I think he was just a member of the Knesset then, he said Iran was 3 to 5 years away from getting a nuclear weapon. And then about 3 years later, he said they're 1 to two years away from a nuclear weapon. And then he said, you know, they're six months to a year. He was saying that around the time of the Iraq war. He was saying that during Obama's administration. He was saying that during Trump's first administration, we have literally been hearing about Iran's being close to a nuclear weapon as long as I have been alive. And I'm, you know, and I'm not 20. I'm I'm I'm over 30 here. And so they've been pushing this a long time. And that's going to color any claims like, oh, this time we're dead serious. They were about to build a nuclear bomb. I I just remember in 2013 so much stuff. Oh, they're a few months away from having a nuclear bomb. And then even if they do, like that doesn't equate to them actually using a nuclear bomb. So you'd have to go on to that level, too. Like Pakistan has nuclear weapons. They're a Islamic country with like an Islamic government, and that actually hasn't led to nuclear war. North Korea is an extremely loopy country. They have nuclear weapons. That is scary. I don't like that at all, but it hasn't led to a nuclear war. And so that's going to color how people react to this. Uh I want to flag cuz we have a few of these donations. Uh Marishia 91 said, "Everyone agrees that war is bad. No one agrees on when war is necessary." I've got to disagree with that one. I think uh I'm not sure Lindsey Graham agrees that war is bad. I think some people think war is fun. War is exciting. War gives them that tingle down their leg that their life has meaning to it. Yeah. You have to remember there's some people that explicitly go into politics because of war. They that they love war so much that they go in and and again there's some really great people who serve in our military who uh become this war is their whole life. They've lived it. It's been part of it. That's why they go in is to use what they've learned to be helpful. And there's others that go in and that have made significant sums of money from the concept of war. And there's lots of people who love it. And and so I guess the question is, Jack, the escalatory response here, what could Iran do if they go all out to try to respond to Israel? And will they loop the United States or Saudi Arabia into that? Well, yeah, Charlie, I like I said, um, in in any military scenario, your assessment, you want to usually create two most likely and most dangerous. So, I I said earlier that the most likely course of action will be strikes on Israel's military, uh, strikes on their uh, the air force bases that conducted this attack. Again, attempted strikes. You know, we'll see if Israel is able to to counter that. And now as we're learning more about these strikes on Iranian leadership, well, I'm sure that Iran's uh generals and the leaders of their the IRGC as well as the Mullas, they're probably going to be calling for strikes on Israeli leadership as well to I would say including the Knesset building itself where Speaker Johnson is supposed to be speaking himself in just 10 days. Uh that again depends on the level of this opening salvo and whether or not there are more waves of strikes planned. Uh fighters traveling Mach 2 would take about two or excuse me 45 minutes to reach uh Tyrron from Tel Aviv and so you need about 45 minutes to an hour between Salvos. So we'll know pretty soon here since the first round of strikes was about 1 hour ago. if there's another round of strikes taking place tonight, we'll know that pretty soon. Uh it should be occurring. And so if uh if they want to go further than that, uh of course uh hitting Israeli uh energy infrastructure, hitting Israeli civilian targets as well as potentially even threatening uh holy sites of course all could be on the table. most dangerous scenario of course could be uh the the shutting down of the straight of Hormuz which is a critical choke point at the end. I know people say it all the time but just to explain it um that's a critical choke point. It is the mouth of the Persian Gulf. It is a very narrow strip of water uh through which 20% of the entire world's oil supply flows through on a daily basis. And so uh putting mines in the street of Hormuz or putting out these picket ships from the the fast attack boats from the IRGC and the IRGC navy could all be potential threats to that civilian merchant shipping and to those super tankers traveling through the straight of Hormuz. Uh this would of course royal energy markets and be used to be able to essentially hold hostage the entire world's economy. So let me ask so Blake do you think that the Iranian mullers get stronger or weaker war? So so so Blake do you think the Iranian mullers get stronger or weaker with an attack like this? This can actually consolidate uh bad guys hold on a country. Look, the West hates us. They're attacking us. I know it's hard to tell, but I could actually see a scenario where the the bad government gets more popular here. What do you think? Yeah, definitely. I think in in the context of the situation unless like incredibly strong proof is offered that they that as the IDF claims they were about to assemble nuclear weapons and launch an attack which I it sounds it's a very strong sounding claim to me that you could see in the Jerusalem Post they were claiming that they were planning to build about a dozen nuclear weapons. they would be able to assemble them quickly and they were planning an attack on Israel including via the Egyptian and Jordanian border. They were essentially claiming a like pan middle eastern plot to attack Israel like a six-day war type scenario when you know the overall situation is Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel. They've basically stayed out of this one. Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel. They've stayed out of this one. So I'm really interested in what the basis of that claim is. Uh, and so what you have is they were in negotiations with the United States. Obviously, relations are bad. We've had some missile exchanges back and forth. Like there's certainly room to claim this was already like a very lowlevel war, especially when you take in to account that Hamas is to some extent a proxy. Hezbollah is definitely a proxy of Iran. There's already a lot of conflict between the two. But they'll certainly be able to claim we did not take this radical step and we were still in negotiations with the United States. And combined with the fact that their population already doesn't like Israel that much. The wider Middle East doesn't like Israel that much. I think this is going to not be great for their reputation. I imagine Israel's calculation was this is dangerous enough. We don't really care about our reputation on this one. That is going to be their attitude on it. Now how this unfolds from here I get scared by the fact that our ability to control what happens here is very limited. Essentially Iran gets to deci has the chance to decide h how they want to respond and how much they want us involved right now. I think our attitude here you know uh you Charlie uh Tyler Jack our attitude is we don't want war. And I think most of MAGA is saying the same thing. We don't want a war. We don't want this war to involve us. That's easy for us to say now, but Iran has thousands of ballistic missiles. Now, maybe they shoot all of them at Israel, but maybe they lobbed them at a bunch of bases and in 2 days there are 200 dead US troops who got blown to smitherines by an Iranian response. What do we do then? Truthfully, what do we do then? Like, people are going to be outraged and hundreds of US troops are dead. What do we do? And the thing is is Iran might decide to do that because they might make the calculation America lost in Afghanistan. America is very indebted. America is overstretched. What if you want to dare America to try to deploy a 100,000 troops into Iran? And if people don't visualize this, you might think, okay, we whacked Saddam. That was pretty easy. Iraq is a flat country. It's just a bunch of people along two rivers in this relatively flat desert. Iran is three times the size of Iraq. It has three times as many people as Iraq did when we invaded it. It's heavily mountainous. It's heavily spread out. It has spent way more time preparing for a war against the United States. Uh by which I mean like Iraq was this sort of play army. Like they were trying to pretend to be America. So they had tanks and they had dudes with machine guns and they had fighter jets, but they were all way crappier than ours. So we kind of fly over them and blow them to smitherines and it was, you know, it was like a video game. Iran actually like is more self-aware that they are outmatched by the United States. So for example, they have a navy, but it's like all little motorboats that you can put little suicide bombers on and you try to sail them up to a boat and blow it up. They have a ton of drones. They have a ton of stuff that is designed for a weak country fighting against a strong country. And yeah, we can drop a ton of bombs on Tran. We can drop a ton of bombs on any other place. Not as many because we gave a bunch of them to Ukraine. But I don't know that we actually have the ability to just take 100,000 US troops, 200,000 US troops and try to occupy Iran in some regime change war. And I think Iran might realize that and think, "Make my day, America. We're going to try to get you sucked into this because we hate you and we're going to absolutely ruin your week." And if they decide to do that, I don't know if we at this point have the power to stop them. If they kill hundreds of US troops, I don't know that there will be the political will to say, "We have to stay out of this one." People will want revenge. With us now is Steve Bannon, host of Hold on, Jack. I want to throw to Steve really quick. Uh, host of War Room here on Real America's Voice. Uh, do we have Steve? We don't have Steve. Okay. I was told that we had Oh, we have John Solomon. Okay. John is here. John from just thenews.com. John, you have an article that's going viral right now saying that Israel uh defied Trump's urges. Please tell us about the reporting, John Solomon, and what led uh to this incredible uh historic event of Israel's strike against Iran. Some breaking news just a few minutes ago. Marco Rubio telling Iran, "Do not attack our troops in uh in the Middle East or anywhere because we did not join Israel in this attack. Israel acted alone." That is Marco Rubio's statement just put out about three minutes ago. Uh there's a news alert on Justin News. Yeah, listen. I think the Trump administration wanted more time to try to get a Iran deal in place. Uh they believe that Iran is a little further from having a nuclear weapon than Israel's assessment. Not far different months uh in the US assessment, weeks in the Israel assessment. Uh and Israel had some urgency believing that there might have been another sort of poxy attack in the wings uh with Lebanon. I think the president said, "Hey, you feel like you got to protect yourself, protect yourself, but we're not sanctioning this. Uh this is your action, not ours." And and BB went ahead and did it. So, we'll see how that plays out. There are four things going on right now. The president has a cabinet meeting going on right now, even as Marco Rubio interest um issued that statement. Uh the FBI is uh mobilizing all of its counterterrorism efforts to make sure that no Hezbollah cells. We know we have lots of Hezbollah cells on our soil here in America. We know some we don't know some because of what came in during the Biden years. There will be a full alert for all counterterrorism uh outfits in the country to be looking for any suspicious activity that would suggest that Israel Iran has given some signal to its sleeper cells here to attack on US things and all military personnel have been on alert for two days already in the Middle East but they'll be watching for all signs that Iran tries to drag as you said drag US into this attack by attacking our troops. Um, all of that is right uh ongoing as we speak right now. But it is true that Trump didn't want this attack tonight. He told Netanyahu, "If you got to do it because you feel like you have an imminent threat, you do it, but you do it on your own and you you you have to deal with it what the consequences are." So, we're watching things really closely. I think Marco Rubio's statement very important. It's a very strong statement. It's very seldom that the US has said, "Hey, Israel's on their own on this one." But that's what Rubio just said. Well, so John, how does that then manifest from military aid, missiles? Because if Israel is going to get into a regional or a kinetic war, then at what I mean is does that mean Israel is on their own, no more foreign aid? Because I can tell you right now, our audience is so against what Israel is doing right now, just looking at the emails, does this mean that the US US aid to Israel is over? I don't think so yet. I listen, Donald Trump has still been a strong supporter of Israel. Uh Donald Trump has fresh in his mind the atrocities that Iran allowed and funded and caused to happen on October 7th which was their 911. I think the president will give him uh Netanyahu some room. I think we will continue to support them in the short term. That's the guidance I got earlier today. The Trump White House knew this was going for two days, so there's been no surprise about it. Um it really comes down to how does Iran react in the next uh several days? Does it try to drag another Western or American ally into this? Attack Saudi Arabia, attack Iraq, attack our troops and some of our forwardleaning bases in the Middle East. That will have one calculation. I think Iran is pretty smart to know that they don't want to poke the bayer unless they're ready for a real war. Uh, keep in mind that some of Iran's military production has been diverted to Russia. So, it doesn't have as uh full a compliment as it would have had two years ago before the Ukraine war began sucking up resources from Russia. So, that's the another piece that it goes into the calculus. My guess is this is a four or five day operation between both sides. Then there'll be a truce and then America will go back to the bargaining table and say, "Let's not have another one of these. Let's get this done." Now, if Israel hits successfully a major nuclear site and Iran is really upset u and they actually cause damage and set the program back, Iran might want to prolong it. But we'll wait and see. A lot needs to be sorted out. There's always propaganda in the early moments of the war. Some of Israel's statements tonight, we just don't know if they're true, right? We don't know if there was a planned attack at the border. We don't know uh if there's been some acceleration. We do know one thing. About two hours ago, the UN atomic weapons agency said that Iran is more out of compliance than it's been in a long time on its nuclear obligations. Uh that is something that comes from a uh a body that's more generally sympathetic to Iran. It is a warning sign that Iran might be uh moving ahead with a nuclear weapon, but um I think the US is going to let Israel fight this on its own, but not pull support, the normal support we give the country. Okay. So um question here John. So the Iranian uh jets are now airborne heading towards Israel look looks like according to reports and so the this this will likely escalate in the coming days. Um how do you see this as far as the MAGA movement? What do you think the sentiment is amongst the rank and file politically? Um because that kind of very tepid response from President Trump is uh very very telling and illuminating and also undermines all the talks that were planned coming up on Sunday. John. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, I uh I think the MAGA movement is going to take its cues from President Trump. They trust President Trump. He has created a far more stable world just in the first four or five months. They'll be looking for cues from the president. Marco Rubio's statement is the first you Iran, we didn't do this. This is your beef with Israel. You take it up with them. Now, if Iran tries to drag us in, American sentiment in the MAGA movement will move very quickly. And Donald Trump, as he has shown previously when he took out Solommani in 2020, won't hesitate uh to use military might. And uh we could we could harm is Iran pretty heavily pretty quickly. I know uh a ground war is not of anyone's interest, but our air superior our air superiority over Iran would be significant. Their drones wouldn't work on us because we don't have a significant forwardleaning location where they can deploy their drones. Uh we could we could put some big hurt on it. I think Iran knows that. Um how this plays out, I think it's about a seven or eight day war. I think Iran and Israel will fight it out until they get tired for a while and then they'll take a pause and assess the damage and then that's Donald Trump's moment to get people to the bargaining table and see if he can resume negotiations. Okay, let's play BB Netanyahu's statement. Play cut 523, please. Moments ago, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel's very survival. This operation will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat. For decades, the tyrants of Thran have brazenly, openly called for Israel's destruction. They backed up their genocidal rhetoric with a program to develop nuclear weapons. In recent years, Iran has produced enough highlyenriched uranium for nine atom bombs. Nine. In recent months, Iran has taken steps that it has never taken before. Steps to weaponize this enriched uranium. And if not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time. It could be a year. It could be within a few months, less than a year. This is a clear and present danger to Israel's very survival. So, so John, the counterargument that people will say is that we have been we've been hearing that for the last 20 to 30 years, John. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's true. Listen, we certainly heard it for the last 10 or 15 years. Um, and then there was a pause with the 2016 Obama deal, though Iran did continue to work behind the scenes. I will tell you this. Uh I've always taken the grain of salt that Iran's getting really close to a nuclear weapon. But in the last eight months, uh both people who are very liberal and have been very supportive and tolerant of um Iran have told me they have really accelerated. Uh we're seeing a a level of behavior we haven't seen. That was really the message today in the UN atomic weapons um uh statement that came out which I think surprised Iran. They didn't think that was coming. Uh the Trump intelligence people believe that there has been an acceleration. That's why they moved more aggressively into negotiations. Remember, Donald Trump wasn't that interested in Iran negotiations during the uh uh election. But he he saw the intelligence when he came in and he made a calculated decision that's in the world's interest to try to negotiate. I do think there's been an acceleration based on the 360 degree view of sources that I've talked to. Were they days away from having a nuclear weapon? No. Did Israel have more time to give the United States time to negotiate? Yes. Uh unless there was some border attack or um Hamas attack that we didn't know about, but Hamas has spent down. Hezbollah is expent out. Uh it does feel like Israel just arbitrarily picked this day based on all the intel I have. But we'll let this play out for a couple days. We might learn some things. Um I do think Marco Rubio's line is probably the line the Trump administration will take for the first few days until things sort itself out. Jack, do you have a question for John here? Uh Jack Pasobic um here on Real America's Voice. Jack, uh they were telling me there was some uh there was a routing issue. So, I don't know if the way that I'm in that John can hear me, but I guess I I suppose going back to John's and if someone can relay this going back to John's question regarding the sleeper cells. Hey, Charlie, I might need you to interpret because I don't have a feedback. I would like like to hear more about what we know about potential sleeper cells that came in under Biden. John Jack says he wants to know about sleeper cells that came in under Biden. Oh yeah, that is a really really big concern inside the FBI inside the larger intelligence committee. We there were some here already. We thwarted an attack in 2011 and 12 against uh the Saudi Arabia via ambassador Ab Al Jabar. Uh but we barely caught that. We got lucky on that one. And the open border allowed so many people to come in. You saw all those passports that Ben shows on air all the time. A lot of them were Iranian. Uh there is grave concern that there are far more than we know of. The FBI since the moment Cash Patel got in has put a big press in to get all the identities of anyone they think could be even remotely associated with radicals. Uh but three months isn't enough to undo the damage of four years of Joe Biden. So that is the gravest concern and uh you know we deal with some of these uh lone actors and even al-Qaeda is the rookie leagues of terrorism compared to Hezbollah. Hezbollah are the best of the best and they probably sent their best sleeper cells to America. So it is something that we're all going to have to be on alert. Uh hopefully Iran will take Donald Trump at his word that we aren't behind this. We don't support it. We still want a negotiation and if you poke this bear, you're going to regret it. the uh according to CNN, the entire Iranian general staff, including the head of um all military, several senior Iranian nuclear scientists, all eliminated tonight. Uh intel uh suggests uh so their targets. I can tell you I can tell you from talking to Israel in the last couple hours that this was more than just a nuclear strike. This was a decapitation strike against their military, particularly the uh Republican Guard leadership. Uh, so they're achieving more than just a preemptive nuclear strike. They're trying to wipe out the military control and command capabilities of their best officers. Yeah. And so Iran is a big country and a proud country. John, I want to play this here. Actually, let's play cut 526. This is CNN's reporting. First, Caitlyn, uh, something I just heard from a senior Israeli official who says that according to Israeli assessments, uh, there are very high chances that the entire Iranian general staff, including the head of the Iranian general staff of the Iranian military and several senior Iranian nuclear scientists, were all eliminated in the Israeli strikes tonight. So here's where our audience is a little confused, John. It was told to be a nuclear issue. If it was just about taking out nuclear reactors, then I guess also taking out the entire senior military command. So help us understand that. As I said, uh these early statements that Israel give often has a little bit of propaganda. It often has a little bit of misdirection. Listen, I'm not unconvinced that when the president said uh he had sent um Wickoff back as an ambassador that it wasn't a head fake to make the Iranians sick, they had more time because the Iranians were even though Donald Trump signaled for two days, I can tell you from what I've heard on the ground and from our own intel before I got on air here, the Iranians were caught a little flatfooted even though they were being told. So, it's possible that Wickoff and the idea that he was coming back to the region might have lulled them into some complacency. They were caught a little bit flatfooted. They could have all been at a meeting preparing thinking they had another day befo
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