War Update: Israel’s True Motives, Potential False Flags, and Oncoming Global Crisis

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It's a safe bet that almost no one involved in the war

now ongoing in Iran and the Gulf

would like to see it continue much longer.

If you were to poll the Iranians or the Americans,

basically anybody,

how long do you want this to go?

Very few people would say,

I want it to go a long time.

But that doesn't mean it won't go a long time.

Unfortunately, it is likely to.

It's unlikely to be resolved any time soon.

Of course, that could prove to be untrue.

You never know.

It's an utterly dynamic situation.

But big picture, there are still a couple of unresolved questions

that this war may resolve.

This war may be the only thing that resolves them.

And so until there's a consensus on the answers to those questions,

it probably going to continue.

What are those questions?

Well, the first is geopolitical.

And it's the biggest question of all,

which is who runs the world?

Who gets to make the decisions?

Not simply who's richest,

but who makes the rules?

Who sets the terms?

And for most of our lifetimes,

there has been no question about that.

The answer has been the United States.

The United States sets the rules.

The United States runs the world.

That's been true in the Western half of the world since 1945

when the US emerged stronger and richer

than any other nation after the end of World War II.

And it's been true since August of 1991,

35 years ago, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The United States has reigned in a unipolar world.

That's the color.

There's just one pole.

There's one center of gravity.

There's one power center.

And that's been the United States.

But that has changed over the past several years,

maybe decades certainly since China was admitted

into the WTO in 2001.

Now, it is a multipolar world.

You've heard that phrase no doubt.

And that means there are a couple,

at least a couple centers of gravity.

Really, there are two.

There's the US and the constellation of states

with which it's allied.

And then there is on the eastern hemisphere of the globe,

China.

And China is now a peer with the United States,

at least, almost a matter of how you measure it.

Population, of course, much bigger.

Military power, well, we're not quite sure,

but certainly from a technological

and industrial output standpoint,

at least a peer.

And then on a pure economic level,

well, China has a bigger economy,

a bigger real economy than the United States.

So, yes, China is a peer.

And so the question is,

since you now have two countries

that are roughly evenly matched,

we think we never do know until they come into conflict,

but they seem roughly evenly matched,

who gets to set the terms for commerce and diplomacy

and everything else that happens on the globe.

Well, if you were to reach a diplomatic solution,

there would be an effect of power sharing agreement

between these two countries.

You take the East, I take the West, here are the terms.

But unfortunately, no such agreement,

formal or informal, has been reached

for a bunch of reasons that everybody's fall,

but one of the reasons is,

almost nobody in Washington can get his head around

the current present obvious reality,

which is no, we don't run everything anymore.

We are in competition,

not necessarily in conflict,

but in competition with this other country

that says the least as powerful as we are,

called China, different system language culture, et cetera,

but at least every bit is powerful,

and so you can't make unilateral decisions anymore.

It's sort of that moment that many parents face

when used to barking orders at their kids,

they realize the kid is taller than them,

and it's a new relationship in some ways.

You're always the parent,

but you can't just bark orders anymore.

That's pretty much where we are with China,

or maybe a little past that, actually.

And what we've noticed over the past several years

is the total unwillingness,

the inflexibility of Washington policy makers

to just acknowledge the reality.

And instead, even as we speak,

there's probably some symposium underway in Washington

about what will we do if China invades Taiwan?

Well, of course, from China's perspective,

Taiwan is part of China.

It just sort of run off for the past 75 years,

but it's still part of China. That's their view.

And the United States, of course,

isn't in a position to stop the reclamation of Taiwan.

Let's stop lying.

And yet only in DC is that not obvious,

which is to say people in Washington are still acting

like they're running everything on a post,

but they're not.

And the rest of the world is looking on,

and thinking at some point,

you've got to knock it off and face reality.

Now, there are a lot of people in the United States,

me included, who would like to live in a unipolar world.

It's way less fun to be constrained,

to have to come to terms with another country

before you make a decision. No one wants to do that.

No one wants to be challenged.

But again, it's sort of not up to us,

or anyone, the moment that you live in.

You're not in charge of reality, actually.

And so this is the reality we live in.

And the question is, are we going to come to terms with it

in a reasonable way, or are we going to be forced

through use of arms to face that reality?

And it looks increasingly like the latter,

unfortunately, that is not the way to settle matters like this

because you can emerge greatly diminished

from those contests and find yourself

in a much weaker negotiating position.

Better negotiate while you're strong than when you're weak.

But our leaders weren't wise or far-sighted enough

to do that, seized by hubris.

They were dictating terms, like Baghdad Bob.

It's sad, actually, no reason to laugh about it.

But that is one of the questions now being decided in a run.

Why a run?

Well, because these questions are always decided by proxy.

No two great powers want to go to war with each other,

of course, especially in the nuclear age,

because that could mean simultaneous elimination,

and no one wants that, at least consciously.

And so typically these things play out in third countries,

like Vietnam, famously, or Afghanistan

for both the Soviets and the United States,

or Korea, and now Iran,

which is part of alliance that includes

the other big powers, Russia and China.

So they may not be explicitly weighing in,

which is to say they're not fighting alongside the Iranians yet,

but they're certainly on a run side,

and they're certainly helping in a multitude of ways,

one expects, and a lot for them rides on the outcome.

And because it does, makes it harder to settle this thing.

So that's the geopolitical, very obvious overlay here.

That's why this is not just a debate about whether the Ayatola

has nuclear weapons stop.

It's much bigger than that, and much more serious than that,

and the consequences are much more profound than that.

So that's the first.

But there is another layer that most Americans are not aware of,

but much the rest of the world is highly aware of,

and that is a religious layer.

The diagram is on tape saying to a gaggle of reporters,

his bloodshot eyes, his puffy face.

God knows what he's been doing.

Saying explicitly, this is a religious war.

This is a religious war.

Now, his motive in saying that, you know,

he's not here to answer the question, we can only guess,

is he trying to ferment a religious war?

Probably.

He's an end times kind of guy.

But it almost doesn't matter.

He's telling the truth for once.

This is a religious war, fundamentally.

And that is not obvious to most Americans,

because this is the most secular society,

not just the United States, but the West,

the English-speaking world, Europe, and the US,

Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

In history, there's never been a more godless

to be blunt about it, a more secular society at scale.

Never.

Nothing approaching this has ever happened ever.

Every society is fundamentally a religious society,

explicitly religious except hours.

So we lack the terms to describe what we're seeing,

and we lack the imagination to think about it,

and well, to quote Jesus, we have the eyes, but we cannot see.

We don't see what's happening around us,

but the rest of the world very much does see.

So you often hear people talking about the Middle East crisis,

and they usually mean energy.

You know, people want the oil, the gas.

But traditionally, when people have talked about the Middle East,

they're talking about Jerusalem,

talking about the holiest spot on earth.

Let's be a lot more specific when we say the holiest spot on earth,

the holiest spot on earth is something called the foundation stone.

The foundation stone is literally a rock in Jerusalem,

on what used to be called Mount Mariah,

which was at one point the highest place

in the oldest part of Jerusalem.

And it's on that spot, on that rock, on that stone,

that Jews believe the world began,

that the Old Testament, or the Jewish Torah,

tells us that Abraham brought Isaac bound to be sacrificed to God.

It's on that spot that Muslims believe

that the Prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven.

And of course, it's right nearby that Christians believe Jesus was crucified,

and then rose to heaven.

So on that spot, or right nearby, a lot has happened,

but critically on that spot,

because it was the place where Abraham brought Isaac,

and again, to America nearest to Sounds weird,

but to the rest of the world, it's like, yeah, everyone knows this,

because it's the center of their lives.

On that spot, Solomon built his famous temple.

Now in the Torah, it says pretty clearly,

and correct me if I'm just reading it,

that Jews, followers of God,

can only publicly worship God and sacrifice on that spot,

in that city Jerusalem, on that spot,

and on that spot was built a temple, the first temple,

and that was destroyed by Babylonians famously,

and then it was rebuilt and later improved by Herod.

And it was at its completion, I think, the largest building,

certainly the largest religious building in the ancient world.

And it was in that building that Jesus preached,

in what we call the second temple that Jesus preached,

the very center of Judaism building without which

you can't really have toward Judaism.

The religion just didn't work without it,

by its own terms, in its own book, it said that.

And during one of his sermons in that sermon,

Jesus, who Christians believe is God sent to earth,

says, this will be torn down.

And one stone will be left standing.

And it was shortly after that that he was put on trial

and mill the night and tortured to death, crucified.

As it happened, so that's the religion.

Here's the history.

About 35 years later, 37 years later in that range,

in 70 AD, Titus, the Emperor, the Roman Empire,

of the Roman Empire, gotten to quite a conflict

with the Jews of Judea and Jerusalem.

And it's complex and incredibly brutal,

but the bottom line was, in AD 70,

the Romans besieged Jerusalem,

finally broke through the walls,

and tore that temple stone from stone,

not a single stone left upon another.

Really a kind of dedication to destruction

that's hard for the modern mind to imagine.

We talk about genocide, this genocide,

that the Romans tried to genocide the Jews for real,

and they succeeded in destroying the temple.

And with it, temple Judaism,

tore Judaism, can't have the religion that existed

before AD 70, after AD 70, because there's no temple.

And so this has been an open wound for 2,000 years

and certainly understandably.

People have wanted to rebuild the temple

what they call the third temple,

to reestablish this religion at its birthplace.

There are a couple of problems with this.

One, exactly 500 years after Titus destroyed the temple

in AD 70, in AD 570, a man called Muhammad was born in Mecca,

and built one of the world's great religions,

the world's second largest religion, as it stands today,

in a very short period.

His name was Muhammad.

He was born in Mecca, he died in nearby Medina.

But in the meantime, he built or inspired the building of,

within 50 years of his death,

one of the great religious monuments in the world,

certainly one of the prettiest, called the dome of the rock,

and it's in Jerusalem on Mariah.

In fact, built over the foundation stone.

And if you've ever been to Jerusalem,

or if you've ever seen photographs of it,

you will remember, vividly, a gold dome.

It's called the dome of the rock.

Why is it called that?

Because there's a rock underneath it, the foundation stone.

That is built on the site of the second temple.

And that's within what's known as the Al-Aqsa complex.

There's a mosque next door called the Al-Aqsa mosque.

And that spot is one of three holy places,

apparently co-equal holy places, in Islam,

Mecca, Medina, dome of the rock, Al-Aqsa.

So that is at the very center of Judaism,

I mean, physically the center of Judaism,

that spot, that exact spot, over the foundation stone,

and Islam.

And it has been occupied by a mosque.

A mosque has been sitting there since the seventh century,

since the late 600s.

Amazing.

You may be dimly aware of this.

Now why go on a length about this?

Because now is the moment right now, like this week.

Is the moment that some people, not a huge number,

most people, Christians, Jews, Muslims,

are not fully aware of all this,

but some people are highly aware of it

and would like to begin the process of tearing down

the dome of the rock, tearing down Al-Aqsa mosque,

and rebuilding the third temple.

Now there are a lot of things to say about this,

about its likelihood, the potential effects of it.

But first just a quick side note on the theology of this,

from a Christian point of view.

Now it was Jesus who said this temple will be torn down,

shocking everyone around to me.

It's in the Gospels.

It's in at least a couple of the Gospels.

And the people who just couldn't believe it,

and of course the people running the temple,

the Pharisees and the Sadducees,

were gravely offended by it.

Why wouldn't they be?

But then it happened.

Less than 40 years later, it actually happened.

He was right, he called it.

And so from a Christian perspective, he did that.

God called for the structure of the temple.

And as Jesus says, plainly in the Gospels,

I'm the temple.

I'm the temple now.

The temple will be rebuilt after three days.

When I'm resurrected, I am the new temple.

Says that.

But there has been at least one attempt

in the last 2000 years to rebuild a physical third temple.

And it happened in the fourth century.

And it happened, without getting too far afield,

shortly after the death of Constantino.

Constantin was the fourth century Roman Emperor,

who converted to Christianity,

and very famously turned the Roman Empire Christian,

thereby spreading Christianity basically instantly

across the West where it's remained,

more or less, ever since.

That was in the 300th, the fourth century.

Now his nephew became emperor,

not long after he died.

And his name was Julian,

referred to very often by Christian historians

as Julian the Apostate.

And he was an apostate.

He was the last non-Christian emperor of Rome,

of the Roman Empire.

And he had been born a Christian apparently,

but he was a fairly enthusiastic pagan polytheist

and very aggressively opposed to Christianity.

And for that reason, he decided,

Julian the Apostate decided in 363 to rebuild the third temple.

So it has been tried for those who were thinking,

could this ever happen?

Oh, it happened.

They tried to rebuild.

He spent a ton of money doing it in 363.

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How long?

What happened next?

Well, let's read the account

of the only attempt ever made at rebuilding the third temple,

and this comes from a personal friend of Julian the Apostate

who wrote it contemporaneously,

and we still have it amazingly all these years later.

I'm quoting,

Julian thought to rebuild at an extravagant expense

the proud temple wants it Jerusalem

and committed this task to Olympias of Antioch.

Olympias set vigorously to work

and was seconded by a governor of the province

when fearful balls of fire

breaking out near the foundations of the building

continued their attacks till the workmen

after repeated scorchings could approach no more

and he gave up the attempt.

By the way, just a few months later,

Julian Emperor Julian the Apostate was killed.

You know what he was killed doing?

Infading a run.

Literally infading a run in 363.

Yeah, he was killed doing that.

So it was during his invasion of a run

that he decided to rebuild the temple.

You can't make this up.

And we're not making up.

And by the way,

there was an earthquake at the same time.

There were many accounts of what happened

when they tried to rebuild it.

And all of them describe the earth rending

and flames coming out.

And it all sounds kind of spooky and supernatural.

It's just too perfect, right?

Jesus tears down the temple

and begins this new relationship

with God directly through him,

no need for a building anymore in Jerusalem.

A city he went out of his way not to spend the night in,

walk over the Mount of Olives,

even after the last supper, but whatever.

And there's this one attempt by a guy who hates Christianity

to rebuild the third temple.

And by the way, the workmen get burned

to buy fire from the ground at an earthquake.

And you can sort of laugh at that

if you're a rationalist, a materialist, a modern man

until archaeologists discovered

that actually there was a big earthquake in the region.

And Galilee to Jerusalem in 363.

So that actually happened.

In any case, why the long history lesson

because it's not history anymore,

it's happening right now.

There are key players involved in this war,

the one happening tonight,

who believe that what we're seeing on our television screens

and on Twitter will usher in a series of events

that begin with the destruction of the dome in the rock,

oxamask, and then the rebuilding of the third temple

after which the world will end.

God will come back.

And they mean it.

And by day, we mean literally some of the guys fighting the war.

So you may have read reports today

that commanders in the field of American troops,

a lot of them, and who knows that this is true,

but it's out there,

told their troops on the eve of the outbreak of this war

that we're doing this for Jesus

because it is Jesus's will that we do this

and that by doing it,

we will usher in a series of events

that bring about the end of history, the end of time.

Armageddon, the last days.

It's hard to believe that's true,

especially since, by the way,

there are a million Christians in Iran.

So if you were doing this for Jesus,

presumably you would go out of your way

not to hurt his followers in the country you're attacking.

Did the U.S. government or any government make any attempt

to spare the Christians?

Are we making an attempt tonight?

Of course we're not.

And of course, when the smoke clears ultimately,

we will find out just a guess that Christians suffered disproportionately

in this as they do all wars

from the Iraq war

to the bombing of Nagasaki,

the seat of Christian church in Japan, et cetera, et cetera.

Christians have a way of dying disproportionately

in these wars, which tells you something about their real motive.

But in any case, there was a spade of stories suggesting that

U.S. commanders told their troops they were doing this

for some weird anti-Christian reason posing as Christianity.

But it's not just the U.S. side.

Here's an IDF soldier, apparently an American by his accent,

describing why he's at war. Watch this.

They call this operation the source of iron.

But what are we really fighting for?

We're fighting for the right of the Jewish people

who exist, be Jewish,

practice their religion, and be free.

And one day our true leader will come

and will be united as the whole Jewish nation

so we can rebuild the Bates of Ignatius.

But Hamidash, probably mispronouncing it,

that's the Hebrew term for the Temple, the Third Temple.

We are doing this so we can rebuild the Temple.

Now you'll notice he's pulling off patches on Velcro

on his IDF uniform.

These are not civilian clothes.

This is the uniform of the government of Israel,

of its military.

And he has patches on that uniform,

one of which is a symbol of the Temple, the Third Temple.

So it just couldn't be clear.

Why are we doing this?

To rebuild the Third Temple.

Now if you think we're just cherry picking this off the Internet,

one guy wearing an unauthorized temple patch,

paid for by the way, a uniform paid by us,

armaments paid for by us,

the US taxpayer pays for all this stuff one way or another.

The US taxpayer pays for the military of Israel.

Boy does it.

If you think we're being unfair and just like found one guy,

well here's a bunch of guys.

It took us about two minutes on the Internet to find this today.

Here is a selection of IDF soldiers.

Let's put it on the screen.

There you go.

And all of them have the same patch.

Look for me.

Look carefully at that.

What is that?

That's the Temple.

That is the Third Temple.

And we'll get to a minute in a minute

about how this might actually happen

and what it would mean for the rest of the world.

And just to be clear,

these are conversations that most Americans certainly me included

never wanted to have.

Everybody's religious beliefs,

sincere religious beliefs when held up

to the light of the rational world,

to the man-made world seem a little spooky and crazy,

which is one of the reasons that in the culture,

some of us grew up and we don't talk about them in public

because they're personal.

They're the most personal part of a person.

So it is without judgment,

by the way,

that we're airing this, okay?

Just describing it

because it is significant to the future of the world,

to the future of this war,

and to our future as Americans.

So how exactly did the IDF,

the Israel Defense Forces,

a military that the US taxpayer pays for,

that lots of wealthy Americans send money to,

to friends of the IDF?

How did all these guys wind up wearing patches

suggesting the point of this war

was the destruction of one of the holiest places in Islam

and the rebuilding of a temple

that is totally anathema to Christianity,

like how did this happen?

Well, there are a lot of ways it happened.

The main way it happened

is because no one in the United States noticed

because it's such a secular place,

and as noted, we have eyes but can't see,

and ears and can't hear,

but this has been going on a long time in public

through, in part,

the efforts of a group called Habbad,

C-H-A-B-A-D,

and you may know people who give money to bother,

run into a bod, super nice people,

engage in all kinds of charitable activities,

drug rehab,

you know, there's a lot about Habbad that's really good.

But what is Habbad exactly?

Habbad, you can look it up,

is a very old organization,

about 250 years old,

and it's a branch of Hasidic Judaism,

it's an organization that was overseen for many years

by a guy called Rabbi Menachem Schneerson,

who was famously in Brooklyn,

considered the Messiah by some of his followers,

who was a friend of presidents,

or certainly someone president's,

visits a very powerful man

in the Orthodox and the Hasidic community.

And he was the overseer of Habbad,

which predated him and outlasted him,

but he was its most visible ambassador.

And Habbad has been pushing

in a pretty subtle way,

unless you look carefully,

for the reconstruction of the Third Temple.

And it seems like, from the reading we did recently,

that those patches actually came from Habbad.

In any case, Habbad is pushing for

the building of the Third Temple,

but it's not just Hasidic groups from Brooklyn,

and it's not just IDF soldiers,

there are amazingly a lot of

American evangelical leaders, Christian Zionists,

whose main point is rebuilding the Third Temple.

Now, how could an American Christian,

or any Christian,

call for the building of a temple,

whose presence, whose inherent presence,

denies Christ,

who said clearly, and Christians believe this,

it's a core point of faith, I am the temple.

You want to speak to God, you speak through me.

That's Christianity, that's the whole religion right there.

So if you're a Christian preacher,

calling for the rebuilding of the Third Temple,

you kind of missed the whole point.

That's more than apostasy.

That's like not even knowing what the religion's about.

So it's hard to believe there could be any

ordained Christian leaders pushing for the rebuilding

the Third Temple.

Oh, but there are a lot.

There are a lot.

And here's just one.

This is Pastor Greg Locke.

Listen to this.

The Gaza Strip, which has now been cut off by Israel.

And rightly so, they should have cut them off a long time ago.

Now, I don't care how insensitive you think I am to that.

There's six doors in this church.

You can leave any time you want to.

They've cut them off, you know, electricity.

They've cut off the water.

They should have.

Now, listen.

I'm not for hurting anyone that's innocent,

but anybody that supports terrorism is not innocent.

You can stand that.

Israel should make the Gaza Strip a parking lot by this time next week.

Destroy the whole thing.

What they ought to do is evacuate up there on the hill

and get a great big missile and blow that wicked dome

with the rock plumb off of the spot where it's standing right now.

So we can get that Third Temple rebuilt and us

are in the coming of Jesus.

Boy, it is embarrassing and shameful as an American Christian

to hear that and to know that video is from a few years ago.

It's been on the internet.

No one bothered to highlight it.

Most people weren't even aware of this was going on.

Oh, it's definitely going on.

These are very common views.

It seems obvious that Mike Huckabee has them.

That a lot of the Christiansign is John Higgie.

Do you think just like Israel?

They just like Israel a lot.

No.

These are clerics.

So their lives were informed by their religious views.

What are their religious views?

Well, you just heard it right there from Pastor Locke,

who was quite a prominent Christian Zionist.

He's not some lone wacko.

And there he is, with an Israeli flag waving behind him,

casual calls for genocidal violence.

Just blow it up, make it a parking lot.

Well, two million people live there.

What happens to them?

They're terrorist sympathizers.

That right there is the tell.

This is not Christianity.

Imagine Jesus saying, just kill them all.

They're terrorists.

Is there anything in the gospel that suggests Jesus believed that?

No, there's a lot to suggest.

In fact, to tell us in very clear terms.

He thought the opposite, of course.

But the last part, let's build the third temple

and bring about the return of Jesus

is a direct contradiction of core Christian theology.

And even people without theology degrees,

who didn't go to some eminent Bible college,

can tell you, what?

Jesus says, I am the temple.

That is not Christianity.

It's not even a close facsimile of Christianity.

It's clearly evil.

And it is, in some sense, the driving force

behind the efforts to rebuild the third temple.

Julian, the apostate, who was the last guy to try it,

who died invading Iran, was not a Jewish.

He was a pagan.

Just like Pastor Locke.

But for some reason, he was the instrument of trying to do this.

There are many of these people,

and not just in the theological realm, in the political realm.

And that's relevant to you,

whether you believe in God or not,

or are interested in the history of the Abrahamic faiths or not.

Global leaders believe this.

People you wouldn't expect,

and you wonder, what is going on here?

And your arms go up.

Did everyone know there was an effort to rebuild

the third temple in the foundation stone, except me?

I can't believe I was left out of this conversation.

No, all of us took place in public.

And if we've been paying attention

or been tuned into that frequency,

the spiritual frequency,

we've been spiritually sensitive enough

to pay attention we would have known this.

But of course, when you grew up in a materialist culture,

when the only things you believe are real

or the things that can be measured or purchased on Amazon,

you tend to miss a lot.

And we miss this.

Here's the president of Argentina,

Javier Miele, who we know personally,

at the western wall,

which is believed by some to be a remnant of the second temple.

The last stone from the second temple,

that's the claim.

Here he is there, the famous wailing wall,

saying this, watch the subtitles.

There's a prophecy about the destruction

that relates to a sorrows,

and will rumpir in a more holy place.

There's a prophecy about the destruction

that says that a fox will break into the holiest of holies.

There is another prophecy that says

that the same place would be rebuilt.

Now that I see, with my own eyes,

the first prophecy will come true.

The second prophecy will come true.

Now that I see, with my own eyes,

the first prophecy will come true.

The second prophecy will come true.

The second prophecy will come true.

I love, enjoy and full of hope

as the second prophecy will surely come true.

So a correction, that doesn't appear to be the western wall,

and there were no subtitles.

You heard him say it through his translator.

He's a very laugh and quiver with joy

when I think about the third temple being rebuilt.

Now this is the supposedly, maybe,

who knows Catholic president

of an overwhelmingly Catholic country,

South American country, wonderful country, Argentina,

who got elected and was presented

to American news consumers as a libertarian economist,

who was going to fix their debt problem

and get rid of inflation and just make life better

for Argentines.

And there he is in Jerusalem,

saying that he's weeping with joy,

thinking about the return,

the rebuilding of the third temple.

What the hell is that?

You would think that would not even be on his to-do list.

If you're running a country as complex

and damaged as Argentina and as promising,

and great as Argentina,

but like, there's a lot of things

you got to do in Argentina if you're running it,

but you take time to fight it Israel

and say the thing you really want in life

is the rebuilding of the third temple?

What is going on here?

And why haven't we talked about this before?

Say before we invaded Iran with troops

who say out loud we're doing this

to bring about the creation of the third temple.

Why weren't the rest of us informed?

Now here's a piece of tape you may have seen

and that I personally don't want to play

since I know the guy that I like him,

but it does make you wonder.

So this is the current Secretary of War,

Pete Hegseth, former Fox News employee, nice man.

Very nice man.

2018 in Jerusalem

and is someone who knew him well,

I can tell you I had no idea

that he had such evolved and specific

and apparently very informed opinions

on rebuilding the third temple of all questions.

This is not something they teach you in Sunday school

in the Presbyterian Church.

This is not something that people talk about

at dinner in the United States.

This is not something our Congress ever mentions

that the President ever talks about.

This is considered so esoteric

and weird and crypto-historical and religious

and kind of culty and what's a bot

and that no one ever mentions it.

But here's Pete Hegseth,

football player from Princeton,

going on about it in a way

that suggests he's thought a lot about it.

This is 2018.

Jennifer and I had a chance to go see

the Western Wall of the Temple Mount,

the Western Wall tunnels,

so much of the old city.

And as you stand there,

you can't help but behold the miracle before you.

And it got me thinking about another miracle

that I hope all of you don't see too far away

because 1917 was a miracle.

1948 was a miracle.

1967 was a miracle.

2017, the Declaration of Jerusalem

of the Capitol was a miracle.

And there's no reason why the miracle

of the reestablishment of the temple

on the temple mount is not possible.

I don't know how it would happen.

You don't know how it would happen,

but I know that it could happen.

What is that?

That's the secretary of war right now

overseeing the war with Iran

that people fighting it

are starting to say actually

is about rebuilding this third temple.

It's the same man.

Okay.

This is the point where you begin to think

maybe we should have talked about this

and its implications.

And what are its implications?

Religious war.

Global religious war.

So the first heavily publicized move

by the United States military

and the Israeli military in this conflict

was to kill the head of state of Iran.

The 86-year-old Itola, Itola Kamini,

who was replaced today by his son,

who's apparently more anti-Western than he was,

so I guess strictly speaking,

that wasn't very effective.

But if you take three steps back,

and no one did,

because everyone's busy bouncing him

as Hitler and the most evil man in the world,

and we're so grateful he's dead,

what was the last time the United States military

or the Israeli working in conjunction

with the Israeli military

killed the head of a world religion?

Is that wise?

It's not because we agree with a world religion.

It's not an endorsement of Shia Islam

to say maybe we should pause

before killing its 86-year-old leader.

It is instead an acknowledgement

that that might have consequences

that affect the United States

and Europe and the world,

but particularly the United States,

since we are the United States,

and we have children,

and hope to have grandchildren,

and we'll be the downstream effects for them.

When you kill a religious leader,

did killing the religious leader

cripple their command and control structure?

Were they unable to launch missiles and drones

when they killed the 86-year-old Itola?

No, because he knew he was going to be killed.

That's why he stayed above ground apparently.

He wanted to be martyred.

No, why would he want to be martyred?

Maybe because he wanted a religious war.

Why did we kill him?

Maybe because we wanted a religious war.

No, why would we want that?

Why would these rallies

who got us into this war?

Everyone admits that now.

Sorry.

Why would they want that?

Well, I don't know.

Think about what would happen

if this war leads to the destruction

of the dome on the rock

and the Alexa complex on Mount Moriah and Jerusalem.

And we'll explain in a second how that could happen.

A war that began with the killing

of the head of Shia Islam.

Well, what happened?

Well, here are the numbers.

There are about 15 and a half million Jews

in the world total.

There are about 2.5 billion Christians

and there are about 2 billion Muslims.

So whatever happens next

is not going to be a fight

between the Muslims and the Jews

because 2 billion versus 15 million,

not much of a fight.

This is likely to be,

if not brought under control immediately,

or maybe it's too late,

a war, a religious war,

the one that Lindsey Graham just described

between Muslims and Christians.

And it's not going to play out

in the Middle East

because this is a regional conflict,

but as noted at the beginning,

it's a global conflict

where every big power has a stake in what happens.

This will play out globally

and it will play out in our cities.

Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States.

There are not that many Muslims in the United States

with 5 million or something like that.

But it's the fastest growing religion

that's enough to cause problems

for sure in Europe.

65 million Muslims,

second biggest religion in every European country,

fastest growing in every country,

Australia's same thing,

second biggest fastest growing,

New Zealand's same thing,

second biggest fastest growing,

Canada's same thing.

What happens in all those countries?

Those Christian, western, white countries.

What happens there?

If there's the religious war that Lindsey Graham

and clearly the Israeli government

and some in our government

are hoping for,

what happens?

Those countries suffer.

More than they have suffered.

And so it's possible that the real target here,

it's just possible.

It's thrown this out, out there.

It's not the mullahs in Iran.

It's us, as it always has been.

But don't take our word for it.

Here's a particularly candid

and honestly kind of articulate clip

from a couple of years ago.

This is from August of 2024

from an Israeli rabbi.

Joseph Miss Rock?

Describing how Israel should take advantage

of a then ongoing conflict with Iran,

much less intense in the current conflict

we're seeing with Iran,

to destroy the dome of the rock in Al-Aqsa.

Watch this.

If it was up to me,

the last time when they shot hundreds of missiles,

I would pretend that one missile came from Iran

and shoot it down.

You know?

Then all the Arabs would go against Iran

and would be the end of the problems.

You make them fight with each other

this bunch of lunatics.

Never too late.

You deal with a bunch of cowards.

Shoot it down into the dome of the rock in Al-Aqsa.

Destroy what's on,

what the Israelis call the temple mount

on the foundations don't destroy it

and blame the Iranians.

And that has the effect,

as you just heard him say,

of turning our enemies against each other.

Turning our enemies against each other.

Well, they've refused to recognize it for quite some time.

The Europeans are the enemies.

The mortal enemies of the Israelis.

That's the Israeli perspective.

Obviously, look at the effects.

And so, if that were to happen in this conflict,

it's not the Israelis who would bear the brunt of it.

It's the Europeans, it's the Canadians,

it's the Australians, and it's us,

and it's the Russians, 20% of Russia is Muslim.

All of those countries would be in for serious turmoil

and budget and maybe already this shortly into the war.

Turn them against each other.

You heard the rabbi say.

Now, how could this play out very simple?

Iran is sending drones and missiles into Israel right now,

mostly into Tel Aviv.

Is it beyond imagination that in the fog of war,

maybe one of those missiles hits the dome of the rock

or were told that it did?

And of course, during war,

the first thing you see is censorship,

so it's very hard to know what's going on.

You're already seeing it today.

Is there less or more video available on the Internet

say than there was yesterday from this war?

Well, there's much less, of course.

That's called censorship.

There's censoring video of what's actually happening.

It happens in every conflict.

Every war sets off the same cycle at home,

far from the fighting, censorship and persecution,

censorship and persecution, persecution of the enemies,

real or perceived for the people prosecuting the war,

and censorship of their views.

So in that environment,

when you can't really know what's going on,

there's thousands of miles from here.

All of a sudden,

the Alexa complex has just vaporized,

oops, the Iranians did it,

then we have this debate.

It's like a hospital bombing in Gaza.

Who did it?

While it was a booster from a Hamas rocket.

Well, how do I know?

I wasn't there.

Oh, we know as it's gone.

Oh, so sorry.

Could that happen?

Oh, yeah, could happen.

The army is fighting with patches of the third temple

on their arms, on their official uniforms.

And what happens then?

Global religious war.

Talk about high stakes.

You thought nukes were high stakes.

At least nukes are over quickly.

There are survivors.

A generational religious war?

That's worse than any virus and more deadly.

That could happen.

Do the people in charge know what could happen?

Some of them do.

They don't seem worried about they should be.

We should all be worried about.

We should all be noisy about it.

No, you can't do that to the world.

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So what is going on in this war?

It's, again, hard to know because of the censorship,

but there is a man and independent analyst

called Brandon Wiker who we think after spending a lot of time

looking at analysis from a bunch of different people

is one of the most informed people in the United States

who can speak freely and publicly about what is actually happening

and not just in a conceptual big picture way,

but in a detailed way and coming at this

with an understanding of the technology,

in use, the tactics, and the strategies.

We've been super impressed and we think you will be two

with that Brandon Wiker joins us.

Now, Brandon, thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me and thank you for those kind words.

That was very, I'm very honored.

Well, it's true, we've never met,

but I've just been watching your stuff recently

and wars tend to bring out phonies and people like,

oh, I was on SEAL team 27 and I know what's going on.

They don't know anything.

But your analysis has been...

I'm just a nerd.

I'm just a nerd.

Well, I have been very impressed by your grasp of what's happening.

So can you just give us really quickly the overview

of where we are today?

What are the big developments?

Well, the big developments, as you saw with Secretary War,

I guess he's calling himself now,

Hegseth is...

they're transitioning the munitions.

So now, the claim is that it's been so successful this air war,

they don't need to use what's known as stand-off weapons.

So think the Tomahawk cruise missile.

And they're going to now shift the Air Force

and the Israeli Air Force.

They're going to shift now to flying large sorties

of warplanes into Iran and bombing targets

with what are known as gravity bombs.

And these are things like the joint direct attack munitions,

J-bams.

They require you to be close to the target.

So the risk factor to our pilots is now increasing exponentially.

But I would just like to posit a theory, and it's just a theory.

I actually think the real reason we are doing this shift

is not because of realities or facts on the ground

that are amenable to the U.S. and Israeli strategic position.

I think we are being dictated to by the depletion of our stockpiles.

Yes.

And what I mean by that, I have some numbers for your audience.

We all know the Tomahawk cruise missile going back to the Clinton era

where he would just pop those things off, you know,

as soon as the Lewinsky impeachment got underway.

4,000 Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles

are believed to be in the arsenal.

We have been draining those since 2022, 2023 in Ukraine

at a disproportionate rate.

In the last four days of this conflict,

we have expended 400 of those systems,

which means that's 100 per day with the operational and tempo not ceasing.

In 2026, the budget request was only for 59 new missiles.

We need several hundreds every year.

The reason we're getting such low numbers, Tucker,

is because our defense industrial base is broken,

and we have no business starting a world war

or a major regional war as we are in the process of doing.

So I believe the real reason the U.S. and Israeli militaries

are starting to get more daring and dangerous

with their airstrikes is because they cannot afford

to blow through the munitions that are already depleting.

And it is in fact a race to depletion between us and Iran.

And right now, I think the Iranians still have a very sizable,

unused, increasingly sophisticated missile arsenal.

Colonel Rob Manus is a friend of mine.

He's in a former Air Force Colonel.

He disagrees with me.

He says, look, these missiles that are being popped off by Iran

are basically a bunch of dead enders.

It's going to fizzle out.

And Hegseth made a sort of argument about that today

that there was a decrease.

But I actually think that those dead enders,

if that's what you want to call them,

actually are probably still combat effective.

And that is why we are now having to still continue the war,

even though we have blown through these standoff munitions,

which really were protecting our people.

In fact, I got word from a source of mine

who's monitoring this on open source,

which it looks like the USS Abraham Lincoln

is going to be repositioned to within

anti-ship ballistic missile range of Iran.

So either the US really believes

we've degraded the Iranian capabilities sufficiently,

or we're just throwing caution to the wind

because we've got to get this thing over

before we run out of materials.

And that'll probably start happening this weekend.

This is not a surprise to people who watched,

carefully, the few days in the run-up to this conflict

where there were uniform servicemen,

there were flag officers who apparently knew this case.

That's right.

By summer culture.

Exactly.

We just don't have the munitions to sustain

any kind of real conflict.

They said that, right?

Yeah, in fact, it is my understanding,

and this is, again, take from this what you will.

It is my understanding that last Friday,

the order went out at 3.38 p.m. Eastern

before that there was a, quote,

particularly contentious meeting

between General Dan Raisin Kane,

who is Trump's hand-picked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He was pulled out a retirement by Trump.

So this is Trump's guy.

And Kane tried to get to the word to the President

that this thing is not going to go like you think it is.

This is not Venezuela.

This is a very different operation.

And the President, for whatever reason,

still decided to ignore the best military advice he got.

And went forward with this.

In turn, Vice General Fred Kocher,

who was an adjutant basically,

Tude Kane leaked parts of that meeting too.

I think it was Reuters.

Now, the question that I've been hearing from people

is, was that Kocher acting on his own volition?

Or was that in fact Kocher executing some kind of informal order

from Dan Kane because Kane is,

the rest of the military is very,

the high level is very worried about the blowback from this operation.

And it is my contention that the permanent bureaucracy

is desperately trying to push blame away from itself

to the politicians.

And even as we're seeing Marcarubio now to Israel itself,

which is not how a winning war would look like.

There'd be no blame shifting.

So, do you have any insight into how the decision was made

to kill Iran's head of state slash chief cleric?

This is not been a conversation anyone's been willing to have

because of course the proponents of it have been screaming about how

he's Hitler, he's the worst person.

If there's any question about whether there's a good idea to kill him,

you're an Iatola lover,

just the normal low IQ crap that you see on Fox News.

But it's a real question.

What was the thinking there?

So, again, this is all background and sort of piecing the puzzle together

with what I know about how it works up in that horrible city we call DC.

But basically what it sounds like is the administration used the idea of diplomatic talks

to law come on into a false sense of security.

We were going into a holy week at that time and the Iranians wanted,

or Kamani wanted to basically come out of his hole.

And he thought, okay, we're going to get a reprieve.

We'll kick this down the road until Monday, which I think was March 2nd.

They got the word on Friday that hey, we're open to negotiating.

So, Kamani and his cadre let their guard down.

And at the moment they did Israeli missiles were fired at a very interesting,

it was actually, if I can nerd out here for a second.

The Israelis did a very interesting performance with their missile

where they fired it into space from, I believe, F-16s or F-35s.

It went into the space above Iran and came down at hypersonic velocities.

And it came within millimeters of the known position of Kamani.

So, from a tactical standpoint, yes, it was very technically impressive.

But the key thing here was that the US used its honor

to law the counter party into a false sense of security

using our diplomatic word that hey, we're going to hold off and try to talk to you.

And I actually think, and I say to somebody who's a fan of Steve Whitkopf,

I actually think Whitkopf and probably Kushner were probably in on the whole thing

to basically law the Iranian leader into a false sense of security so we could clip him.

And I think, Tucker, I think the assumption was that if we lopped off the head of the regime,

Kamani, that the whole thing would implode like a house of cards in about 72 hours,

which is why I think Trump didn't really care when Dan Ken was warning him last Friday

that hey, we've got eight days of munitions in Senkhan before we have to start cannibalizing Indo-Pakhan

and then we have a real crisis on our hands.

I think Trump was thinking, we can probably do this at about 24 to 72 hours.

We'll get Kamani, the Israelis will, and then it'll all work out.

It's all going to work out.

And obviously nobody took the time to brief the president on, and I could have done,

and I wrote a whole book about it on basically what the Iranians have been doing

for pretty much 47 years to harden their regime and to make it relatively survivable.

And that is why now we find ourselves, what is it day four or day five now?

And they're already having to panic and change the munitions structure

because we're depleting them too fast.

This is why, by the way, the heads of those defense companies are now being summoned to the White House,

because Trump is going to try to read those leaders the riot act saying you got a boost production,

and they're going to say to him, sorry, we can't do it,

because the defense industrial base is both broken and corrupt.

I don't know the truth about what you said about the diplomacy as a cover for action-lulling community into vulnerability.

I have heard just the opposite that the Israelis are telling everybody that the U.S. knew the strike was going to happen

and they're doing that to shake the faith of any of our partners in the region in our diplomacy

and make us sound decisive.

Well, obviously, like I said, take from this, because this is all, you know, I don't have evidence of this to present you.

I don't either.

But I find it, just if I can speculate here for a moment,

I find it impossible or improbable to think, given the level of fusion between the U.S. and Israeli command

and, I mean, for goodness' sake, there are Israeli officers permanently stationed in the Pentagon

and I was just told by a former CIA case officer at Langley.

So basically, I find it really hard to believe that the administration did not have any involvement in this.

Now, they want to say that they did it and I think they are saying this because they're worried that there's going to be significant political and possibly legal blowback,

you know, over time, because this war is, anyway.

But so I don't believe that particular story when they say, oh, we had nothing to do with it.

I think we probably did not have an active role in the sense of bombardment, but I do believe that we were aware of what was going to happen

and I think we probably nudged it along.

If that's true, that's one of the craziest things that's ever happened.

I mean, we're trying to negotiate an end to the war we've been waging against Russia, which is right-

Are we?

Yeah, well, exactly.

And the Russians aren't stupid, the Iranians aren't stupid.

Not everyone other than us is stupid, and which is our assumption, there are a bunch of savages,

they're all posh tunes, you know, living in the Hindu Kush, but they're not actually, they're really smart.

And they look at this like, why would we enter into negotiations with the same negotiating team that just did this?

So, okay.

But here's my macro question, which is, what about the safety of the United States?

Like, when you kill an 86-year-old leader of a global religion, which Islam is, it's the smaller but still enormous branch of Islam,

you're going to expect to create religious extremism, you kill the religious leader during Ramadan?

Like, was there no one in the room?

And I know you're not supposed to say this because it makes you like a Muslim lover or something.

I just want to say this as a Jesus person, but as an American who wants peace in my own country,

nobody stood up and said like, hey, what are we doing here?

Like, we're going to create a generational war that our grandkids are going to have to deal with at the shopping mall.

Did anyone say that?

No.

No, I think General Kane was the closest and he was making sort of a tactical, technical argument.

And I have to say, as much as I do like the general and I do like him, I think he's a decent guy.

Yeah.

I think he's gone down in my book a little bit because he didn't resign in protest, because whatever they're saying in public,

the logistics does, it's like math, it doesn't lie, it's gravity, it doesn't lie.

And the logistics are not in our favor if this becomes Trump said it was a forever war yesterday.

Now he's putting in sneer quotes, but this could become at least a five to eight week war.

Hegseth said eight weeks today.

And so I'm starting to remember COVID and two weeks to flatten the curve became years of dealing with fallouts.

So I am very concerned that the president has really bad advisors.

These are not people that I think have the best interests of Maga or America first.

The coalition that got him elected in their hearts.

I think these are these are deep stators masquerading as Maga lovers.

And I think that this is why we're here.

This is one of the most strategically irresponsible moves I've ever seen.

And the fact that the president I don't believe was informed the truth about what was going to happen and the way it was going to happen.

I think now that's why you're seeing the administration expanding the war, talking about giving curbs, weapons, and money.

And we're going to now expand it into Iraq and destabilize Iraq as if that's another thing we need on our plate.

This to me is somebody who this to me is a country that has made a very serious mistake with triggering this war.

And now they're just making the mess bigger and bigger and bigger, hoping that they can clean it up once it's totally out of hand or maybe they don't even want to clean it up.

I don't know that speculation, but I do believe that we were involved on some level with what was going on behind the scenes of the day.

And by the way, I just want to make something clear, I am very much anti-Islamic Republic of Iran, that regime, all of that.

I'm on the record, people know this about me.

So I'm not saying this because I'm mourning the loss of commodity, but it is very dangerous what we're doing.

And I think that we really damaged America's credibility for a long time, for a long time when it comes to diplomacy.

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The companies have the exclusive control. They can manipulate the price of the coins at any time.

That's the dark side of it.

What he said was, you don't get as much of a loss and they tend to really accelerate when the market goes up.

Which obviously sounds too good to be true.

We know this is happening because we talk to people who work inside these companies.

The reality is there is no regulation.

And then we talk to people who lost their savings.

They were pumping this company and I trusted them.

Even as the price of gold rises.

It's so crushing.

Great gold scam.

Watch it now at Tucker Carlson.com.

People are getting robbed.

We're sound in the alarm and we hope you will join us.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to put up with that for one second.

That whole like call your patriotism.

Some guy working for Israel is calling me unpatriotic and in country.

Right.

Ancestors founded it.

I don't think I'm not going to play along with that at all.

And it's shocking that they would even be throwing that out there at the most patriotic.

I've gotten that in the world that you have.

So let me, I mean, you look at this and it's so heartbreaking and it's so potentially catastrophic

that you keep thinking, all right, point made.

Can we pull back?

Can we just pull back and declare victory and go home in the famous phrase?

Are we at a place where that's possible?

Well, I'm reminded of a 2004 interview that Donald Trump gave to your old colleague, Neil Cabuto.

And it was during the Iraq War at the height of the insurgency.

And at the time, everybody made fun of Trump.

But I thought it was brilliant.

Trump told George W. Bush on that interview.

He said, listen, just declare victory, bring everybody home.

We got Saddam.

You've won.

Let's just call it a day and let the Middle East figure out the mess.

Now, people mocked him at the time.

But I actually thought, actually, that's probably the best at that time way out.

Well, he could do the same thing right now because get this.

He got rid of Kamani.

He got rid of very top bad IRGC guys.

He can claim that.

He has done what he can to help the people.

There is a way forward.

It's a golden off ramp.

But he's got to take it in the next probably 48 hours.

Because if he doesn't take it, Tucker, this thing takes on a life of its own.

The Iranians are not going to surrender.

They're not going to stop popping off missiles.

They have planned for this.

Like I said, for 47 years.

Yeah, they're degraded.

Yeah, they're hurt.

But so are our allies, by the way.

And the oil coming out of the region is not coming out of the region.

We are now looking at spikes in the price of energy.

I saw a report from Seeking Alpha, which is an investment publication,

saying that if this continues for four to eight weeks,

this could take oil over $200 a barrel.

That's recession territory going into a midterm election.

Yeah.

Well, I think 200 is depression.

I mean, well, who knows?

Yeah.

Now, that's extreme.

I mean, listen, they're destroying not.

They're not just blockading the straight.

They're destroying the refineries in Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

And the Qataris are saying they're not going to get this stuff online for months if not years.

So that's going to be a gaping hole in the global economy for oil and natural gas.

So even if Trump gets a quote victory here in Iran,

and I don't even know what victory looks like anymore,

we're going to be cleaning up this mess economically for many, many years thereafter.

All of that is awful.

All of it is managed.

They don't call me Dr. Doom for nothing.

All of it is managed, although you can imagine working through those problems

and convincing yourself that it was worth it somehow,

or you know, you could concoct a story to tell yourself.

There are certain things that are not possible to recover from.

And one is the use of unconventional, you know, highly destructive weapons

that just changed the calculation forever.

And I worry about that.

And everyone I ask that is, oh, no, no, that would never happen.

Do you worry about it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I think I tweeted about this in the last 24 hours.

Trump responded to what I've been writing.

And I'm not going to get into how I know that.

But he, somebody told him what I've been writing.

And he's quite cross with me.

And, you know, I'm a three time supporter of Trump.

I'm saying this out of love, you know, not out of hate.

But I was told that the statement he made yesterday in the Oval Office

was partly responding to my claims about the stockpiles.

And he said something very specific.

He said, not only we have enough weapons to fight a quote forever war, which only cow.

But he said that we're depleted a little bit on the, and I'm paraphrasing.

He would be on the lower level weapons.

But we've got, we've got enough higher end in middle tier weapons to fight forever.

Well, the higher end weapons would be things like, I don't know, low yield nuclear weapons.

And, you know, you don't want to think that an American president would go there,

especially over something like this, where we weren't attacked, which we were not.

And I'm not a fan of the Iranian regime, and they do support terror.

But we were not attacked.

The Israelis weren't even attacked.

This was all sort of the machinations of Netanyahu's worst fears.

And it is my concern that if we truly are reaching depletion,

that we might have an incident where a nuke is used.

And, you know, it's not the likeliest, but it's no longer impossible.

It's now moved into sort of the realm of it could happen.

And the longer this goes on, and the more that we run through these stockpiles,

and if we start losing planes to some of the remaining Iranian air defense systems,

then we're going to have some problems.

And I want to also say something about the strategic side.

I was on a, I was on ban and show earlier today, and there was one of the guests was saying,

basically saying I was wrong, and maybe I am, but you know, who knows.

But he was saying that we've got local air superiority,

and from there we'll be able to grow out and go farther.

And the only reason you get local air superiority is because you've degraded the enemy so much.

Well, yes and no, but that's just a small slice of a very large country.

They probably in Iran, if they've decentralized those missile capabilities to the local commander level,

anticipating that we would degrade command and control,

they likely have hidden and decentralized their air defense capabilities.

And that means we have to do sort of a long-term air defense hunt.

And in the meanwhile, the Iranians are still combat effective.

And the longer this lasts, the longer that straight is closed down, the more the oil is disrupted.

And basically, the more we get to these really nightmare scenarios,

in my book I said, a war over Iran will likely trigger a World War III.

That book came out in 2022.

I remain convinced that we are at the opening salvo of a true World War.

And it's happening because of our actions and the actions of our partner, Israel.

I would say, even more precisely, it's happening because of Benjamin Netanyahu,

in the hammer lock he has over the American government,

including Mossad officers at CIA headquarters and IDF officers at the Pentagon.

I mean, that one came from a, you would know this individual.

He's a very famous CIA guy.

I got off the phone with him about an hour before I came on with you.

And it's scary.

I mean, remember though, Gary Vogler, who wrote a great book for the Libertarian Institute.

It was called, I think Israel was the winner of the 2003 Iraq War, or something like that.

He was an oil guy working for the Coalition Provisional Authority.

And he identified this guy named Makovsky, who was a Pentagon bureaucrat,

who ran the Iraq War desk for the first part of the Iraq War in 2003.

And he was a Mossad officer, not just IDF, and he was Doug Fife's son-in-law.

So, you know, this is, you know, our country is unfortunately not being run entirely by the United States.

You know, people.

No, it doesn't, you don't see a lot of software.

I'll get emails for that one more.

Well, it's true. It's factually true.

And the Secretary of State, God bless him, admitted that two days ago.

And said, yes, because Israel made us do it.

We're going to go anyway.

Right.

So, what about the question of hypersonic weapons?

You read that Iran has them? They've been given them?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, they've got them.

In fact, I got an interesting report from overseas yesterday.

And again, you know, these are sort of, I take with a grain of salt,

but they've been right.

And when they're right, though, they're really right.

This one came from our friends in Russia.

So, take from this what you will.

But the report that I received was a retired Russian general

is telling the press over there that he knows, for a fact,

there's a cluster of Chinese high-tech officers or technical officers

on the ground in Iran right now,

perfecting and maintaining Iran's growing.

They're still building them.

Growing hypersonic weapons capability.

And the reason is because the Chinese want to test these systems

because they're basically very similar to the Chinese ASBM,

which of course, when and if, and I really hope it's if,

the war with China erupts,

the first thing the Chinese are going to do after they knock out our satellites

and disrupt our electromagnetic frequencies,

is they're going to use thousands of ASBMs

ringed in those man-made islands to either keep our carriers at bay

so that we can't launch planes in range

or to think or destroy the carrier's flight deck.

And the Iranians are the, the Iran rather is the test bed,

the same way that we've been using Ukraine as a test bed against Russian tech.

And so the Iranians have them.

They're buried in those underground missile cities.

They have not really fired them.

I believe they fired four ballistic missiles at the carrier

after Kamani was killed.

That was a symbolic attack, though.

If the Iranians really wanted to go ham on the carrier

with a missile swarm, they absolutely could.

The only thing that would be preventing them was if we had degraded

their C2 functions enough.

And at that time, I don't believe we had.

What's a C2 function?

I'm sorry.

That's command and control.

So basically their ability to control their systems and issue commands.

That's why before the war began, the Iranians basically,

the government said to their local field commanders,

we're going to give you permission to take command of your individual missile battery

so that if something like killing Kamani happens,

you can just start going and you won't have to call in for orders or for range.

And by the way, the Chinese are using their Yalgon.

I think it's their Yalgon satellite constellation to do surveillance of the carrier

and of the US air bases in the region.

And they are providing increasingly accurate targeting sets to the Iranians.

In fact, I believe the reason the Iranian missiles have been so effective

in damaging our bases, and boy, have they done a doozy.

It is not being reported accurately.

They have done a real doozy to these bases.

It's because of the fact that the Chinese are providing direct real-time

signals intelligence and electronic assistance to the Iranians.

So we're fighting a proxy war with China right now.

That's the World War.

I mean, this is a World War.

And the Chinese are more than happy to see us stew.

Now, there's this story that the politicians keep telling us.

It's really the Republican side that keeps saying this that well, you know,

we went after Venezuela and we went after Iran and that's going to really kill China

because they rely on these countries for their oil.

It's not really accurate.

The Chinese got less than I think 4% of their oil from Venezuela.

It was a nuisance if anything to lose.

If anything, they were thinking more money into rebuilding the refining capacity

because the communists had ruined the oil industry in Venezuela over 25 years.

And then with Iran, they get at most, I think, I think 14% of their oil

and natural gas from Iran.

What they were doing is the Chinese knew because they could read the room.

They knew we were going in.

So what they started doing was shifting their purchases of oil

from Iran to places like neighboring Russia and to other Middle Eastern countries.

In fact, I think that the largest amount of oil purchased by China in Saudi Arabia

occurred two weeks before the war began.

So while this will hurt the Chinese, absolutely, economically,

it's not going to trigger a collapse.

The Chinese were prepared for this just as the Russians were prepared

for what we were going to throw at them in 2022.

These regimes have been studying us for years, for years,

and they know our pressure points.

And we're like the gentle giant, we're like the lovable giant.

We're just too stupid to realize these people are serious and they're killers.

And we're trying to lecture the world about transgendered rights in Namibia.

And these guys are playing hardball and they're playing for keeps.

And I was actually speaking to Brendan O'Reilly, who's probably one of the foremost China scholars,

real world intelligence type scholar practitioner.

He wrote a great book called Everybody Is Everyone Is Wrong About China.

And I just talked to him this afternoon.

And he tells me he's convinced that at the end of the day,

the real winner of this conflict is China.

Of course.

And I think actually this conflict, worst case scenario,

because you laid out a pretty bleak scenario too.

But worst case scenario is this is the end of American military power for a generation.

I mean, I think that's clear to the goal.

And that's up to us at this point.

I mean, the second you, it's the same in a fist fight.

The second you punch someone, everybody standing around finds out how tough you actually are.

Would you say, would you say, but the second the blows start, it's like we know.

And you don't always want to reveal that.

It's better to keep it mysterious, I would say.

With nudity.

Like, you know, none of us look better naked.

So, but I would, okay.

So the hypersonic weapons, missiles, which they possess.

Yeah.

You suggest they might be deployed against surface craft, right?

Yes.

What about Israel?

Would any of them wind up?

Yeah.

So, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you've got, you've got two classes of hypersonics.

I apologize.

I was fixated on the carrier because I got that text.

But yeah, so you've got the, you've got the maritime targeting of surface warships.

But then you also have what you've seen a couple of times in the last year,

where the Iranians did deploy hypersonics against Israel.

And it did an incredible amount of damage to Tel Aviv, if I remember correctly, in the 12-day war.

And I think, although this might have been AI, I think in the last 48 hours they deployed another,

the Iranians did another hypersonic against Tel Aviv that did a lot of damage.

So these hypersonic weapons, there is no active defense against them.

Are, are air defense systems, Kenna, and the problem is, it's really what makes them very interesting.

Is they come in fast, and then they sort of zigzag unpredictably right before they land.

And this is the problem for our AD systems, our air defense systems,

because they sort of just track and then go.

But if you've got a target coming in, and then they, you know, those AD systems are not,

because the AD systems are older, and they're based on older generation being able to track incoming regular ballistic missiles.

So this is where we get real concern, because I don't think we really know how many hypersonic weapons they've got.

I would imagine they've got at least, I would say at least a hundred or so,

because they've been just churning them out.

And the Chinese have been helping them, and of course the Chinese have overmatched with us in terms of industrial mass production.

What is the damage right now to Israel, and to US bases in the Gulf, do you think?

Well, well, the, the bases in the Gulf, you know, I wish I'd kept the window open that I was reading,

but basically at least three of the bases have been devastated.

The fifth fleet headquarters, I am told, and if you look at the satellite imagery that you can find on open source information,

it looks like actually the base in Bahrain looks like Gaza, it's completely moonscape.

So the, the American fifth fleet, now I don't believe, I don't know if there's any,

because I think we might have evacuated that base before this started.

So I don't, I don't want to say there's casualties, because I don't know.

But just looking at the satellite images that it looks like that's been flattened.

And that's a very expensive base that you and I paid for.

And that was the sort of the hub for the US Navy in the Middle East for many years.

And it has been completely taken off line.

And I have serious doubt.

I was talking also to a Middle East expert not long ago.

And he was saying that with these bases being obliterated basically to use a term, a term.

Essentially, he doesn't think, because he thinks the Arabs are going to be so irate with us

for having kicked over this hornet's nest, because it is not going to end anytime soon.

His belief is that once the war does end or settles down enough for us to say, hey, we're good, we're done.

The Arabs are going to say, you're not building back in our, in our countries anymore.

So why would they, we didn't defend them?

Of course.

I mean, that's, this is a reciprocal relationship.

They're not doing this because they love us.

They agree.

They agree.

Deals on billions, hundreds of billions in foreign investment in the United States, all this.

But in exchange, we promised to protect them and we didn't.

That's right.

And in fact, there's reports, and I think they're credible.

In fact, the Saudi official was complaining about this two days ago.

Basically, whatever air defense systems were in these Arab countries were sent over to Israel.

Yeah.

And they actually left our own bases and people vulnerable.

Our own government did to protect Israeli targets rather than to protect our men and women in uniform.

Do you believe that's true?

Do you believe the US government prioritized Israel over our own troops?

If you had asked me this a year or two ago, I would have said no way.

But after seeing that Huckabee interview, by the way, Bravo, after seeing that Huckabee interview, I can't imagine how we didn't do that.

I mean, it is very clear the United States is being let around the nose right now by its, by what should be its proxy.

I mean, let's get it real.

I mean, of course, it should be, you know, so.

They're the housekeeper.

We're the homeowner.

Like, what is this?

I don't get it.

No, I'm serious.

I don't understand at all.

I agree.

So I do believe, yeah, we probably did.

And the worst part here, one of the worst parts is I have a colleague who's in the Gulf States.

And he tells me he sent me a picture of the warning he got from the State Department to get out.

And to cut to the chase, it basically said, you're on your own to get out.

Like, we're not doing flights.

That's true.

And meanwhile, I hear that until 24 hours ago, the British government was evacuating their people.

No questions asked.

So you mean to tell me that the sole superpower is picking a fight with this missile city that is your own.

And we're not even going to provide exfiltration for our people.

That's not an empire.

That's not a superpower.

That's a power in decline.

That's what the Chinese see, by the way.

And the Chinese think their time is at hand because we are committing national suicide with this incident.

I wish I could disagree.

It's one of the saddest things I've ever seen.

I wish I didn't have to say these things.

I don't know.

I totally agree.

And you think of the men whose lives are going to be taken Americans who are like the best people already.

Already have been.

Already have been.

And you look at, I think, the deities only release the hometowns of four of them, I think.

But it's like Iowa, a couple from...

And it's like the best people we have.

These are our people.

No private equity kids in that group, I know this.

That's right.

And I just want to just say something.

Yes.

And I probably shouldn't.

But I was...

I was, as I said, a very early supporter of Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense.

I thought his takes on hypersonics were good.

I thought that he was a warfighter so he understood in a way that maybe you and I could never understand.

But I was mortified by his press conference this morning.

The glibness, six Americans are dead because of a political decision that was made.

Obviously, I don't expect him to challenge the president on this publicly.

But at the very least, it's a solemn day.

And we should probably not be acting like this is just another walk in the park because this is not.

This is not.

This is not going to plan.

Now, hopefully we can pull it out of the fire, whatever that looks like.

But right now, this is not going the way we were told it was going to go.

And certainly not the way the president assumed it would go once he...

Once Camani was whacked.

So the question, I think, is do we commit ground troops, Americans on the ground?

They already are.

Okay, so explain what you know if you don't mind.

So again, I don't have any...

But just for the record, because I know I'm going to...

I have no access to classified information.

I am an open source guy.

But I can read a freaking room.

And I can tell you right now, if the president went into this air war thinking I'm going to be over in three or four days,

I don't have to worry about the stockpiles.

And now he's waking up and going, holy cow, everything's running out.

And I've got to keep fighting.

He's talking about now opening up a front in Iraq using the Kurds, which is lunacy.

What are the Turks going to do?

Exactly.

Well, by the way, the point is because Israel's next priority is Turkey.

So the point is to diminish Turkey, that's the truth.

Yeah, and so there's that.

And then there's the fact that the president wants to be seen as quote-unquote winning.

And winning means you've got...

He's already outlined what the objectives are.

And this was also a big bugaboo of mine.

War and strategy is about objectives, attainable political objectives,

cloudswits, wars and extension of politics through other means.

Trump came out on Saturday.

He's repeated it since.

The aims are regime change.

The aims are denuclearization and the aims are getting rid of the ballistic missile system.

He's now added on getting rid of the navy of Iran.

So those four objectives, what is the objective of the Iranian regime?

Survive.

That's all they have to do.

Survive long enough because they know, because the Chinese and Russians are giving them the intel,

they know that our stockpiles are about to be depleted.

So all they have to do is hold out until we have to start cannibalizing Indo-Paycom.

And there's going to be a real political fight at that point.

People that Indo-Paycom leaders are already raising quite a stink behind the scenes,

because they know once those systems are gone out of their arsenal,

they ain't coming back anytime soon.

So the question of ground troops, this gets us to that.

I don't believe it would ever be an invasion like Iraq and O3.

First of all, we don't have that capability anymore, which should scare every American,

because we don't have that capability anymore.

Second of all, the way the country is arrayed, Trump is trying to do this in like a light footprint methodology.

So he, I think, is going to replicate the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan in 2001,

where we sent a bunch of special forces A teams and CIA paramilitaries infiltrated the country,

linked up with already organized locals.

It was the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

This time, it'll probably be the Mujahideenikalk Mek to try to basically organize a movement

with the Kurds coming in, probably from the Iraqi side in the, I think it's the north west of the country,

and we'll be coming in from the south, and it will kind of link up in whatever's left of Tehran.

That's the plan, I think, using air power as an interdiction, like we did exactly like we did against Taliban in 2001.

Well, first of all, the Mek is not the Northern Alliance at its height, it's not.

Second of all, you're talking about far greater ground that's going to have to be covered

in a logistics tail that is going, I mean, we're talking like this is not going to work.

Then you're going to have to deal with the rugged terrain of Iran.

Iran is basically like Switzerland, it's just surrounded by mountains, it's a desert in the middle.

I mean, this is not good geography for the kind of tactics we're talking about.

And again, the size matters, this is a much bigger country than Afghanistan with many more people.

So we're talking about a much longer and commitment on our part.

And I think the president knows this, and I think he's sort of like the frog boiling the water, boiling in the water,

he's just sort of slowly getting us used to the idea before he has to send troops in because he wants to quote win.

Well, winning for him is regime change, the regime is not going to change on its own,

it's not going to be the people who can do it because they're not organized enough, they're too divided amongst each other.

So he's going to need to send in special forces and CIA to basically do the organizing on the ground and to do force multipliers.

And I'm sorry to say that the likelihood of this working is very, very low.

And now we're talking about being seen in this region as strategically defeated by what we were told was a backward military force in Iran.

The first American to die in the war in Afghanistan was a CIA officer, Johnny Michael span.

Yes, right. That's right.

So these forces, the CIA paramilitaries, special forces, would be deployed to do what?

The goal is what?

Well, this is exactly what, well, again, the goal that we are told and that Trump continues to say is regime change, regime change.

We don't want the Islamic Republic of Iran in charge anymore. We want, I don't know, MEK or the Shah's son, who's the lobbyist in Northern Virginia.

I'm sure he'll do great or any of these other groups.

The thing is we don't really know. And I think it's very interesting that...

Can I just ask what is the problem?

I do detect, I don't detect, I notice it's very obvious efforts by Israel and its proxies in the United States of Fomento religious conflict in our country.

Hate all the Muslims to port the Muslims as if that's better than saying hate all the Jews. It's not better.

It's the same thing.

But they're trying to turn religions against each other in our country.

And I see the same, which I resent more than anything I've seen in a long time, because it's not going to make a peaceful country for my children.

No.

But I see that in this effort. So the idea is like they're not allowed to have an Islamic country or something.

How far allies are Islamic countries?

What kind of country are we calling for?

It's their country, no?

I was just using the official name of the, I don't know if this, I'm sure for some people it is.

But they just want to replace it with anyone other than the current crop of leaders.

And I believe that that is not possible because this regime is deeply embedded.

So, you know, we killed Kamani and a dozen new leaders replaced all of these other leaders.

This is, this reminded me a lot of the early days of the Ukraine war when the Ukrainians and the NATO types would be,

oh, we killed this Russian commander, we got this guy.

Well, within 24 to 48 hours, the leadership was replaced and the Russians kept going.

So this is, you know, who knew a nation of 96 million people would find other generals in people to promote.

You know, you know, you know, it's like, well, also you wonder like how much, if you really believe that killing an 86-year-old cleric is going to topple the government,

how much do you know about the country and how much of what you think you know is filtered through some CIA source?

Right.

Who wants to be president like the former king, exactly.

Like, do we know a lot about Iran?

I don't sense that we do.

Well, I know a lot about Iran, but you know, I was boxed out of the administration almost from the beginning.

So it's like, you know, and people like, I think, well, I think there's some personnel in the White House that doesn't like me.

And I think that they don't like that I don't play ball.

And, you know, I moved, I got out of DC, moved to Florida, and I never looked back.

But there are people like me as well who were boxed out, who know a lot about these things.

And we are not boxed out.

Can I ask you who, if you can say who, because you're clearly very knowledgeable, you seem sensible, you seem pro-American.

I'm going to tell you off line.

I'll tell you off line.

I really don't like really not looking to start a mix or anything.

I understand.

So Bill, let me ask you a broader question, which is, and I know the answer, but I want to hear you say it,

was there from the very beginning of this second Trump term an effort to exclude anybody who might conceivably stand in the way of an Iran invasion?

Yes.

Yes.

Even though I, again, again, understand, I hate the regime, you know, I don't like that regime.

I'm not like I'm some lover of, you know, but I was, I was a friend of mine joke,

I wasn't sufficiently on board with this program.

With this Iran invasion program, Iran war program.

Yeah, because I think it's, this is the stuff of lunacy.

And this is literally, this is like the mad king, you know, this doesn't make any sense.

Yeah.

It doesn't.

And let's, you know, what you were saying in your model law, which I think you're probably right, I think that's definitely a play here.

Yeah, I mean, I, I just want to be clear, I don't, I don't think that most U.S. policy makers have any idea what the foundation stone is,

or Al-Aksa, or Dome of the Rock, or the third temple, this is just so far from the concerns of average people in this country,

even our country.

Their minders are not paying them to know.

Their minders are not paying them to know.

Well, that's it.

But there are people who do know, and certainly in the region, in the Middle East and the rest of the world,

people are religious.

They're not Americans, like they care.

So these are big questions to people around the world, just not.

Well, I care, these are, I'm a question.

Well, I care too, actually.

So let me ask you since you said that you're constructing most of your analyses through open source materials,

you're reading publicly available, things on the internet.

Have you noticed an effort to clamp down on videos?

Yeah.

Okay, tell us what you've noticed.

There's also an interesting effort, Tucker, to, and I think this is coming from our guys, to spread AI videos of what look like war scenes,

and then you share it, and then they say, oh, that's AI.

We got to get him deemed now.

We got to get him, you know, this is all, you know, we have, it is a, Tucker, it is a sad day in this country when we have official,

and I have a feeling I know the group that's doing it.

We have official US intelligence people being paid with our tax dollars to sit around a basement in Langley or Arlington, Virginia,

and harass American citizens online for sharing their opinion.

But that is where we are at in this country.

That is where we are at.

And I can tell you right now, I have been the victim of bot attacks.

I have been the victim of cyber attacks in the last 24 hours on my personal email, which I didn't know people had, but apparently they do.

We have been, I had to file a police report in fact yesterday with my local police on this, ever since coming out in the last week and sharing my opinion.

And this is not an organic phenomenon.

This is either ours or Israel or the British, you know, because they're always in there somehow.

Or the French.

Or the French.

That's right.

So this is, you know, this is where we are.

This isn't really America anymore.

This is some sensorious state.

And I thought that we were going to be cleaning that up, but we're instead, we're instead giving the keys to these guys and telling them to go start World War III.

I wonder if we're going to see this is purely speculative, but wars tend to create an environment where there's actual persecution of critics of the war.

Well, I was told.

And again, take from this what you look, because I have no way of proving it.

I was told two years ago that the Biden regime had concocted a list of high profile magus supporters that they were going to basically go to and say if Kamala had won.

Say that, hey, you got to leave the country as, you know, you can't get out of it.

We're going to basically prosecute you until you're broken.

Okay, law fair.

And thank God that never happened, but those lists are still around.