News Roundup: Iran, Reformed Christian Politics, & More

Iran’s Nuclear Program, Israeli Strategy, and Trump’s War Aims

Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I've said that for 15 years, long before I decided to do the political thing. So Iran can be taken. I would never take the military card off the table. And it's possible that it'll have to be used because Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.

Now you asked about a preemptive strike, Margaret, and I want to answer the question. Look, it is up to Israel what they think they need to do to keep their country safe. And we should support our allies wherever they are when they're fighting the bad guys.

I think that's the right approach to take.

Was forced to strike because of an invented Israeli adjunct?

No, first of all, let me two things I would say. Number one is no matter what, ultimately this operation needed to happen. That's the question of why now. But this operation needed to happen because Iran in about a year or a year and a half would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short range missiles, so many drones that no one could do anything about it because they could hold the whole world hostage.

Look at the damage they're doing now. And this is a week in Iran. Imagine a year from now. So that had to happen. Obviously, we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what that would mean for us and we had to be prepared to act as a result of it.

But this had to happen no matter what.

There's just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi-year conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective. He's defined that objective as Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and has to commit long term to never trying to rebuild the nuclear capability.

It's pretty clear. It's pretty simple. And I think that means that we're not going to get into the problems that we've had with Iraq and Afghanistan.

The United States military continues to carry out large scale combat operations in Iran to eliminate the grave threats posed to America by this terrible terrorist regime. Following our obliteration of Iran's nuclear program in Operation Midnight Hammer a short while ago, we warned Iran not to make any attempt to rebuild at a different location because they were unable to use the ones that we so powerfully blew up.

But they ignored those warnings and refused to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons. In addition, the regime's conventional ballistic missile program was growing rapidly and dramatically. And this posed a very clear, colossal threat to America and our forces stationed overseas.

The regime already had missiles capable of hitting Europe and our bases both local and overseas and would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America. The purpose of this fast growing missile program was to shield their nuclear weapon development and make it extraordinarily difficult for anyone to stop them from making these highly forbidden by us nuclear weapons.

There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory.

Mr. President, did Israel force your hand to launch these strikes against Iran? Did any of them pull the United States into this war?

No, I might have forced their hand. You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics. Based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first. And I didn't want that to happen.

So if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand.

Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the UAE all condemning the strikes from Iran. All of those nations said they have the right and they plan on defending themselves as well. There is now indication that European nations could be getting in on this as well.

Did we go in because of Israel? And I said, you asked me, are you from the follow up? And I said, no, I told you this had to happen anyway. The president made a decision and the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program, that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ability to conduct these attacks.

That decision had been made. The president systematically made a decision to systematically destroy this terroristic capability that they had and we carried that out. I was very clear in that answer. This was a question of timing, of why this had to happen as a joint operation, not the question of the intent.

Once the president made a decision that negotiations were not going to work, that they were playing us on the negotiations and that this was a threat that was untenable, the decision was made to strike them.

That's what I said yesterday. And you guys need to play it. And you're going to play these statements. You need to play the whole statement, not clip it to reach a narrative that you want.

To do.

All right. Let me explain to you guys this in simple English. OK. Iran is run by lunatics, religious fanatic lunatics. They have an ambition to have nuclear weapons. They intend to develop those nuclear weapons behind a program of missiles and drones and terrorism that the world will not be able to touch them for fear of those things.

And this is the weakest they've ever been. Now is the time to go after them. The president made the decision to go after them, take away their missiles, take away their Navy, take away their drones, take away their ability to make those things so that they can never have a nuclear weapon.

That's why the president made this decision. It was the right decision. And the world will be a safer place when these radical clerics no longer have access to these weapons. You see how they're using them now.

Imagine how they would use them a year from now if they had more of these. All right. I got time for one more.

Welcome to the Podcast and the Need for Prayer

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast, where we are forging a bold Christian vision for America. I'm your host, John Harris. In that particular montage, you saw a number of things. You saw statements from some of our leaders, including Donald Trump, J .D. Vance, and Marco Rubio on the stated intention of going into Iran.

You saw clips from Donald Trump going back to 2011. If you go online, you can actually find clips going back even farther and news articles going back to the 1980s and 90s of Donald Trump saying that there may come a time when military action is necessary against Iran.

And then you also saw the development of this whole situation and how countries in the Middle East and now Europe are also joining the efforts. It's a lot happening in a very short period of time. I was shocked at how much happened in just under 24 hours.

I actually wrote a post about it because I'm not someone who wanted this to take place. I think like a lot of you, I was praying against it. No one wants to see war, obviously, especially when that war could involve very high powered missiles and especially against a regime that is willing to go to.

There's no level at which it seems like they are not willing to stoop to cause damage and wreak havoc. And it happened anyway. And so we're going to get into some of that. There's obviously a lot of discussion about the role of Israel, the constitution and whether or not this was authorized.

And then as the thumbnail for this video suggests, we'll talk a little bit about some of the way that Christian leaders or self-proclaimed Christian leaders, as the case may be, are handling this particular situation.

And so it is a live broadcast, which means you can interact with me live if you so choose. I'm a little late to the game on this and not on my sub stack. I actually got an article out on Saturday about this, but I was going to do a podcast yesterday and I was as sick as a dog.

I just I was in Mexico and it was it was actually a I thought probably the best cost effective way for my wife and I to get away just because I had good air miles and the food there's cheap and staying there's cheap.

Well, obviously, the downside of going to Mexico and everyone warns you this is that you shouldn't drink the water, that if you drink the water there, you're going to get.

Sick.

And so we avoided that like the plague. We're not going to drink the water. I noticed at a restaurant I had ice in my glass and I thought, I better not drink that. The last day we're at a restaurant, it's the last meal we're having in Mexico and we order smoothies and did not think about the water that they may have used for the smoothie.

So I got really sick and yesterday was bad. I'll just put it that way. It was just really bad. I'm probably at about 70 percent now. I still feel a bit queasy and just my head's a little bit aching, I suppose, but I'm well enough to do a podcast.

I do appreciate those of you who prayed for me. It could have been a lot worse, obviously. And I know that the prayers were mostly about the cartels. Cartels did not get me. I did see free Palestine protesters down there, though, which I was like, can you just not get away from these people?

Are they just everywhere? And they were protesting Mexico City, which was kind of funny. They were upset at the city of Mexico specifically. I don't know what the city of Mexico is supposed to do about what's happening in Gaza, but there you go.

Anyway, it was a mostly relaxing time and I needed that to kind of rejuvenate and come back. And we are back and we're ready to talk about not just the news of the day, but also kind of the direction I think that we need to be thinking.

And I want to mention that before I even talk about the news, I want to mention direction really, really quickly. I'm connected to a lot of pastors, obviously, and Christian leaders online. I mean, a lot of people I follow are Christians who are professional Christians in some capacity.

I mean, that's what they're known for. That's why they're doing what they do. I have seen since I started looking for it, some calls from major Christian leaders for prayer, people like Franklin Graham.

I am a little surprised, I'll be honest, and I'm not trying to chide anyone here, just so you know. But I think it's worth noting, I am surprised that there has been so few calls to prayer over this situation.

There's a lot of fear right now. I can sense that even among my my own supporters and people who who just talked to me and the various chat groups I'm in and everything, there's there's a lot of fear about what could be on the road ahead of us.

What's going to happen in the midterms? What's going to happen in the Middle East? What about the domestic issues that we have? Are those going to be now on the back burner? Is Trump is he tanking the Republican Party?

Some think he's doing think he's doing great things for the Republican Party right now, but there's all kinds of fears about potentially what the future looks like, which I think is a normal thing in war, to be quite honest.

And what do we as Christians do with those fears? We go to the Lord, we pray. We know from the book of Daniel that there are angels that are actually involved. We don't understand exactly how in the course of nations, in nations battling with nations, even.

We know that the Lord is the one who raises up empires and crushes empires. We know that he's sovereign. We know that history is leading up to something. Eventually there is going to be peace, but it will be under the reign of the Messiah, even in the Middle East.

Actually, that's going to be the focal point is in the Middle East there is going to be peace. So these are things Christians believe, and we ought to be praying for these things, ought to be leading our people that are, you know, people that are under our influence, your pastor, your congregation, to reflect on what God might be doing and taking those fears to him and just asking him to do his will, that there would be peace, that especially the Christians that are in the region, but everyone who's in the region would be as safe as possible, that the bad guys would be eliminated and that there would be a successful outcome.

And especially, I mean, I think of Iran, some of the estimates put it in millions of Christians that are there now. We don't really know. There's estimates range all over the place. It's kind of like when you try to find out how many protesters died in the protest there in Iran against the government in the last few months, the estimates range all over the place.

Tens of thousands, less than 10 ,000. Well, the Christians, it's the same thing. Are there 50 ,000, 500 ,000? Are there, you know, I think one estimate I saw said it could be as much as something like, you know, 2 million, 3 million, but we don't really know.

We don't have information on it. But I do know from people I know who are in Iran, or I should say have come out of Iran, friends of mine, that the Christian population there is growing. In fact, 2017, I actually went to Turkey and the interest I had in going there was to see how the Lord was working among refugees who were Persian, Iranian mostly.

And the Lord's doing amazing things in that particular community. So is this going to open up the possibility of a government that will be more friendly to them? I don't know. But there's a sizable amount of the population there that is Western friendly, that doesn't want the clerics running their country anymore.

And hopefully if that kind of an arrangement that reflects the values of the people there can be acquired somehow, that would be something that would benefit the Christians who are living there and not living in freedom.

They are very persecuted. So anyway, I just wanted to remind you that. Let's pray, you know, and let's as we're going about our business and even posting online, if we do that, let's just remind people that God's in control here.

Things are scary. It's not the only time in world history things have been scary, but let's take a breath and let's just pray to him and ask him for his guidance and for his mercy. And that's what I'm doing.

And I hope you're doing the same. So I wanted to just remind you of that. If we forget that, we're going to be in a very bad spot. We do need to remember who's actually in charge of things and who we must be submitting to and seeking guidance from.

And that is one of the concerns I suppose I do have. If there's more commentary and I don't want to chide anyone, like I'm providing commentary, obviously, in this podcast. But if there's only commentary, I'll put it that way from coming from Christian influential accounts online and in other places and not calls to prayer and just a recognition that, look, I'm where we're only finite human beings.

We're not in the situation room. We don't know everything that's going on. This is a lot of moving parts. It's just too big. The scale is too massive. It's overwhelming. We can't figure everything out.

But God does know all those things. That's the only source of our comfort. And that's the only source of our success, I think, as Christians in the United States, which is where I'm podcasting from. And this is our history.

We have always looked to God for our inspiration and our direction. OK, with that said, let us get into some of the commentary, if that's OK with you. And we do have someone streaming here. I'm not going to I guess Gomez, I'll say Mr. Gomez from San Antonio, Texas, where there's a lot lots of possibilities, these election days.

And I should mention, I think if I'm not mistaken, there's some local elections happening or some state elections. I forget which states in this country, but we're obviously leading up to some elections here.

You'll be praying for that as well. We have Sparta, Spartacus, Spartacus, OK, pray, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. All right. Well, let's talk about this. I wrote a blog, a Substack article, I should say.

And it's called The Long Fuse, how regime change became attractive to the United States. And I put this out there on Saturday. I actually wrote this while I was mostly actually entirely while I was in the airport and then on the plane.

So there are a lot of interruptions, but I got it out fairly quickly and I wanted to do it because I I just thought there was going to be a lot of. And I was right, a lot of misinformation and slop and just all kinds of things being thrown out there.

And I just thought, you know what, let me get this out there, at least for the people who follow me so that you can get the big picture before zoning in on the specifics. I did a podcast last year and I go into great detail about the history of the United States and Iran.

And those slideshows are available for patrons. But I wanted to summarize some of those things in this. And so first I say, look, to understand what is happening in Iran is important to understand some history.

And the first thing is that Donald Trump has consistently and publicly opposed Iran possessing nuclear weapons since 2011. I probably should have said since the 1980s, because I've seen other sources now going back much earlier.

But the clip I played for you at the beginning of this podcast, the first clip was Donald Trump or the second clip, I suppose, after the destruction in Tehran was Donald Trump in 2011 saying that Iran could not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

So anyone surprised that he would use military action to stop Iran has not been listening closely to his words. Trump's opposition to Iran did not come out of a vacuum, though. And so I'll say one thing, because I know there's another tweet of Trump that's being passed around where he's saying that Obama, he's predicting Obama would start a war with Iran because of his failure to negotiate.

Trump sees himself, if you've just watched him for any length of time, is the great negotiator. He's the dealmaker. He works over foreign nations like he does a boardroom. I mean, he thinks that he can really get in there and offer them something that they will find appealing.

And he runs into problems when he tries to do this with people like the Iranians or the Gazans, because I think so often is this is the case. We assume that everyone else has our same interests. They also want their children to grow up in prosperity and to have a better economic outcome.

They want the things that we want. And sometimes people actually have ideology or religious zealotry. They have things that actually trump those other interests. And those can be blockages for any kind of negotiation.

I think Trump ran into that with Iran. He couldn't negotiate with them. So maybe there was some naivety there at one point. I don't know. But the White House actually did post a and this is not exhaustive, but it was just the title is 74 times President Trump has made clear that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.

And it's mostly 2024, 2025, but it does go back to 2020, 2011, 2015. So that doesn't even include the statement that I had before. But Donald Trump's been pretty consistent on this. And I think that is the first thing about this history that we do need to set the record straight on.

He he is the peace candidate. That's how he ran. But he was also the peace through superior, superior firepower candidate. He was the guy that made a lot of threats. And if you cross these lines, I'm going to actually deliver on my promises.

I'm not like Biden. I'm not like Obama. I don't just keep warning you and then you do it and we don't do anything. Trump is the guy that actually does something. And I think he's doing a few things here at once.

Is it 40 chest? I don't know. I've never bought that. Trump's doing 40 chest. But I do think Trump is someone who is a lot of bluster. He has a lot of negotiating tactics that include things like hyperbole.

But he will also make good on threats. And this is something that people across the world are, I think, afraid of. And it does. Does it benefit the United States for other countries to be afraid of us?

Maybe I suppose. I mean, it's such a contrast between him and Obama, who was more of a soft negotiator on all these things. And so often, I mean, why do we why do Iran even have the financial backing that they had?

I mean, Obama was giving them money. I mean, there's there's a lot of problems that Trump inherited, unfortunately. But Trump has been pretty consistent with this, that Iran can't possess a nuclear weapon.

And part of it might be the fact that Trump was an adult, a young man when the Iran hostage crisis was happening. I think that had a deep psychological impact on the people who experienced that. They got to see a foreign country chanting death to America, holding our hostages and our president unable to do anything about it.

And it is probably the major reason that Ronald Reagan got elected over Jimmy Carter. So this is this goes back a long time. And and I realize I probably should get a move on because I've only gotten through one sentence.

But but that's, I think, the first thing to just sort of emphasize, like, look, we did vote for a guy who was potentially going to do this. We can't really say that we weren't warned or that we didn't know like we did.

This is the this is the guy we elected Vance to Vance was saying similar things. So let's go back further, though. Let's talk about the historical roots. When the British pulled out of Iran in nineteen fifty one, a competition commenced between the Britain, British, the Russians and eventually the Americans for Iran's oil.

Now, I want to say something here. A lot of the problems that we see around the world in the Middle East in particular are the result of a power vacuum. When Britain pulled back from many of its colonies, the United States filled some of those those that gap.

But also the Russians did some of this. And there was a competition for other foreign countries not to take over these countries in the same way that Britain had had a government because Britain's model was more government driven, right?

Like it wasn't just economic. They had infrastructure and people living there and they controlled things. This was more of just getting getting the access to the oil, getting economic deals. And so this vacuum was filled by others.

And so the United States is one of those forces. And we had a tense relationship with Iran that stretched back to this time, because in order to stop Soviet influence and stop oil nationalization, the United States helped organize a coup against Prime Minister Mohammed.

And I'm probably going to mispronounce his last name. So, you know, I'm not even going to try. It's Mosada. I don't know. So I tried. But I don't know if that's actually how you pronounce it. But it was the prime minister at the time in support of the Shah.

So we installed the shawl essentially or we helped and MI6 was involved in this as well. But this sowed seeds of mistrust towards the United States. And those seeds do endure to this day. By 1979, the United States had long back Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who was staunchly anti-communist.

It's a problem when I read these books and I don't actually listen to like an audiobook or something that has the name. But this is the beginning of the Iranian revolution and the problems kind of exacerbating.

The Ayatollah Khamenei led an Islamist revolution that was hostile to the United States. This was motivated by clerics, by Shiite Muslims who believed in 12th imam theology, which I'll explain a little bit more in a second.

But throughout the 1990s, Iran's relationship with China and Russia grows in opposition to American dominance. Iran currently sells more than 80 percent of its oil to China. So if you want to think about this in a global context, who's the big loser in all of this internationally?

If you think about geopolitics, you have the United States, you have China, you have Russia. These are like the big three, the European Union, if we want to see that as a consolidated force. And China is getting oil from places like Venezuela and Iran.

Now, these places are going to be cut off. Likely, Iran will be cut off from them, which is over 20 percent of their oil that they import. That's going to be a problem for them. And so another thing that you'll notice about Donald Trump is he has consistently been been very aggressive against China.

Does this play into it? I don't know of quotes recently where he has said that, but a lot of people have speculated this must be part of the strategy and it's possible. But Russia also has assisted Iran's nuclear program, sold arms and coordinated with Iran to back Assad in 2015.

So the United States has enemies that have close relationships with Iran and they are pursuing regional dominance. And this is viewed as a liability for American interests in the region. So you have this this issue of our enemies geopolitically are in bed with Iran.

Iran is it's more than just Iran. It's who's also behind Iran that the United States finds threatening. When the Shah was overthrown, America began sanctions and became the great Satan to the new regime, which is an interesting turn.

They'll say death to America. America is the great Satan. By the way, Israel's the little Satan. So America's got a more of a threat, a bigger outsized influence than Israel in just their terminology.

America is the great Satan. This goes back before Israel was the main or one of the major threats that they in their mind. This goes back before that to the Cold War. So they have not liked us for a long time, meaning they meaning the those who are controlling the government right now.

I think the population, a lot of them probably. I mean, there's no poll that I know that it's been taken, but we've had marches in the United States and around the world now in support of this military action from Iranians.

Very thankful to President Trump. In 1988, the United States destroyed much of Iran's Navy in the largest naval battle post-World War Two. Did you know that? In order to end an oil embargo, Iran state sponsored terrorism also targeted American interests.

Hezbollah killed 241 U .S. personnel in the 1983 Beirut Marina barracks bombing. In 1996, Iran bombed the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 more Americans. And they organized attacks on U .S. forces in Iraq and attempted to bomb a restaurant in D .C. in 2019.

The Houthis also use cyber warfare against U .S. infrastructure and financial institutions. So these are. Not just Iran, but the terrorist organizations that they fund and support, and the White House actually did put out a itemized list of all the actually they say it's a partial record of the Iranian regime's blood soaked war on Americans starting in 1979 and going to the present.

And it's pretty extensive. You could say that there's already been somewhat of a I don't know if you want to call it a Cold War, but some severe tensions between the United States and Iran going back that far.

And I would just refer you to the White House for those resources there. Let's talk about Israel for a minute. Meanwhile, Israel's relationship with Iran also deteriorated. Israel had been involved in a joint missile program with Iran in the 1970s and even sent advisers to assist Iran during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

And can you believe that? Go back to the 1980s and Israel is actually sending military advisers to Iran because they see Iraq as this greater threat. I mean, this is one of the things that you'll see a lot with Israel is they when you have enemies all around you or at least people who don't like you necessarily, but they also don't like each other.

Sometimes it's to your benefit to try to tip the scales a little. So one side maybe that's not as unfriendly towards you is in a superior position to the other side. And that must be what they were doing in the 1980s.

But I mean, the 1970s, a joint missile program, which is incredible that they ever had that. That all changed as Iran saw Israel more and more as a barrier to their theocratic goals, though, because Iran's Shiite regime believed in the 12th imam, which essentially means they are aggressively in favor of global theocratic control and sponsor proxy terrorism by Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, etc.

They are viewed as a threat by many of their neighbors, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE. And this theology is one of the ways which Iran's potential threats differ from North Korea, because North Korea mutually assured destruction might mean something for Iran, according to their belief.

I mean, you see it playing out now before the return of the Mahdi comes a time of chaos and the defeat of Israel are anticipated conditions. So a nuclear weapon would help accomplish more than regional dominance for them, but also help usher in their ideological goals as well.

Deterrence to accomplishing the school are expected. Now, we have the United States, several bases in the region that Iran had missiles already pointed at, and they were ready to launch. As Donald Trump said in the clip I played at the beginning, as soon as the war started, it didn't really matter who attacked and they were going to launch these things.

Iran, this is this is the thing that many of us don't like about the great American empire, if you want to call it that, but we really are around the world. We really do have these bases all over the place.

And so the. The problem for us is if you want to scale that back, which I'm very interested in, I'd like to disentangle ourselves, I think we have domestic issues, I don't want to spend money over there, right, all these things.

Problem you have is you also have the fact that you have China, Russia, these other places are interested in asserting their own dominance. And so that's one of the reasons we're over there. It's a Cold War era byproduct that's still with us.

And so Iran is very conscious of this. They want regional dominance. They're against us and they're against Israel because Israel also stops them from within our allies from regional dominance. But in their eschatology, their theological belief, there's going to be chaos before the end.

And Israel has to be gone, essentially. I mean, Israel, it will be defeated by them. They believe this. So you have a situation now where they are suffering defeat after defeat. They're making tons of stupid moves.

I know I was reading and I've been reading everything from Russia today, which is Russia today is probably one of the worst sources on this, by the way. They they were they were doing reports from Iran that like Iran had killed over 200 Americans and stuff like that.

It's just like sensational stuff. But I'm trying to read as broadly as I can and I'm trying to remember where the story was. I think it was the Jerusalem Post. I think it was the Jerusalem Post. They had a report that an Iranian official said that the chain of command has already broken down, essentially.

And you have these rogue military units basically just doing their thing. They're just launching missiles. There's really the brain doesn't know what's happening. And they because so many of their leaders have died, which was the Israeli end of this.

Right. The United States was focused on annihilating their short term, short range ballistic and naval capabilities. And Israel was focused on more destroying the leaders in the country, two separate missions that are complementary, not contradictory, by the way.

I've seen a lot of people saying these are all contradictory. You can't say that you want to you want regime change, which could be a byproduct of this. And then your mission is to take out these short term ballistic missiles, which serve as giving Iran immunity to continue their nuclear program.

Even after we took out their their their program last year, they're rebuilding it and they're using these short term short. I keep saying short term, short range missiles to create a situation in a year or a year and a half from now, according to Marco Rubio, where they will have immunity.

In other words, we can't really do anything because they're going to have so much firepower. And that's our United States. That's our end of this is taking out those capabilities, stopping them from ever getting a nuclear weapon.

That's basically it for us. But with the added benefit, hopefully it sounds like our leaders want of a better regime getting in there that reflects the values of the pro Western population in Tehran. And these things are not necessarily contradictory.

These these can complement themselves, complement themselves.

So, all right.

Twelfth Imam Theology and the Window for Regime Change

Twelfth Imam theology. We talked about that a little bit. So this is sort of messianic thing where the Mahdi is going to return. They're waiting for that. There's going to be chaos before the end. So the chaos right now for them, if they really are true believers, is nothing to be surprised about.

This is this was supposed to happen, right? We're supposed to have some chaos. What's happening right now, though, in the title of my article, the subtitle was why regime change became attractive is there seems to be a window of opportunity here.

Preceding the Iranian revolution, Iran started to pursue nuclear capabilities. Their violation of the JCPOA in 2015 and subsequent United States pressure sanctions against them deteriorated whatever trust we might have had.

Twenty nineteen Iran backed Hezbollah militants launched a rocket against a K1 airbase near Iraq, in Iraq, and it killed an American civilian contractor, wounded several U .S. service members. And this escalated tensions.

Eventually we killed Qasem Soleimani in 2020. He was the brains behind the ring of fire around Israel, which is now. It's basically gone. Both Israel and the United States have worked towards managing the threat.

I shouldn't say it's basically gone. You still have Hezbollah. But other than Hezbollah, I think it's basically gone. Both the United States and Israel have worked towards managing the threat Iran poses through sanctions, sabotage and strikes.

But this was never a long term solution. And that's, I think, the main thing I want to emphasize. It's always been a policy of management. Iran's always kind of they're looming as a threat. Bad things happen, but we just kind of kick the can down the road.

The only thing you can do is manage this. I think Trump doesn't want to manage it. He wants to solve this problem. So in twenty twenty four, an opportunity opened up after Assad fell in Syria. Iran's ring of fire around Israel collapse and then tactical strikes were seen as high reward, low risk moves, which is what happened.

Right. And this was supposed to send a message to Iran and not only stop their nuclear program, but it was supposed to tell them to stop permanently. Like, we're going to keep doing this to you. Just stop.

But that's not what happened. The most stable Middle Eastern countries are ruled by dynastic governments. So Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman. These are all more stable.

And the reason for that is because they have governments that are not religiously based where Islamo states proliferate. So does chaos and violence. And Iran's an example. The people of Iran are overwhelmingly young.