Brett Stevens has recently published a new op ed in The New York Times with the title, quote, we absolutely need to escalate in Iran. He wants the hot war with Iran. He thinks it's a great idea. [00:00:15] He thinks now is the time. And if you're wondering, well, is he like a teenager? Does he not remember what happened in the aftermath of nine over 11 when we invaded countries and it was a complete and utter disaster? Does he not remember any of that stuff? I guess not, I guess not, but we'll remind him as we talk about this first. [00:00:34] A few excerpts from his piece. Now, he says that the possibility, of Iran causing real harm to Israel, is no longer a far off thought. [00:00:51] Okay. He says, I thought of Nasrallah's words on Tuesday while watching images of Iranian ballistic missiles raining down on Israel, fortunately causing only slight damage thanks mainly to Israel and American air defenses. [00:01:06] I should also note again that Israel's air defenses are multi-layered. Okay, there's the Iron Dome. There's, you know, David Sling. And then on top of that, okay, there's, I forget the name of it, but there's a third [00:01:24] layer of defense capability that shoots down long range and intercontinental intercontinental missiles. And, like so, the sophisticated defense capabilities, along with the fact that [00:01:40] Israel is backed by a military superpower like the United States, should maybe play into this equation about starting or escalating a war with Iran. But it doesn't seem like Bret Stephens has done any of that in his equation here. [00:01:58] So he says, what if one of those missiles, one of Iran's missiles, had tipped with a nuclear warhead? Because, you know, Israel does have nuclear weapons. You know, Israel is is a real victim in the region, okay, because they have nuclear weapons, like, okay. [00:02:14] Like when you remember that they have nuclear weapons, it makes the argument that people don't want Israel to exist and they want to wipe it off the face of the earth. Even more clownish. It doesn't matter if people want that. It's never going to happen, okay? [00:02:29] It's a nuclear power. But okay, let me continue with the Brett Stevens argument here with a ridiculous hypothetical. But what if one of those missiles had been tipped with a nuclear warhead, a warhead whose construction Western intelligence agencies, even Mossad, had somehow missed? [00:02:46] If nothing else, it would have fulfilled Nasrallah's prophecy of his fondest hopes. Okay, so, based on the thought experiment and scenario that Bret Stephens has laid out. Yeah, definitely. We should definitely engage in a hot war with Iran. [00:03:01] Sounds like a great idea. He says that possibility is no no longer far off. This year, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned that Iran was within a week or two of being able to produce enough weapons grade uranium for a nuclear bomb. [00:03:16] That is fascinating, John, isn't that so interesting that we're so concerned with Iran developing a nuclear bomb? You know, if I recall correctly, Obama signed something during his term. It was called the Iran nuclear deal. [00:03:32] It had a different name that was more technical, but everyone refers to it as the Iran nuclear deal. Other Western allies were involved in the negotiation process. They signed on to the deal, and it ensured that Iran would not be able to develop nuclear weapons, [00:03:47] and it provided the ability of our allies to do the necessary oversight, go into Iran and ensure that they're not developing nuclear weapons. Donald Trump took that. He's like, oh, oh. Iran nuclear deal. I rip it up because my daddy, Benjamin Netanyahu, he doesn't like it [00:04:08] because he wants war with Iran. Okay. Yeah. He wants the excuse to go to war with Iran. And when I say he wants to go to war with Iran, what I really mean is he wants Americans to fight that war on behalf of Israel. You you think Israel is going to fight that war? [00:04:26] I mean, come on. This is madness. And by the way, you're going to wipe out the current government or regime in Iran. And then what? What happens on day two? What happens on day two? You're going to install like, a puppet government. [00:04:44] That worked out real well and has done that right. Yeah. I mean, America has done that. In Iran, by the way, but. That that's a good point. And how did that work out? How did that work out? When America gets involved in regime change, does it typically work out well for us and for the international community? [00:05:03] Well, I mean, Stevens is one of the dumbest people on the planet for urging this to happen. Yeah. Okay. And a lot of innocent people are going to die if it does happen. He's sick. Okay. He's a sick person with a sick mind. And he somehow thinks like this is the moral thing to do. [00:05:21] There's always going to be people getting paid to express, you know, this point of view. There were, you know, in during the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq, the years after, there was always David Frum and a number of others. And they'll write their books and they'll make a whole bunch of money. They'll give their speeches advocating for other people to fight and die. [00:05:38] But when you ask, how has that worked out for us? You have to define us because, like, you know, from our perspective of the American national interest, it certainly didn't work out for the American soldiers that have died. It certainly didn't work out. But if you were a defense contractor or had stock in a defense contractor [00:05:54] that got paid hundreds of millions or billions of dollars over that time, I think it worked out fine. Not a lot of, you know, Raytheon executives died on the ground in Iraq. That's not how that works. Like, they tend to do pretty well. And so, yeah, no, it's utter madness, by the way. [00:06:10] Like, if they're going to do this thought experiment. And I understand that when analyzing foreign policy, let alone foreign policy hypotheticals, we're supposed to be wildly hypocritical about how we evaluate the morality of actions. But if the idea is that Israel's actions, what they're doing, and even what they [00:06:27] might do totally justified because Iran could have a nuclear weapon, even though there's no reason for us to believe that they do. Okay, well, Israel does have nuclear weapons. So here's the thought experiment. What if there was an Iranian, Bret Stephens writing, you know, [00:06:44] in the Persian Times? Well, what if an Israeli missile tipped with a nuclear weapon landed in Tehran? Arun, I guess that justifies anything that they might want to do. And that's far less of a hypothetical, because Israel actually has those weapons. Like we can play these games. How about we stop invading people? [00:07:01] How about we stop starting wars? And the issue is, so long as these leaders are not the ones that are going to be fighting them, and in fact, their domestic political futures might be better secured by the presence of a conflict. The incentives are all effed up, and Netanyahu knows that. [00:07:18] That's how he's been governing for a long time. One more excerpt from this op ed. He, you know, argues, you know, diplomacy. We tried it and it hasn't worked. Let me read it word for word. [00:07:35] For nearly four years, the administration's diplomatic outreach to Tehran, along with its finely calibrated responses to Iranian aggression, has done nothing to deter it from striking us and our Allies striking us. [00:07:52] Striking us. Iran struck us. When did Iran strike us? And I'm under the impression that in this current round of war in the Middle East involving Israel, Israel decided to do bombings in a sovereign country. [00:08:13] Iran and Iran retaliated with, like a fake attack. Okay. When you really want to attack a country, you don't hit them up hours ahead of time and let them know, hey, we are going to send drones to areas of Israel where it's not really [00:08:30] going to hit anything, you know, just to show our people that we're retaliating. But we're warning you so no one gets hurt and everything gets intercepted. I mean, like, come on. Iran has said over and over again, they don't want to go to war because they understand going to war with Israel means going to war with the United States, [00:08:48] and who knows how long that war goes on for. But Netanyahu keeps poking and poking and poking and poking and poking. He doesn't stop because he would rather do literally anything, anything, than just allow Palestinians [00:09:06] to have their own state. That's the root of all of this, literally. That is the root of all of this. And by the way, the last time we took advice from this piece of crap, it's 22 years ago. Let's listen to what he had to say to members of Congress 22 years ago [00:09:24] about the possibility of invading Iraq. Let's watch. If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region. And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people and many others [00:09:42] will say the time of such regimes of such despots is gone. There is a new age, something new is happening and the. Speculation on your part, or you have some evidence to that effect. You know, I was I was asked the same question in in 1986. [00:09:57] I had written a book in which I had said that the way to deal with terrorist regimes well, with terror was to deal with the terrorist regimes and the way to deal with the terrorist regimes, among other things, was to apply [00:10:15] military force against them the way. We did in Afghanistan. The way, for example, I want to answer your question. I guess I'm running out of time. So I quickly was trying to get and we've done, I think, what you propose in Afghanistan yet I haven't seen that sort of neighborhood effect. Well, I think I think there's been an enormous effect. [00:10:31] The effect was we were told that there would be a contrary effect. First of all, people said that there would be tens of thousands of people streaming into Afghanistan, zealots who would be outraged by America's action. And this would produce a counter-reaction in the Arab world. But I think. What happens is that when you take an action like we did in Afghanistan, [00:10:48] we're going to see all the other countries just fold. No, what we saw is something else. First of all, we saw everybody streaming out of Afghanistan. The second thing we saw is all the Arab countries and many Muslim countries trying to side with America, trying to make to be okay with America. The application of power is the most important thing [00:11:05] in winning the war on terrorism. If I had to say, what are the three principles of winning the war on terror? It's like, what are the three principles of real estate? The three L's. Location, location, location. The three principles of winning the War on Terror are the three W's winning, winning and winning. The more victories you amass, the easier the next victory becomes. [00:11:24] The first victory in Afghanistan makes a second victory in Iraq that much easier. The second victory in Iraq will make the third victory that much easier to. But it may change the nature of achieving that victory. It may be possible to have implosions taking place. [00:11:40] I don't guarantee it, but I think it makes it more likely. He doesn't guarantee it. It's good that he didn't guarantee it because the Taliban is, you know, back in charge in Afghanistan, a war that we spent 20 freaking years fighting and paying for. [00:11:58] For what end? What was the result? And by the way, we invaded Iraq on behalf of Israel. Let's keep it 100. That's a big no. No. You're not supposed to say it. It was all about the oil. It wasn't all about the oil. Okay, we know what the reality is. It's just it's so infuriating how many Americans have to die [00:12:17] for this lunatic who doesn't give a damn about just doing the right thing, following international law and allowing Palestinians to just have their own state without Israelis occupying them. He just can't have it because it's never enough. [00:12:34] I mean, what they have the land, it's never enough. It's insane to me. It's just absolutely insane to me. And Brett Bret Stephens. He's the kind of person with the kind of mindset that enables some of the worst people on the planet, like Netanyahu and other extremists in the Israeli regime. [00:12:51] Yeah. It's infuriating, John, like we're going to go to war with Iran. Like that's where we're headed right now. This is so similar to the kind of we are. It's the kind of garbage that we. Yeah, I know exactly. It's going to get worse. [00:13:07] I mean, and it's just wild to feel the things and see the things that I did when I was in high school, right before the preemptive strike in Iraq, I remember we were reading [00:13:22] The Glass Menagerie in class, and I'm like, this is boring as fuck. So I was reading The New York Times, and I remember reading quotes from Bill Kristol, similar to garbage that we're now reading from Bret Stephens, and I was ripping my hair out of my head. Yeah. Yeah, people, when you hear a politician make an argument people don't often [00:13:41] enough ask, does he care if he's wrong? Like if he says no, go invade, invade, invade and great things will happen. What happens to him if that long term stuff doesn't turn out the way he says? [00:13:59] Is his career ruined? Is it? No. He's fine. He'll be fine. When? When politicians are like, let's do this tax cut and trillions to billionaires and, you know, it'll trickle down. Do they care if that doesn't happen? They already got their money. Their money is automatic. [00:14:15] That's guaranteed. The second order stuff. If it doesn't happen, are there going to be ramifications they never have in past rounds? Like people just need to interrogate. Like, what if it doesn't work out that way? Does this mfer care at all? And very rarely do they. That's how they word things. [00:14:31] That's the strategy. We have to get money out of politics, man. Like these Politicians are such greedy pieces of. All right. So desperate for the campaign donations, so scared of AIPAC to the point [00:14:48] where they sacrifice Americans for wars they should not be fighting. It is gross. It is so gross. Anyway, I'm going to end on this. Nancy Pelosi was asked about a potential war with Iran. [00:15:03] I didn't love her answer, but it was certainly better than the crap we got from Bret Stephens. So let's take a look. Sounds like you're saying that Israel should be cautious about going after Iran's nuclear program. Or maybe or not. [00:15:18] I mean, tell me exactly what you what you believe. And then even extend that to the question of its oil fields. Well, it's up to Israel to decide about their security. But the fact the fact is, we are, as you said earlier, and I repeat it again, [00:15:34] we are trying to avoid a wider War. And would that would that cause a wider war? Avoid a wider war? It may. You know, again, there has to be a weighing of opportunities or weighing of possibilities in the region. [00:15:51] I'm not I'm not going to come on this show and say Israel should attack the nuclear facilities in Iran. I've never really been for that. I was for a diplomatic solution, which President Obama successfully put forth to reduce the nuclear capability and possibilities of Iran. [00:16:12] And I think as much as we can do diplomatically, we we should, Madam Speaker, avoid a wider war. I thought, okay, fine. Pelosi was okay. She's trying to urge caution. But like John, kind of the question [00:16:32] from Dana Bash, like she seemed. So you're wait, I need to understand. Are you saying that Israel should proceed with caution? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't understand. I really don't understand. People like. [00:16:47] I feel like I live on a completely different planet from these people. Do they not understand the severity of the situation? Do they not care about how many people have already died? How many people will die as this escalates? [00:17:03] I mean, maybe because it's on a different continent. People like Dana Bash and Bret Stephens, they're totally detached from it. So they don't understand what the US is enabling right now and how in the long run, it's going to cause a lot of damage. [00:17:19] I mean, a few days ago, the New York Police Department was taking extra measures because of the possibility that what's happening right now in the Middle East could lead to terror attacks on the United States. [00:17:36] - What are we doing? - I don't think that's likely to happen. I mean, each win you have makes the next win easier, and there's no consequences. And winning a whole bunch doesn't inspire terrorists. Instead, they're scared of you. And they would like people who are willing to literally blow [00:17:54] themselves up to accomplish a goal. They'd never go up against a scary military. No, I mean, these are these are massive, corrupt liars. That's what they are. They're corrupt liars lying to us. They don't believe the things they're saying. [00:18:09] Whether they're in elected office. They could be prime ministers. They could be whatever. They could be. Columnist for the New York Times. They get paid either way. They're not going to suffer the consequences of this violence. You know, when we cover stories. [00:18:25] If I advocated for something that turned out to not be great, like, I feel so awful about it, like I just I don't again, I just don't understand these people.