Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/3/26: Rubio Admits War For Israel, US Embassies Burn, Tucker Claims Mossad Captured In Gulf Countries

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Krystal and Saagar discuss Rubio admits Israel dragged US into war, US embassies burn, Tucker claims Mossad captured in gulf countries.   Trita Parsi: https://x.com/tparsi?s=20 Scott Horton: https://x.com/scotthortonshow Kat Abughazaleh: https://katforillinois.com/ Kat's Discord: https://discord.com/invite/katforillinois    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent Media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

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I'll break all of that down for you. Bebe was on Fox News last night celebrating, of course. The Gulf states are in K. our embassies are being attacked. Trita Parsi is going to join to break down what is going on. Scott Horton is going to join to break down his larger historical perspective of how we got to this place. Media is propagandizing during their pro-war propaganda on overtime. We've got some low lights for you there. And we're going to take a little trip back in the very recent trip back down memory lane of all the lies that were told from J.D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. and Stephen Miller and Donald Trump himself about how they did not want war with Iran, and yet here we are. Also, Ryan and I are going to record an interview with Kat Abu Ghazale. You'll recall, last week,

Ryan had some reporting about her foreign policy views, so we thought the best thing to do would be to have Iran and just ask her directly what she thinks about various issues, including the Iran War, of course, so we will have that for you as well. I'm interested to follow that. Been a lot of drama before the Iran War entirely broke out. Ryan's always starting some shit, you know. We love Ryan. Ryan is and remains the goat, no matter what is to do. attractors may say thank you to everybody who has been supporting our show for visibility to our audience yesterday was the single biggest day in the history of our show on all platforms both on

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And if you're listening to this on a podcast, please share an episode with a friend. It really helps other people find the show. But with that, let's go ahead and kick it off with what Donald Trump and his administration are saying is the reason why that we are in this war in the first place. You, if I said it three days ago, it would have been the anti-Semitic conspiracy.

And now it is coming out of the mouth of the United States Secretary of State. That's right. So not only Marco Rubio, but also Mike Johnson saying that the reason, because everyone's saying, why are we doing this? That the reason, according to them, is that Israel was going to strike Iran no matter what, that that would put our U.S. service members at risk. And so we calculated, well, we may as well be involved because maybe that will help us to be able to control the outcome here.

Let's go ahead and take a listen to how they framed that. Why now? Well, there's two reasons why now. The first is it was abundantly clear that if Iran came under attack by anyone, the United States or Israel or anyone, they were going to respond and respond against the United States. The third is the assessment that was made that if we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties. And so the president made the very wise decision. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action.

We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed. And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that indeed. They had to evaluate the threats to the U.S., to our troops, to our installations, to our assets in the region and beyond, and they determined, because of the exquisite intelligence that we had, that if Israel, fired upon Iran and took action against Iran to take out the missiles, then they would have immediately retaliated against U.S. personnel and assets. The consequences of inaction on our part would have been, could have been devastating. We don't know it at what magnitude, but you can assume, because it is common sense that if Iran had begun to fire all of their missile arsenal short and mid-range missiles at our personnel and our assets and our installations, we would have

suffered staggering losses. I mean, Sager, taken at face value, this is utterly humiliating and insane. And obviously begs one really clear question, which is, okay, if Israel striking Iran was going to create all of these problems and put our service members at risk, why don't we stop Israel from striking Iran? This is our client state. They can't function without our protection, our weaponry, our support, et cetera. So why did we just get coerced into this rather than going to our client vassal state and saying, no, you're not going to strike Iran because this is against our interests?

We need to, this is the most extraordinary admission, probably in modern history by United States Secretary of State. They claimed that this war was preemptive and it was preemptive in the sense that we had to preempt Iranians. reaction to Israel's preemption. Are you here with me now? We are not a sovereign country. Israel was the threat. That's the bottom line. Israel was a threat. We have sacrificed our sovereignty. We are a non-sovereign nation. If the world's superpower is subject to a country, the size of New Jersey, which basically makes nothing and is controlling our politicians such that, despite being the largest single recipient of military aid in the history of the United States, that we are not capable of telling them no. And it is now documented history from the New York Times now to the

open mouth of comments of the U.S. Secretary of State and the Speaker of the House that this is Israel's war. Israel's war. Now Donald Trump has agency, but he never once was able. Apparently, it even entered his mind to say, hey, you're not going to do that. We're going to cut off weapons. We're going to make you a global pariah and good luck defending yourself without all of our missile defense systems that never once entered their mind. And you know what else I was thinking about? You have to think, even the Iranians. Like, Iranian strategic calculus was, guys, they won't want to hit us.

Or Israel's not going to want to hit us because we'll hit U.S. bases. And the theory behind that was by threatening U.S. bases, it would mean that we would constrain or restrain Israel from striking them from their belligerent action. They never could have imagined the world where the client state is actually dictating and dragging policy of the United States and the global empire to actually actually. enter the war on their very behalf. We are beyond screwed. Also, at a certain point, is it even useful to play comments here at this point from Donald Trump? Israel's in the driver's seat. They're the ones who killed Ayatollah Khomeini. We're the ones apparently who gave them

the intelligence. There's the ones who do it. All of the strikes now so far are for regime collapse. The ingredients for civil war are happening. They are already... We're stoking them. Bebeenhani, got Donald Trump, maybe got Donald Trump, made Donald Trump, I don't know, got Donald Trump on the phone with a bunch of Kurdish leaders in Iraq, and they're like, hey, go on in there. Let's stoke a little civil war. And killed a bunch of border guards. They killed all the border guards. So that people could come in over the border and go on chaos.

By their own admission, they are new, they're going after and blowing up all the police stations. You only do that to collapse the civil society and order in the country. Nine different hospitals, obviously murdered those school girls, et cetera. And here's the thing is, you know, I keep bringing up the Epstein files because you have to look at this. and go, okay, this is insane. You know, Trump clearly had resist, reluctance to go into a full-blown war with Iran. And yet, nevertheless, he did it. And it never occurred to him or it never seemed to be an option to him to go to Israel and say, no, we will cut you off. Here will be the, you know, here will be the repercussions. This is something that previous American presidents have been able to do.

It's not like Israel's so out of control and they have so much autonomy that they're able to do all of these things on their own. No, they're fully and completely enabled by us. So why is that not an option on the table? Why? And you have, I mean, you can't help but ask yourself, maybe it is Epstein files, right? Is it just the money from Miriam Adelson? Like, there's lots of people who give Trump money for his campaign. There's all sorts of interests that are, you know, filling his both campaign and personal coffers with cash. So that really it, it's just about the Israel lobby cash, there's some piece of this that is missing that just does not add up. Because, listen, Donald Trump is extremely belligerent, right? He's bombed more countries in, you know,

his presidency than like any other American president. He has no problem taking a hawkish military action. But it did seem like the one thing that he was reluctant to do was get embroiled in a long, large-scale war, particularly in the Middle East. And yet, here we are. And you've got the Secretary of state saying, well, Israel made us do it. It does not add up. It does not make sense. There is some piece of this that is missing. And so you cannot call people crazy when they look at the Epstein Files cover up and go, I don't know, maybe. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's what's going on here. Yeah. To quote Dave Smith, think about this. George W. Bush had the wisdom, not to do what Donald Trump is doing. I mean, I said it before. You're going to launch a so-called war of choice,

preemption, whatever, you want to call it now admitting openly, nine, with ten months or whatever, before the midterm elections in your first year. If we think back to the history of the Bush presidency, we're all on the right track. You've got an unpopular war in the Middle East. You're going to have, what did W call the 2006 midterms a thumping? Is that what he said? It's a thumping. I don't remember.

I remember the Democrats. And then, yeah, that was Obama's. I think Bush called it a thumping. Then we have a massive financial crash. So we're on track, okay? Oh, yeah. We're all on track. This thing is out of control.

I mean, we've got embassies that are being attacked. We're telling Americans now in 12 different countries in the region like, oh, use commercial means and get out of the region. Well, there are no commercial means. The airlines are all shut down. The airports are all virtually shut down. You know, there was an article yesterday about how Americans, mostly wealthy Americans in the UAE, we're trying to get the heck out of Dubai. and there's no way to get out of that area.

The busiest airport in the entire world, and it's all but closed down. So you've got this thing already completely spiraling out of control. And, you know, apparently they thought maybe if we take out the Ayatola and we hit them pretty hard in the front, maybe this whole thing will collapse and the IRGC will just hold a hand over their arms and we can declare mission accomplish. This is delusional.

No. Obviously, and now they realize this is delusional, which is why Donald Trump is not going. going out and talking to anybody. Yesterday he said, oh, everybody go listen to BB Netanyahu on Fox News because apparently this is the person who's actually calling the shots. Look, we'll get to that, but yeah, Trump is out to lunch, like completely. Let's take a listen to him yesterday at the White House during a Medal of Honor ceremony where in he spent, I watched the entire thing. He began with maybe a four-minute segment on Iran where he was extremely tired. He seemed distracted.

His heart really didn't seem in it at all. And he immediately pivoted to start talking about the fucking ballroom. Let's take a listen. Our objectives are clear. First, we're destroying Arns missile capabilities, and you see that happening on an hourly basis and their capacity to produce brand new ones and pretty good ones they make. Second, we're annihilating their navy. We've knocked out already 10 ships. They're at the bottom of the sea. Third, we're ensuring that the world's number one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon, never going to have a nuclear weapon. We're already substantially ahead of our time projections, but whatever the time is, it's

okay, whatever it takes, we will always, and we have right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that. We'll do it. Whatever somebody said today, they said, oh, well, if the president wants to do it really quickly after that, he'll get bored. I don't get bored. There's nothing boring about this. See that nice drape? When that comes down right now, you see a very, very deep hole. But in about a year and a half from now, you're going to see a very, very beautiful building. And there's your entrance to it right there. In fact, it looks so nice, I don't think I'll even, I think I'll save money on the doors because it can't get more beautiful than that. I picked those drapes in my first. I picked those drapes in my

first term. I always like gold, but I think we can save a lot of money. I just saved, I just saved curtains. But, and it will be, it will be spectacular. It'll be the most beautiful ballroom. I believe it's because I built many a ballroom. I believe it's going to be the most beautiful ballroom. That was not an unfair cut. That literally happened. I watched the entire thing. Not joking. Like, we only spared you about two to three minutes in between Iran and all of that. In addition, by the way, Trump continues this thing where he'll answer his cell phone for anybody who calls. Let's put this up here on the screen from the New York Post, where yesterday he refused to rule out sending U.S. troops to Iran if necessary, saying, quote, I don't have the yips with respective boots on the ground, like every president says.

There will be no boots. I don't say it. Trump said after launching strike Saturday to decapitate Iran's military and political leadership, I say probably don't need them or if they were necessary. So that is the situation as we currently have it. And, Crystal, you know, that civil war point that we made earlier at every time that we have to try and launch some insurgency to overthrow or destabilize a government, there are U.S. special forces that accompany them on the ground. And look, no hate to the Kurds. You know, they've been screwed around by the United States now for probably decades.

But we did a lot of work together in the counter ISIS campaign. So these forces know exactly how to work together. There's a base in Airbill, right, you know, where they are. And look, it's all ready to go. The weapons are there. There'll be the most well-armed insurgents in history. That's all they need. A little bit of forward deployment from a couple special advisors.

It's going to look like the special operations that went in in October 2001 to defeat the Taliban. That's the theory, at least. But that is the recipe for Quagmire, for disaster, for civil war, for collapse. And that is, look, if we are to acknowledge this is Israel's war, it is almost irrelevant. to what Donald Trump wants. Only he can pull the plug. At least he did in the 12-day war. But of course, that was just a lead-up to this entire thing.

It was a pause. Then we tried all of the internal, you know, let's collapse the currency, let's stoke the protest, you know, let's see if that'll work. And then when that failed, then we're back to a war. And yeah, I mean, you, and with all of them, obviously they all lie, you know, if they're breathing, they're lying. But you can look at what they're doing. And to your point, we see these reporting about, oh, let's talk to the curfew.

Let's kill the border guards and, you know, open up that border so people can flood in. And then you also see in the targeting, they targeted Ahmadinejad, you know, previous president of Iran. They targeted a jailed opposition leader who was under house arrest. So they wanted to make sure that this actually wasn't a regime change. There was no other person who had any sort of legitimate base of support who could come in and take the reins. Because Israel's goal is regime collapsed. They don't want a strong Iran. They want, they don't, I apparently don't believe they can really successfully install a puppet.

So they just want it to be chaos, death, insanity, civil war, et cetera, so that they can, you know, extend their regional hegemony. With that being said, we've got a lot more to get to and we've got Dr. Trita Parsi standing by. So let's go ahead and bring him in. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart And I'm Catherine Clark

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All right, everyone, we are fortunate to be joined by a friend of the show, Dr. Treata Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Great to see you, sir. Good to see you, sir. Good to be with you guys. So we just played for the audience, Marco Rubio and Mike Johnson, both saying, no, the imminent threat came from the fact that we knew Israel was going to attack Iran, regardless of whether we involved ourselves. We knew that would put our U.S. service members at risk. Therefore, we felt compelled to strike Iran first. Your reaction to those extraordinary revelations. I'm delighted that he has spelled it out that this is the reason that at the end of the day, the Israelis have been driving the boat on this one. and that the United States has followed their lead and let them decide when the U.S. goes to war and when it doesn't. This is, at the end of the day, a decision they made. They made a decision to let the Israelis decide, and now they're trying to hide behind that as if that is some sort of a self-defense.

At this point, there's no speculation valid any longer as to whether Israel is the driving force behind us or not. It is coming out of the mouth of Rubio, and it's coming out of the mouth of the Speaker of the House as well. It is now clear. This is what they decided. this is not by any definition, America first. This is Israel first. This is probably the most consequential Kinsley Gaff in American history, where they accidentally, you know, tell the truth. And this is one where I really don't even know where to go from here. I do think it is worth noting that the administration has laid out the most maximalist goals and is now making a mockery of America first. Let's say,

put A6, let's say, up there on the screen. I really loved this exchange. So, Matt, Walsh over at the Daily Wire, he put out a tweet. He's like, I've got some questions about this whole operation. And press secretary Caroline Levitt released a statement and said, let me reiterate all of the objectives. We're going to destroy the regime's missile, raise our missile industry to the ground. We're going to annihilate the Navy. We're going to ensure the regime's terrorist proxies can no longer operate. We will stop them from making and using IEDs. And by the way, IED literally means improvised. So, okay. Guarantee that Iran can never obtain a nuclear weapon. Preventing preventing the regime from threatening America. Killing terrorists is good. And there's a long

continued diatribe. I was like, you know, whenever she was meant to address concerns about regime change, this is a regime change manifesto. I don't see any way that there could be a realistic off-ramp without effective surrender from the Trump administration. Curious for your review. So here's what I think has happened. I think, first of all, you're right. But here's, I think, how we got here. The administration was led by the Israelis to believe that this is going to be a very simple operation. They thought that by Sunday evening, this would have been wrapped up, that the regime would have imploded as a result of the assassination of the Supreme Leader. That obviously did not work twice, reportedly perhaps even three times. Trump reached out and tried to see if he could get a

ceasefire from the Iranians. The Iranians rejected it. And I can go into as to why the Iranians rejected it. So now they're stuck in a situation in which they understand that the Iranian game plan is to prolong this and expand this war and play to what their relative strength, which is they can withstand this, whereas Trump probably cannot, not militarily, but politically, he cannot withstand this for a couple of weeks. So now the Trump administration is trying to essentially convince the Iranians that, no, no, no, the United States is more than ready to withstand this for a long time. He suddenly said four weeks.

And that now, as a result of the Iranians refusing a ceasefire, he is going even more maximalist. So he is throwing good money after bad money after his first. completely unrealistic expectation was not met. And this is the very definition of losing control. We're not even two or three days into the war, and it's already clear they have lost control. Look at how they are grasping for straws, not just to find what objectives they should have,

but also how to justify them. And in that effort, they have gone as far as to say that Iran is at war with civilization to actually admitting that all of this was done because Israel decided it was time to go. So I want to go back to why Trump let himself be let around by the nose by Israel, because clearly there was some reluctance from the administration. You know, they were concerned.

You had the top military brass here leaking to basically every newspaper they could get a hold of to say, this is a real problem. We are not ready. There's an interceptor issue. This is not going to go well. There's tremendous risks here. And yet in spite of all of that, and in spite of all of the very clear, campaign promises that, you know, we're going to play them later. He made, J.D. Vance made,

Tulsi Gabbard made, RFK Jr. made. Stephen Miller made. Like, every top person in this administration said, oh, of course, we're not going to go to war with Iran. In spite of all of that, he still ends up making the decision to do Israel's bidding. Like, what can explain that? Is it just the power of the Israel? Is it Miriam Adelson money? Like, how does this calculation get made when you have so many people from the political people to the military people warning that this is going to be a disaster? It's really difficult to explain it. I absolutely cannot claim to have an answer. I think a part of the answer, though, is he has been lulled into this belief that everything he has done has been an absolutely amazing success and everything he would

did was in contradiction to the conventional wisdom and their advice. They told him that he can't move the embassy, he did, nothing happened. They told him that he couldn't recognize the Golan Heights. He did, nothing happened. They told him, you can't kill Soleimani. He did, in his view, nothing happened. They told him that he can't take out fordo. He did, in his view, nothing happened. And then, of course, he did Venezuela. He's on this massive sugar high, the mother of all sugar highs. And it made it easier for the Israelis under those circumstances to tell him, look, the Iranians are just so weak. All you need to do is push a little bit. You're going to be the hero.

You're going to be the president that finally puts an end to this regime. Everyone said that you can't do it. That's precisely why you should do it because only you can prove them wrong. So what you mentioned. Maybe they mocked up a newspaper cover like a Zoran did. I mean, they played to his psychology. The Iranians did not. Right.

Yeah, right. And we should say that. We should fall to their negotiating team as well. But now we are where we are. And so, you know, what do you see? You said that the Iranians have rejected to maybe three diplomatic overtures from the Trump administration. What is the internal logic inside of the regime right now? It seems pretty clear that they expected to take mass casualties

at the top. They have decentralized military command. What is their internal assessment right now from far as you can tell, from how they're doing and for what they're planning? The first thing we have to say to truly understand how they're thinking is that they truly, Unlike the Israelis who oftentimes throughout and say, oh, this is existential for them, this truly is existential. And this is why they're making the decision of the way they're making it. They believe that a premature ceasefire, one in which after the U.S. has scored a major victory, if they were to accept it, all it would do, it would allow the U.S. and Israel to regroup, remobilize, and then six months later, relaunch a war. If there's to be a ceasefire, it has to be a prolonged and durable one. The only way the ceasefire could be durable, they believe, is if this war ends up being

tremendously costly to all sides. So that all sides believe it was a mistake to start it, and as a result, believe it would be a mistake to restart it. If they agreed to a ceasefire too quickly, without that cost actually being felt, they believe that it will only give the other side, the U.S. and Israel, time to be able to regroup and then once again attack Iran. This is the conclusion they drew after agreeing to a ceasefire. in June. Many of them believed that it was premature. Many of them believed that the Israelis were in a

very, very bad situation because they had run out of interceptors and it was a mistake for the Iranians to agree to that ceasefire. And they're paying for that mistake now. I mean, that was another incredible moment from Rubio is he also talked about that interceptor, Matt. You admitted it. Yeah, he talked about, you know, they've got these drones and they're very inexpensive. And meanwhile, we're shooting all these interceptors. They can't, they can make the drones much more quickly than we can make the interceptors. It's like, okay, then why are we doing this? That's math that you're aware of. And once you're in this situation and you recognize that logic, which they should have recognized before, it actually pushes them to go all out as well.

And that is what I think we're going to see in the next couple of day. Trump is going to throw everything he has. Yeah, tell me more about what you mean by that. And just to, you know, as a little preamble here, we can put A-9 up on the screen. We now know at least six Americans have been killed in action. At least 18 have been seriously wounded. You have U.S. embassies that are being attacked in a number of countries, both by Iran and also by local people. We know now we have confirmation that U.S. Marines were shooting at civilian rioters at the U.S. embassy in Karachi in Pakistan.

We can put A-11 up on the screen. So already the Strait of Hormuz was sort of de facto closed because the insurers pulled the plug on shipping traffic and said, basically, we're not going to insure you or we're going to jack up the price extraordinarily. Now, Reuters is reporting Iran is notifying vessels. It is officially closing the Strait of Hormuz, if officially closed, 20 plus million barrels of oil per day will be impacted 20% of global supply. Qatar has cut off their LNG production. Gas prices in Europe have already skyrocketed some 50%. So when you say we're going to throw everything that we have at it and we're going to go big, you know, what does that actually in effect look like? Let me start off by just saying one other things that I think is important.

Just a couple of days, about three days before Trump decided to start this war. I was in a close meeting with a bunch of former officials, analysts, military people. And the general view in the room was the Iranians would never do this. They would never close the straits. They would never attack the GCC states. It would be too costly for them. And I think it reflected the fact that this had not really dawned upon people the manner in which Trump is doing this is making a clear signal to Devonians, this is an existential

fight. And in an existential fight, they're not going to think about tomorrow. They're not going to think about what GCC Iran relations are going to be a year from now. They're going to think about how they survive this war. And as a result, decisions that were perceived to be unthinkable, just empty threats from the Iranians, we are now seeing happening on a daily basis, as you pointed out the closing of the straits. And again, I think it shows the profound miscalculation, although, of course, those people in the room were not the decision makers. I think it reflects what also decision makers have been thinking about this.

I think what is happening now is that because of this essential, I wouldn't call it panic, but really scrambling to try to figure out a new plan, the emphasis is going to be to throw everything at the Iranians. I think we're going to see significant bombardment. We're going to see an effort to use the Kurds in order to launch attacks in the Kurdish areas in the absence of other ground troops, although I wouldn't be surprised if there may be some Israeli ground troops with the Kurds, although the Kurdish numbers are not very high. It's not so much that this actually would end up becoming like a real invasion, but something that would be further effort to try to cause Tehran to lose control of the larger situation.

If the Iranians are trying to expand the theater of war into areas that the U.S. wasn't ready for, the U.S. is responding in kind. But bottom line is we're seeing that the original plans didn't even survive the first five seconds of reality. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I mean, already, this is a full-blown regional conflict, which, as you said, and by the way, Trump admitted, you don't just have to listen to you, we were surprised that they attacked the Gulf countries. He has caused absolute chaos. The State Department saying this morning, all citizens in the Gulf should leave, all of them. By the way, good luck leaving. All of the airports are closed. The U.S. Ambassador, Mike Huckabee, is putting out guidance about how to get on a bus from Israel to the Sinai Peninsula and then hopefully be able to catch a flight from there to somewhere else before they can eventually get the hell out.

There's over a million Americans who live in the region. I used to be one of them. But sticking with that, sir, let's put A10 up here on the screen just so you can already see huge strikes in the middle of Tehran, in the middle of daylight. God only knows the number of people that have already been killed, but many of the reports coming out of Iran saying that they are, these Israeli strikes are specifically targeting these police stations. As you said, the internal logic right now for the Gulf and for the United States is that this is already intolerable from a munitions depletion standpoint for interceptors, which means that they have to go all out, bombard the country as much as humanly possible,

and try to basically erode their capacity to fight. this is the North Vietnam bombing strategic logic of many, many decades. Of course, it doesn't work if you have a population and a regime, which is hardened in its belief that it is completely existential. So let's say we do get this massive bombardment, an effective trying for to collapse the state. Let's say they do take out the missile launchers. What's next from that point? Because the regime itself will still be intact, and it's not like Trump and Israel can just declare victory. Again, I don't think there is much of a plan.

The hope was that now they're targeting a lot of police stations, IRGC headquarters, the siege headquarters, the hope is that this eventually will lead to a regime implosion because the repressive capabilities of the state will be eroded, and then magically people will rise up and take over. And, you know, there is some basis to believe that something like this could happen. To bet an entire war that it will happen is, a completely different story. I go back to what I said on this show several times.

I repeated as often as I could in every interview. Trump has been led to believe that Iran is much weaker than it is. And as a result, he's gone down this path. And now we're discovering that it is not that simple. As you mentioned, the problems for Americans to leave the GCC states, even leaving Israel at this point. I spoke to a friend who was traveling. He was in Dubai.

Can't get out. How to take a cab all the way to Oman. the border to Oman between the U.N. Oman was just completely overloaded with people trying to escape Dubai and try to find a flight out of the Arabian Peninsula. Clearly, no planning whatsoever from any side for this to be able to happen, yet the writing was on the wall. I mean, we've been listening to Professor Robert Pape, who's an expert on warfare and air power in particular in 100 years of trying this. There has never been a successful regime change just using. air power. We also have the recent example of Gaza, which obviously is much smaller, and where the Israelis, with our assistance, bombed the hell of it, out of it, reduced it all to rubble

effectively, and had a ground invasion, and still were not able to dislodge Hamas from power. So the arrogance, the delusion here is just extraordinary to me as someone who was not expert on these things whatsoever. Last question I had for you is, you know, I was watching that bombardment of Tehran looking at the fact that they've already targeted some nine hospitals. Obviously, little girls massacred over 160 of them at a school. Another school, I think a girls volleyball team, was killed. Are they, since the initial, let's try to collapse the regime didn't work out, are they now going to pursue effectively the same strategy they pursued in Gaza?

It appears that at least on a couple of occasions that has happened. We've seen evidence of double-tap attack. There's a video of an Iranian woman who actually doesn't live in Iran. I don't know if she's Iranian American who is crying and said that they struck this hotel. When people rushed in to try to help it, they struck again. So evidence of these double taps are now emerging. One thing I have to say, though, I'm sorry to raise this, but I was on BBC last night, and they aired tapes or reconstruction of tapes of three voices from Iran that they claim to have spoken to,

who all were praising these bombings. I mean, one of them were saying that, you know, we're applauding every time we hear a bomb. Without a doubt, I do believe that there is some level of support inside of Iran for this campaign. Certainly there's a degree of support, although I think it's exaggerated in the diaspora. But BBC aired three voices who all said the same thing, given the viewers the impression that this is a liberation war, that the people inside of Iran are just yearning to be bombed. And I had to call them out on us. this is worse than the Iraq war propaganda that I've seen because you know very well that there's a

diversity of views inside the country, yet you only aired one type of a voice and give people the impression that everyone is welcoming this war, which is absolutely not the case. Yeah, that's outrageous. And we've been watching this happen in our own. There are 92 million people in Iran. 92 million. Did three maybe, maybe. Maybe. What about the rest? How do we have any idea and how have we not seen this story? I've seen plenty of videos. Yeah, I've seen plenty of videos, I'm sure you have too, of like secular-looking people who are like, we will stand and fight to the death against the United States and against Israel in the streets of Tehran. Could be selective regime propaganda.

I'm not going to take that fully as the only voice. But of course, that voice exists too. It's completely irresponsible to say that it doesn't. And at this point, I mean, the history of nationalism, even in countries which are being externally bombed with, you know, external pressure to be applied, many are not willing to just play ball with the imperial aggressor, even if they do disagree with the internal politics, which is quite literally the story of Iraq. I mean, I guess the final thing that we wanted to, I guess wanted to talk to you a little bit about here is with this logic along the escalation ladder, the consuming of the Gulf states, every story top Wall Street

Journal, Bloomberg, is interceptors are running out in the Gulf. By the way, even these Gulf, I mean, I'm reading stories. They're shooting Patriot $4 million missiles at Shahhead drones, which cost $20,000. They're going to be out within a week, maybe a month. We don't exactly know the number. If that happens, and we see a conflagration, already Saudi Aramco is under threat, they're saying that they're going to avoid the Straits of Hormuz, move oil through the Red Sea via a pipeline. Qatar, LNG has already shut down. Iran saying this morning they may even attack Europe, When we see a depletion of that and we see this actually globalized into a major war, what does that look like from a global perspective and not only impact on the United States,

but broadly for a regional and global picture for our geopolitics? We don't know because the planners didn't think this through. I mean, this is truly unprecedented. The Iranians have struck or tried to strike Cyprus, where the Brits have been using a base that was extremely active in the genocide, against Gaza. But apparently also played a role in some of the attacks on Iran. It may also be a retaliation for the Brits allowing Garcia to be used by the United States

after first having resisted. The Iranians cannot reach that, so perhaps they struck the Cyprus base short of that. But we also see what's now happening between Europe and Russia. Europe is now putting pressure on the Ukrainians to allow Russian gas and oil to come into Europe, because now they're suffering from an astute fuel shortage that has been made much much worse because of this war. I mean, life as a vassal is clearly not particularly easy, since you have put your own destiny in the hands of someone else, but the Europeans chose to become vassals of the United States in this matter and not paying the price for it.

Now, will this then eventually lead to a scenario in which the Russians and the Chinese one way or another are also dragged into it? The conventional wisdom has always been that the Russians, at least the Chinese will do everything they can to stay out of this. The Russians are not going to jeopardize their prospects for a deal to end the Ukraine war in order to help the Iranians. But if this expands in an uncontrollable way, then we cannot say exactly what the response of some of these other countries will be. We're also seeing right now other things.

We're seeing that in Bahrain, there are riots taking place. There's some reports that the Saudis have stepped in into Bahrain again to clamp down on those protesters as they did in 2011. Bahrain, of course, used to be Iranian territory. it's majority Shia. So we're already seeing the kind of repercussions that most people thought would only happen in the worst case scenario. We're three days into it. We're already in the worst case scenario in that sense. Unbelievable. Just absolutely unbelievable. Dr. Parsi, thank you as always. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much for having me. Canadian women are looking for more.

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and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to the Gulf situation, which we just talked about, with Dr. Tretta Parsi, the entire region in flame and also deeply afraid of what it means

if they run out of interceptors. We did want to start, though, with this extraordinary accusation by Tucker Carlson, reporting that there were Mossad plots and agents arrested by two different Gulf countries trying to foment terror and chaos in these countries. Let's take a listen. It really, really hurts these countries. And Israel wanted to hurt these countries. Wanted to hurt these countries.

Wanted to sow chaos and disorder because they are rivals of Israel. So it's probably not, hasn't been reported, but it's a fact that last night in Qatar and Arabia authorities arrested Mossad agents planning on committing bombings in those countries. Now, that's weird. That doesn't make any sense. Why would the Israelis be committing bombings in two Gulf countries, which are also being attacked by Iran? Aren't they on the same side? No, no. Israel wants to hurt Iran and Qatar and UAE and Saudi and Bahrain and Oman and. and Kuwait. Extraordinary claim there by Tucker Carlson and obviously highlighting the bigger strategic picture

that we picked off our entire show is this is Israel's war. There's really not a whole lot in here for the United States. We've depleted our interceptor stockpile. We've now made a mockery of all of these Gulf countries. Do you know how many billions of dollars these Gulf countries have spent on U.S. I mean, it's probably hundreds of billions, if you total all of it together, where they're like, look, we buy all your weapons. You get to keep your bases here to support the war in Iraq.

We get to have a literal monarchy, and it's all cool, and we have a ton of oil and you buy it. That's it's security in exchange for monarchy. Everybody's kind of done a handshake deal around that. That's all being blown up, their entire vision before the world. Let's go ahead and put some of this VO that we have up here on the screen. In each of these cases, we're showing you the region is literally in flames. So you've got Tel Aviv in the middle of last night. This is all just from last night.

You've got missiles that are flying around the screen. You can see some of the interceptors that come, but multiple interceptors that they're having to fire. This one was in Doha, Qatar. I mean, this is genuinely shocking. Like, it's crazy. Look at the amount of interceptors and all that that are being fired up into this guy to intercept either drones or missiles that are coming in towards them. These people have never seen anything like this. This was video, which was actually on the border of Saudi Arabia and of Bahrain, where as riots continue to break out in Bahrain, which has a large

Shia population, which you can see in front of you, Saudi Arabia is having to dispatch some security forces, potentially to try and crush those riots just like they did in the middle of the Arab Spring. So your foundation of their society is now in question from Bahrain, which is the home of the Fifth Fleet, tens of thousands of Americans, Kuwait, of course, their long security relationship with the U.S. Iraq this morning, which somewhat allegedly was our protectorate, or kind of was whenever we invaded and occupied it for, I don't know, like 20 years, just had to shut down their largest oil field. Saudi Arabia this morning, the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia,

issuing an explicit notice that they have incoming missile and UAV attacks on Dharan. If you don't know what Dharan is the home of the Saudi Aramco compound and of the largest oil facility in the world. In addition, we had the Saudi embassy, or the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, was hit by a, a drone yesterday, and apparently the roof was caved in. Three different drone attacks that hit the U.S. I mean, do you know how insane a single attack on a U.S. Embassy is an international story. The U.S. Embassy in Riyahat has now been hit. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was basically under siege for two days straight. You've got now confirmed reports. We were careful when we talked about this

yesterday. The United States military is now confirming by Reuters that Marines fired on people in Pakistan. I'm sure that's going to go over well. That's going to go over real well in Pakistan. isn't it? Pakistani protesters killed by American Marines in the middle of a consulate, in a massive protest where people are shooting at each other. This is full-blown chaos all over the entire world. And then bigger, what really belies all of this is this story. Let's put B3 up here on the screen. The UAE and Qatar are urging allies to help, or urge allies to help Trump find an off-ramp, and largely interceptor stocks. Front page of the Wall Street Journal, literally this morning, is about the number of interceptors that these consequences.

countries are firing. They're four, I mean, just think about the math here. Four million dollar Patriot against a $20,000 drone. They say that they might be done in a matter of a week, perhaps days. And then what the hell is going to happen to the Burj Khalifa or the Queen Elizabeth Hotel or in Doha? I mean, the Ritzcar, all of these famous hotels. What did Professor Zhang say yesterday? Water desalination plants. The dams, which are all over the country, for water supply? What about Qatar LNG is already done? Qatar LNG announced this morning they're shutting down all downstream production, not just LNG production of everything is happening. The Iraq oil field is down. The Saudi Aramco is basically notifying its suppliers that they're going to have to pick up from

somewhere else to avoid the straits of order. The disruption across the Gulf, it will take them years to recover from this, you know, structurally militarily. What are they going to do? And then brand-wise, Oh my God, you've got probably a million plus, maybe two million Americans who are now stranded all across the entire Gulf. I mean, these are like very rich people, like oil. I used to live there. I'm telling you. Like, when I went to the American School of Doha, every other kid is like, oh, my dad works at Exxon or whatever. Imagine you've been living there for a decade.

You're drinking margaritas at the intercontinental hotel. And the next day, you are literally trying to get the hell out of the country. But you can't. You literally can't. All the people who go and vacation. You know, again, very high-end luxury. Like, do you think that they're going to be rushing back for their Dubai vacation after seeing luxury hotels going up in flame?

And this is what their whole economy and image is built around. So that's why it's so long-term devastating to them. To your point saga about that Wall Street Journal front page article on the Interceptors Math, which again, Marco Rubio himself came out and was talking about quite openly yesterday. Now, Donald Trump put on a truth social post saying that we could do war forever and it wouldn't be a problem. I'll ask you to, you know, which version you'd believe. But in any case, they quote this expert who says, the intensity of interceptor usage that we have seen over the last couple of days cannot be maintained for more than another week, a week, probably a couple of days at most,

and then they will feel the pain of interceptor shortage. That is from Fabian Hoffman, a missile expert at the University of Oslo. So that's where we're at. And the Iranians, number one, they have an asymmetric interest in this fight. So of course they're outmatched by the amount of firepower that we have and Israel and all of our allies, all the weapons we've sold them over the years, blah, blah, blah. But they have one thing going for them, which is that it's truly an existential struggle. This means so much more to that. I mean, how much do you care about this? You just probably want us to end this war, right? They know that this is truly, truly existential for them. You know, we couldn't defeat the freaking hoofies.

armed with much cruder arms and much lower level of supply, because ultimately at the end of the day, we didn't care enough to be able to, you know, when they saw the fight as more important. We spent 20 years in Afghanistan with all of our weaponry and the ground invasion. And at the end of those 20 years, when we left, guess who came back into power? The Taliban. Why? Because they cared much more than we did. I mean, that's what really has screwed us.

That is the lesson that should have been learned over all these many years. When you are attacking people's lives, when you're attacking a government, when you're threatening its existence, they will fight to the death. And the American people are not bought in for this at all. They are not willing to accept any of this pain. Like the six service members who have already been killed in action is six too many. No one, virtually no one outside of this small area and some, you know, people in the Iranian diaspora here are really excited and enthused and motivated to.

suffer in any sort of way for this. And yet we can already see, I mean, Dr. Parti said it, it is already spiraled out of control. And to go back to Israel's motivation here with allegedly sending Mossad agents in to, you know, commit terror attacks, which, you know, it's not confirmed, but I certainly don't put it past them. The logic of that is that not only do they have an interest in just sewing chaos everywhere. We're going to talk to Scott Horton about how they're now openly advertising like, yeah, Turkey's next. You know, after Iran, next threat is Turkey. But also they want to create these false flag attacks so that the Gulf states are fully bought into the war too, that they also want to fully engage. So that's what Israel is constantly pushing for us and for all of the GCC to be fully in to this war.

That is what serves their interest. And so that is what they're trying to foment. Right. Put C4 up there on the screen just to highlight again the problem and why this is really diminished to the United States. This is from the Middle East eye. U.S. is stonewalling request by Gulf states to replenish interceptors. One Gulf states sought reassurances on U.S. commitment to air defense when discussing access to its bases. Again, by the way, Qatar and the UAE highly dispute that original Bloomberg report. They're like,

we're fine. We have plenty of interceptors. Apparently, that's the new line. Donald Trump actually put out a truth social in the middle of the night. Let me read it to you because this is actually one of the most unhinged, dangerous things that he has said. Maybe we'll add this in post. The United States munition stockpiles have at the medium and upper grade never been higher or better. Not true. As we stated to me today, we have virtually unlimited supply of these weapons. Not true. Wars can be fought forever very successfully. Yes, but not with interceptors. Maybe with dummy bombs, J-dams, and some bullets. But in that scenario, you're going to be taken a shitpot of casualties. Wars can be fought forever using just these supplies. At the highest end, we have good supply. But we are not where we want to be. Much additional high-grade weapons.

is stored for us in outlined countries. That's the most dangerous part. Why? Because it means we have to go all in. We don't have that many of these interceptors. If we want to go all in, say goodbye to Taiwan. Say goodbye to Ukraine, if you care about those places. Say goodbye to any place in the world, which may matter more than this tiny little country the size of New Jersey, which literally produces nothing called Israel. And we are done. That's it. It's over in terms of U.S. geopolitical projection. Aren't they already talking about pulling a sad battery from? Yeah, from South Korea. South Korean state media right now. Yeah. Anyone want to tell me what trading partner South Korea is compared to Israel in terms of its rank? South Korea is one of the most developed

economies in the entire world. One of the most important trading partners ever heard of this little brand called Samsung or any of these other places or, you know, oh my God, I mean, I could go on forever of its importance. Not that anybody in the U.S. apparently even gives a shit. But yeah, fad battery out of that. Against, let's compare threats. One state has one of the world's largest standing armies, a literal nuclear-tipped ICBM capable of hitting the United States and frequently launches missiles against South Korea and Japan, two top trading partners, which are vitally important to the security of the U.S. That's called North Korea. The other one is called Iran. It has short-range and medium-range ballistic missiles.

It doesn't have a nuclear weapons program, and it can't hit the United States. And if we'd done a deal with them, pretty much wouldn't have mattered. Which do you think is more important to defend against? And has never started a war, by the way. And it's never started a war, or at least directly, against the United States. So which do you think would you say is more important to defend? But we're going to strip it from there. That's just one example. It's over.

I mean, let me read you my interceptor math, because people really do not appreciate how dire all of this is. I have the direct numbers. These are from CSIS. In the 12-day war, the U.S. fired 150 bad interceptors to protect Israel. That was 25% of the whole U.S. stockpile. In the last 48 hours, we have fired, we don't really know. Probably, you know, several dozen at the very least. In 2025, how many new interceptors do you think that we got?

10. 12. 10 a month. The year before. So 10 to 12, in the last two years. So we fired more than what, triple or, sorry, quintipple in a single, in 12 days. And we acquired in a two-year period. It's over.

You can't manufacture these things. It costs millions of dollars. The defense supply chain is screwed. And for all the $2 trillion that we spend on this, you know, it's funny, I was listening to this CSIS expert. They go, the NPR person is like, but where does all the money go? And he's like, well, most of the money is on TRICARE, which is like welfare for all of these services and health care programs and subsidies. It doesn't actually go to a lot of the critical weapon systems, despite the fact that people have been warning about this for years. By Trump's own admission, the Patriot Missile Battery.

They say in there, the UAE and the Qatar, they were like, can we get more Patriot? are like, oh, we gave them all to Ukraine. Sorry, they're all gone. We literally gave them all away. The Europeans can't give you anything. They shipped it all already for the eastern Dunbos region. This is bad. They're messing us up with those drones, too.

I mean, that was one of the things Professor Zhang said yesterday is that our military really was built for the Cold War. It was built for flexing. It was built for performance of power. And it really has not been, you know, reimagined for modern warfare. And so, look, the Iranians learn from the 12-day war. So, okay, we're going to shoot off our, you know, lower-tech missiles and use these drones that can, you know, evade. Some of them will evade your interceptors.

And we're going to, we're going to bet that we can outlast you. Now, let me tell you the other side of the other side of that is that the U.S., look, they're bombing the hell out of Tehran right now. Their goal is to destroy all of the missiles, destroy all of the missile launchers so that Iran can never make it to that point. Iran is not capable of outlasting because their capabilities have been so severely degraded and destroyed. And that is certainly a possibility. That is the bet that they're making. But look, already, already what Iran has been able to do by saying, basically, fuck it.

We're throwing everything against the wall. We are putting all our chips on the tape. We are all in the economic damage, the brand damage in the Gulf, the chaos, the attacks on the US, the humiliation, really, truly, of. The U.S. Our fighter jets are flying or dropping out of the sky, which, by the way, there should still be a lot of questions about what the hell exactly happened there and whether that was truly friendly fire or not because if it was, I mean, the whole, it's insane anyway. But the level of humiliation the U.S. has already suffered here is truly incalculable.

And, you know, and the Iranians are like, no, we're not going to negotiate with you. We need to exact some pain because otherwise you will never leave us alone. So we are going to do everything we can to make you suffer. and there is zero appetite for suffering on the U.S. Also, new update just while we were filming Donald Trump. Their Air Defense, Air Force, Navy, and leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said too late.

Great. Oh, yeah. I'm sure we take his word for it. But no, I'm just like, he's such a liar. Regardless of what is being, maybe they probably said, no, we don't want to talk at all. But him saying, nope, we're not going to talk at all. We're going to go full on. So this is it.

I mean, when we say. He's lying. They, I mean, based on other reporting, they rejected it. And so he's trying, oh, you didn't fire me. I quit. You know, that's what he's doing here. Yeah, but regardless, the situation is the same. Yeah.

There's only one logic from here. If you know you're going to run out of interceptors, then you've got to bomb the shit out of the country and to try and flatten and destroy it, collapse it into civil war. Well, okay, well, what comes next? What's going to happen after that? Massive refugee crisis, huge civil war. It could bleed all into the rest of the Gulf. These drones aren't going anywhere. You've got hundreds of thousands of people with a bunch of guns and military.

and we don't have a ground force there to do anything about it. So what do you think they're going to do? You think you're just going to take it, sit and line down? By the way, they just attacked the Iraqi Kurds this morning in turn to try and preempt some sort of attack by them. So we're already going cross-border. Well, and here's the other thing, you know, a bigger picture in terms of the... So we know public sentiment in the U.S. is against this war. Overwhelming. Look, the Republican base is going along with it by and large, but the rest of the population is like what the hell is going on here, right? And you even hear Democrats, the Democratic rhetoric has already shifted from being so... extremely lame at the, you know, especially at the top levels. To now after those Rubio comments,

I'm hearing Democrats like Mark Warner saying some things about Israel, I never thought I would hear in my entire life. So that they are already reading the political writing on the wall here. But you also have to think about the populations in the region where, you know, to Saugher's point, these are these are monarchies. Like these are not representative democracies. And they've made some noise about, oh, the Palestinians, yes, we support a two state. But there are populations who, many of whom truly do support the Palestinian cause. and truly are disgusted with the genocide in Palestine and the annexation of the West Bank and all of that,

they do not agree. They see the factlessness. They see the game that their leaders are playing. So you also start this war at a moment of a low point in regional public opinion, both about the US and about Israel, which is why you see multiple of our embassies being attacked. And in Pakistan, the fact that US Marines were shooting civilians, attacking the U.S. embassy in Karachi, I mean, this in and of itself is just that one thing

is an absolutely insane event. And then you've got, you know, mobs at the Baghdad embassy as well. I mean, this is a moment when most of the population in the region, look, they're, you know, typically not too crazy about us. They hate our freaking guts and they hate the Israelis. And that's the moment when you're going to ask to, you know, them to bear the pain. of their country is getting attacked. They're, you know, the luxury hotels next to them getting blown up and their governments are on board with all of it. You're going to have some, you know, you're going to have some local.

And we're already seeing that in Bahrain, which is why the riots are very significant development. That's going to be the first one to fall because they have the Shia population. But the rest of them, I mean, look, there's a serious social contract, right? You have no rights literally whatsoever, but you're going to be rich. But those riches come from oil, natural gas, being. this global playground, right? All of these Indian laborers. I mean, how many of them are going to stick around? Like, money is worth it up to a point before you think you're going to die. And then if you have enough money, do they have enough money to continue paying them?

I think I mentioned earlier, the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh is issuing this imminent threat of a missile attack over Dharan, which is the seat of Saudi Aramco. This is the lifeblood of these places. The money is the only thing that flattens out all of the tensions in these people societies. If it dries up, if it dries up by even 30 percent, it's catastrophe for these economies. Iraq has shut down oil production at the world's second largest oil field, which produces 1.5 million barrels of oil per day amid escalating military activity. Yes. And the American government is telling Americans in the region, you should get out, but we're not going to help you. You're on your own. Good luck. Can you imagine being stuck in Israel? And you're like, hey, how do I get out of here?

And you have to go to the U.S. ambassador's Twitter feed where he's giving you these minute instructions about how to catch a bus to the Sinai. And then when you get to the Sinai, use this link, which you have to pay to cross the border. And then when you cross the border, let's hope that you can, I mean, look, I've only been once,

but I'm pretty sure that it's not a very big airport in the middle of the Sinai Peninsula. Are they going to be, you know, there's 700,000 Americans who live in, or at least 700,000 American citizens who live in Israel. Are they all going to be able to get out? And now imagine Dubai, Doha,

what Treata Parsy said there. Do we have that story about Dubai? Yeah, let's put that one up there, C5 up there on the screen. Half of Dubai is booking. Ex-bats are driving to Oman and Saudi Arabia to trying to find flights. I said yesterday, the going rate for a PJ out of Saudi Arabia right now is $350,000 for a single flight to be able to get out of the country. Trump's podcast advisor, Alex Brousowitz, from the campaign, he got to be able to get out of the country. from the campaign, he got stuck in the Gulf, and he apparently had to talk with a bunch of friends,

including like TikTok influencers or whatever, to charter a PJ, to Greece to be able to get. That's the only way out, is you have to be able to get a private jet. That's it. And I bet you the premium is unbelievable. So unless you don't have that kind of money, you're stuck. You're stuck for a long time down there. And they're basically even the ambassador is saying openly, he goes, flights, even when they do reopen, will be extremely limited, and they will be disrupted for a significant period of time. It could be months that these people are completely stuck with missiles flying all over their head. Let's just put C7 up on the screen. This was some important reporting from DropSight. We've got, you know, we saw Iranian drones, I think, mostly, that attacked

various hotels throughout the Gulf. And according to, you know, sources that Drops are in touch with, they say some of the buildings and hotels that were hit were specifically housing Israeli or U.S. personnel or intelligence operations, and that Iran pinpointed the locations has really caught the Americans and Israelis off guard, according to an Iranian official. So, you know, this, that level of intelligence penetration, too, was apparently shocking to the Americans and to the Israelis. And let me say something. Like, you know, the Iranians are obviously attacking civilian infrastructure. You know, they're attacking hotels.

They're attacking two data centers now have been taken out. They're, you know, and they're attacking some of the oil infrastructure. You know, they're claiming some of that is incidental or they didn't mean to or whatever. But there is no doubt they're attacking civilian infrastructure. Like, we have zero ground. I don't even hear anyone complaining about it because we have zero ground to stand on. Zero. And that's the other thing.

Like, you know, when you talk about the Pandora's box that was opened by Gaza and what is now on the table, right? is not just confined to us. We're not the only ones who are going to take advantage of this new law of the jungle, where schools and mosques and hospitals and water zalotization plants and wastewater treatment plants where that is all on the table.

Our adversaries are going to take advantage of that as well. And that has already, already, right now in this moment, that has put Americans at risk and that's part of why they are being urged to flee the region immediately. But being given no, Help, no help in order to do that. And those six Americans, you know, I think Hegg Seth, it's, oh, they were in a fortified facility.

No, they weren't. Bullshit. They were in a triple wide trailer. Yeah. That's what they were in. They were in a triple wide trailer with concrete walls that were put in front of them because in their mind, they're protecting against suicide car, like they call V-Bids, like vehicle-borne IED. It's not 2005 anymore.

The, you know, the IED, it comes from the air with a $20,000 drone, which crashed directly into it's called a Tactual Operations Center, also known as a talk, and they all got blown up. Imagine that. Temporary trailer, totally unfortified. There's now an investigation as to why there weren't proper troops or there weren't proper air defenses or any of that put around them. Sitting down. It's, I mean, it's beyond comprehension. These are six guys, their family. I mean, what are you going to tell their families? Who did they die for? What did they die? I hate to talk to that way. I really do. But I do think, you know, we have to say it, this. in the middle of a conflict, otherwise we're going to get caught up in this Iraq war. Freedom

isn't free level bullshit. And no, we're not doing that this time around. We're not going to let them do that to us because that's how we lost thousands, tens of thousands who were maimed as well. It really is just absolutely sickening. Okay, we've got Scott Horton standing by. Let's get to it. Hey, I'm Jay Chetty, host of the on-purpose podcast. I'm joined by Luke Combs, award-winning country music artist and one of the most authentic voices in music today. The guy that says he's always going to be there and that will do anything to be there is the only guy that's not there. No matter what, I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children.

I dread the conversation with my son. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2020. But what if we didn't get the whole story? Evidence has been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe?

Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's ministry. of state security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its fault of secrets. Listen to the Sixth Bureau on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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