School of War - Ted Cruz’s Plan to Bring Down Iran’s Regime—and Tucker Carlson

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

As the American right and left are increasingly pulled toward their ideological extremes, many politicians have chosen to appease the loudest voices in their coalitions even when those voices flirt with or openly embrace antisemitism. Senator Ted Cruz says he’s done playing nice. “If we do not defeat this poison,” he warns, “I believe it will consume the Republican Party just like it has consumed the Democratic Party.” Today, Cruz joins School of War to discuss his strategy for bringing down Iran’s regime, what Tucker Carlson’s splinter from the mainstream right means for conservative politics, and the battle he believes will define the future of the Republican Party.  02:08 - The State of Iran After the War 02:46 - Why Trump Struck Iran 04:13 - Why the MOU Was a Disaster 05:39 - The Post That Triggered an Iranian Bot Campaign 07:24 - Why Cruz Opposed the Iran Deal 08:57 - America’s Next Move in Iran 09:29 - Why the Goal Should Be Regime Collapse 12:01 - Cruz’s Strategy to Bring Down the Regime 13:08 - Why He Wants to Arm Iranian Protesters 15:22 - The Future of America’s Foreign Policy 16:27 - Is the Democratic Party Being Taken Over? 21:32 - The Rise of Antisemitism on the Right 22:50 - Why Tucker Carlson Is “Dangerous” 24:06 - “We Have to Defeat This Poison” 26:34 - Could Tucker Carlson Run for President? This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, the builder platform for the American warfighter, fielded across the force and live on the frontline today. Learn more at palantir.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, the builder platform for the American warfighter, fielded across the force and live on the front line today. Maven Smart System isn't just software you use. It's the platform you build on. Every day, thousands of uniformed service members use AI coding agents to build their own agentic applications across all warfighting functions on top of the DOW's integrated ontology. What once took a contract in a year, now takes a warfighter and an afternoon. Administered by OSWCDAO, powered by the Palantir platform. One platform deployed everywhere at all classifications. Build at the speed of war.

Today here on School of War, we check in with Senator Ted Cruz. He joined us for a few minutes in between engagements on Capitol Hill, a lifelong critic of the Islamic Republic. We obviously start with the war in Iran, but zoom out from there and talk about the foreign policy debates on both the left and the right in America and the strange role that anti-Semitism

seems to keep playing in both. Let's get into it. It is for a war this Iraqi invasion of late. December 7, 1941, a date which will live for the experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the great situation in the ground.

On the landing ground, and the fight in the fields and in the streets, which will never have no rest. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted to welcome to the show today. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, he chairs the Commerce Committee,

he sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He's also the host of the podcast, The Verdict, which, as we all know, podcast hosting is the most important game in town. Senator, thank you so much for coming on the show. Well, back at you. Thanks for having me. I want to start in the obvious place, which is Iran. You have been, certainly for as long as I've been paying attention to your career, a critic of the Islamic Republic. You were supportive of Operation Epic Fury when it was launched back on February the 28th. I do think you expressed some, I'll just say, reservations back in June when the memorandum of understanding was the topic of the day. As you know, we are now in this moment where it's unclear what's coming next, a return to some sort of MOU-like structure is,

one possibility amongst many, but I want to get your assessment, Senator, of how we got here and what your prescription is for the road ahead. Well, Aaron, I think President Trump's decision to take out Iran's military capacity was the most consequential decision of his second term. I think it was the right decision. It was a decision I enthusiastically urged him to take. When the Ayatollah chanted death to America, I believed it. And I think the prospects of an Iranian nuclear weapon are utterly unacceptable, that if Iran had a nuclear weapon, I think the odds are unacceptably high, that they would use that weapon and that they would use it either in the skies of Tel Aviv or New York or Los Angeles. And there are very few risks

that are as acute as the risk of hundreds of thousands of Americans being murdered by an Iranian a nuclear weapon. And so I think President Trump, as commander-in-chief, acted decisively to prevent that from being a real and live possibility. Now, how did things proceed? The blockade was having a very real impact on Iran. Iran's military has been decimated. Most of their ballistic missiles have been eliminated. Most of their drones have been eliminated. Most of their navy has been sunk. It is at the bottom of the ocean. In terms of military objectives, we've accomplished virtually every one that the administration set out at the outset. If you look at what the blockade was doing, the blockade, Iran's energy storage was filling up.

And when the storage entirely filled up, they would have no choice but to shut in the wells. And if you shut in wells, it means if you try to open them up again, you end up losing typically half the production. So that would have been a permanent economic blow to Iran that would cripple its revenue in perpetuity. They were right at the edge of that. We know from satellite analysis that their oil production had dropped 19 percent, so they were reducing their production because they were running out of storage space. And they were right at the point of having to shut in wells and stop production altogether. That's when the MOU came out.

Now, the MOU was a disaster. It was a terrible deal. The MOU contemplated a number of things, including lifting sanctions immediately and allowing billions of dollars to flow into Iran, including giving Iran a permanent role with the Strait of Hormuz and the potential to have permanent revenue from charging fees or tolls for traveling the state straight of Hormuz. And critically on top of that, is... It also envisioned flowing $300 billion to the Ayatollah.

Now, when the terms of the deal first started the leak, it was May 23rd, I put out a detailed tweet that laid out all of the elements of the deal. And I said, I am hearing their voices in the administration that are urging the president to take this deal. I very much hope those reports are incorrect. and I hope the president does not take the deal. Now it's fascinating, Aaron, when I put that tweet out, and that was the first big public acknowledgement of what the different elements of the deal were,

lots of people came after me and attacked me, that's a lie, that's a lie, that's not what's in the deal. Turned out every single thing I said was exactly what was in the deal. But it's even more interesting. So we had a very sophisticated data analytics company look at the interactions on X with that post. And they concluded that that post I put out on May 23rd was subjected to a state-level and state-run disinformation campaign run by Iran.

And in particular, there were two different full-blown campaigns. There were four different narratives being run simultaneously. There were 4,441 fake accounts that were pushing this disinformation narrative. narrative, and 28.1% of all of the comments targeting my post were fake. That was a very deliberate response from the Iranians. It's something they engage in regularly, but they saw this as enormously problematic. Well, fast forward to when the details of the MOU are announced. And the actual MOU, if anything, is even worse than the first blush, what it appears,

to be. You'll recall, I was the very first Republican senators speak out publicly against it and unequivocally. I said the deal was a terrible deal, and the president should not be listening to the voices in the administration, pushing him to agree with this. And I just made a very simple observation, which is history shows giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to kill us, that does not work out well, that if we were to go through with it and give $300 billion or cause others to give $300 billion to Iran, they would use that money to murder Americans. They have not backed off of their desire to kill us. They publicly declared, in fact, they publicly declared right after Lindsey Graham died,

the IRGC publicly put out that they wanted to kill me and they wanted to kill your former boss, Tom Cotton. We were the two. They identified as wanting to murder. You know, forgive me if I'm not terribly eager to give them $300 billion to facilitate their carrying out their stated intent of murdering us. And by the way, the person they want to murder the most is Donald Trump. They also want to murder his family. They've threatened his children. And so giving them $300 billion is an exceptionally bad idea. It was a bad idea two months ago. It's a bad idea today. And it would be a bad idea two months from now, so I hope we don't go down that road. So if those are the bad ideas, and so we'll take the option of a new deal and set that aside, because my view, it sounds like your

view, Senator, is that a quote-unquote good deal by the standards that this administration is enunciated towards the start of this war is not on the table, that the Iranians are not ready to come to that kind of agreement. So that leaves you with what? Continued economic warfare, the dueling blockades. Another option would be substantial escalation. The president has threatened it. Numerous times, he's not followed through on any of those threats as yet. What's your prescription for the road ahead? So before you can lay out a prescription, you've got to assess what the objective is. And I believe the objective here should be regime collapse, removing this regime from power.

And look, the administration is reluctant to use those words. They're reluctant to use the words regime change because it carries bad connotations from the Iraq war. I understand that. I understand that reluctance. When it came to the Iraq war, and it's worth noting, you know, sometimes when people look at foreign policy, particularly Republican foreign policy, they treat it as there are only two polls, that you're either an interventionist like John McCain or you're an isolationist like Rand Paul, that you have to be one or the other. I have long considered myself a third point on the triangle. I disagree with both the interventionist and the isolationist. I think the interventionist are two. quick to send the Marines. That's their solution for everything. I'm not really interested in invading

a bunch of foreign countries. And I don't think it is our military's job to engage in nation building and try to turn foreign countries into democratic utopias. But I'm most definitely not an isolationist. It is a dangerous world, and it is our military's job, to prevent enemies of America from killing Americans. So with respect to Iran, I believe this administration, as long as it remains in power, it will carry out its stated objective of death to America. For 47 years, the Islamic Republic has been waging war with America. They have been the world's leading state funder of terrorism for those 47 years. They have killed nearly 1,000 Americans over the years. They twice hired hitmen to murder President Trump. As long as they are in power, they will keep trying to kill Americans

and they will keep trying to kill as many Americans as they can. So I think our objective should be regime collapse, collapsing this regime. Now, once this regime is out of power, I don't particularly care who comes next. I don't have a dog in that fight. I don't have a dog, whether it's the son of the Shah, whether it is the MECA, whether it is someone local. As long as, you know, they are not, an Islamist who hates America and is actively tried to kill Americans. That's my test. If you're an Islamist who hates American is trying to kill us, then I am not in support of you leading a nation state and having the resources to be able to murder Americans. That is where we should be focused. Now, how do we bring about regime collapse? Number one, the blockade was

tremendously successful. In fact, as I said, they were hemorrhaging cash every day. It was costing them $500 million a day. The economy was in free flow, freefall, and the oil storage was virtually full. Unfortunately, the MOU, when it went into effect, we briefly allowed them to sell their oil. And they sold 70 million barrels of oil and made $6 billion almost overnight. What did they do? They managed to sell down their oil storage so they now have 70 million barrels more capacity. What I think we should do is a series of things. Number one, impose the blockade again, keep it in place and continue ratcheting up the economic pressure. That combined with continue taking out their military assets, continue taking out their ability as they continue firing missiles at their neighbors, take out and degrade their military ability consistently. And then number three, arm the protesters. This is something I've been calling for from the very

beginning. Look, we're not going to send American boots on the ground. President Trump is not going to go down the road of the Iraq war and send hundreds of thousands of American soldiers into Iran. That's simply not going to happen. The obvious answer, Iran is a nation of 92 million people. Millions of the people of Iran do not want to live under these Islam. dictators who murder and torture and oppress them, we saw at the beginning of this conflict, heroic protesters stand up and the regime killed somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000 of them. It is not fair to expect an Iranian citizen to fight with rocks against soldiers with machine guns. That's not a fair fight.

What I believe we should do, what I've urged President Trump repeatedly, what I've urged Israel to do repeatedly, is arm the protesters, give them the guns to let them overthrow their own government so that it's not American boots on the ground, it's Iranians fighting for their own country. Now, that was discussed several months ago, in particular arming the Kurds. The Kurds have been loyal allies to us in military conflict after military conflict after military conflict. And what was reported was Erdogan and Turkey, who despises the Kurds, convinced the administration don't arm the Kurds. My view, Erdogan can think whatever he wants. The Ayatollah has declared his

intention to continue murdering Americans, and we have a national security imperative to protect Americans. And I think the best way to do it is massive economic pressure plus arming the protesters. This episode of School of War is brought to you by Maven Smart System, administered by OSWCDAO, powered by the Palantir platform. Maven isn't an It's a builder ecosystem. Right now across the joint force, thousands of uniform service members are pointing AI coding agents at their hardest problems and building the tools they need themselves, targeting workflows, intel products, battle management. No ticket, no vendor, no wait. The warfighter closest to the fight is now the one building for it. That's how you fight at the speed of war. So I want to step back for a couple minutes, Senator, and ask you about the few. of the foreign policy debate. Actually, on both the left and the right, you alluded to this debate that's been underway on the right, I mean, in many ways forever, but particularly acutely in recent years between call it interventionism and non-interventionism, and you place yourself somewhere

in the middle there. As you know, there's a similar, equally fearsome debate within the Democratic party. You have the older guard. I'll describe them as center left. You have the newer guard, energetic progressives who sound to me to be quite non-interventionist, the sort of left-wing variety of isolationism. So you have these twin debates playing out on left and right. I'm very curious your take. First for the Democrats and then for Republicans, where these debates are going to play out in coming years, what role of any Iran plays within those debates? Just how you see the future shaping up for the United States here. Yeah. Well, look, within the Democrat Party, we're witnessing what I believe, and this is not hyperbole, is a...

a communist takeover of the Democrat Party and simultaneously an Islamist takeover of the Democrat Party. We're seeing the green-red convergence, where the Marxists and the Islamists have come together, they've joined forces because they hate the same people. And spoiler alert, the people they hate is us. They hate America. They hate Israel. They hate capitalism. They hate Christians.

They hate Jews. they hate the Constitution. And you see this green-red alliance. You see it in New York with Comrade Mondami. You see it in Michigan just this week with Abdul al-Said, winning the Michigan Democrat primary. His father-in-law is on the board of several Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated organizations. The man is openly an Egyptian Islamist who hates America.

He's now the Democrat nominee. to be in the Senate from the state of Michigan. And the takeover we've seen, I believe Mondami is the most powerful person in the Democrat Party. We saw after Mandami won his election, he got behind three different candidates in New York, running.

All three were open communist, open Marxist, and they defeated longtime established Democrats, went three for three. We saw another open communist win and defeat an incumbent Democrat in Colorado. We are seeing in Wisconsin, the Democrat nominee for governor,

is another open communist. And when I use the word communist, a lot of people who don't follow this, that's jarring. I mean, they kind of pull back and say, surely you're exaggerating. They tell you what they believe, the DSA, their own documents,

their own leadership, they're advocating, number one, abolish the United States Senate. kind of odd that Al-Saiet is running for the Senate, given that he wants to abolish the institution he's running to be a member of. They want to make the president subservient to the House of Representatives. Basically, the House becomes the Politburo. They want to make the Supreme Court subservient to the House of Representatives.

Understand what that means. That means you no longer have any constitutional rights, your rights to free speech, religious liberty, the Second Amendment. All of those go away because their House of Representatives becomes, the Communist Party Politburo able to take anything they want from you, able to do anything they want to you. They are advocating for seizing the means of production and the government owning and controlling all of the major businesses in America. It is full-on communism. And that's not every Democrat, indeed most of the Democrats I serve with in the Senate. That does not describe their belief.

but every Democrat in the Senate is terrified of these guys. And the rest of the party is essentially hostage. And on foreign policy, there is a very real and cognizable pro-Hamas contingent in the Democrat party and the remainder of the Democrats are terrified of that pro-Hamas contingent. If you look at Al-Sahed, he campaigned around Michigan with Hassan Piker, this viciously left communist who hates America, who said, among other things, and this is a quote, America deserved 9-11. Al-Sahed proudly campaigns next to him, does not disassociate himself from any of Pikes extreme views. Yesterday, in the Senate Judiciary Committee, I chaired a hearing on the Muslim

Brotherhood, the Muslim Brotherhood in America and their ongoing efforts in America, including care, which spun off from the Muslim Brotherhood. Care was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation prosecution for funneling millions of dollars of money from what was then the largest Muslim charity in America to Hamas. It resulted in the Holy Land Foundation being convicted five senior leaders of the Holy Land Foundation serving long, long prison times. At my hearing yesterday, every single Democrat boycotted the hearing. They refused to come, including the ranking member who did not come, because this is now a critical. element of their party. They don't want to offend Mondami. They don't want to offend

care. They don't want to offend Al-Said. And I think it is very bad for this nation to have one of our two major parties become radical and extreme and unequivocally anti-American. Look, the clown running in Wisconsin has said we should cancel Thanksgiving. That gives you a sense of where they're coming from. They believe with all of their heart that the United States of America is an evil and racist institution and they want to tear it down. And then on the right, how you see these divisions playing out. And, you know, I'm particularly interested, Senator, you've been really outspoken in the last year, two years in particular about the phenomenon of anti-Semitism on the right, which it seems like it maybe ought to be

a separate question. And yet it's fundamentally woven in somehow to these questions of the future of foreign policy and these divisions within the party. So how are things on this same issue shaping up on the right? And how do Israel and the Jews, somehow find themselves at the center of this debate, perhaps bizarrely from a certain point of view. Well, it is absolutely intertwined in these issues. You know, I mentioned it was a decade ago that anti-Semitism really started to rise on the left. And the Democrat leaders basically looked the other way and hoped it would go away. And it didn't and it's consumed their party. It's been really the last 18 months that anti-Semitism has been rising on the right. And I got to say in the last 18 months,

I've seen more anti-Semitism on the right than at any time in my lifetime. And I believe this is an existential threat. It's an existential threat because anti-Semitism is the gateway drug to anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism. You see that with Mondami and the Green Red Alliance. It's where it goes. You mentioned Tucker Carlson. I think Tucker Carlson is the single most dangerous demagogue in America.

He is actively, he hates Donald Trump with all of his might and is attacking Donald Trump every day. He is obsessed with Israel and Jews. And if you look at his episodes, every episode, the punchline, here's the killer punchline, the Jews did it. That is his central message. You know, you have on your podcast serious respected professors, experts, Neil Ferguson, Victor Davis Hansen, like very serious, respected professors. He keeps inviting these clowns like Daryl Cooper he has this week, these revisionist historians, but what is it he likes about him? Well, they hate Israel and they hate Jews. And by the way, they look back to World War II,

and they kind of have a fondness for those Nazi guys. Like, that's where Tucker's descent started when he had two different quack historians or professors on his show. One, who said he believed Winston Churchill was the villain, War II and a second quack professor who said there was a very good argument America should have come in and supported the Nazis in World War II instead of the allies. Now, these people are fringe lunatics and part of their mission is to erase the Holocaust, deny the Holocaust occurred, and invert the narrative. I mean, to them, Hitler's the good guy. There are other primarily podcasters

and influencers on the right who keep spreading this poison. And as you noted, about a year ago, I made a decision that I'm going to do everything humanly possible to defeat this. That when I talk to friends of mine who are discouraged or demoralized at what's happening, I say, look, there's only one answer, which is we win. We have to defeat this poison. If we do not defeat this poison, I believe it will consume the Republican Party just like it has consumed the Democrat Party. I don't want to wake up in five years in a country where both major political parties are unequivocally anti-Israel and unapologetically anti-Semitic. And I think that is a real possibility. This is gaining traction with young people, with teenagers and 20-somethings. They are being fed, misinformation, and lies.

And so I've decided to take it on quite directly. And I will say, almost all of my colleagues in the Senate agree with me. most of them, most of the Republicans have come up to me and said, hey, you're exactly right. Thank you for doing it. Thank you for doing it. Almost none of them will say Tucker Carlson's name. And there's a reason they won't say Tucker's name because he's got a huge megaphone. And when you do, you get subjected to torrents of attacks.

If I tweet, good morning, I get hundreds of anti-Semitic responses. And you know what? It doesn't bother me at all. Tucker Carlson has said there is no. on planet earth he hates more than Christian Zionists. And he singled out, me and Mike Huckabee as the two human beings he hates more than anyone else on planet Earth. I wear that as a badge of honor because the man is attacking America every day. By the way, he's also, he's defending Comrade Mondami. He defends Putin. He defended Maduro. Like you see with Tucker the slide that when

you begin Israel hating and Jew hating, you very quickly get to capitalism hating and America hating. He despises Donald Trump. He's called Donald Trump the Antichrist. And that poison is spreading. I think we have an obligation to counter those lies with truth. Senator, I know you're short on time. So this is my last question for you on this question of Tucker Carlson. You may have seen that he hosted a gathering up at his place up in Maine with quote unquote maga dissidents. You know, Marjorie Taylor Green, Joe Kent, people like that were there. And there was apparently some discussion, this gathering of getting him to run for president. I guess the serious version of this question is your thoughts on that. But then I also want to know who you, they said to just

add one more data point that they might for a running mate look for somebody on the left to create a national unity ticket. Who do you think Tucker Carlson's running mate should be? Well, look, I actually tweeted about this yesterday. And I said, hey, that's a great idea. And Tucker can form a quote unquote unity ticket. with Abdul al-Said. They both are apologists for the Muslim Brotherhood. They both love the Ayatollah.

They both defend Iran. Look, I did Tucker's podcast last year, and he sat there. So he operates in a truth-free environment. So when I pointed out that the Ayatollah had twice hired hitmen to murder President Trump, he just denies it.

No, I don't know that. I don't know that. Tehe-he-he-he as he laughs, is like high-superman villain giggle. He says, I don't know that. And then he comes back and says, well, if they did, though, if they did actually hire hitmen to kill President Trump, then we should nuke them. It's like, no, no, we shouldn't nuke them. That's actually crazy.

It is a fact. And by the way, we've apprehended the hitmen and prosecuted them. You can go read the indictment of the hitman hired by Iran to kill President Trump. And they were not subtle about it. The IRGC put out an animated video of a drone coming to Mar-a-Lago and killing President Trump. like they're very explicit with their desire to murder President Trump. He lives in a fact-free environment where he just denies it. But he also had the president of Iran on his show.

And he was practically stroking his leg the whole time, gazing at them with adoration. He's bought a home in Qatar. Look, Qatar is home to many of the leaders of Hamas. Qatar funds, they put about $7 billion funding anti-American, pro-communist, pro-Islamist, propaganda in U.S. colleges and universities. They funded the anti-Semitic protests on college campuses, and Tucker has decided he wants to live there. Look, there is rampant speculation that Tucker is being paid tens of millions of dollars by Qatar. I don't know if he is or not, but given that Tucker, some of us who are older than 10 years old, remember Tucker during the Bush administration,

Tucker Carlson was one of the loudest cheerleader for the Iraq War. I thought it was a mistake because we tried to engage in nation building. We tried to turn it into a democratic utopia. And that is not what we're good at. That's not our mission. Our mission is to protect America and defeat our enemies. And we got away from that. So the amazing thing is if you ask who shares the same views as Tucker,

you have Ilhan Omar or Abdul Al-Said have virtually identical views with Tucker. and he also, by the way, despises capitalism. You saw him go to Russia and ooh and ah at the government grocery store. I'm waiting for Mondami to put Tucker in charge of the government grocery stores in New York that sell 30% below cost and have the great policy. You must have an ID to shop there. So you don't need an ID to vote, but you do need an ID to get government lettuce. I mean, this is the insanity of the left.

And sadly, Tucker is a tragic figure right at the top. top of it. Well, regarding his residence in Qatar, as you know, Senator, they say summers in Maine, winters in Doha. It's always a pleasure to check in with you. Thank you so much for coming on School of War, Senator Ted Cruz. Thank you.