The Charlie Kirk Show - Iran Is Israel’s War, Not America's

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Israel finally delivered on years of warnings last night, launching a wave of strikes against Iran that not only crippled its nuclear program but also decapitated its military leadership. Charlie provides an update on the war as it stands, and gives his opinion on America's proper role. Josh Hammer joins from Israel with eyewitness insight on how Israeli civilians are reacting to the dramatic events. Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com!   Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com! Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, everybody. Charlie Kirk here live from the Bitcoin.com studio. Israel decapitates Iran. We go through the facts and then we present it from a pro-American standpoint as well with a cautionary tale. Make sure you guys are subscribed to our podcast and text these episodes to your friends. They're doing very, very well. So make sure you guys check it out and email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast page. That is the Charlie Kirk Show podcast page. And email us, freedom at charliekirk.com. Do you stand with Israel?

We want to hear. Email us, freedom at charliekirk.com. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here. Noble Gold Investments is the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com.

That is noblegoldinvestments.com. It's where I buy all of my gold. Go to noblegoldinvestments.com. We saw this happening in real time yesterday. The news heard around the world. We were live streaming last night, and it's important in times like this, in situations that involve war and kinetic conflict, to report the facts and to stay calm, collected, with a lot of precision, not to get too excited, not to get involved in hyperbole or be very measured in your reporting. In fact, I believe you, the audience, that's why you keep on tuning in. Right now, we are the number one conservative podcast in Apple News because we did a late night stream all about the Israeli strikes on Iran. And you can count that this program will have a pro-civilization, pro-American view on all these things. And we're going to tell it like it is. We're going to

report all the facts of exactly what has happened. So what occurred? Well, so Israel hit over 100 targets against Iran. And as I am talking right now, it's continuing. The bombing campaign is continuing. Here is what is so remarkable is that Israel was involved in a little bit of a deception campaign. Totally legitimate. There's nothing wrong with deceiving your enemy. Israel said, oh, Netanyahu is going to go to a wedding and we're going to try to slow walk. We might go to D.C. and have some talks and some diplomacy. And amazingly, Iran let its guard down. Israel was able to infiltrate the inner circle of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

They were able to infiltrate the top levels of the IRGC. And we're going to learn a lot more of what happened in the days and weeks of exactly what has happened. But this was not merely just a bombing attack against Iran's nuclear facilities. It was a decapitation strike against the entire Iranian military. They took out Mahmad Bagheri, the Iranian general staff, the head of their military. That is like the equivalent of taking out J.D. Vance and Susie Wiles. They took out Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. They also hit the following targets, the capital in Tehran, Natnaz, where Iran enriches

uranium, Tabriz, where explosions have been reported near a nuclear research center and two military bases. Kermasha, I'm butchering these pronunciations, but whatever. West of Tehran, where an underground facility storing ballistic missiles was hit near the Iraqi border, plus other major cities like Isfahan and Arak, Arak, A-R-A-K, not, well, not Arak yet, the country. Iran's air defenses appear to have been totally compromised, offering no resistance at all to Israeli airstrikes. And to the knowledge that we have right now, and again, this could change at any moment, it looks as if not a single Israeli aircraft has been shot down. Again,

it's the fog of war, so we do not know yet, but we don't have any reports of any Israeli aircraft that has yet been taken down. Israel was apparently able to execute some stunning infiltrations, such as smuggling explosives directly into Iran in advance of the strike. Regardless of your opinion of Israel, even if you hate Israel to your core, you have to have remarkable respect for Mossad and their military for what they were able to pull off here. Understand that Iran knew this was coming. And without getting into too many details, we knew this was coming. In fact, I was talking to Blake and Andrew, and I'm like, guys, unless my sources are totally wrong, in about two hours, Iran is about to get lit up like a Christmas tree. So I knew it was coming.

A lot of other reporters I was talking to knew it was coming. And Iran still was infiltrated because it seems as if that Israel was able to infiltrate at such the highest levels of the Iranian government. They use the looming attack as a way to gather all of these senior Iranian officials together to then strike them. Remember, we moved out all diplomatic and non-essential staff. This was somewhat of a deception surprise attack, but this was the longest windup. Here it comes. Here it comes.

Here it comes. And it does beg the question, is Iran a paper tiger? And we'll explore that later, which is, wait, I understand that Intel shows that they were close to a nuclear weapon, but there's a little bit of a contradiction here of if they really don't have any air defense systems and they're this foolish and kind of a third world country, it really makes you wonder how sophisticated of a threat this actually is. However, it's happening.

And Israel is a sovereign country, and they made, and you have to just say this, they made an incredibly ballsy move with a lot of chutzpah. Took a lot of chutzpah for them to do this. And we're going to find out in the next couple of days and weeks and months, the ramifications of that, especially from a pro-American standpoint, which I want to get into. But they also killed some of the nuclear scientists. That's a 564. By the way, if you want to just have entertainment, watch this show of me trying to pronounce these ridiculous Persian names. Faradun Abbasi, I think I got that one. Mohammed Mehdi Tarajanani, the physicist and president of the Islamic Azad University in Tehran. The Israeli operation was not just airstrikes. The Israeli Mossad intelligence

service has operatives on the ground conducting covert sabotage operations on missile and air defense sites. And it's ongoing. Israel right now has complete command over the air of Iran. No one really could have anticipated that. No one could have predicted it. And this is why no planes have been shot down. And this is why no planes have been shot down. And Bibi Netanyahu and the Israeli government, they're basically having an all-you-can-eat buffet in Iran. They've had these targets basically in their tickler file for quite some time. They've had these targets like, hey, here they are all over Iran for quite some time. And they're like, why are we going to stop now? We're just going to keep on going. This is a dream for Israel in the sense where they, for quite some time, would love to

have been able just to fly over Iranian airspace with no opposition whatsoever. 562, which I think is a very important picture. Yes, some residential buildings were struck, but that's some pretty remarkable precision. This visual is something, and on podcasting, you just have to take pause and be like, that's as good and as sophisticated of a military that I think you'll ever see. So here you have, for those that you can't see it on podcasting, a high-rise residential building in Tehran, where the neighbors above and the neighbors below, literally, they were able to, either through a drone or through a fighter jet, have a precision missile go to what is that, like the eighth floor, but not the ninth floor,

not the seventh floor, and they decided not to take down the entire building. And I do think that is a necessary picture where the stereotype and the prejudice against Israel is that, oh, they take down residential buildings just for fun and to go after civilians. I think that picture is a very important picture that I hope is included in the national and international narrative that Israel actually decided not to take down that entire residential building because that would have been a narrative collapse alongside an apartment collapse because if they would have taken down the entire building, first of all, innocent people would have unnecessarily died. And I'm sure some people did. I mean, you can't, maybe the missile would have continued into another apartment building.

However, it looks as if the apartments above and below are largely still intact. We don't know all the details associated to it, but Israel very well could have collapsed the entire building and they could have said, hey, you know, these are command and control centers. What's the big deal? That's another picture that shows that the apartments kind of above and below are kind of untouched. And part of this also is that Israel's strategy here is they know that many of the everyday rank and file Persians hate the Iranian regime. They hate the Iranian regime and they don't want to try to turn the Iranian people against Israel unnecessarily. They're trying to fight a war of liberation, a very risky war. And I want to just make sure that's very clear.

In this fog of war, it's easy to get caught up in the overemphasis on the military action. We're going to talk about this from an American standpoint, from where does the base stand on this? Israel has a right to do what they want to do. There's a risk reward calculus. Private student loan debt in America totals over $300 billion. YRefi does not care what your credit score is, and you can finally take control of your student loan situation, a plan that works for your monthly budget. YRefi offers a three-minute rate check without any credit impact. Call 888-YRefi34 or log on to YRefi.com.

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Go to YRefi.com. You don't have to ignore that mountain of student loan statements on your kitchen table anymore. Go to Yrefi.com. That is Y-R-E-F-Y.com. Again, Yrefi is amazing. If you know anybody in your life that has privacy-driven loan debt, a sister, a brother, an uncle, an aunt, anybody that might have struggled with privacy-driven loan debt, Yrefi is the solution. That's right. Yrefi is the solution. So check it out right now. Why refi dot com. So that's a little bit of the analysis of the what has happened. Now I want to spend a little bit of time from an American standpoint and also from a conservative movement standpoint and kind of where the base stands. But here is where we stand right now. Right now, Iran is getting blown up, and currently America has faced zero blowback or any consequences. And Israel's operation against Iran has been far more successful as of right now than anyone could have dreamed. No one could have dreamed

that they're taking out the entire core of the Iranian military, not to mention bombing after bombing of nuclear reactors and airports and military sites. And in some ways, for many people in this audience and also for those of us that want to see civilization succeed, this is very satisfying to watch. But we must also caution you and the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war show us that it might not necessarily continue that way. The first weeks of the Afghan and the Iraq war looked incredibly easy. Remember Shakanah? Shakanah looked like, wow, there is no situation that we can't handle. Iraq will bend to our will. And for those of us that are America first, but also are very sympathetic to Israel,

this has always been our cautionary tale, which is that war is far more complicated. Military strikes are usually much murkier and complicated than it might seem on TV. Our generation especially, and the base of the Republican Party, we have never seen a triumphant, declarative military victory. And I hope everybody in the audience understands that. Everybody in MAGA that says, you know, keep the strikes going. And I totally get it. I see it from that perspective. But also understand that the base of MAGA has never seen a declarative victory. And I could tell you right now, our MAGA base does not want a war at all whatsoever. They do not want U.S. involvement.

They do not want the United States to be engaged in this. And let's just go 569. This is a picture of the Iraq shock and awe bombing, you might remember. It felt as if we were going to steamroll Iraq, and this would be like a two-month operation similar to the Persian Gulf War back in 1991. But the Middle East has a tendency to draw you in. It is the land of sand and death, as President Trump would say. The last major war that America clearly and definitively won is the Gulf War. And even that led to the Second Iraq War. Before that, it was World War II. And the Korean War, you could argue, had some real good upside with the creation of South Korea. Wars are not profitable endeavors. And even from a pro-Israel standpoint,

Israel does not benefit from long conflicts or long wars. The shorter the conflict, the better it has always been for Israel. That's why they prefer deceptive, immediate, and violent action. We as conservatives must be very morally clear as to what side we are on. But we must resist the siren song of displacing dictators and lands we do not understand and we have no business running and i just want to have a cautionary tale because it can feel very good and seem very good and it objectively can be good when i see a picture of that apartment building i kind of just have awe and i'm like man i struggle to like install my tv i i need someone to help me set up the Wi-Fi.

Like, Mikey, get in here, set up the Wi-Fi. I mean, what they do in the tech room is like the most impressive thing. They got guests, and they got Zoom, and they got different televisions, and they got audio stuff. And look at this. They're sending missiles to the eighth floor, but not the ninth floor or the seventh floor. I mean, I marvel at that and you should too. However, Iran does have a conventional military. They are a proud and they are a big country.

Persia was once a great power. They have a memory, a very serious memory of being respected. And this was a humiliation. This was an absolute humiliation of the Iranian regime and mullahs. And it is continuing. Iran could say that they're going to just go march 900000 troops into Iraq. The Iranian play is there. The worst possible case scenario is Iran says, OK, you humiliated us. You killed all of our leaders. We're going to go make this a regional mess and try to get as many people involved as possible. They're going to go after Americans. They're going to go after Saudis. They're going to go after everybody imaginable just to create a big mess and to try to draw the world into it. Because understand,

the Iranian people are widely respected and not necessarily are always in sync with leadership. But if and when the people of Iran feel like Persia is being defaced and humiliated and disrespected, we don't know where that is going to go. And that's my final reason why I am always skeptical of military intervention. And when a lot of the sometimes warmongering wing gets too excited, you don't know, actually, you need to have a lot of humility. You do not know how things are going to work out. It is impossible. You could try to predict it. You could pray. You can hope. But when you start saying things will guarantee happen, like in Libya, overthrowing the regime will be easy. And then everything after was a disaster. Some humility is necessary in these moments. Gentlemen, let's get real for a second.

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The Iranian people are the opportunity, not the enemy here. But I can say concretely, here is where I stand and where the MAGA base stands. We do not want U.S. boots on the ground. We do not want American kinetic involvement. This is Israel's war. This is Israel's self-determination in play. And with that, we welcome Josh Hammer from Newsweek. Great man and very clear thinker, host of The Josh Hammer Show and author of Israel and Civilization.

So, Josh, I mean, I have to ask the kind of elephant in the room. How many paces, how many steps are you from a bomb shelter? God forbid you have to go there. Yeah, I'm laughing, but I probably shouldn't be laughing, Charlie. You know, we woke up at 3 a.m. local time here. The whole country had sirens nationally. And, you know, we have our six-month-old baby here. It's actually our first time flying with our baby. So it's no joke. So we immediately went down to the bombshell firm, the house where we are staying. We soon learned within minutes that the sirens were not due to incoming rocket fire. Instead, the IDF

Home Command did sirens nationwide to essentially alert the people that, you know, major stuff was going down inside Iran and there was the potential of imminent retaliation there. That, I think, was what the IDF was most concerned about, was they were concerned about imminent, immediate retaliation. There's now been over 12 hours, actually far more than that, since that, and I think that the threat level has decreased.

But to your very first question, Charlie, there's a bomb shelter, probably 30 or 40 steps over there. So God forbid I can make a dashboard. I think I'll be OK. Well, yeah. And I hope everyone in the audience understands that that's now become normal life in Israel. And so you are outside right now and which is great. Praise God. You can see the sun. But I just so I have so many questions here and I'm just going to kind of go to stuff I can get from you that I can't get from the cable networks. What is the vibe? You're there with your your kid. You are there with, you know, so many people you care about. What is the what is the morale like on the ground? Do is do the Israelis support this?

Well, this whole trip and Charlie, like you, I've been to Israel a number of times. This whole trip thus far has been not exactly what we signed up for. So my wife and I were getting dinner the other night in the Tel Aviv area on the ocean. There was a massive siren. We ran to a bomb shelter. It turns out that there was a Houthi ballistic missile incoming from Yemen. That was just two or three nights ago. And now this is the mission of all missions, what Israel is calling Operation Rising Lion, the operation

inside Iran. Charlie, I'm here in the broader Tel Aviv area. As you can see in the background here, the sun is slowly starting to set. The Jewish Sabbath Shabbat is coming in. So I guess we're spending the Sabbath here. We were planning to be in Jerusalem, but we didn't want to get in the car and drive an hour and a half, God forbid, getting stuck in traffic with a lot of missiles. Again, we have a six-month-old, so we're being smart state parents here there so we're locking down now what i can tell you is that the locals here the roads are empty the roads are basically like a ghost town the supermarkets it's like a hurricane i've gone through hurricanes living in florida back home i live in houston texas miami florida during hurricanes anyone who has been to a supermarket

during a hurricane knows that the that the shelves are, you know, you can't get any food items. There is a line around the door curling around the supermarket. Same thing here. It feels like a hurricane-like condition right now. Again, I guess we're going to see what actual hurricane in the form of an Iranian retaliation actually comes here. But the thing about the Israeli people, Charlie, and holding aside the Arab Israelis, it's a little more complicated. But the thing about Jewish Israelis, which are still the vast majority of the Israeli people, there is full consensus as to the Iranian issue. There are a number of very, very divisive issues here in Israel.

Bibi Netanyahu, the two-state solution versus one-state solution with the Palestinian Arabs, the issue of the Haredi ultra-Orthodox draft into the IDF. There are a lot of very contentious issues here in the Israeli domestic political spectrum. But if there's one very important point, I think for your audience to know is that the Iran issue is not a contentious issue. I remember speaking back in 2016, during the 2016 presidential cycle, I spoke with a far left member, a Jewish member of the Knesset, their legislature here. Charlie, dude was so far left, he was an actual Bernie Sanders supporter, I kid you not. And even this guy, even this guy who was a total peacenik on the Palestinians, a total liberal on all domestic issues, you name it, there even he was very sober and hawkish minded on Iran, because there was an understanding here that Iran actually genuinely

is the existential issue. And that if the IDF's mantra that never again means never again, if it means anything whatsoever, then Iran has to be dealt with at some point. It turns out that they dealt with it or at least started to deal with it while I happen to be visiting the country here. I'm now going to refer to you as our Israeli war correspondent. We're going to have you on as much as you'll have us. I have so many questions here, Josh. Just a more technical one while I have it on top of my head. I'm guessing that this will be a Shabbat that is largely not honored by the military in the best possible way, right? I mean, it's not like the whole country is just going to go to sleep while Iran could launch a bunch of missiles. Am I correct in that regard? Look, everyone has to do what they can here. So, you know,

not to get too deep in the weeds of Jewish law, but there is a well-known Jewish principle known as Pahulach Nefesh, which basically means that there's an overwhelming imperative to save a human life at all costs. And when human life has to be saved at the expense of desecrating the Jewish Sabbath or any other of the violation of Jewish law, it has to be done there. So for example, Charlie, back home in Florida, where I pray, I pray at a local synagogue near the beach. There's a guy who has a walkie-talkie there because he's actually an emergency driver for Hatzalah, the emergency services there. So he's allowed to do that for reasons of Kulak Nefesh. Similarly here in Israel, when there was an active threat of the world's leading

state sponsor of Jihad potentially launching God knows what kind of missiles, drones, or whatever we'll have here over the next 48, 72 hours, who the heck knows. Yes, I think people are going to interpret Pekuach Nefesh and take it into their own hands. It's just so, I have so many questions, but I hope people understand that even in the midst of all the terror, that still the Shabbat will be honored and the Kaddish will be said. It's just pretty amazing. I'm turning off my phone, Charlie. Well, it's just, it's remarkable.

So Josh, let me ask you. So now let's get more to like the technical side. Are you surprised? And what is your reaction, I should say, to the fact that Iran has not really responded yet, that we're coming on almost a 24-hour marker and there have not been missiles that are cascading down on Israel? Why is that? And is it because that Israel is just having a feeding frenzy in the interior of Iran right now? So it's such a real-time, minute-by-minute situation that it's a little hard to keep up with everything. I did hear maybe about 30, 45 minutes ago that there were rocket sirens in northern Israel. I assume that is from Hezbollah in Lebanon, or at least the remnants of Hezbollah in Lebanon, because Hezbollah has been dealt

such a crippling blow over the past year or so by Israel. But Iran, Charlie, and this is why Israel apparently felt that this was the time to actually launch this operation that was literally decades in the making, was that they had done such an amazing job at crippling Iran's various proxies. Hezbollah, in particular, in Lebanon, with their massive 100,000-plus precision-guided missile arsenal, that was always the Iranian regime's sort of Damocles hanging over the Israeli people here. It's right on the Israeli border up north there. And Israel knew that if they were to ever launch a serious operation against Iran, then Hezbollah would just rain down lots and lots of missiles on Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, all the population corridors there. But Hezbollah has not been

literally eliminated, but I mean, 80, 90 percent, I mean, they are on really, really, really weak knees right now. So the path was really, really clear. And then inside of Iran itself, you look at just the sheer number of the top ranking IRGC, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the general staffers that apparently have been killed over the past 12 to 18 hours there. I mean, Charlie, I think we're literally talking about a situation where the actual physical men who would literally call the shots are perhaps no longer with us. It's a pretty astounding thing to say there, but I think that's the reality inside Iran right now. And so let me ask you, so then it looks as if Israel is continuing a bombing campaign against Iran. I mean, how else can Iran respond if their missile capacity is largely disabled? Well, look, they have the potential to try to launch extraterritorial assassinations. Charlie, I'll be honest with you. In a weird way, I actually almost feel safer if you're in Israel than if I were back home in the United States.

I live in Florida, so Florida is kind of the exception to the rule. Florida is an incredibly safe place to be Jewish. It's an incredibly safe place, frankly, to be anyone. But I do think in a time like this about more exposed Jewish communities, Israeli expatriate communities in blue jurisdictions? I think a lot about New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, places like that at this time there, because those are the places where the local government is not necessarily going to be up to speed at protecting vulnerable, soft targets, synagogues, kosher restaurants, things like that at this time here. Living here, or no, I don't live here, but being here in Israel at this time here and having the IDF protect us, I feel pretty good for the most part there. But they do have the

capacity, Iran. Iran has a lot of sleeper cells. They have a lot of sleeper cells, a lot of lone wolf agents, a lot of people all throughout the West, a lot of these crazy radicals, the Mahmoud Khalil's on the university campuses, a lot of folks who are pledging and vowing to take up not necessarily full-on jihad in an ISIS-style caliphate here in the Middle East, but just engaging in lone wolf-style attacks, very similar to what the Marxists did in slaughtering, brutally assassinating these two Israeli diplomats in Washington two weeks ago. So that's the kind of soft lone wolf target that I'm actually most scared of at a time like this. I'm less scared about whatever is coming

from Iran in kind of a paradoxical way, even though I'm right here kind of in the crosshairs of fire. Yeah, I mean, I literally put up on Twitter, I'll read it to the audience, which is, keep your head on a swivel, Biden let millions of people into America, Iran might activate some sleeper cells against Americans stay armed. And I mean, that goes for all people, right? Is the Iranian sleeper cells into the interior of the United States. Can Israel win this without United States troops? So it totally depends how you define win.

Charlie, it seems to me that Israel is not at least at this moment seeking to decapitate the head of the snake. Again, we'll see. It's a very, very fast time situation there. It seems to me like if they were going to take their shot at the Ayatollah at Qamani, it probably would have happened in the wee hours of the morning. Again, what do I know? I'm just kind of playing a speculation game here. But the goal of this operation, so far as I understand it, is simply to neutralize the nuclear threat. And if that is the goal, if that is the goal, then I think that Israel has already shown that it's fully capable of doing that. Just to take one example, I mean, they had a large,

large number of Iran's nuclear facilities. But just to take one example, Natanz, which is maybe the most infamous of all of the Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, Natanz has been kind of front and center of all these can Israel strike Iran debates for the past 15, 20 years now. These debates have gone back a long time. Israel has, by all accounts, according to the IAEA, the UN International Nuclear Watchdog, they call it, Natanz has been completely obliterated. There is no more Natanz nuclear facility. I mean, that is an astonishing, astonishing thing right there. So again, if the goal of the Israeli operation, Rising Line, I think is the name that the IDF is giving it, if the goal is to neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat, then I think they are

fully capable of doing this on the run. There's not going to be a ground invasion or anything like that there. It's not going to happen. I mean, the logistics of that are just impossible to even contemplate. I don't even know what that looks like. I mean, the tanks start rolling over Iraq. I mean, it's not going to happen. So the goal of this is tactical aerial strikes to neutralize a harrowing threat of the world's number one state sponsor of

jihad, these fanatical Islamists who genuinely believe in 72 virgins in heaven, all that there. The goal is to decapitate their capacity to launch a nuclear strike on Israel, Europe, anywhere else. If they were to ever acquire, God forbid, intercontinental ballistic missile technology. And so far, they've been very successful. And I think, God willing, that they will continue to be very successful. Hey everybody, Charlie Kirk here. Brand new year, brand new opportunities to change the world for the better. It's easier than you might think. You can save babies by providing ultrasounds with Preborn. Together with the Sanctity of Human Life Month, we're going to save 35,000 babies to show the world that not only do we believe life is precious,

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Josh, I want to put this up here. We did this on X last night. I asked our audience, 323,000 people voted. Should the U.S. get involved in Israel's war against Iran? 88% said no. I can't imagine you're surprised by that, though, Josh. So as someone who's in Israel and cares about Israel but is also an American, walk me through your reaction to that and how you think this plays out politically. Yeah, Charlie, I don't think the U.S. really has to get involved. I have never once actually in my entire commentary career called for the U.S. to directly get involved in military or kinetic action against Iran because, frankly, it's not my stance.

I thought that the first Trump era maximum pressures economic campaign was very successful there. And then beyond economic pressure, and placing crippling sanctions on the oil and natural gas exports to the Chinese Communist Party above all there, I've always thought that Israel could take the military end of the bargain and do what needs to be done. All that essentially is needed from the United States is to cast the various vetoes at the UN National Security Council and things like that there. But, Charlie, I would suggest that another way to view it actually is this way. Iran obviously is an existential threat to Israel. It is a major threat to other countries, but it is a larger threat to Israel.

And I think it would be sloppy analysis to try to needlessly conflate the degree of the threat to Israel to others there. It is a threat to the United States, but not the exact same threat. Having said that, it is a threat. Iran definitely does have American blood on its hands for 46 years, going back to the hostage crisis that launched the regime and ended the Jimmy Carter presidency, going back to the 241 U.S. Marines slaughtered at the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, from Hezbollah, the top Iranian proxy, the 500 to 600 American soldiers killed by Qasem Soleimani-supplied IEDs on the roadside of Al-Anbar in Fallujah during the Petraeus counterinsurgency during the Bush administration, and on and on and on we go there. So I think another way of viewing this is as follows, which is that Israel is acting as a good ally should act in securing not just its own national interest, it happens to be

an existential interest in this case there, but also then ultimately conducing to the enhanced and greater safety and security of the United States, of our European allies, and so forth and so forth. The United States, Charlie, today and for the foreseeable future, is a safer and more secure place because of what Israel is doing inside of Iran. This is a very, very key point there. Again, this was needed for Israel. Israel is doing inside of Iran. This is a very, very key point there. Again, this was needed for Israel. Israel is acting as any sovereign nation state would do in its own national interest here. But the key thing, and I make this point at great length in my book, Israel and Civilization,

but the key thing here is that when it comes to the Middle East, and this is kind of what you expect of an ally from a nationalist, realist foreign policy paradigm, the key thing is that Israel's national interest in this region is overwhelmingly then diagram overlapped with the American region. The degrees may actually vary for sure. I will happily and readily concede that there. But again, America is a safer and more secure place today from Israel simply doing this. In fact, America in many ways is benefiting, frankly, on the cheap because we're not actually sending in any kind of troops. And no one is calling for that, by the way. No one is seriously, literally. I haven't found a single person who's actually calling for that there. So as long as it remains on the cheap,

I think America looks quite good, actually. Josh, please stay safe. I know that you are in a calamitous situation right now, and we'll be praying for you and praying for your family and praying for the peace in Jerusalem. Thank you so much. God bless you, Charlie. Thank you. Thank you. I want to just go a little bit deeper into the politics here. And we talked about the cautionary tale. These military operations are almost oversimplified in the media, and they kind of have an immediate crescendo and then some complication as one proceeds. I could tell you, though, that young MAGA, especially the more online you get, the more skepticism there is about America getting involved in this,

in the quagmire, in the nonstop flow of military intervention in the Middle East. And the base will diverge from some orthodox opinions on Israel that you might hear on cable news or in the mainstream media, where the base might have diplomatic and sentimental support towards Israel, which, of course, I've demonstrated over a very long period of time, which the question is, though, how much money, how much funding are we getting involved? And to what extent does that lead towards? Because I could tell you right now, a primary concern from the MAGA base, it is a phrase I hear all the time, Charlie, this is just to get the war contractors wealthier. Charlie, this is just to get people that are in the permanent war machine more money.

They want more war and not peace. I hear this all the time from people, from those of you in the base. And with that, I want to hear from you right now. I want to be flooded with emails. Freedom at CharlieKirk.com. Should we send more aid to Israel? Should we send military support? Should we not send any support at all? Email me, Freedom at CharlieKirk.com. That is Freedom at CharlieKirk.com.

Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us, as always, Freedom at CharlieKirk.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.