Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Good morning, everyone. I am Cabot Phillips. We are coming to you live from Daily Wire HQ for a special breaking edition of Wired and Live.
After months of growing tensions, speculation, and ultimately multiple rounds of failed nuclear negotiations, the United States of America and Israel have begun a series of widespread airstrikes targeting Iran in what President Trump called a, quote, massive and ongoing operation. The Department of War has dubbed this operation Epic Fury. This story is rapidly developing.
We're going to be getting new updates by the second. We'll bring you all of the latest news as it comes in.
Chapter 2: What are the details of the U.S. strikes on Iran?
But let's first start with what we know so far, and then we're going to get to some guests, including Michael Knowles and other experts from the region. President Trump announced this news early Saturday morning, saying America will, quote, never be threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran.
Again, we're still getting details, but it appears American strikes at the moment are focusing on Iranian nuclear sites. which the regime has worked to rebuild following Operation Midnight Hammer, along with naval facilities. For their part, the Israeli military is reportedly going after senior leadership within the regime.
Their strikes have reportedly targeted top generals, the country's president and armed forces chief of staff, and even the Ayatollah himself. We're still waiting for news on whether any of those men have been killed, but footage from Tehran shows smoke rising from a number of compounds that house the country's senior leadership, including the presidential palace.
According to the New York Times, satellite imagery appears to show that the Ayatollah's residence has been completely destroyed. Again, we're still waiting for his whereabouts. But there are also unconfirmed reports and footage that appear to show strikes targeting the home of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His condition is not yet known either.
Elsewhere, it's worth noting Israeli media is reporting that Mohammad Pakpour, that's the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, has been killed. So a senior leader there within the Iranian military confirmed killed. It's worth noting Iran's state-affiliated news agency published a list of officials that they claim were unharmed following the first volley of attacks.
That list included a number of parliament members. countries. President and Chief Justice, they said, were not harmed. However, it did not mention the Supreme Leader himself. There are rumblings on social media, rumblings in Israeli media that Israel feels confident that their strikes may have taken out the Ayatollah.
Again, that is not yet confirmed, but that will be the big question this morning. As the dust literally settles, everyone wants to know. has the Ayatollah been eliminated? Now, zooming out, according to numerous reports, this will not be a limited operation. The Pentagon says these strikes will go on for at least the next few days, potentially even weeks.
Right now, it appears as if the Pentagon is planning to launch one to two days worth of strikes, wait for the dust to settle, reassess the damage on the battlefield, and then go back in for more. But again, this is going to go on, it sounds like, for days to weeks. President Trump offered a sober warning that there may well be American casualties. saying, quote, this is what happens in war.
Have a watch.
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Chapter 3: How is Israel involved in the operation against Iran?
But this time, it looks like Iran is trying to fire off as many of those missiles as possible before they're potentially destroyed. And we've already seen, again, an unprecedented flurry of explosions across the Middle East. The Iranian military in recent hours says they've already launched drones and missiles at Israel in what they're calling the first wave of retaliatory attacks.
And the expectation from the Pentagon is that they will target any number of US military bases across the region. There have been reports of explosions in Jordan, Kuwait, Dubai, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. The list is continuing to grow, and at least some of those explosions do appear to have been on American military bases.
Again, because this is such a breaking story, we're waiting for details on whether there have been any U.S. casualties so far. At the moment, we're told there have not been, but at least one of those explosions appears to have been significant. We're going to show you footage that reportedly depicts a missile targeting the headquarters of the United States Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
We're out front.
Again, you can see the magnitude of that strike. Reports again right now are that no American service members were harmed there. Fox says that thankfully the base had been largely evacuated and that was a warehouse that had not been in use lately. Now, the obvious goal of this operation is to knock out Iran's nuclear sites and weaken their military.
But President Trump has also made clear that he supports regime change from within in a extraordinary, really historic statement, Trump called this morning for the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the Ayatollah's regime, saying, quote, take over your government. I say tonight, the hour of your freedom is at hand. Watch.
Finally, to the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don't leave your home. It's very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.
For many years, you have asked for America's help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight. Now you have a president who is giving you what you want. So let's see how you respond. America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force.
Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.
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Chapter 4: What is the potential impact of these strikes on U.S.-Iran relations?
When you were in the president's cabinet, were there times where President Trump would maybe exert pressure like this militarily or otherwise on a country, and it made your negotiations with completely other countries easier?
Oh, yeah, no, look, it does. I'll go back to what I said earlier. The president, I think, hesitates at some times. I mean, not in a good way. He doesn't want to do these things. It's not in his nature. It's not, you know, as you saw in his public comments, he wants peace. These are very, very difficult decisions.
You don't come to this decision on a whim and you don't do it in a matter of seconds. You do it with a lot of forethought, a lot of information at your disposal. And I know he struggled with this decision. I just know that by watching him over the years. But once he makes a decision, he will follow through with it. And that's what you're seeing today.
But look, what it does to other negotiations, I think it demonstrates clearly to other nations, to other leaders, he means what he says. If he says he's going to do it, he will do it. And to the extent that people want to pay attention to those words and pay attention, and more importantly, to those actions, that will treat them accordingly.
And I think it helps understand once people have a clear idea of who this leader is, of who other leaders are, then we can have more constructive conversations and not just dance around these important issues as we move forward.
Final question, then we'll let you go. As former energy secretary, you know better than anyone the implications of what this means for Americans when it comes to oil prices, gas prices. Could this have a tangible impact for folks when it comes to the global oil supply?
not the global oil supply so i mean what we're going to see and what we have seen today as a matter of fact and some of the oil features pricing is that you'll see this short-term spike uh you know what we're talking about here is roughly three percent of the world's supply of oil uh coming into the marketplace iran does roughly three million barrels a day we consume or produce roughly a hundred million barrels a day most of iran's oil goes to china so we don't see that in the u.s anyway
But even if it were taken completely off the market, which I don't think it will be, Saudi Arabia has enormous capacity to fill that gap. The United States has enormous capacity to fill that gap. So I don't think the long-term effects of this type of action are going to be sustained high oil prices or sustained high gasoline prices over the course of the year.
So I don't see that happening right now. The Strait of Hormuz obviously is very, very important. A lot of oil comes through that. I don't think Iran is going to close that. They may threaten it. I don't think they're capable of closing it, frankly. The US Navy will ensure that it's open, but it's not in their interest to close it either.
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Chapter 5: What warnings are U.S. lawmakers giving about potential military action in Iran?
Democrats in the Senate, for example, Mark Warner, saying that the U.S. was poised to, quote, repeat mistakes of the past, invoking the Iraq War. We see another statement here. The American people have seen this playbook before. Claims of urgency, misrepresented intelligence, military action that pulls the U.S. into regime change.
Ed Markey from Massachusetts saying it's illegal and unconstitutional. Other members going on, Tim Kaine, Adam Schiff, saying a diplomatic solution remained the best way to end this crisis, slamming President Trump. A crisis of Trump's creation. What do you make of those messages?
Well, the problem, we can take it in reverse order. The problem with the argument that we were just this close to diplomacy is... President Trump has been trying diplomacy for his entire first year, not to mention the first term, not to mention the United States has been trying diplomacy since 1979. So that's pretty preposterous. Likewise, the preference of the United States in Iran...
Chapter 6: How has President Trump's foreign policy shifted regarding Iran?
has been regime change since 1979. That was not always the case in Iraq. In fact, during the Iran-Iraq war, we kind of helped out Iraq. So, you know, here, the battle lines are much more firmly drawn. However, I'll give a little credit to the Democrats and people like Mark Warner, which is that the stakes are very, very high, and there is a risk of repeating the mistakes of Iraq.
There's no question about that. I think President Trump sees that. You know, what we're talking about here is... a preemptive war based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction and with a further justification that the people of the country want freedom. That is almost precisely the justification for war in Iraq.
And so you're seeing a shift here in President Trump's criticism of George W. Bush. You're seeing a shift in what it means for President Trump to be the foil to George Bush. Initially, he was running against dumb wars, you know, against pursuing, say, the strategy of George W. Bush.
What's interesting about the strike on Iran, it seems to me, is that President Trump is saying that the strategy of George Bush is not necessarily all that bad.
Chapter 7: What implications do the recent strikes have for U.S. relations with China?
It's the tactics of George Bush that didn't work. In other words, Bush had it right in principle. He just totally bungled it during the Iraq War. And Some people are going to be skeptical of that. The point that I keep coming back to, though, is that President Trump has an exceptional record on foreign policy. He's got the best record on FOPO probably in my lifetime.
And so if anybody has the credibility to make that kind of a claim, it's him. But that said, the Democrats' attacks are going to keep on coming because the echoes from Iraq are manifest.
I have one more question for Morgan before we let you go, Morgan. What does this mean for China specifically? I know there had been concerns that the US could potentially deplete some of its stockpiles and that could give China maybe more of an incentive to make a move on Taiwan. Do you think that this changed anything for Xi and his calculus?
Well, I'm gonna speak bluntly. So China, most Chinese assets are in their region. They're right there. Taiwan is just 70, 80 miles off of the Chinese coast. China has 10,000 commercial shipping vessels. We have about 500. So we are militarily would be very pressed to defend Taiwan.
But we have a lot of other instruments of national power using the dime strategy, diplomatic, intelligence, military, economic. The M is just what most American presidents have defaulted to this president. President Trump is using all of the other instruments of national power to include taking oil off the table. And most Chinese oil, most Chinese energy is imported. They import
They were importing at the start of President Trump's term, two million barrels of oil a day from Iran at a very discounted rate because Iran couldn't sell it elsewhere. They couldn't sell it to the civilized world, but the Chinese were all too happy to buy it up at a discount. And the president said, no, Trump said, we're not going to have that.
And so between now and this morning, when he took office and this morning, the import of Chinese Iranian oil to China dropped about 70%.
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Chapter 8: What are the potential consequences of the strikes on the Iranian regime?
I expect it to drop a lot further as this plays out. So the strategy that I see, and Michael was speaking earlier to strategy, and I think he's right, The strategy here is more than just the Middle East. So many presidents have talked to me all the way back to Obama have been talking about pivoting out of the Middle East.
Well, it's one thing to abandon your allies and partners and just pivot away and try to put out a fire in another region.
uh it's not a thing to resolve that issue and that's what the president has done i think this morning started the process of resolving the iranian issue which has been with the united states and our partners and allies in the region for five decades and that is the significance and if you we can resolve it here and then pivot to china i think we've shown them pretty adeptly they're not going to have bargain oil for much longer
So many different angles to this story. Morgan, thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate your expertise very much. Glad to be with you.
Thanks for having me.
So we're going to keep Michael on. But first, I just want to thank our audience. If you appreciate The Daily Wire's live coverage of moments like this one, the reason we're able to launch new shows like this one, Wired and Live, is because of you guys, our subscribers. So if you're not a subscriber, go to dailywire.com right now. Become a member. We've got breaking news, investigative reporting.
We're helping to explain the world. We can bring this programming again because of our members. So if you want to continue, if you want to join us in that fight, in that important work, please join us today. Go to dailywire.com and become a member. So we're now going to keep Michael on again. This is all breaking news as we go through this huge story today.
We're going to keep Michael and we're also going to bring on Tala Goudarzi, former Deputy Assistant Energy Secretary. Tala, Let's just start with your 30-foot reaction to what's going on. We'll get into some of the details.
Sure. Well, thanks so much for having me. I think first and foremost, this is an incredible day for the Iranian people and also Iranians all throughout the world. As a Persian American myself, it is incredible that this is a day of liberation for the Iranian people. We've seen almost 30,000 people have died in the past couple of months just fighting for their basic rights rights.
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