The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2378 - BREAKING: Trump DEVASTATES Iranian Defenses, Iran Attacks EVERYONE
02 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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That's trustandwill.com slash Shapiro to get your 20% off trustandwill.com slash Shapiro. Well, we are in day three of President Trump's military operation in Iran. It's the most courageous military decision of my lifetime, and we are kicking ass. The United States military, the Israeli military working in tandem are kicking the hell out of the Iranian government.
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Chapter 2: What recent military actions have the US and Israel taken against Iran?
And then you have the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is the terrorist apparatus. You'll remember that the head of the IRGC, The terror sponsor of the IRGC, Qasem Soleimani, was killed by President Trump at the very tail end of his first term in office. Well, this strike basically decapitated the top levels of the regime. So successful there. And that decapitation goes on.
Top members of the IRGC are being targeted. Top members of the Iranian government are being targeted, including former top members of the Iranian government. I don't know where Columbia University is going to go to get speakers anymore because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was killed in the first couple of days of this war.
You'll remember the former Iranian president who had threatened to wipe Israel off the map and then welcome to Columbia University to speak. Well, unfortunately, Columbia is going to have to look to other speakers bureau other than the Tehran Speakers Bureau.
Secondarily, after decapitating the regime or while doing so, destroying the forward capacity for Iran to make war, that is the other thing that the Trump administration is pursuing.
And that means targeting not only its nuclear facilities and its possible future nuclear development, but also its ballistic missile facilities and its possibility of firing ballistic missiles capable of hitting a large part of the Middle East. One of the most amazing things, and we'll go through the operation as the show goes on,
One of the most incredible things is the lack of full-scale capacity by Iran to retaliate en masse. Realistically speaking, what we are watching right now is one of the most competent military operations in all of human history, truly. Because Iran had literally thousands of missiles. It had hundreds of ballistic missiles.
And in the opening salvo, the Israeli Air Force, the American Air Force, working jointly, destroyed a huge swath, up to 50% of all ballistic missile capacity in Iran. In fact, the air dominance in the Middle East by the Americans and the Israelis over Iran right now is so complete that it's very difficult for the Iranians to even fire up their ballistic missile launchers.
It takes a moment for them to heat up. They can see the heat signature. And before those things are heating up, the Americans are blowing them out of the water. It's absolutely incredible. So destroying the Iranians' forward capacity to make war, that is a massive, massive feat.
Now, again, that had really started in the aftermath of October 7th when the Israeli military took it to Hezbollah in Lebanon, took it to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and then during the 12-day war, took it to Iran directly. But remember, it's been a Yemeni, Iranian-backed Houthi terror group that has been harassing shipping in the Suez Canal.
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Chapter 3: How has Iran historically posed a threat to the US and its allies?
This has been one of the big problems, for example, in the Russia-Ukraine war is the fear that if we go too hard against Russia, Russia will fire nukes. The best you can hope for is a standstill, never a victory. Because of the destruction of the air defense systems provided by Russia and China in the 12-day war, well, this was a unique opportunity.
And that unique opportunity became even more unique after The mass protests began in December by the Iranian people against the regime. President Trump saw a window of opportunity. And again, I'm sort of astonished by folks who are arguing that the best policy when you see a window of opportunity is to sleep, is to go to sleep.
One of the beautiful things about being an isolationist is that you always get the counterfactual on your side. You always get to say a military intervention went wrong. But it turns out there are lots of counterfactuals in which actual preemptive war making is might have foresworn, might have stopped true genocidal intent.
There's so many instances of this throughout history, it boggles the mind. Whether you're talking about the rise of the Russian revolutionaries in the aftermath of the fall of the Tsar, In 1917, what would have happened if the West had had the stones enough to actually stop the rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia? Totally different map for an entire century, essentially.
Probably World War II doesn't happen. What would have happened if the West had had the strength to actually stop the rearmament of Hitler? What would have actually happened if the West had, for example, taken out Osama bin Laden in the aftermath of the USS Cole instead of jacking around? It turns out that coherent, solid action. We're not talking here gigantic wars.
We are talking about operations like this one. Targeted action can provide serious upside and limited downside. And that's what we are talking about right here. That is the counterfactual that we should be looking at right now. Turns out the only counterfactual is not Iraq or Vietnam. Sometimes there are other counterfactuals to examine as well.
And that is what President Trump was saying yesterday. He said that the goal here is to ensure security for generations. That is indeed the burden of the United States. We're undertaking this massive operation, not merely to ensure security for our own time and place, but for our children and their children, just as our ancestors have done for us many, many years ago.
This is the duty and the burden of a free people. These actions are right and they are necessary to ensure that Americans will never have to face a radical, bloodthirsty terrorist regime armed with nuclear weapons and lots of threats. For almost 50 years, these wicked extremists have been attacking the United States while chanting the slogan, death to America or death to Israel or both.
They are the world's number one state sponsor of terror. We are the world's greatest and most powerful nation, so we can do something about what they do. I mean, can't say it better than that. President of the United States, spot on again. What he is doing right now is the most courageous thing I have ever seen a president do. He is stepping into the breach. He is...
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Chapter 4: What recent terrorist attack occurred in the US related to Iran?
And so basically, the IRGC has been relegated to a series of regional state level actors at this point, meaning not federal and consolidated under the domain of a centralized commanding presence. But instead, it's basically a bunch of independent military forces roaming around.
I mean, when they're admitting that and they are two days into the war, two and a half days into the war, that is a pretty shocking admission. And as Lindsey Graham, Senator from South Carolina said on NBC, it is not the job of the United States to pick the next Iranian government. It's up to Iran to pick your leader. It's not my job, it's not President Trump's job.
We're not gonna occupy the country. We're gonna give the people of Iran a chance to do something they've never had before, chart their own destiny. We're gonna take away from any future regime, the ability, any future government, the ability to have a ballistic missile program, a nuclear program or support terrorism. Well, that brings us to the current status of the operations.
General Dan Raisenkane, he gave a presser a little bit earlier today with Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War. And here's what he had to say about where we are right now. This operation was highly classified so that at H-hour, the enemy would see one thing, speed, surprise, and violence of action. The first movers were U.S. Cybercom and U.S.
Spacecom, layering non-kinetic effects, disrupting and degrading and blinding Iran's ability to see, communicate, and respond. At H hour, the beginning of major combat operations, 0115 local Eastern Daylight Time, 945 local AM Tehran Time, as dawn crept up across the Central Command AOR, the skies surged to life.
More than 100 aircraft launched from land, sea, fighters, tankers, airborne early warning, electronic attack, bombers from the states and unmanned platforms, forming a single synchronized wave. This was a daylight strike based on a trigger event conducted by the Israeli Defense Forces enabled by the U.S. intelligence community.
The first shooters at sea were Tomahawks unleashed by the United States Navy, closed in on Iranian naval forces, and began to conduct strikes across the southern flank in Iran. On the ground, forces fired precision standoff weapons, measured, deliberate, precise, and lethal.
This was a massive, overwhelming attack across all domains of warfare, striking more than 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours. Now, obviously, we have seen some American casualties thus far. We have seen four Americans who were killed in a missile falling in Kuwait, shot by the Iranians. Of course, another four American soldiers who were injured in that fall.
Obviously, our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the wounded and to the families of those killed in action. These are the best among us. These are the heroes who are there to do the dirty work. They are heroes. And the attempt by some to turn the brave fighting men and women of the armed services into victims. of some sort, like victims of America or victims of bad decision-making.
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Chapter 5: What were the major events leading up to the current conflict with Iran?
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Now, meanwhile, three American F-15s were shot down, but not by the Iranians. They were shot down by mistake by the air defense system in Kuwait. All of the pilots are fine. There is footage of these jets sort of almost floating down from the sky. You can sort of see them as they fall down from the sky. The pilots did eject.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of Trump's military strategy in Iran?
The pilots are okay. Again, that's a friendly fire incident. As it is worth noting, friendly fire incidents, unfortunately, are a common theme of war. They do happen fairly frequently.
It also happens to be true that in terms of the military campaign that is currently being waged, if anyone had suggested that the United States would have established complete air dominance over Iran and taken out the entire top echelon of the Iranian military, as well as Ayatollah Khamenei, that the United States would have been completely dominant in terms of destroying pretty much all the ballistic missile launchers available, ballistic missile facilities, nuclear facilities.
and that the total casualty list for the United States would be four dead and four wounded. That would have been an astonishing success of a military operation. Now, undoubtedly, this is gonna be a longer operation. Certainly, I'd be shocked if more soldiers are not wounded or killed because that's the nature of military operations.
They're inherently dangerous, but that's exactly why we ought to be paying them homage. That's exactly why we ought to be honoring the men and women of the armed services who are doing the hard work that needs to be done. By the way, here is a map since February 28th of strikes on Iran. Pretty astonishing stuff here. You can see these strikes on Iran all over the country, all over the country.
The vast population of Iran tends to be in its west, not in its east, which is why you're seeing fewer attacks toward that portion of Iran. Now, the more important map in terms of what Iran is trying to do is where they're firing in retaliation. And the answer is pretty much everywhere. They're desperate, and you can see they're desperate.
They're attacking Dubai, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Riyadh, Tel Aviv. They attacked in Jordan. They're firing missiles at Cyprus. They're basically trying desperately, desperately, desperately to get someone to tell the combined forces of the United States and Israel and its allies to stop. That's really the strategy here.
When it comes to what comes next, I know everyone wants to know what comes next. First of all, again, let the President cook. We're three days in. That's first of all.
But Neil Ferguson, the historian, has a great piece over at the Free Press today in which he says, contrary to the criticism already being aired on both the left and the right, Trump is not reverting to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's regime change playbook. Regime alteration is the practical consequence of the approach laid out in Trump's national security strategy published late last year.
The strategy rules out the deployment of American ground forces other than special forces. It requires a short time frame for military operations. It will disappoint those who want to fast track Venezuela and Iran to democracy. But the lesson of Iraq has not been lost on Trump. That's why it misses the point to say Trump claims to be an isolationist and he's starting another forever war.
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Chapter 7: How is the Iranian military responding to the US and Israeli attacks?
And count on the left-wing media to do the work of the Ayatollahs. That is the most bizarre description of a true... piece of human shit that I've ever, I mean, truly amazing stuff there from the Washington Post. Well done, Obit writers. Wow. Wow. True self-reliance begins with taking control of your health. Our sponsor, Armra Colostrum, harnesses nature's original blueprint for resilience.
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The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash Shapiro. That's netsuite.com slash Shapiro. Adam Schiff, the senator from California, also helping out. He jumps in, he says, don't worry, the Ayatollah posed no imminent threat. No imminent threat. Okay, so I'm just going to point out again, the Ayatollah spread terrorism all over the world.
The Ayatollah was not just an imminent threat to Israel, it was an imminent threat to Saudi Arabia, to Jordan, to Lebanon, to UAE. I mean, like, you know, I love that imminent threat now comes to mean that basically, everything has to be an episode of 24.
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