Chapter 1: What led to the U.S. strikes on Iran and the death of the Ayatollah?
Good morning, everyone. I am Cabot Phillips, live from Daily Wire HQ. And this is a special breaking edition of Wired In Live. This morning, I'll be speaking with top U.S. lawmakers, diplomats, and intelligence officials to sift through all of the noise in Iran and get to the facts. But first, let's recap what has taken place in the last 36 hours. Because it has been crazy.
Yesterday, President Donald Trump launched Operation Epic Fury, joining with Israel in a historic military operation targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran. We now know that the US targeted missile stockpiles, anti-air defenses, and nuclear facilities, while Israel primarily went after senior personnel within the regime.
The goal was to score a decapitation strike, knocking out the most senior leaders as possible, And that is just what happened. Numerous high-ranking officials within Iran were killed, including head of the country's National Defense Council, the top commander of the Iranian military, their defense minister, the military chief of staff, and most importantly, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
President Trump confirmed the news last night, saying Hamani, quote, one of the most evil people in history is dead. This is not only justice for the people of Iran, but for all great Americans and those people from many countries throughout the world that have been killed or mutilated by Hamani and his gang of bloodthirsty thugs.
He was unable to avoid our intelligence and highly sophisticated tracking systems. And working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he or the other leaders that had been killed along with him could do. This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their country.
Overnight, videos flooded social media showing Iranians around the world celebrating with large demonstrations in Washington, New York, London, and all across Iran, where thousands of people flooded the streets, dancing, honking horns, and setting off fireworks. Have a look. And especially remarkable footage, demonstrators tore down a large statue of the Ayatollah.
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Chapter 2: How did Operation Epic Fury unfold in the first 36 hours?
Watch.
Hmm.
Just stunning footage there. And obviously, even more footage comes out every second from this country. And we're going to be playing that throughout the morning as it comes to us. Now, for their part, the Iranian regime says they will not be deterred by the death of their leader. They've been adamant that they were prepared for a moment like this and have a succession plan in place.
For now, state media reports that an interim committee will run the country until a permanent leader is chosen. Overnight, regime spokesman vowed to enact revenge on the US and Israel, quote, with a force they have never experienced before. At this hour, the United States and Israel have begun day two of their bombing campaign against Iran.
President Trump issued a statement warning the country that, quote, Iran just stated they are going to hit very hard today, harder than they have ever hit before. In all caps now, they better not do that. because if they do, we will hit them with a force that has never been seen before.
But to this point, earlier in the last 24 hours, those strikes had been largely effective, though some missiles and drones have found their mark in Israel, Bahrain, the UAE, Jordan, and Kuwait. We do have breaking news coming in just in the last few minutes. I'm going to get right to that. This is from U.S. Central Command reporting the first U.S. casualties
In this operation, they wrote, quote, as of 9.30 Eastern Time, March 1st, three U.S.
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Chapter 3: What reactions are emerging from the Iranian regime after the Ayatollah's death?
service members have been killed in action and five are seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury. Several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions and are in the process of being returned to duty. Major combat operations continue and our response effort is ongoing.
The situation is fluid, so out of respect for the families, we will withhold additional information, including the identities of our fallen warriors, until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified. So again, CENTCOM there reporting three American service members have been killed
That is a major development here, something that President Trump also warned of when he first announced that the strike was going on. He told the American people that there was a chance that service members would be killed in pursuit of a safer United States. And now we know. According to CENTCOM, as of 9.30 a.m., at least three U.S. service members have been killed.
We're also now getting new details on the strikes yesterday that killed the Ayatollah and roughly 50 other senior advisors. First, numerous reports say that the latest round of nuclear negotiations which took place in Geneva were essentially a ruse to keep Iran believing that a diplomatic solution was still on the table. The U.S.
wanted to avoid arousing suspicion that a strike was coming, so they kept the negotiations going. The president had decided reportedly that the Iranians were simply stalling, that they never intended to make a deal or give up their nuclear ambitions. And that ultimately is what led to this decision.
Senior White House officials are now saying there were also credible intelligence reports from within Iran that the Supreme Leader knew he was running out of time and also running out of options, and that he planned to launch a preemptive strike on U.S. service members in the region.
So the administration is essentially saying they had no choice but to strike first to ensure that that Iranian response would be more muted. Now, there are plenty of skeptics, especially those on the left, who do not believe that assessment.
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Chapter 4: How are U.S. lawmakers responding to the situation in Iran?
They have drawn parallels to President Bush assuring the American people there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that warranted an invasion. So do not be surprised if we hear from President Trump and others in the White House in the coming days as they look to assure the American people that this was the best and potentially only option.
That pushback from the left and from many who are skeptical of a broader military conflict in the Middle East, it's only going to grow as we now have these reports from Central Command that three US service members have been killed. Again, President Trump warned that could take place, but now we know that it has in fact happened. Three Americans are now dead.
We now also know that on Saturday morning, Ayatollah Khomeini convened a meeting of his top military and intelligence aides above ground in Tehran. And at the same time, two other meetings were taking place in the city. Now, typically these sorts of strikes take place at night, but the US and Israel reportedly felt this was their best shot for a decapitation strike, and they took it.
The obvious question now is who will fill the power vacuum in Tehran? Could this ultimately lead to the collapse of the regime? Joining me now to help answer those questions and more to kick things off today is Tim Rice, Daily Wire DC bureau chief and Cassie Akiva, Daily Wire foreign affairs reporter. So Tim, I want to start with you. You are in DC. What have you been hearing from lawmakers?
What is the mood in the Capitol?
About the same as yesterday, but Congress has shifted into the expected phase two of its response to yesterday's attacks, which is they're now fighting with each other and demanding more information. So the Congress had previously scheduled votes on potential intervention in Iran for this coming week. Those have obviously been preempted.
Now we have the Democratic leaders of both the House and Senate calling for a referendum vote, essentially, in the next coming days to either condemn or affirm the president's strikes in Iran and also to attempt to, on some levels, curtail future action.
We're also seeing, you know, dissident Republicans like Thomas Massey and Rand Paul joining in those calls to prevent another forever war and curtail executive power.
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Chapter 5: What does the interim leadership in Iran look like following the Ayatollah's death?
And more than that, though, and this is likely going to change now that we've seen reports for casualties of casualties and fatalities. But the other thing that the lawmakers are doing is they are grappling for information. So as we reported yesterday, Marco Rubio briefed the Gang of Eight, which is congressional leaders and the head of the classified intelligence committees from both houses.
Now every other lawmaker wants to get in on the action. There have been some private meetings, at least on the Republican side, late yesterday and early today. But I expect to see a lot more public posturing calling for either support or condemnation of the president.
And more than anything, expect to see a lot of anonymous stories of such and such a lawmaker is furious that they weren't briefed on the attacks.
Yeah, we're going to be speaking with Senator Bill Hagerty in a moment. And we're definitely going to get his take on that looming War Powers Resolution vote in the Senate. So Cassie, I want to get to you. We know that Iran, they were very prepared for a strike that would kill the Ayatollah. They had an entire succession plan in place.
We now know that there is an interim leadership council who is temporarily running the country until a permanent leader is chosen. Walk us through that process. Who is on this interim council? And what does this replacement process look like?
Sure. So the first person on the council is President Masoud Pesistan. And then the second one would be Judiciary Chief Gulmelassin Mohsen Engi. I'm probably mispronouncing some of these names.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of American casualties in this operation?
And then there's a jurist from the Guardian Council. So this is a group of three people. Obviously, they're probably very hidden right now. And they're supposed to lead the country. Now, the Iranians are very prepared for this. They have succession. They have IRGC commissioners.
commanders spread out throughout the country, they knew something like this could happen and they're prepared to deal with it. So usually there is a huge process of how they pick the next supreme leader.
A lot of the mullahs come together and they go through a very legalistic process to figure out who the next leader is, but they're obviously suspending that and having a short-term council to lead. But I did just see that Israel has now launched new strikes on Tehran. This has happened in the last few minutes. Israel has declared air superiority over all of Tehran and all of Western Iran.
So they are in the skies and they're not getting shot down. And this is a big breakthrough throughout this conflict. And I'm assuming they'll go to the rest of the country as well and get rid of those air defense systems.
So again, the big question now, we have this obviously information vacuum coming out of Iran where it's difficult for us to glean too much about their internal processes. But what are we hearing right now as to who could be the most likely or logical replacement for the Ayatollah when this is all said and done?
Right. So a lot of people, I mean, previously, a few years ago, you would have said it would have been the Iranian president that mysteriously fell down in a helicopter.
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Chapter 7: How is the situation affecting U.S.-Israel relations?
Everyone thought he was going to be the successor. You know, this is up in the air. It could be anyone. Israel is currently killing a lot of the senior leaders. And if you haven't heard of how the work's been kind of divvied up between Israel and the U.S.
during these attacks, Israel's been primarily taking out leadership and America has been primarily taking out facilities and military installations. So I guess we'll just see who's left standing because Israel has already killed a huge portion of the chain of command in Iran. So I guess we'll see what happens there.
But I also want to point out that you're talking earlier about Iranian strikes on different countries in the region. And the UAE just announced that they had shot down 90 or 96 percent. of Iranian missiles that is highly successful. Israel is close to that as well.
So while the Iranians are shooting their missiles and they're estimated to only have about twenty five hundred, a lot of them are getting shot down. So it's only a few more days until Iran might run out of missiles.
Tim, let's get back to the political angle here. Before these strikes, polling showed that a preemptive operation against Iran, frankly, was not popular. The majority of Americans opposed such an operation.
But we also saw the same thing before the operation to capture Maduro in Venezuela, where people were not supportive, but then they saw the results, and the majority ended up supporting that mission. Do you think the same thing could happen here in Iran, given the overwhelming success of this move?
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Chapter 8: What does the future hold for Iran and its influence in the Middle East?
It's very likely. I mean, first of all, you know, the sort of disclaimer is that war polling and polling around military action is kind of notoriously fickle and it always sort of vacillates depending on the mood, right? I mean, there was a time when the Iraq war was polling, not super popularly, but right, I mean, kind of, you know, better than it eventually pulled.
And these things go up and down. I think one thing that people are missing in this debate and one thing we're hearing a lot here in Washington from the president's supporters is that it's very easy to fall back into the rhetoric of he said no more forever wars. He promised no more, you know, regime change in the Middle East.
And yes, while this sort of smacks of that, I think much like we saw with Maduro, the president and this administration are really hitting the message that their goal is not for it to be a forever war. Their goal is for it to be decisive, successful, and then to hand things over to the Iranian people. So I would expect to see a lot of vacillations in the coming days.
I mean, the two big news stories out this morning, obviously the fatalities, that's going to make this a little bit less popular. But not an entirely equal counterbalance, but something else to throw into the mix, the reports that former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been killed.
I mean, he was a big villain in the American political lexicon for a long time and in the formative years of a lot of people in our prime voting bloc. So, I mean, this is a man who, much like the Ayatollahs, in a lot of American minds is synonymous with terrorism and tyranny in the Middle East.
So again, I think we're going to see a lot of these one-two punches, something to boost the poll numbers, something to bring it down. It's also, I think, going to come down to when does Trump really start talking about this, right? We've seen a couple of statements, a couple of truth social posts, again, mostly geared at Iran and the Iranian people.
But at some point, the president's going to come back to Washington. At some point, he's going to get in front of news cameras. And then that's a whole different ballgame.
Let's talk about what that might look like then, Tim, because as you mentioned, Americans are hesitant to get involved in the Middle East, even if it is a more touch and go operation like this one, in and out, not having boots on the ground. But the White House was saying off the record to reporters or on background that they had evidence of an imminent strike from Iran.
What are we hearing on that front? And do you expect President Trump to make that the main thrust of, hey, we had to go do this or else we were going to get hit because Beyond just saying, well, it's good for the Iranian people to topple this regime.
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