Chapter 1: What is the context of the US strikes on Iran?
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 initial targets of the airstrikes?
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.
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Chapter 3: What updates are we receiving about Iranian leadership?
We pray for every service member as they selflessly risk their lives to ensure that Americans and our children will never be threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran. We ask God to protect all of our heroes in harm's way, and we trust that, with his help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail.
So the big question now is how Iran will respond. To give some context here, Iranian leaders have been saying for months that if the Ayatollah and other members of the country's leadership team were directly targeted, there would be, in their words, an unprecedented response. It was the red line of sorts. They used the term existential threat to describe a potential attack on the Ayatollah.
And now it appears that such an attack has taken place. It's already clear that this is a very different situation than what we saw back in June. That's when Trump first hit Iran in Operation Midnight Hammer. Now, remember, following those strikes, the Iranians offered a restrained, mostly symbolic strike of their own in response. They targeted an American base in Qatar, sending 19 missiles.
They actually went as far in that case as giving the U.S. advance notice that the strikes were coming. So most of their missiles were shot down and no casualties were reported. Basically, it was a face-saving measure from the Ayatollah.
The Iranians said if they were hit again, and especially if the Ayatollah's family and himself were targeted, that they would respond this time with the full force of their arsenal. And that appears to be happening. During Operation Midnight Hammer, the US successfully targeted Iranian missile stockpiles early on. That significantly hindered their ability to launch retaliatory strikes.
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.
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Chapter 4: How is the international community reacting to the strikes?
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.
Again, just historic, remarkable comments there from Trump directly telling the people of Iran to overthrow the regime. Now, the prospect of regime change will ultimately come down to how the Iranian people respond to these attacks. We've already seen massive historic demonstrations this year against the Ayatollah. And the White House is confident that sentiment will only grow gradually.
as the regime continues to weaken, or at least appear more weakened from within. To that point, we've already seen a number of videos that reportedly show Iranians celebrating this operation today. Here's one, for example, that appears to show students cheering the strikes.
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Chapter 5: What concerns do Democrats express about US actions 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...
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.
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Chapter 6: How does President Trump's foreign policy differ from previous administrations?
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 strikes on Iran have for US-China relations?
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?
Chapter 8: What is the potential impact of regime change on Iran's future?
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%. 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.
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