Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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.
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Chapter 2: What recent events led to the U.S. strikes on Iran?
Have a look. And especially remarkable footage, demonstrators tore down a large statue of the Ayatollah. Watch.
Hmm.
Just stunning footage there.
Chapter 3: What was the objective of Operation Epic Fury?
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. 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.
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Chapter 4: How did the Iranian regime react to the death of their Supreme Leader?
And you start counting on your fingers and trying to figure out what it is. But he's going to talk about Venezuela. He's going to talk about bringing all the hostages from Israel. He's going to talk about how he's talking tough with Putin. He's going to talk about peace in Armenia and all these other places that he's sort of brokered talks.
So I think that is ultimately what it's going to come back to. switching the rhetoric away from we needed to neutralize this threat and more to look at all that I am doing to create peace and stability in the broader world and make America safe.
Cassie, there have been reports from Israel that it was Israeli intelligence that was telling the US that the Ayatollah would be having this secret meeting above ground. That was an important aspect there as well, that he would be above ground with his team.
Just tell us about that intelligence operation, because even the fact that they were able to get footage of the Ayatollah's body confirmed out of the country, how are they doing things like that? And just how ingrained is Israeli intelligence within the regime?
I mean, there was a story a few years ago about how the man in charge of finding Mossad spies in Iran was actually a Mossad spy himself. So Mossad is very ingrained in Israel, but they're not the ones taking credit for this. The CIA is taking credit for knowing where Khomeini was. Um, and they say that they pass it along to the Israelis who carried out the strike. So, um, very coordinated.
This is much different than the 12 day war. The 12th day war Israel was by themselves until America came in with the B2 bombers. This is highly coordinated. I kept asking because I was offline on the war start. I kept saying, who attacked first, Israel or America? And they attacked together. So this is very coordinated.
And I just want to flag one more thing that we might be seeing the death toll of Americans go up because there were nine Israelis who were just killed in Beit Shemesh, which is a highly American neighborhood in Israel. We don't know the identities of these people yet. And the death toll might be going up because there are some severely injured.
But I'm just flagging that because that might be a situation as well.
Yeah, I want to read this tweet again for people who are just now joining us, that we have information coming in of American casualties. I'm going to pull up that post right here from Central Command. They wrote, as of 9.30 a.m. Eastern Time, three U.S. service members have been killed in action. Five are seriously wounded as part of Operation Epic Fury. Again, that's from CENTCOM. That is...
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Chapter 5: What implications do American casualties have for U.S. military strategy?
I think we can expect to see some more lawmakers. I would keep an eye on some folks like Anna Paulina Luna and Lauren Boebert, some of these other kind of former allies of Marjorie Taylor Greene who sort of stuck very close to that America first, no foreign wars part of the party. Also, the president's critics externally too, conservative voices. We're going to start seeing a lot of that.
Yeah. All right. Tim, Cassie, thank you guys so much for coming on. A very fluid situation, but we appreciate both of your insights. Thanks, guys. All right, we're going to get now to Brian Hook, one of the leading experts on Iran. He served as the US Special Representative for Iran. He was also the Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo.
Brian, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Let's get right to it. Because of your work for years now, you have faced credible death threats from the Iranian regime. So this has to be a remarkable weekend for you. How does it feel seeing the death of the Ayatollah? Well, I think more about American foreign policy than any of my own sort of personal questions around these topics.
And so the Islamic Republic of Iran for 47 years has been engaged in really an endless war against the United States and Israel. And President Trump has had enormous success in the Middle East in his first term and now in the second term. I mean, you saw in the first term the defeat of ISIS. and the Abraham Accords. And then here we are in the second term.
We had another country join the Abraham Accords. And now you have... Iran largely on its back and in a very bad place as a consequence of the 12-day war and now this effort to really change the trajectory of the Middle East towards something more stable, something much more secular, something much more tolerant.
And I think these are all, I think the building blocks are in place for a much more stable and prosperous Middle East. What do you make of the men currently leading this interim council to replace the Ayatollah? What should we expect from them? Is there a chance that they take a diplomatic approach with Trump, sort of like we saw in Venezuela with the new leadership?
Or do you think they're going to dig their heels in and fight even harder? President Trump has offered all along the diplomatic track, which the regime has consistently exploited. I think that was a mistake.
And so here we are again, where the president is making very clear that there is an opportunity to have good diplomatic relations with the United States, but Iran has to end its enrichment so that we don't ever face the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran. We also need to end all of this proxy warfare, which has been such a danger to our troops in the Middle East.
And they also need to end these long range ballistic missile productions, which could be aimed at the United States. And so regardless of who is in power, whether it's the Ayatollah or this triumvirate that's in place, any sort of government that follows the death of the Ayatollah, there is an opportunity to be at peace, not only with the United States, but also with Iran's Arab neighbors.
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Chapter 6: What are the potential consequences of the strikes on Iran's leadership?
But Central Command confirming this morning three U.S. casualties. How does this change the calculus of this operation?
Well, it's heartbreaking. President Trump warned that this was likely to happen. But I think you need to add this to the long list of murders and mayhem that the Iranians have caused this regime since they took over. You think back to 1983. What happened with our marine barracks, they took over 200 lives there of American Marines.
They've continued to consistently wage war either directly or through their proxies. You think about what happened on October 7th of 2023, 1,200 people were murdered and slaughtered there, over 40 Americans included in that toll. This is something that we're going to have to address. President Trump was clear about this yesterday that it could happen. I pray that this is absolutely minimized.
I know the president does as well, all of us do.
Yeah.
Now, let's get to the Senate.
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Chapter 7: How are U.S. lawmakers responding to the military action in Iran?
Democrats largely furious over this operation, despite its success to this point. A number of Democrat leaders are calling for a vote on a war powers resolution in an attempt to block the president from taking further action. How will you vote on that measure if it comes to the floor? And what do you make of that effort?
I don't think it's going to be successful at all. First, President Trump has been clear he's not waging war on Iran. What he's doing is he's taking out their capability to harm us, to harm our allies. He's taking out their short-term, short-range ballistic missile capabilities. He's also taking out their ability to create the launchers that send those missiles in the direction of our allies.
Also in the direction of commerce in the region. 20% of the waterborne oil exports in the world go through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has always used this as a choke point. President Trump is reducing or eliminating that capability. This is about American interests.
This is surgical, and I think he's going to try to do everything he can to minimize the casualties, as we said, sad that we'd have any casualties. But also, he's opened the door for the Iranian people. We've seen the picture of people in the streets celebrating. This is a generational opportunity for them to step up and take their country back.
Yeah. I'm interested in your take on the objectives here. So President Trump initially saying that the main goal was to knock out the nuclear stockpiles, to destroy the missile capabilities, the missile program.
If that is successful, but the regime is still in power, would you support the president continuing this operation once that first military mission is successful to try and get the regime weakened so that they could be toppled from within?
This regime has done nothing except shout death to America, death to Israel. And look at what's happened now in the wake of this most recent episode. They've actually gone out and attacked their allies in the region. I think the world's sentiment is turning against this regime. They need to go.
The White House has said they had credible intelligence that Iran was planning a preemptive strike on American forces in the region. Have you been given any evidence of those preemptive plans from Iran?
You know, I've not had those sort of intelligence briefings, but I can say this. Iran is consistently positioned and postured itself so that it continue to create and wreak mayhem in the area.
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Chapter 8: What role does Israeli intelligence play in the current conflict?
the countries in the Gulf to ally with the United States and Israel and enter into combat, which appears that we're on the track too because of this very misguided approach by the Iranians. But not as surprising when you start to realize how fractured their leadership's become.
To this point, we have seen, again, three US service members killed. We've seen a number of civilians in Israel also confirmed dead.
But from a relative standpoint, when you take into account what we believe to be the thousands of missiles the Iranians have fired off so far, have you been surprised by the relative lack of success that Iran has been able to have and the relative lack of damage that they've been able to inflict as a result?
again, I kind of go back to the lack of targeting discipline is really what's equating to this very ineffectual missile barrages. They're not launching the large massed attacks that they did last summer because their command and control has been decapitated. And in that confusion,
They're making attacks as they see an opportunity rather than coordinating with drones and large mass missile strikes against, say, Israel or one target, but it's scattered across. So I think this is the real reason behind the ineffectiveness. That could change. Hopefully it doesn't.
But this is going to last with this level of intensity, at least for the next few days, as the targets and the threats are actually taken out. And hopefully in the interim, the Iranian people stand up.
You spent years working within the Pentagon. Walk us through what the options you believe are. They're being presented to President Trump now from his military advisors.
Yeah, most of my time was operational in the Pacific, but dealing with providing the president many options, military options, is the key goal of the Pentagon and the military. It's not to dictate or make the recommendation which to take, but to maximize the options. And so by having two aircraft carrier strike groups, one in the Eastern Mediterranean and
The other one in the Arabian Sea, both within striking distance and very likely conducting very intensive operations, gives the president a rheostat that he can adjust and maneuver his forces to send a signal, but also to affect certain military operational impacts like we're seeing right now in the pictures.
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