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Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis
Is Action Against Iran Justified?, Christopher Tollefsen Debates the Just War Theory & Rep. Ro Khanna on Whether Iran Is an Imminent Threat
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Foreign. Here. Welcome to the no spin news. Wednesday, March 11, 2026. Stand up for your country. Iran continues to dominate the news cycle. Very important story. And now the Catholic Church is involved. And I am a Roman Catholic, as you probably know, so I take a heavy interest in this. But even if you're an atheist or any other religion, you should, too, because what the Church is putting out is worth considering when you are thinking about the United States trying to right a wrong in Iran. And that is the subject of this evening's Talking Points Memo. So the Vatican is a country. A lot of people don't know that. It's a nation. And it has a foreign policy. And as part of that policy, it says that you should not fight militarily unless you're involved in a just war. Okay? A righteous action. And there are three things that define just war. Just cause, you got to have a reason, right? Intention, what you want to happen after the military action is over, and proportionality. So if some nation kills 5 of your people, you don't kill 5 million. That's proportionality. Now, this is based on the writings of a very brilliant scholar, St. Augustine, and it has changed over the centuries. And you remember way back, the Crusades, where the Catholic Church tried to dislodge Muslims from the Holy Land. That was not a just war. I mean, it was a conflict between two religions, but it went on forever. And it was back and forth. It was more about territory than imposing some kind of belief system in a deity. Anyway, right now we have a schism in the Catholic Church. People like me who respect the church's teaching believe that the Iranian action is righteous. So it is a just war. I said President Trump is doing the right thing. But often the right thing is very painful and very difficult to accomplish. In fact, most of the time. And it doesn't help when you have a powerful religion lining up against you. So Catholics are the biggest religious group in the United States of America. And Pope Leo has weighed in, and here's what he said. We lift our humble prayer to the Lord so that the thunderous sound of bombs may cease, weapons may fall silent, and a space for dialogue may open up in which the voice of the people can be heard. Unquote. Okay? In theory, that's perfect. That's what should happen. But we have been trying to negotiate, we the United States, with Iran, to stop their nuclear weapons program for years, and dialogue doesn't seem to be doing it. And Iran itself admits we're going to develop our nuclear weapons. Whether you like it or not. That's why the bombing started. That was the reason in the last Geneva Conference between the United States, led by Steve Witkoff and the Iranians, the Iranian Foreign Minister said, hey, we don't care what you say. We're going to do what we want. In addition to that, 30,000 Iranians have been murdered by their own government over the last few weeks. Those are protesters. You saw it, 30,000 dead. That's a lot of dead bodies. All right, so I'd like to hear the voice of the people, your Holiness, I would, but they can't talk because they're dead. So this is reality intruding on theory. Now in the United States, the Cardinal in Washington D.C. robert McElroy said this quote, the criterion of just cause is not met because our country was not responding to an existing or imminent and objectively verifiable attack by Iran. As Pope Benedict declared categorically that Catholic teaching does not support preventive war, a war justified by speculation about events in the future. Now, we asked Cardinal McElroy to come on. He was so disrespectful to us, he didn't even reply to the invitation. That's not the Christian thing to do there, Cardinal. I'm scolding a cardinal so hell awaits me. I understand that, but it's not. It was disrespectful totally. And the cardinal is not a stand up guy. Sorry. Got to tell the truth. Now the cardinal says does not support preventative war. In the Civil War, if Presidents Pierce and Buchanan had taken aggressive action against the south, which was supporting slavery, which was brutalizing human beings, okay, if they had taken preventative action, Pierce and Buchanan would not have been a civil war because the Confederacy at that point was too weak to fight. But neither president did. Pierce actually sympathized with the south and Buchanan was an incompetent fool. And so it fell on Abraham Lincoln, President after Buchanan. Now, if the Union had taken action against the south to stop the rebellion, more than a million people would not have died. Then you go to 1938. Everybody knew Adolf Hitler wanted to conquer the world and was willing to kill as many people as possible to do it, including murdering civilians that he didn't like. Like Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals. Everybody knew that that was not a secret. And interestingly enough, while the Catholic Church gets a black eye in the run up to World War II, that's unfair. Because if you look at the roles of the first concentration camp at Dachau in Bavaria, it's still there. If you want to go over and see it. There were scores of Catholic priests who spoke out against the Third Reich incarcerated in that concentration camp. Now, the Vatican couldn't do anything about it because it was so small. It is a nation, but it doesn't have any power. But if Europe and America had united against Hitler in 1938-39, 20 million people wouldn't have died. So you're telling me that preventative war is off the table? Cardinal McElroy, you're willing to see millions and millions of people die? That doesn't make any sense. And I don't believe Jesus would support it. I'm sorry. It makes no sense at all. Iran. So we all know that 1200 people were killed by Hamas in a raid of October 7, 2023. How did that happen? Well, if you read Confronting Evil, and all of this swirls around my book, Confronting Evil, all of it. Hitler, civil war, attack on October 7th. It's all in there.
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The New York Post has been delivering impactful headlines for over two centuries. And every weekday morning, I'll bring them straight to you. I'm Caitlin Becker, host of the New York Post. Cast from Washington to Wall Street. If it matters to you, you'll hear it here. And it wouldn't be the Post without the stories other outlets like to ignore. So ask your smart speaker to play the NYPost, listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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And the overarch theme is, if you don't stop evil, it gets worse and worse and worse and worse, and more and more people die. That's a theme of confronting evil. Okay, so Hamas goes over, he kills, rapes. You know, 1200 people, they could not have done that without Iran. Iran arms them. Okay, and then the blowback from Israel into Gaza with the Palestinian people. What do we got? 60, 70,000 dead there because Israel had to protect itself and Hamas was hiding behind the civilians. I mean, come on, that's. Iran did that. Hamas and Hezbollah, which is firing the rockets at Israel now from Lebanon, they're bought and paid for by Iran. So how many more people are going to die? And then you go back to the Iraq war where Iran was making all the roadside bombs killing Americans. On and on and on and on. You know, I got ya. Tolah Khomeini on the COVID of Confronting Evil, and we explain exactly what he did in 39 years. Millions of people he killed. But you don't do a preventative war. And the Pope. Space for dialogue. What do you want to talk about? This is a regime that admits it's going to develop a nuclear weapon and you let it go. You let it happen based upon all of the things that we have seen in the last 39 years. I wouldn't want it that on my conscience. I really wouldn't. The un, a paper tiger has no power, actually condemned Iran and said, look, they are developing a nuclear weapon and they're dangerous. Now, Iran never signed, neither did the United States or Russia, the UN nuclear treaty. Iran didn't sign it. We didn't sign it. Russia didn't sign it. But the UN understands that at this point, Iran was fairly close to developing at least 10 nuclear bombs. Okay? When the UN condemns you, you know you're bad. So let's sum it up. In 1938, Hitler could have been stopped. He wasn't stopped. All right? 20 million dead at least. At least in Europe and, you know, millions more displaced. Civil war. A million dead could have been stopped. This is all preventive action which was not taken. But we're dealing with the Catholic Church now that even doesn't understand history or ignores it, because I think I've made the most powerful case you can make that if you got a dangerous nation. Now we have nukes involved. Hitler didn't have nukes. Believe me, he would have used them if he did. Putin has nukes, which is why we can't preempt Putin. That's why we can't do it. Okay, but you can't, according to the Catholic Church, have a preventative war. And that's a memo. Let's bring in another point of view, which we of course, always do. Here joining us from Columbia, South Carolina is Dr. Christopher Tollefson. He is the director for the center of American Civic Leadership at the University of South Carolina. Where am I going wrong here, doctor?
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Well, that's a good question, Bill. You make a number of important points. I think there's an important difference in what the church teaches between what it calls preemption, what we could call preemption within the Just war tradition and prevention. Force Use of force is permitted in just war theory in order to prevent what the Church considers to be an imminent attack, where there's an intention to do harm to one's country and preparations are underway. Underway. And one could think of that as preventative because it can certainly take place before the actual hostilities commence on the part of the country that is preparing to aggress against one's own country. I think the Church distinguishes between that and what it calls prevention in part by a scope of time. Prevention is taking action before the hostilities are imminent, before there's actually an attack that is being planned and about to go underway. It's being undertaken with the anticipation that such an attack might happen in the future, but without evidence that it is about to happen right now and that there are steps that we can take to prevent this particular attack. So I think the Church is making this distinction. It doesn't require you to wait until the hostilities are actually underway. Right. If you see that they're forthcoming, then it's entirely reasonable for you to undertake them. But I think in the interests of peace and fairness and with an eye to the destruction that contemporary warfare can cost or cause, the Church teaches that prevention undertaken or understood as a longer term prospect and project.
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But look, Hitler wasn't a danger to the world in 1938. Okay? And right now the Church is making the argument that Iran's not a danger to the world. And I'm saying it is a danger to the world. 30,000 dead. I mean, does the Church overlook that? Did they not know that? How can you justify allowing a Nation to kill 30,000 people in two weeks?
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Well, I don't think the Church does justify that. I think even.
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But it condemned the action. It condemned it.
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Governor McElroy says Iran is a terrible nation. It's a terrible country. It's being ruled by terrible people, it's guilty of grave crimes and injustices.
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I think it's important, but we don't want to do anything about it. You know, rhetoric is one thing and action is another.
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D
Look, that's both the time have been to do something about that. Do you think?
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Now that's why I support the action
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for those 30,000 people though. Right.
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It's too late, but there'll be another 50,000, okay, if they
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D
use hostilities.
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Look, let's stay in a real world here. The Church, the rhetoric is, oh, you know, we don't want this. We want dialogue, we want the people to be heard, but we don't want it. But if you try to do something about it, which is what is underway now by the United States and Israel by knocking out Iran's military capacity to kill people, which is what we're doing. We're not going to support that. It doesn't make any sense at all. It makes no sense at all what they're doing. So on one hand, they want to say, oh, we hate this, but we don't want to do anything about it. Come on, Doc.
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So I think one important way to look at this is in terms of what the Church thinks of as the first principle at stake in international relations and also in domestic relations and thinking about the common good. And that is its particular understanding of peace and the nature of peace. So peace isn't just the absence of war. It's not just the cessation of hostilities. It's what the Church calls the tranquility of order, which requires an order and harmony of the wills of the various participants. That's a really tall order when you're dealing with a country like Iran and its leaders. But the Church is always keeping that in mind as the state of affairs.
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That, again, it's theoretical. It's theoretical. Look, these are people, these theocrats in Tehran, the two ayatollahs. And I hope you read my book, Confronting Evil. You should let your, you know, sign it to your class. I mean, these people will kill you for being gay. They throw gay people up buildings. Okay, so I don't understand the sympathy for the devil here, because when the Pope says something, people pay attention. You know, a lot of cynics don't, but I do. I respect the Vatican. I respect the quest for peace, and I understand my religion very, very well. They're wrong here. It's just wrong. Last word.
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Sure.
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So the Church teaches, as you put up on your slide, that there needs to be a right intention, and that right intention needs to be an intention towards peace. How is that, for instance, compatible with a requirement of unconditional surrender, which the president has said is a requirement here? That looks like a requirement of subjugation. It looks like a requirement of humiliation. It doesn't look like it's consistent with a desire, ultimately, for the kind of peace that the Church is talking about? And that's the kind of consideration about these hostilities, about this particular war that I think is raising the concerns of Catholics.
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Okay. But you have to disarm the murderer.
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And that's what's going on now. And that's what the Pope and Cardinal McElroy will not support. And that's the fact. Hey, Doctor, very good debate and we really appreciate your time coming on. I, I think that was one of our best segments we've done. Thank you very much. All right, the Rasmussen poll out. This is a poll that's favorable. DONALD TRUMP Usually 10, 85 likely voters. Big question. President Trump ordered U.S. military to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program ballistic missile capabilities. Do you approve or disapprove? Strongly, somewhat approved, 52. Strongly, somewhat disapprove. 42. That poll is opposite the Quinnipiac poll we read yesterday. So these polling centers, you should know this, all right. They skew based upon their ideology. I think it's about 50, 50 in America on this because as I said, we're not a, we're a soft nation. Now. We don't want to be inconvenienced. We don't pay more for gas. We don't want to pay attention all of that. But that's an interesting poll. Democratic Party is now lining up against the war, as you know, and there was a vote. I'm going to go over this again. We've already reported, but it's very interesting. Last week in the House, it was symbolic legislation said, quote, whereas, according to Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grassi, Iran has amassed a large stockpile of uranium, continues to block access to undeclared sites in Iran affiliated with their big ambitious nuclear program. Now, therefore, it's resolved. House of Representatives declared a policy of the United States that Iran continues to be the largest state sponsor of terrorism, unquote. 53 Democrats voted against that resolution. One of them is a Guy I like very much. He's a standup guy, all right? He comes in, he answers the questions, unlike a lot of his cohorts who run for the hills. Ro Khanna is a congressman in California. He joins us now from Washington. So I said nice things about you because I believe those things, but I was very surprised that you voted against this resolution. Very surprised.
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Here's the thing, Bill, and I appreciated the kind words in your fairness. First of all, Iran is a terrorist state. The IRGC is a terrorist organization. They have killed their own civilians, thousands of them. They have supported Hezbollah and Hamas. So why did I vote against the resolution? Because one of the whereas clauses said that Iran posed a direct and imminent threat, as I read it, to, to the United States. And I fundamentally don't believe that to be true.
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Let me stop you right there. Let me stop you right there. If the United States doesn't take action to destroy their nuclear capability, all right, they are going to develop the weapon. They say that the foreign minister of Iran says we're going to do it. You don't think that's an imminent threat against the United States? Even if they didn't hit us with the weapon, if they hit anybody on the planet, the whole planet's thrown into chaos and thousands of people die. That's not an imminent threat.
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I do believe that it should be United States policy for Iran not to get the bomb. The my view, and we disagree on this, probably, is that the JCPOA that Obama negotiated had sufficiently stopped their enrichment. Now, it didn't do enough in terms of their ballistic missiles. And we could have renegotiated and strengthened it to include missiles, but you had, not only that, you had Donald Trump strike six months ago by his own account, saying he owns obliterated a lot of the nuclear capability. So I just, I do not believe that at this moment this war was worthwhile losing seven service members, over 100 casualties, injuries, the price of gas that it is, the billion dollars a day. I believe there could have been diplomatic efforts that continue to prevent them from getting the nuclear bomb.
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If I thought it didn't work for Obama and it didn't work for Biden, they tried to bribe the mullahs by giving them billions of dollars in unfrozen money. You know that. And they told John Kerry, the secretary said, no, no, no, we'll stop. We're not going to enrich our unanimous weapons grade. And now the U.N. you don't have to believe Trump. The U.N. is saying, hey, they're very close to having Weapons grade uranium enrichment. And it could happen within weeks. That's what the UN Says. And you're still sitting there in California going, I don't see it as an imminent threat.
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But Bill, what about President Trump? Six months ago he said we obliterated all of it.
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I'm not in business to defend President Trump's rhetoric. What he did in June, last June was he knocked out their primary facility where they were making the nuclear weapons. But there are satellite facilities, as you know. You know that. Okay. And that's where we're going now. Not only in the nuke area, but the strategy is to obliterate all offensive capability from Iran because they're killers, they're murderers. So you've got to neutralize them down to pistols so they can't do the carnage they've been doing for 39 years. You gotta stop it. And you say you don't want to stop it by calling a terrorist nation. Come on.
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Well, they are a terrorist nation. I have no problem calling them a terrorist nation.
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But you voted against the resolution because
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of the whereas clauses, where it said it was an imminent threat, where we respectfully disagree, or that, you know, I don't believe it was an imminent threat. If there is a clear resolution saying it's a terrorist state, of course it's a terrorist state. But Bill, what do you think so far we've accomplished? I'm hoping that will accomplish more. I believe the war is wrong, but we've replaced Khamenei, who was 86 year old, with Khamenei Jr. Who was 56 year old, who is a more of a hardliner.
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It doesn't look at this moment like the regime is going to change what it looks like. And you know, I have access to the highest levels of power in the United States. What it looks like is that the bombing will continue to obliterate Iran's offensive capabilities. That will take another week or so. Already today there is a report. I cannot verify the report. I'll be in the White House next Tuesday. I'll be able to verify a lot more after I go there. But there's a report today that the Mueller Jr. Has said to we want now to talk. So the Iranians obviously are getting the hell kicked out of them and this is a threat to them. And they wouldn't be in power if they didn't kill 30,000 of their own countrymen. Okay.
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No question.
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And so they'll probably open talks and then Trump will impose what he wants. Now, whether Iran accepts that or not, I think they will because they really don't have much of a choice now, you know, talk that cliche is bombing them back to the stone age. That's what they're doing. And that is not a bad policy. I'll give you the last word.
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The question is, you know, what are we going to happen when we have a new president? Are they going to go bomb again when they start to develop the weapons?
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With what?
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Well, I think they're the public reporting because I don't want to speak about any of the classified that I've seen is that they can rebuild this stuff in a couple years. And you know, I think that's a question that Donald Trump or the administration needs to answer. What comes next? And first of all, the question should be clear to the American people. If this is not a regime change war, you should make that clear. If this is just to degrade Iran's capability, my view is it wasn't imminent. It still wasn't at the right time moment in terms of our lives lost. But then, now that we've done it, and I have great admiration and respect for the service members and their families who bore the ultimate sacrifice, we should at least make sure that their sacrifice isn't in vain and that there's some plan that they two years, three years from now, we don't have the same conversation about what are we going to do?
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Well, we're going to have a different president in less than three years. So that's up to that person. You know, look, when they defeated Hitler, they got another problem with Stalin. But that doesn't mean you don't defeat Hitler. Hey, Congressman, it's always good talking with you. And again, I'll reiterate that you're a stand up guy and you should tell your peers, you know, the conversations that we have are worthy. People need to hear both sides. And when you run and hide or just go on MSNBC because they kiss your butt, that does nobody any good. But you are an exception and we appreciate it very much. Okay. Donald Trump today is in Kentucky talking about lowering drug prices. So he's got a, you know, a duality here because he could lose the midterms. And so he's got to convince the American people that he's going to try to get these prices under control. That's what he's doing today. All right, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with we'll do it live, how to get it final thought of the day. So when I hear the Word podcast, I envision two guys sitting in a garage or a basement smoking pot and sweatshirts. Not what we do here. Okay, so I've resurrected the old Mike Wallace Nightbeat program where we have very interesting conversations with people that you are going to want to hear from. First one tomorrow, Rob Schneider, the pro Trump comedian, talks about Jimmy Kimmel, talks about the crazy Hollywood environment, talks about why he likes Trump. All of that. Now you can get it by just going to billorilly.com we're going to drop this at noon tomorrow. Thursday at noon. Okay? It's billoreilly.com our apps. It'll be there. There's directions on the website. And then every Thursday, hence 6 o', clock, we'll drop it. And we got a Spotify, we got Apple, we got all kinds of distribution on this thing across the board. First TV, YouTube, and it's called we'll do it Live. Because my staff wants to make fun of me. Because when I was 12 years old, I started cursing and said, we'll do it live. I was at Inside Edition anchoring then. So they said, oh, do we gotta name it? So I get humiliated every week. Anyway, you're going to want to see this and I'm going to want your reaction to it. So just go to billoreilly.com we'll guide you right into it. Let me know what you think. We're going to do it every Thursday, unless you hate it. And we won't. We'll do it live. It's not actually live, it's tape, but some media. So we can kind of do what we want. Thank you for watching no Spin News tonight. We'll see you tomorrow.