← Piers Morgan Uncensored
Piers Morgan Uncensored
‘UNMISTAKABLY a US Attack’ Trump Military Accused of Bombing Iranian School
00:39:33
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- [00:02]
Ryan Bodenheimer
The investigation is ongoing.
- [00:04]
Scott Horton
I do not trust that answer.
- [00:06]
Christiane Trebet
That we actually have footage of a projectile coming in makes it unmistakable that this is a US attack.
- [00:13]
Scott Horton
167 killed all little girls.
- [00:16]
Ryan Bodenheimer
This is a playbook that you see out of terrorists surrounding themselves with children.
- [00:19]
Scott Horton
What's the story about the volleyball game that they also bombed at the same time with an experimental new missile. They killed 21 girls there.
- [00:28]
Christiane Trebet
It's basically a missile that like explodes above the ground and, and basically shoot out 180,000 tungsten pellets in all directions. US denied any responsibility.
- [00:38]
Scott Horton
When I was on your show previously, I disputed the 40,000 dead. I'm not Iran's lawyer. I'm just here to argue against inflated war propaganda.
- [00:49]
Piers Morgan
Deny, deflate and delay was the standard policy of the IDF in Gaza. Whenever there were claims of tragic accidents or crimes, we talked about them regularly on this show. First they denied all knowledge. Next, they'd flood the zone with reasons to blame somebody else. Next, they promised an investigation with an outcome to be published someday. Trump administration and the US Military is now accused of doing exactly the same thing about the missile strike which destroyed an Iranian school, killing many children almost three, four months ago. This week, a congressional committee challenged the head of the US Central Command.
- [01:22]
Ryan Bodenheimer
The investigation is ongoing. As soon as it is complete, I'm
- [01:25]
Scott Horton
happy to be as soon as possible. We will not take responsibility for something we've very obviously did.
- [01:30]
Ryan Bodenheimer
And what, sir?
- [01:31]
Scott Horton
It's a complex investigation. The school itself is located on an
- [01:35]
Christiane Trebet
active IRGC cruise missile base. It's more complex than the average strike.
- [01:40]
Scott Horton
I do not trust that answer.
- [01:43]
Piers Morgan
Well, Dominic Waghorn, a reporter with Sky News in the UK who's in Tehran, responded, we have been there multiple times this week. It is categorically not on a missile base. And everyone we've asked, excuse me, says no military activity nearby. So what is the truth and what do we know for sure? That's the question for today's panel who will also tackle the oft repeated claim that Iranian forces killed 40,000 civilians. One of the most frequent justifications cited for war. Joining me is Scott Horton, author of Provoked Ryan Bodenheimer. He's a former Air Force combat pilot, also known as Max Afterburner, the Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist from the New York Times, Malachi Brown and Christiane Trebet from the New York Times Visual Investigations Team. Well, welcome to all of you. I appreciate it very much, very much. Let me start with you, Scott Horton. Welcome back so soon to Uncensored. I feel quite spoiled that we're getting you so soon. And thank you for your kind words about me on the Joe Rogan podcast, which I really enjoyed too. And we will do that one on one, by the way, that you were talking about not getting when you were talking to Joe. So we'll come to that another time. But Scott, this whole strike on this school, obviously utterly devastating in terms of loss of life, particularly young children. The Sky News report from the guy on the ground makes it crystal clear that this was not part of any IRGC compound as the early spin wanted us to believe. Which begs the question, they must know who has fired this Tomahawk missile. They don't just get fired randomly. Why is there such a concerted effort not to admit what happened?
- [03:27]
Scott Horton
Well, I'm sure it was a targeting mistake and yes, they should have just apologized immediately and said, well, we didn't mean for that to happen. Now, my best understanding, and you have the New York Times reporters right here whose work I'm referring to here, they seem to show that this used to be part of the same compound, but then they just built a wall and separated it and they showed where the strikes on all the different buildings, virtually all of the different buildings in that compound, look just the same as this one. And then it was the Washington Post that published video of a Tomahawk incoming that hit another one of the buildings just adjacent to the school there. So apparently this, I believe the Times reported this used to be part of IRGC base is essentially on one big piece of property, but they had built a wall separating it back years ago. But the thing of it is, is from the Iranian people's point of view, it seems like we should at least take into account here that regardless of whether it was a mistake or not, just how absolutely horrific this was. And in all the casualties of all the wars, the numbers, you know, get, you know, taken in different contexts and, and scenarios or whatever. But I believe it was the leftist media critic Adam Johnson who first pointed out that the casualty count here is essentially equivalent to the O Oklahoma City bombing only if that entire federal building had been the daycare center. 167 killed all little girls. And this is the kind of it just, it's one of the things that goes to show why we should not be starting aggressive wars in the first place, is because mistakes like this can happen and become an absolute stain on this country.
- [05:11]
Piers Morgan
Okay, Malachi Brown, welcome to Uncensored. What do we know for a fact about this, do you think?
- [05:20]
Malachi Brown
What we know for a fact is that, yes, multiple buildings in that area were targeted. And yes, the school building is adjacent to the IRGC facility.
- [05:34]
Scott Horton
And
- [05:37]
Malachi Brown
according to experts that I've since spoken to since our early reports, it's not uncommon for these IRGC bases, much like American bases, to have schools for the children of the serving members of the irgc. This particular school was opened up to the public a few years ago, cordoned off from the site, public entrances opened, other parts of the site also repurposed for public use as a medical clinic and a cultural center there as well. And witnesses are not witnesses, but sources that we've spoken to say that, yeah, there weren't weapons stored there, that it was more of a logistics hub than a base that was used to store cruise missiles. Why would you store explosives right beside the school that your kids are going to? We know it was hit in that early salvo on the first day of the war, the start of the working week when school was in session. Teachers had called parents to collect their kids once the war started. But by the time that most parents got there, the school building had been hit and, yeah, devastating consequences. There was a second wave of attacks a couple of hours later on that same area and facility. There have been some reports, we haven't been able to confirm them, that the schools hit twice, including the Sky News report with an eyewitness who has survived the attack, but that's what we know so far. And then on the casualties. Yeah, the original casualties were put at 175. The Iranian state has since revised that down to about 156. And Christian here, my colleague and others have been able to corroborate that number.
- [07:27]
Piers Morgan
Right. Well, let's bring Christian in here. Welcome to Uncensored. Obviously, there's a lot of investigation that's been going on into this, and I guess in terms of who fired it, there's one of three potential options. I guess the Americans, the Israelis, or was it some rogue missile that Iran had acquired, which they misfired, which seems the least likely of the three scenarios. But do we know for a fact that it was a US Tomahawk missile?
- [07:59]
Christiane Trebet
Yes, we do. I mean, Maliki and I think, you know, others on the panel already referenced it as well. But, like, indeed, you're mentioning the three actors here. But the fact that we actually have footage of a projectile coming in at that same compound makes it unmistakable that this is a US Attack. Because what we're seeing in that video is a US Tomahawk missile. And Trump went as far as to saying, like, Iran may have Tomahawk missiles. But there's evidence to back that up. So I don't think it's really worth going into that claim right now. I think by now he has also said, like, he's willing to live with the, with the fact if it happens to be the U.S. right. That's what he said in response to questions of the media about this. But, yeah, coming back to the casualties, like, yeah, we were able to establish 156, at least 156 people have died, 120 of them being students at the school, 73 boys, 47 girls. Teaching staff as well, I think also seven parents that we were able to identify that already gotten to the school as Maliki was referring to school driver and so on. So absolutely devastating attack. But what also very interesting is that it's only one of several attacks that opening day of the war where the US actually hit civilian sites.
- [09:30]
Piers Morgan
But it's very reminiscent to me about the debate that was going on in Gaza, where the constant refrain from the idf, for example, was when a number of civilians had been killed was always they were targeting a Hamas compound, a Hamas, you know, school or hospital or whatever it was where Hamas were based, using it as a base, they were using civilians as some kind of, you know, shield and so on. Are we in the same kind of realm here where the argument may be and they say they're going to conclude the investigation soon. It's ridiculous. It's taken 80 days. But if they come back and simply say, look, we were targeting the base and this missile strayed into the neighboring school here, it was a genuine mistake, is that a plausible scenario here? Is that what we're really looking at, do you think?
- [10:23]
Malachi Brown
Whatever your thing, it could be anything.
- [10:26]
Ryan Bodenheimer
Canva helps you make that thing a thing. Canva is a simple online tool thing.
- [10:33]
Malachi Brown
It's a way to design, with our magic AI tool, things you can social media your thing, generate images or videos of your thing, make decks or presentations to show your thing, whatever needs to
- [10:44]
Ryan Bodenheimer
be done for your thing.
- [10:46]
Malachi Brown
Canva can make it an even better and bigger thing.
- [10:49]
Ryan Bodenheimer
Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing.
- [10:54]
Malachi Brown
I think that what we're looking at is outdated. Targeting is the most likely scenario. We can't preempt what the investigation is going to finally show. By the way, it's three months on and in any previous incident, they've come out much sooner than that and admitted liability. So what it looks like, and according to sources that we've spoken to and written about, it looks like it was outdated targeting information that was used and dusted off. And we don't know if that's because of the speed at which targets were being chosen and prepared or what, because there was, you know, this was in the midst of, you know, a flurry of targets on targeting military sites and government officials in the opening hours. But, Piers, you would think that with weeks or months to prepare for this, that due diligence would have been done to ensure that this school, which had a website, an active website, which was clearly separated from the base, is not dissimilar to schools at other IRGC bases along the coast, would have been flagged and, you know, had proper work been done, but on perhaps a no strike list, which is an obligation of militaries to maintain. So there's no evidence that this compound, or indeed the school was used for military purposes, was storing weapons or anything like that. You know, it just looks like it was lazy targeting with devastating consequences.
- [12:28]
Piers Morgan
So before I go to Ryan, just to conclude on this part of it, if it is how you believe it to be, would that constitute potentially a war crime or not?
- [12:41]
Malachi Brown
It's the obligation of militaries to mitigate civilian harm. If there are repeated reckless patterns, then under international humanitarian law, it could be constituted a war crime. As Chris said, these aren't the only civilians or children that were killed in the opening hours of that, of that war by the US Using weapons that we can identify as only US Weapons. But it depends on whether this is a repeated pattern of recklessness.
- [13:17]
Piers Morgan
Okay, let me bring in Ryan Bodenheimer. Welcome back to Uncensored. Brian, you're a former Air Force combat pilot, so you're a perfect person to ask here. When you were engaged in operations or you spoke to others who were, you know, put yourself into the pilot cockpit here of whichever plane fired this missile. How confident would you be before unloading and firing a missile on an area like this that the targeting was precise enough to avoid what we've seen happen here?
- [13:53]
Ryan Bodenheimer
Yeah, great question, Pierce. I'm glad we're having this discussion. And hello to you and hello to the panel. This is really important that we talk about this. Well, for myself, in an F15E cockpit, I've been in situations in combat where we've been asked to drop weapons, and we're the tip of the spear. We can see what's going on. And there's a case that I can recall where we were asked to strike insurgents in Afghanistan, and they would surround themselves with children. So that was the tactic that they would use. They would bring children around them and so in that exact scenario, we were cleared hot to strike and I delayed. I didn't strike with the kids around them. But that's a tactic that we saw throughout the entire campaign in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we see it in Iran as well, where even when there was the potential for the power plants and bridges to be struck and Iran called for women and children to go to these locations, essentially doing the same terrorist playbook that we saw in Afghanistan to try to protect their infrastructure with children. So this is a playbook that you see out of terrorists, dual use, surrounding themselves with children because they know that will hold fire, which is exactly what I did in that situation. And so putting myself in the shoes of that Tomahawk missile operator launching from a submarine. They're not going to purposefully strike something that has kids in it. And you as the operator, you have that determination, that final determination. If you know that there's children or civilians in it, you have the obligation to not strike. Which is why this to me is definitely not a purposeful strike. I think the discussion on the panel of this being some sort of targeting error, the Defense Intelligence Agency maybe not having the latest up to date information, which is not okay. That's something that we need to fix and update.
- [15:35]
Piers Morgan
When you have a Tomahawk fired from a submarine, is it is, is the moment called by a pilot in a plane. I mean, how does it work in reality? In combat?
- [15:49]
Ryan Bodenheimer
They're likely using some sort of information previously. They are some sort of information previously from a targeting package. And this was previously a Iranian cruise missile base. We know that, but it was years ago that they say that they separated the school from the actual military operation. But we know the IRGC rotates. They rotate in and out of different locations. They have underground facilities. So there's other things that they could do to have swapped this back and forth a couple times. But I agree with the panel that we have to have the latest breaking information. In a conflict and in the fog of war, terrible things can happen. So I don't think anybody's justifying this. I mean, this is a true tragedy that those kids died. But if you look at what Iran's doing, they're using it as a propaganda win. I mean, where's the discussion of the thousands of people that were killed over the last few months? They don't want to talk about that. They want to say, hey, look at this. Which again is a tragic incident. We can't overlook it. But they are fighting a propaganda war where the only situation in that school strike is that the US Loses. Well, there's no propaganda win there.
- [16:51]
Piers Morgan
Yeah, it's interesting you bring up the, obviously the killing of all the protesters in general, because last time Scott was on recently, he was extremely skeptical about these claims that up to 40,000 protesters were killed. And I will come back to Scott in a second, but maybe just ask you, Maliki, about that. From the New York Times investigative perspective, do we know how many people or even a vague idea of how many of those protesters were killed in January?
- [17:24]
Malachi Brown
I think it's really challenging. Let me just preface it with that, because there was a communications blackout. A lot of protests were happening at night. Really. We were relying on video evidence that was being collated and managed to get out through starlinks onto social platforms and aggregating and collecting that. So to add to your question, we can't truly know yet it's likely and feasible that it's in the thousands of people, according to what we've seen and we've been able to collate. And also what has been collected by three human rights, Iranian human rights groups who have a record of getting numbers like this fairly accurate. Two of them put it in around three to three and a half thousand people, one at about six and a half thousand people. And it's worth saying that, you know, the, the Iranian authorities themselves admit that about 3,100 people were killed, and they usually lowball those numbers. But what we could see in the footage is, you know, extensive use of live fire being used on protesters. We documented it in 19 cities in Iran and six suburbs of Tehran. And we saw people being shot in the head, you know, legs, bodies, torsos being carried away. It was widespread. And we also have reported, my colleague Farnaz Pazahay, and reported along with us that the order came from the top to quash the protests, and the order was given to security forces to use lethal force.
- [19:06]
Piers Morgan
And Christian, again, before I come to Scott on this, you know, you work in the New York Times Visual Investigations Team. There's so much misinformation, AI fakes and so on, swirling around now about almost everything. How hard is it for you to do your job and actually get to the truth? Because, you know, I had a very interesting chat with Scott a couple of weeks ago about this. And, you know, he. And from what Malachi just said, there's no clear evidence that tens of thousands were killed. I don't know whether they were or not. Scott's very much of the view that it's at the lower end of the toll and that if it was at that kind of level, we'd know about it. But would we know about it? Is there a way to verify it or not?
- [19:54]
Christiane Trebet
I mean, that's a great question, Piers. And I think even, just to start, even when we say the lower end, if we take, let's say what the Iranian authority said, which is over 3,000, that's still a lot of people for anti government protests. So even that, I think, is a lot, but it has been really hard. Just to give you an example, we would see these scattered videos coming out, but it could be a video that maybe a doctor filmed in a hospital and you see maybe a couple of body bags laying around. And it takes some time. We can use high resolution resolution satellite imagery to verify, like, oh, this is a recent video filmed in this hospital in Tehran. We can count the body bags, but it tells us very little. What is, you know, who are the people inside the body bags? How did they die? And I think that's why, you know, just to add to what Maliki is saying, like, it's, it's, it's very hard for us to verify these numbers. And I think, you know, even if, you know, you're referencing AI and AI generated videos, even in countries like the United States or the United Kingdom, where we have basically, we can go on the ground, we can knock on people's doors, but there's still a lot of mis and disinformation out there. And when you have a very restrictive authoritarian regime like in Iran or the Iranian authorities, I mean, and there's almost no information coming out, it's just very, very hard at the same. Yeah, even these, if we deem them to be low, I think 3,000 is still a lot. And those numbers are probably way higher.
- [21:33]
Piers Morgan
Yeah. So, Scott, let me come back to you. One of the more notable aspects of this war now, in three months in a, it's taken a lot longer than people were led to believe it would take, which wasn't surprising to me, and I don't think to you, but once you get into a war like this, they talk a lot in the military of the fog of war. This incident was obviously horrific. Both the protest killings in January and then the killing of this school and so on. How much can we, I mean, how confident are you? For example, when you assess these things, you go into great detail and you speak to lots of people, but how confident can you be that the information you get is correct?
- [22:20]
Scott Horton
Well, it depends. I mean, I try to read the posts, the Times and the Journal every day with A severe amount of skepticism, but that is who the government talks to. So they're indispensable. I mean, New York Times will give themselves Pulitzer Prizes over completely fake reporting about George Papadopoulos and, and a hundred thousand other things they've gotten wrong over the years. But at the same time, if the DIA or, you know, one of these reports on this story has it that someone at the Pentagon or maybe the National Security Council told them that, yeah, the DIA gave us outdated information, well, then you can take that as essentially sounds like a confession against interests of reality. Right. It's not a leak where they're like trying to sabotage Trump with that. They're saying, okay, yes, this was us, but don't put my name on it because I don't want that. But that sounds to me like a credible explanation that, and, and we might find out that no, the Israelis gave them this bad data or whatever. But I have no reason to believe that, no, there's, that hasn't been demonstrated by anyone that there was any reason to think that this was deliberate. Again in that the New York Times, I'm sorry, which of these gentlemen did the video there where they show the bird's eye view of the place after virtually every one of the buildings has been hit and they all have exactly similar damage. They were all hit with the exact same type of munitions, clearly within a short period of time there. So I don't think there's really any question that they did it.
- [23:50]
Piers Morgan
Is he morally justified? Is it morally justified, Scott, in any way? No, no. Well, let me, let me ask you a specific question about that. Is it morally justified? I had a big argument with Tucker Carlson about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for example. And obviously after World War II, Geneva Convention came in, rules were changed and so on. But is it morally justified to target an organization you believe to be a terror group like the Israelis and Americans view the IRGC for their propping up of all these terror groups through the Middle East. If you're targeting them, but you make a mistake, is it, is the targeting the actual attacks morally justified in any way to you?
- [24:37]
Scott Horton
Well, look, I mean, this is a completely unconstitutional, illegal, aggressive war we had no right to start against a country that we're in the middle of negotiations with on behalf of a third nation and based on a lie is a completely treacherous Pearl harbor style attack, sneak attack, which was the day of infamy when somebody did it to us and then we did it to them and killed their FDR and killed schools full of kids at the same time, too And I want to address the January protest, too, but at least I want to ask this question of the New York Times reporters to save for a minute, if they can tell us about what's the story about the volleyball game that they also bombed at the same time with an experimental new missile, and they killed 21 girls there, you know, relatively nearby. Was that just a targeting mistake, too? The DIA just gave them a. I
- [25:27]
Piers Morgan
can see, Christian, you're nodding there. So you know about this. What would you say?
- [25:33]
Christiane Trebet
Yeah, actually, we. We've done a very, very deep dive on this. So thank you so much for bringing this up, because I already actually wanted to earlier. I was raising my hands. Pierce. Pierce, I want to say another thing because I feel like there's a hyper focus, understandably, on Mina, because, you know, 120 children have been killed, many more civilians killed. But it is not like one thing like, oh, this was a mistake, you know, and. And that's it. And the rest, we targeted military sites. And this volleyball hall, this rec. Operational haul that you're referencing here happens five hours after the Binab School bombing. And what we were able to establish is that, you know, based on satellite imagery, videos, like, all of the same things that we're doing in our investigations is that the US Deployed three new missiles that they had not used in combat before. And it's basically a missile that, like, explodes above the ground and basically shoots out 180,000 tungsten pellets in all direction. So this is not a weapon that you use above a residential area because you're going to perforate. You're going to, like, you know, you're going to. You're going to. You're going to put these tungsten pellets in everything that's in its way. But three of these missiles exploded above exactly that, above residential areas, including a sports hall where a girls volleyball team was having practice. Not only that, there was also, like, a boys team doing soccer practice. We were able to establish that 21 civilians died. And what is so striking is this got way less attention. But the US Denied this any responsibility and did the same thing. They said, actually what you're seeing in the video, that's not a U.S. missile. That looks like an Iranian missile. So they again shifted the blame towards Iran. But we are very confident that this is a US Strike and where they also used a new type of weapon that was intested in combat. And it's absolutely striking to see that this was used. And we don't know what happened there. Was it a targeting Error. Like again, this was a sports hall that was adjacent to an IRGC compound.
- [27:44]
Piers Morgan
So very similar for those not familiar with this story, was it, was that fired from a plane, from a submarine? What kind of missile are we talking about?
- [27:54]
Christiane Trebet
So this is called the precision strike missile, or PRISM for short. And actually it's a land launched missile. So we believe, like we did a trajectory analysis and we believe, believe it's probably from the direction of Kuwait or Iraq where we know these vehicles that can launch two of these missiles per vehicle, basically per pod, were indeed stationed in Kuwait and Iraq at the opening day of the war. So they're launched most likely from Kuwait or Iraq, possibly also Bahrain or.
- [28:26]
Piers Morgan
Okay, and Ryan, you know, again, coming back to someone who's had combat experience, but, but this whole fog of war thing, how serious is it taken to be absolutely precise when you're targeting these things? Because if I think back to World War II, obviously hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in places like Dresden and others. And there was an argument put up it was morally justified, but many people felt it was a war crime. Right, where's the line for you with these things?
- [29:00]
Ryan Bodenheimer
For me it's a very hard line. And I think if you ask any military fighter pilot or anyone operating these deadly weapons, you gotta be able to sleep at night. That's the first thing. So prior to deployment, I remember having conversations with some of my most trusted friends that the number one thing was don't kill civilians and don't kill friendlies. That's the number one thing, because all these military members that are out there are put in this impossible position of going out and targeting with the best information they have and then using their moral judgment. And I think we're in a much different time than we are in World War II. But the military still has to make crucial last second decisions and the fog of war can happen. But I think the underlying tone of every military member I know and that I went into combat with was you don't pull that trigger until you know for certain that you're minimizing collateral damage and hopefully avoiding it completely. Now, when it comes to the law behind these types of things, these targets become legitimate if there's active firing coming at you from them. So if you're right above the target, they're shooting at you. There's reasons why certain civilian centers can become actual targets. I don't see that as the case here, but when it comes to the legality of it, it's something that we go through time and time again. I Mean, I flew with a packet on my knee in the F15 that told me the different situations where I could and couldn't drop. And at the very top of the list was avoid collateral damage at, at all cost. And another thing to hit on as well, Pierce, is the fact that we know Iran has targeted civilians in the Persian Gulf over a thousand times. So I think it's good we're having this conversation. The US Military should strive for zero civilians dying when we're going after this radical regime. That should be the focus. But I think we have to also look and see that Iran's using this as a propaganda play and a win. While they're shifting, they're like, hey, look over there, look over here. While we're going to, we're going to launch drones at a thousand different times at civilian neighborhoods in the Persian Gulf, we want you guys to look at these incidents, which again is good, and I'm glad we're having the conversation, but let's not pull any punches for the IRGC and what they're doing.
- [31:00]
Piers Morgan
No, I mean, I think the argument is always that we should operate in a, at a higher moral, ethical plane than the for sure enemy if we view them as a bunch of terrorists.
- [31:10]
Scott Horton
Here's tonight, Can I address January here? The, the massacres in January. Is that what's brought up? And I think, okay, so as you mentioned, when I was on your show previously, I disputed the 40,000 dead claim. Now, I'm not Iran's lawyer, as I tried to make clear there. I'm from Texas. I have, I'm not here to argue their side of the story. I'm just here to argue against inflated war propaganda. And I, what, what these gentlemen from the Times say about it must have been 3 or 4000. Sounds right to me. In fact, one of the National Endowment for Democracy sponsored groups talking to the Wall Street Journal said it was six. So I said, okay, so it's probably about four. And that's a lot of people. That includes horrible massacres. But as we know, and as Donald Trump has admitted that those were also against fighters who were burning mosques and killing policemen. And it was an armed insurrection in part, which I think was piggybacking on top of the protests. And then did the state also kill innocent protesters there too? Apparently. I mean, if we're at 4,000, if we accept, for argument's sake here, 4,000, that's a lot of other people that got caught up, not just the armed insurrectionists, but there was an armed insurrection going on at that time. And my point was not that, oh, see, Iran is this much less morally guilty or whatever, but I'm just saying the reason the numbers are inflated by 10 times is because, one, they're trying to jerk your chain and get you to believe their lies so that you'll get emotional and support an aggressive war that we should have never started. But two, underlines again, this crucial bit of propaganda, which is that which Donald Trump apparently believed himself and based on this lie that, see, no one in Iran supports the regime. They are such coops and such criminals. They only cling to power through the barrel of a gun with no popular support whatsoever. Why, see, they had to kill 40,000 people to get the other. I don't know, presumably hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people to give up and go home. Otherwise they surely would have lost power in January. But that's just not true. There are some, not including me, but there are substantial numbers of people, millions, tens of millions in Iran who do support their regime. And just as I predicted and can prove it going back 20 years, if we attack them, we'll drive more people to support their regime than before. Just like Americans rallied around George W. Bush after the greatest failure of any president in American history. When we got hit on September 11th, we still all told the pollsters we support our security force against the enemy, no matter who they are. And that's the same position we put the Iranian people in. And that's why they held giant rallies in Tehran with hundreds of thousands of people coming out in support of the regime.
- [34:03]
Ryan Bodenheimer
So not as that something, it was
- [34:05]
Scott Horton
based on a bunch of propaganda in the first place.
- [34:08]
Piers Morgan
Okay, but let's, let's be mindful that of course the death toll on 911 would not be dissimilar to the death toll that we all think is. The panel seems to be in some agreement with.
- [34:18]
Scott Horton
They weren't Americans in New York City, were they? That's the difference.
- [34:25]
Piers Morgan
We've got to bring this one in. I just wanted to ask Maliki one question separate to this, which I think I should just ask, given we're two New York Times journalists here. A lot of furorium last week about the Nick Kristof report into what was going on in Israeli prisons with Palestinian prisoners. What's the feeling inside the newsroom at the New York times? Is everybody 100% behind this reporting by Nate Kristof?
- [34:52]
Malachi Brown
I'm not across the debate really around that. I'll just say that Nick is a proven reporter over decades of reporting from conflict zones. And on the question of sexual violence in conflict as well. You know, he's, you know, it's just, he's got a reputation that, you know, very few other journalists have. So the Times is rightfully standing by his. His reporting. And, and there are. There were reports of sexual violence, you know, long predating his report as well. I would, I would add.
- [35:37]
Piers Morgan
Okay, Malachi Brown, thank you very much. Thank you to all my guests. I've got to leave it there. I'm sorry, we run out of time, but thank you all very much. I appreciate, Appreciate it.
- [35:43]
Scott Horton
Thank you.
- [35:44]
Christiane Trebet
Pierce, there needs to be a point of clarification, though, about the number. Just very, very, very briefly, because you have a lot of people basically. Like, I think. I think what we're saying is, like, if we take the lowest number, at least 3,100. Right, is what the Iranian authorities say. And I think we talked about how hard it is to verify. And I think some of these Iranian human rights organizations that are doing credible reports, they say they still have like 11,000 names under investigation. Right. Like, they're still investigating. So that number may get way higher.
- [36:13]
Piers Morgan
Yeah, I think that's perfectly reasonable. I don't think we know is the bottom line. It's very hard to get to the reality and hopefully we'll get some more clarity. I mean, I feel very strongly about the situation in Gaza that all these things have been claimed and counterclaimed and so on, but the international media are still not allowed in to do their jobs, even though there's supposedly a ceasefire, which I think is just completely outrageous. And in my experience of these things, when a government stops media from doing their jobs somewhere, it's because there's stuff there they don't want the world to see. I'm going to leave it there. I'm sorry, guys, we run out of time. But thank you all very much.
- [36:45]
Christiane Trebet
Thanks so much for having us.
- [36:47]
Piers Morgan
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