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C
Welcome in everyone to a redacted special report on this Saturday. So glad to have you here with us as we are going to be covering the United States and Israel, which has of course stepped into a massive pile of shit and have started a new war against Iran. And this, you know, obviously moving fast right now we want to bring you up to speed before we bring in our special guests today. Some of the numbers differing depending on which side is reporting them. So of course we're going to try to separate what's been confirmed by multiple outlets and what's still a claim. And of course, we're also following that report on the USS Gerald Ford at this hour as well, whether or not it is actually dark and why it would have disappeared from tracking. Of course, this was a big fear back in the summer when that 12 day war broke out that we could lose a USS aircraft carrier. So we're going to follow up with the USS Gerald Ford part of the story in a second. So, but the big headline at this hour, the US Israel Launching coordinated strikes on Iran. And of course, it's proudly splashed all over Fox News that this wasn't Israel alone, that the United States was of course directly involved in this. It was a coordinated attack. As expected, Iran has now responded with missiles, reportedly drone attacks as well, aimed at Israel. Multiple US Allied Gulf states also that host American bases have been hit. You're looking at the U.S. navy's 5th Fleet here in Bahrain following Iranian missile strikes. I mean, this is unprecedented what you're seeing. Iran has struck US Navy fleet, 5th Fleet in Bahrain and multiple other targets. Like this is not a game any longer. We also just got word about a few hours ago that Netanyahu has now fled Israel. That is his plane, the presidential plane leaving Israel with Netanyahu on board and leaving. Of course, this has happened in any time that there's like these types of attacks, he flees. I spoke to sources inside of Israel who are right now, they've been in their bunkers. Many of the high rise buildings in Tel Aviv, of course, have equipped with indoor bunkers inside of those high rise buildings. So they're massive concrete bunkers internal to the building structure. And got videos from individuals who are in those bunkers. They've been in there all night with like their grandmothers, with their, with their children. So these are real people that are being affected by this inside of Tel Aviv at this hour as well, that
B
we should point out were volunteered by the Netanyahu government saying they want this, they're ready to die. So Netanyahu was more than happy and spiritual leaders inside of Israel as well that represent the Zionist government saying we, we're ready for it, we're okay with it, we want it. So, you know, they're speaking for families, regular people now, what the US And Israel did, they said President Trump said this is a massive operation meant to eliminate imminent threats. Now, again, we've been reporting all week that the US Government wanted Iran to strike first and then wanted Israel to strike first on intelligence that they knew that Iran would not strike first. They've known all along. That's why we struck first last summer. That's why we needed our forces to strike now. So they're calling this preemptive? We should call bullshit on that. It clearly wasn't. They knew that they wouldn't strike first. Reuters also reports that Iran's supreme leader was moved to a secure location, citing a source. And the Daily Mail posted this without any confirmation, saying Israeli media say growing indications that he was killed in a strike, although there are other Middle Eastern reports that he may address his nation later today and is still alive. So at this point we don't know. And so you may recall that the same sources last summer, last June when the US Hit Iran, they also had said initially that Khamenei was killed. And that is what we know from the initial US strikes on Tehran. Initial reports are that the US was targeting Iranian leaders but hit an elementary school with young girls. Reports are confirmed that 63 young girls were killed in the initial strikes by the US And Israel students.
C
And so what you're looking at is, is that school reportedly and still digging through the rubble at this hour according to those reports as everyone's coming together to try to locate any students, any young girls in that attack. Let's now talk about the high level deaths reported, not independently confirmed though by all parties. Reuters cites three sources saying Iran's Defense Minister Amir Nasreddeh and Revolutionary Guard commanders Mohammed Pakpour were killed in these Israeli attacks. And a separate Iranian source told Reuters several senior IRGC commanders and political officers were also killed. And what about civilians? Well, we have a lot of contested numbers and we're waiting on more reporting on that.
B
All right, so now Iran's retaliation. This is where they are reporting that bases were hit, bases were targets. The picture becomes the key story for the last few hours. How many American casualties, how many, you know, casualties, Israeli CAS casualties. What are we looking at for this retaliation? Bahrain said a missile attack targeted the U.S. 5th Fleet Headquarters Service area. Reuters had witnesses and video showing a gray plume of smoke smoke near the coastline as sirens sounding. CBS also reports that Bahrain began evacuations in the Jufair area and that the U S Embassy announced that it would close Sunday due to ongoing missile strikes in Qatar. They said that the US they had intercepted incoming missiles and that all missiles targeting the countries were downed according to Reuters. But again an attack there. Kuwait reporters reported report that Kuwait confirmed a missile attack on a US Military base and separately that the Kuwait army is dealing with missiles in their own airspace as well in Dubai. Reuters is reporting that loud booms in Abu Dhabi and Dubai so across the UAE amid the barrage and state media reported that one person killed by debris in Abu Dhabi. In Jordan there are reports of downed two Iranian drowned, downed missiles and US Bases being targeted there in Jordan. But again no immediate reports of missiles. So Iran is saying that retaliations will continue.
C
Now we want to bring in someone who understands the military realities of this better than almost anyone. Retired U.S. army Colonel Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, senior fellow and military expert defense priorities Colonel thank you so much for joining us on this crazy morning. Based on what you've seen so far, does this look like a limited sort of strike against Iran or the opening phase of a longer campaign here?
D
Well, it's almost got to be an opening campaign, an opening phase, because I mean, you had President Trump saying that. I mean, he laid it out, he said the objectives are regime change, the destruction of their long range missile program, the cessation of their proxy force, and the destruction of their alleged nuclear weapons program. I mean, those are not short things. Those are not something that you just have a demonstration or a bombing and then you say you're done with it. We had negotiations last night. There was what by all accounts was a major breakthrough and a willingness of the Iranian side to make some big concessions. So if diplomacy was the path, we had it in our hand and we chose not to use it. So this can't be to force diplomacy because we already had that. So then the question is, where is it going to go? And you have set these really ambitious objectives that we want the Iranian people to rise up to basically be the boots on the ground for us. President Trump said that he asked them to rise up and that we would support them, et cetera. So it sounds like that you're going for regime change with the, trying to use the Iranian people as the, as the ground fodder to get this done. So I don't see any pattern. And by the way, that was mirrored by Netanyahu's comments this morning. He's definitely saying this is regime destruction. He wants to get rid of that completely and he's really happy to have the United States and as he said, close coordination with us. And this is the first time that we've ever operated. Jack Keenan was on Fox News and he doubled down on saying that this is a weeks long campaign. He said, don't think this is gonna be short, this is gonna be a campaign that he went on talking about destroy the air defense, destroy their leaders, they destroy the IRGC military and then of course the long range missiles and their air defense. He said, we will definitely get all that. That is a very, very ambitious target set. And I still find it really puzzling that, that that is a major war type objectives, but you only have half the equation. You only have the air and naval power, you don't have a ground force. So I don't know how you're going to coerce this to happen if you don't get lucky and the Iranian people rise up and just, you know, become Your foot soldiers. I just don't see how you accomplish these objectives. I think we have said something that's just not very likely to be accomplished.
B
Now. A lot of champions of this online this morning are saying, oh, we really surprised them. You and I are not surprised. We've been expecting this. Yeah. So nobody here is surprised, but by some reason they think that the Iranians were. At the same time they were not able to protect a school of civilian children. And so what do you make of this? Because, I mean they've been signaling, look, we will go to peace talks, but we don't trust the United States because we were bombed last time in peace talks. So we did it again, we went to peace talks, we bombed them. Nobody's surprised. That's bullshit. But talk about the actual defenses of the Iranian military because civilians were killed.
D
Yeah. And look, that's happened on both sides, I'm afraid. We've known that a lot of the missiles that both the Israelis and the Americans have, we knew for sure that was going to get through. No air defense system is impervious, no matter what it is. That includes the Iron Dome system, the Thaad system and everything in Iran, Israel. I'm sorry, all the stuff we have. Everybody knows that there's stuff that can get through it. But I was more concerned about what got through our defenses. There was, I saw a video just before it came on here of our base in Bahrain where there were two strikes that came through and one of them was very clearly captured on camera was a slow moving drone. And I'm thinking, man, if a drone gets through that and lands inside of our base and hits one of the buildings in there, that's really troubling because those should be easy to knock down. If we can't knock down a drone, then we got some real problems. Yeah, I think that's it right there, the one you're showing. Then there's also a radar installation in Qatar that according to an aerial view of it, if it's accurate, it shows a pinpoint accuracy missile getting to a multi hundred million dollar radar system. And if they can get through our system with that and have that kind of accuracy, then that portends real problems. One of the IRGC leaders this morning also came out and said so far all you've seen is our old stuff, you haven't seen some of our new stuff and we've got stuff that you haven't even seen at all yet and much more could be coming. Can't say yet whether that's bluster, whether that's true. But I can say that what has gotten through, and that means in all of these places, whether it's Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, all these places, their stuff is getting through our air defense. And I think you've talked about this before that in the weeks leading up to this, one of the reasons we delayed from the January strike date, which was supposed to have come around the 13th or 14th, was because we needed more air defense missiles in the area. And 20 bases were alleged to have nearly tripled their air defense capacity of what they had. And so far, and there's only. This has only been a few shots that have gotten through, but that's all they've shot. There hasn't been this big wave of strikes. That was my concern and still is, is that they may send waves of missiles, like 100 missiles at a time, several hundred drones maybe. And if they really do them in coordination, it's pretty clear that they can overwhelm our defenses. But we haven't seen that yet. We haven't done that to them yet. So so far, this has been kind of a tepid start, as a matter of fact.
C
So when you look at the USS Gerald Ford, a question that's been raised online, maybe you have any sort of insights about why the USS Gerald Ford would have gone dark and disappeared from tracking radar. So we don't want to get into speculation territory, but of course, Scott Ritter on our show months ago said one of the big concerns, of course, is that a US Aircraft carri carrier could be hit with hypersonic missiles or otherwise in the region, which in many ways are like sitting ducks here. Do you have any information about why USS Gerald Ford would have gone dark?
D
I haven't seen that report, but I can just imagine that they're probably trying to reduce the signature on it so that he can't be tracked, or at least make it more difficult to be tracked, because in order to hit any of our aircraft carriers, you've got to have very precise targeting data. I'm equally as concerned the fact that the Chinese have been publishing video satellite photographs of the Gerald R. Ford and some of our aircraft as well, which makes me concerned that if they're publishing that publicly, what are they given privately? That's possibly with targeting data to the Iranian side. And if Jack Keane is right that this is a campaign, it could be that the Iranian side is saying we're going to hold our powder dry for the time being because we haven't even seen any of the big air attacks yet. I mean, we talked about these hundreds of fighter jets that have been flown into the area on the ground bases, about the aircraft that are on board the two aircraft carrier strike groups, et cetera. And we haven't seen any of that go in yet. So the question is, when is that coming in and how effective are we going to be at knocking out their air defenses? Because that's going to be one of the primary targets. But it's also one of the most difficult things. This is not like going into Syria in the past. This is definitely not like Iraq or Afghanistan. These guys have some capability here. And a lot of the reports from the 12 Day War last year that we, you know, had impunity in the sky, I'm not sure that that's true. I've seen conflicting reports that say we probably didn't even test it. I have talked to some knowledgeable Air Force pilots that said that in our portion of the Midnight Hammer, that our Air Force didn't even. They weren't even taken under fire on the way in, which implies that there may have indeed been some sort of coordination. So it's not like they just missed. They just weren't taken under fire. And we didn't have a lot of the seed mission before. So this is a really highly complex mission. And the objective set that we have set militarily is incredibly difficult. So this, I have some real concerns about where this is going to go, and we have to wait and see how things unfold.
B
Can I just summarize what you're saying? If I understand correctly, you're saying it's a tepid start. You think that there's some level of withholding, as awful as it sounds, and we may have stated objectives that we know that we cannot achieve. And so it's a shot across the bow.
D
I mean, that's how I see. I mean, just compare it with Desert Storm and the shock and awe and all that. I mean, that's when you saw massive shots coming in, going after air defense, going after command and control centers, et cetera. Clearly there have been some going in, but in terms of volume, it's. It's a. It comparatively, it's a tepid start from what it could have been with this, you know, a shock and all type of Baghdad strike. You may remember all the videos that came in with that. You see a few plumes like this one right here. There was a handful of others. You see some actually in some of the other. The Gulf Arab states, they've had some of theirs, et cetera. So I just haven't seen any Kind of a big sustained shot. So far we have the capacity to do that, but we haven't so far. And the question is, why are we kind of holding our powder dry? Do we realize that if we come in with a big shock and all kind of thing, we can only keep that up for a week, maybe two, if you drag it out, and then you're going to be in some real trouble in terms of just inventories of available offensive and defensive missiles. I just don't know at this point, and certainly no one's talking about it publicly.
C
You know, in Iran, you know, children go, as one point person points out in our chat room here in Iran, children go to school from Saturday through Thursday. So earlier when we were talking about that school, that was where the 63 children were likely killed in that school attack in Tehran. Also, we just got breaking news in from Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. This is the Palm Hotel, which I was just at, actually, not too long ago. And this has been hit in the United Arab Emirates. So to your point, Colonel, these are breaching air defenses in these Arab states. And what sort of pressure campaign is this seeming to imply from the Iranian side to try to put pressure maybe on Washington and international leaders to say, look at all, you guys gotta stop this right now. Like you're hitting all of these other Arabs. We knew that this was coming, though. This is not a surprise.
D
Yeah, I mean, they signaled it very clearly. They were very open that this would not be like the 12 Day War last time, where they limited their response just to Israeli military targets. They said, this one's going to be much bigger. And they said specifically everywhere you have bases. I actually had on our, on our show here, the Daniel Davis Deep Dive. I had an Iranian expert that said openly, and he's, he's from Tehran University, Morandi. He said, listen, if this is attack, we will go after all these countries where there are American bases. We have signaled it very clearly, and apparently they have done that. Now, so far, it's been a pretty small amount. Some of these places had literally one missile fired at it. I think Qatar has had a number of them. The Bahrain has had now a number of drones and missiles as well. But again, even from their side, we haven't seen any kind of big sustained one. And it could well be that they're saying to these nations, listen, this is just a taste of what we can do. And you can see, I can penetrate air defenses. It can get a lot worse. Don't give this, you know, the Americans this kind of capability because Then we'll have no choice but to hit further. That's just speculation on my part. I don't know that. But given what they said they would do and what they have done so far, which is small but successful, one wonders, could they also be holding their own? Powder, dried, waiting to see what the United States does because it's definitely in Iran's interest not to escalate this. They don't want to get into this big war if they don't have to. And perhaps because they saw our initial strike was somewhat limited, maybe they're hopeful that there could be a diplomatic way out. Though I think that's a really bad idea if it is, because I don't. I mean, we've shown that we had diplomacy. We had a golden platter last night with the Oman foreign minister talking about how this could have been, how Iran was making these big overtures that they hadn't made before. So if we wanted diplomacy, it was there. So it doesn't look like we do. So this just. I just don't see a lot of hope that this, this gets put off the table anytime soon.
C
Yeah, here's some ballistic missiles being fired from on the Iranian side. This was the first wave of ballistic missiles being fired. And to your point, you know, last time we saw it seemed like older material being used first. Slower, older material. And then we saw downtown Tel Aviv and all parts across. Across Israel being pounded with hypersonics and other advanced missile systems that the Iron Dome couldn't do anything to stop.
D
Right, yeah, yeah, it is. And that's, that's really the question is, is what, what is gonna, you know, how much further is this gonna go? Is that, is that new stuff right there? I've not seen that one. That looks like something from last year.
C
Yeah, yeah. This was the 12 day war. So what you're seeing. Yeah, that what you're seeing on your stream.
D
Right, you see, and that's my point too, that that's what we haven't seen so far from any side. And that's kind of what I thought. Okay, well, we saw some big blasts like that last time and we haven't seen it. So the question is we know they have the capability. Is that coming?
B
Right. And so there are some Middle Eastern journalists that I follow on X from Iranian journalists saying that President Trump has already reached out to Iranian leaders seeking a ceasefire. So is it possible that the level of. Penetrate. You don't believe that.
D
Why? Maybe it is. No, I don't dispute it. If that's true. It wouldn't surprise me.
B
Well, these are what Iranian leaders are saying. So we, you know, we can't put stock in Trump. Trump's. Trump has been saying that his phone was ringing from Iranian leaders all week for a deal. Okay. We don't know. Now Iranian leaders are saying that the US Is reaching out to broker a ceasefire. So is it possible that the level of penetration across the Gulf has us spooked?
D
I mean, that's my theory is that's why they've done it, to do that, to try. And so it would not surprise me if they were wanting to reach out, because they do desire to de. Escalate and to take this thing down. They don't want to go to a full war. And so I hope that that's the case. But like you say, I mean, we certainly. Everything is, you know, all kinds of misinformations out there right now and speculation. So we can't say whether it is, but it makes sense. And if that is the case, it would be logical for President Trump to make that calculation because then the casualties could go quite higher if we don't go down that path. But then, I mean, the reason I had that reaction that you saw was like, well, everybody knows that this was the capability. They demonstrated it last year. You just showed the video from 2025, so you can't be surprised by this. And then why would you have started it in the first place? It's. It's really puzzling.
C
Colonel, we have breaking news from Glen Deason, who's reporting that the Strait of Hormuz is now shut down. Iran. Iran has now shut this down. Of course, this was the thing that everyone's worried about. I mean, talk about global oil markets and what this is going to do around the world. Can you talk about strategically and also militarily, how would they manage to shut this down?
D
Yeah, this has been one of my bigger concerns still, aside from the threats to American military folks in there in the region, obviously that's my personal number one concern. But that was right behind it because of the impact that could have on the global economy. And they have all kinds of capabilities with the Iranians, with their navy that they have. A lot of people want to dismiss it because it's a lot of speedboats and some small number of ships and especially some of the bigger ships. They don't have many of them, but they have what they need to actually shut that thing down. Because that strait, as your map was showing there a minute ago, it's a pretty narrow band where you can try to shut that down. And they can put sea mines out there. They have a lot of anti ship cruise missiles. They have lots of others, allegedly some hypersonics as well as that. They have just other kinds of drones and a bunch of things. There's a lot of assets they have that they can shut this thing down. And if ships start moving through it, I think I'd seen that the report was the IRGC gave instructions that no ship should use, doesn't look like it's been mined at this point. But that means that every ship, a civilian ship, has to take into account, do I listen to this, do I ignore it and go through and then risk having a missile come up? Because that's a civilian ship. If it goes through and tries to force it, they've got no defenses. They'll, they'll be hit by anything. So if this is true, this could be a big pressure case. And you know, I'm telling you, President Trump is, is motivated by the price of oil and by the price of gasoline here. And so if Iran is saying, okay, we have now shut this thing down temporarily, but we can make it permanent or we can end it, depending on how reasonable you're willing to be. I mean, that, that's, again, this is speculation on my part, but based on what we're hearing, that would be logical.
C
Drones just hitting right near the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Of course, one of the most recognized, one of the, I think the tallest, tallest building in the world.
E
Right.
B
It's not any longer, but it was built to be. Yeah, I believe that is in Korea
C
and other reports saying that the strategy that Tehran is employing here is letting their Arab neighbors know that we are not attacking you, that we are not coming for you. We are simply attacking American interests and American bases. Well, that doesn't also, I mean, the Palm Jumeirah Hotel in Dubai is not an American hotel, unless I'm wrong about that. So I don't know, but that's what they're trying to tell their Arab partners right now, that this is the case. What do you make of that, Colonel?
D
Yeah, and what you know, what we don't know is this, this happens a lot in the Russia, Ukraine war. What you don't know is did a missile go off course and hit in the wrong place? Did they choose to attack a civilian target anyway? Or was this an errant air defense missile that missed its primary target and landed in the city? All of those things have happened in the Russia, Ukraine war. And all three of those possibilities are at play here. And some others, and especially there in that Dubai, I can't think of any military targets that are anywhere near that installation. So that would also be problematic. So it could just be that Iran is saying, hey, look, if we're going down, we're going to cause some problems elsewhere, places that are important to you. If you don't put pressure on America to stop this, that could be what the signal is.
B
Well, Colonel, we know you have a lot of people wanting your expertise today, so we really want to thank you for, for coming to redacted and offering it, because this is something you've been warning about. Let's don't find out. But we decided to f around and find out. So thank you for, let's just. Yeah, thank you for.
D
Yeah, I was gonna say let's just hope that it doesn't get. I, I, I, I hope that that report you heard is true, that Trump is seeking to shut it down or that Iran was seeking to shut it down. Whatever. It's, it's bad so far, but it's not catastrophic. So let's keep it from getting any worse than it is, and then we'll deal with it afterwards.
B
Thank you so much. All right, Colonel, thank you so much.
D
Pleasure to be here.
C
Thank you.
B
And if you're not following his own YouTube show, please do it, because day by day he's got the specifics of military intelligence. So don't rely. Yeah, don't rely on idiots on X. Follow Colonel Davis.
C
Thank you. Colonel, great to see you on this Saturday. Thank you.
E
All right.
C
All right, we, how are we doing, guys? Just want to make sure we've had all sorts of, I don't know, Internet issues and attacks today. So
B
we're good right now. Okay. We're pissed. If we're collectively pissed, let us know how you're feeling about this because we're here to at least commiserate. So we're coming. We're going to have more guests coming up. How are you?
C
Good. I'm just, we're dealing with all sorts of crazy Internet issues today. And, I mean, across the board, there seems to be some sorts of attacks.
B
You know, it is Mercury retrograde, so this is when we tend to have the.
C
But when you, when you attack Iran, that's also. That may have something to do with it.
B
Yeah. You know, I wouldn't have started a war that I wanted under Mercury retrograde. I would have at least waited. Waited.
C
You know, this was my, if that was your plan.
B
If this was my plan.
E
Yeah.
C
Just trying to reset here and Just having all sorts of issues.
B
Yeah, I'm not able to get a lot of my feeds either. But you know, thankfully we're here to speak to experts, not bring expertise. We are not military experts. We are only anti war voices. We know for sure. What we know for sure is that Iran was not going to start this war. We've known this.
C
Yeah. Just to reset, I mean, and where things stand right now, there are continuing drone attacks across the Middle East. We just got word of a drone strike near the Burj Khalifa Hotel inside of Dubai. We know that the Palm Hotel which is on the, if you look at Dubai and you know like the sort of palm fronds that stick out, which was of artificial palm tree looking island, the palmyra that was struck. And it was just strange to see that those images, we were just there just like a short time ago. So that exact same hotel was just struck. Unbelievable. So we want to bring in now former U.S. marine Corps Captain and State Department officer, Iraq War combat veteran and Afghanistan War Department officer and senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network. That is Matthew Ho. Thank you so much for joining us on this Saturday on such short notice to talk about all of this. Matthew, great to see you.
F
Yeah, good to see you guys. Wish it was something else we were discussing Right here. We are.
C
We've been trying to, you know, you've been on the show before and of course we've been trying to call out false flags and trying to stop this to try to bring awareness to what's happening there. Just your response from a 30,000 foot level as you're looking at all of these different dispatches over the past few hours.
F
I think the truism about war is something we need to keep first and foremost in our mind, that war is a breeding ground for unintended consequences. And so anyone who's talking with any certainty about what is to come simply doesn't know what they're talking about. And so I think that humility we have to have as we go forward witnessing this war is paramount and that if I come back on and discuss this in six months time, we have no idea what we may be discussing. I mean you're just talking about the drone strikes impacting all the Gulf states. Essentially those are political systems that are fraught, that are tenuous, that aren't incredibly popular. Could this type of warfare lead into political unrest in those Gulf states? Right. And could you see a monarchy overthrown because of this war? I mean that's just speculation on my part. Right. But that's the type of thing we have to consider here. And the one other thing I'll say about this is last night when I went to bed, the last thing I had seen was the reports coming from the Omani foreign minister stating that there was a breakthrough in the talks, that the Iranians were willing to give up enrichment, meet the core US Demand, essentially. And then the first thing I saw when I woke up this morning was the report of 57 Iranian schoolgirls massacred by an American bomb. And so I think that is the one thing that we need to understand and the one thing that, that's all we need to know right now is that that's how this war began.
C
So David Icke posted this. Philip, do we have this? I dropped this in the, in the thing, but here he said, you know, to your point, Captain, you know the updates about the talks, right. David Icke writes, I love the updates on U. S Iran talks, as if anything but war would be the outcome. Who represented the U.S. oh, Trump's golf partner, widely acknowledged ultra Zionist moron Steve Witkoff and Trump's ultra Zionist son in law handler Jared Kushner, who has Israel running through his DNA, who wanted war with Iran. Yep, we're really trying to find a peaceful settlement here. If that, if that is, you have, you have naive, naivete, naivete running through your DNA. And this was Charlie Kirk last summer before the. Here's a tweet that he said, this is insane. Regime change will result in a bloody civil war killing hundreds of thousands, creating another massive Muslim refugee crisis. Toppling a leader is never as easy as you think. It almost always results in further involvement, a civil war and chaos.
E
Resist this.
C
And I just want to play this quick 18 second soundbite, Captain from Charlie Watch. We are just going to take out the Ayatollah. Oh really? What comes next, what comes after regime change might be, oh, well, we need a small number of US Troops to support the new regime. We have seen this play before. Regime change. You have no idea how this is going to work out. You have no idea, Captain kind of thing.
F
Yeah, I mean, I think Charlie Kirk was right and this gets the idea that we don't know what's going to happen. And the scale of this is unlike any of the iterations we saw of warfare between Israel and Iran and the US in 2024 and 2025 to include the 12 Day War last June, where the scope has already exceeded those three nations. And so we've seen these attacks on nations throughout the Gulf, on Jordan and of course the attacks on Israel. And what we're waiting to see now is we're waiting to see will the Amenis, the Houthis become involved, will Hezbollah become involved, will the Iraqi militias become involved? I mean, so the idea of this becoming a regional war is something that many of us have been warning about, let alone the larger consequences of this war. Shortly before it came on, the Iranians announced that they were closing the Straits of Hormuz. I mean, the expectations of oil closed at about $67 yesterday. The expectations that when the market opens on Monday, oil will be 85, $90. I think that's the smart assumption to make. So the effects on this will be worldwide. And then the vulnerabilities to the United States, the Iranians have said that they will go after strategic US Assets, meaning not military assets, but civil assets. So American energy facilities, American production facilities. Now, that might be confined to the region because that's all Iran is capable of, but it might not be. And so we as a country have to realize that we may be getting into a war here where our vulnerabilities say, like our electrical grid system here in the United States are something that could easily be attacked by the Iranians if they wanted to. And, you know, of course, then who is to blame for that? This is a reality of the United States is making. This is a reality of our leadership's making, you know, hand in hand with the Israelis, of course.
B
Well, I really appreciate that you pointed out, because we are going to be asked to forget this in short order, that it was you, the US And Israel together who started this by bombing children. And we will soon see civilian casualties and military casualties, Western from Israel, from the United States, U.S. service members. That seems like it will happen soon. And we will be asked to rank suffering. But we started this. We hit children first. Our intelligence, how could we do this? How? Like how? Because we're told that our intelligence is so keen, they had to have known. What do you think of that in
F
terms of our intelligence? Well, intelligence, this is. Look, here's another war we're being lied into. If you read Donald Trump's statement today, just to go off, this is about Iranian blood on their hands. And I can tell you that as someone who worked on the Improvised Explosives Defeat Organization task force and saw the intelligence, the Iranians did not put IEDs in the ground that killed Americans. The Iranians had some role in the Iraq war. It was minor. Almost all those American soldiers killed in Iraq were killed by Iraqis because we were occupying them. You know, What I mean, but the idea that they're going to use that lie that was put in place by the Bush administration to attempt to justify a war on Iran, you know, back in, say, 0506, that lie still is peddled. I mean, so we just see one lie after another, include the latest one, which is that the Iranians will soon have a ballistic missile, an intercontinental ballistic missile that can strike the United States. So here we are again being lied into another war that will likely be a failed war and a counterproductive war and a war that is clearly illegal and immoral. So this idea of intelligence, of course, is all what you make of it, and intelligence has certainly been used before to justify the lies. Again, the Iraq war, the best example of that. So I think for a lot of us, Natalie, it's this, the fact that we're going through this again and the fact that we're willing to do this. And this is not the first time the Americans have killed children. We killed scores of children in Afghanistan and Iraq, killed scores of children in Syria and Libya.
B
But a direct hit on a school like this. Do you think it was a mistake? Can I just.
F
Yeah, I mean, certainly.
E
Yeah.
F
But that's what, that's what mistakes are. The provenance of warfare mistakes and errors and miscalculations and things not working right. Absolutely. And go back to, say, the attacks on Nigeria back on Christmas Day, if people remember, the United States fired 12 Tomahawk missiles into Nigeria to go after Islamic State forces from everything we know from the Nigerian reported landed nowhere near any Islamic State forces. But of those 12 missiles, four didn't detonate. I mean, so there's an issue here of one, the corruption of US Intelligence. And then there's the issue here of that we have weaponry and munitions that doesn't work because we have a military industrial complex that's purpose is profit for corporations with a secondary purpose of kickback to politicians and not to protect American citizens. So a lot of our soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines are in the Middle east right now with equipment that of course, costs tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that simply doesn't work. And so I think that's why a lot of military analysts. I know you just had Danny Davis on, and Danny's been saying this, I've been saying this. The ability United States to wage a sustained campaign against Iran. When you look at the size of the force, we only have 10% or so of the number of aircraft in the Middle east that we had for the 1991 Gulf War. For the first Iraq war, we've only got about a third of the aircraft in the region that we had for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
D
Right.
F
So our force structure is very small then the idea that we have an industry that can't make the missiles and the rockets and the drones and all the things, the different munitions that our forces need. We saw this happen twice, both on the Biden administration and the Trump administration, where the US Navy sent a task force into the Red Sea to defeat the Houthis. And after weeks, maybe a couple months, the United States had to agree to a face saving truth, essentially a retreat from the Red Sea because they couldn't defeat the Houthis and because they were running out of missiles, they were running out of munitions. And that's essentially what happens last year in June with the 12 Day War with Iran, where both the Israelis and the Americans are running out of missiles to shoot down Iranian missiles and drones. And so Trump has to Send in the B2s to have this event, have this theater to justify ending that war. So, I mean, this is the reality of what American forces are going into the war with, you know, fewer ships and planes than they need, an industry that can't supply them, maintenance issues. And then of course, incompetent admirals in generals who at this point especially are nothing more than hacks for Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump.
C
Just a few moments ago, Professor Mohammed Morandi, who's in Tehran, said that 85 children were killed at that school. 85. So that's the update. Now I also want to show you some breaking news out of Bahrain. It's about 8:12pm in Bahrain right now, so after sundown here. So this is what you're looking at here. This is an Iranian drone striking one of the high rise hotels in Bahrain. So that is an Iranian drone striking a high rise building there. Residential building it looks like as well. And you're going to see more of this? Of course, we saw this in Dubai, multiple locations across Dubai, near the Burj Khalifa. And to your point right now about these air defense systems, Captain, I mean, as Colonel Davis was talking about, like trying to deplete air defense systems by using some of these older missiles. We haven't even seen some of the more advanced things yet. Hypersonics, we haven't seen, reportedly, of course, the stuff that had been delivered from China, even stuff from Russia yet it seems what we're seeing seems like older stuff. Right. Do you expect to see far more advanced systems rolled out over the next coming Days and weeks.
F
I think we're going to see the advanced stuff early. I think we may have seen it already. If you recall, go Back to the 12 Day War last June. And we really didn't begin to see say successful Iranian penetration of the American, Jordanian and Israeli Defense Shield of Israel until several days into that 12 day war. And we're seeing reports now again unconfirmed, but of Israeli ballistic missiles, Iranian ballistic missiles already penetrating that shield. We've seen video of these drones hitting Bahrain. We've seen satellite imagery of a destroyed American radar facility on Qatar. Now something like this with the video you're showing right now, the expectation would be the electronic warfare that is used to essentially jam the drones and make them uncontrollable, causes the drones to fall, fly off course and you see things like this and that's what you see all throughout the Ukrainian and Russian war especially. So I think you're going to see events like this occurring. But I've seen video this morning of a slow flying drone penetrate the 5th Fleet defenses and hit 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain as well as again that destroyed radar complex in Qatar. That should be incredibly disturbing and concerning for the American military that the Iranians have already hit US facilities within the first seven or eight hours of this. And that could come from a number of things. Maybe the Americans weren't prepared, maybe the installation commands didn't have the warnings that say the, the fighter squad squadrons and the bomber squadrons had. You know anyone who thinks that Hegstead's Pentagon would screw something up like that, of course they would. Look who's in charge, right? You know, this may be an issue of just not enough defense resources or maybe an issue that the American defenses just aren't that good. Or the Iranians have watched the Americans for so long now they have developed tactics to defend, defeat the Americans defenses. I mean there's all kinds of answers to this that we can speculate on. But the fact that on the first eight hours the Iranians already penetrating seems significantly US and Israeli defenses. I think that's really important to go for it because this will not be the same war that Iran wages that we saw in 2024 or 2025, I think that's one thing we can count on.
C
Captain Matthew Ho, thank you for joining us on this Saturday on such short notice. Really, really appreciate it. And your insights are really second to none. So thank you so much. We really appreciate it.
F
All right, thank you both. I appreciate what you do.
C
Thank you Matthew. Appreciate it. All right, we have got, yeah, we're just continuing to watch all the breaking news out of the region. Again, just a few moments ago, Bahrain hit with a drone and to Captain Matthew Ho's perspective, likely as a result of that drone going off course being downed as part of electronic warfare to
B
try to stop these, which means again, more civilian casualties in a war that didn't need to be started. So pray.
C
Yeah,
B
we don't know.
C
Yeah, we don't know. Maybe someone who does know and who's been warning us, especially about the US Gerald Ford or other aircraft carriers in the region. Sitting ducks for this nonsense and warfare is former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter. U.S. marine Scott Ritter, who joins us now. Scott, great to see you on this Saturday. Just I know you've been busy. We saw you on Judge Knapp show earlier. So God bless you for sticking with us here and jumping on. Can you give us your sense of where things stand right now it's after 8pm in Bahrain where one of the high rise buildings there was just, was just struck.
E
We're at war. It's a regional war. It's a war that is going to have consequences that will impact the American public. The Strait of Hormuz has been closed. You know, this is unprecedented. And you know, it is the beginning of an economic phase of this conflict. This is also a conflict that it appears those who started it didn't understand what they were getting into. And Iran has been fully prepared for this eventuality. The decapitation strike did not decapitate. The Iranian people are not in the streets demanding the overthrow of the government. Just the opposite. They're in the streets rallying in support of the government. And the war plan has gone awry from the start. You know, this was a war that the, you know, the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the President, we don't have the resources to fight and win. They tinkered with the war plan anyways and they went forward. But when you're trying to accomplish a lot with limited resources of if the war plan goes out of sync up front, which this one has, remember, this war, this mission that we're on is predicated on decapitation. We didn't decapitate. So all of the missiles that were flown to achieve decapitation are gone. They're wasted. You never get them back. Now we have to reallocate resources to continue to chase decapitation, which means we're removing resources from other aspects of this, you know, truncated military campaign, which means we're going to run out of resources very quickly. And we're not going to have accomplished anything. Meanwhile, Iran seems to have been prepared. They have. They're running a very aggressive pace of operations. A very aggressive pace of operations to which we don't have the solution. I had always assumed, just because having participated in the planning and execution of a major war plan against Iraq in 1991, that we would had our act together. There would have been, you know, people who would have studied the Iranians and would have come up with a military solution. And if they couldn't, they would have told the President, we have no military solution. But when you make a decision to launch an attack of this magnitude, there should be a plan. For instance, on suppressing Iranian ballistic missile launch capabilities. We haven't suppressed anything. I mean, this is. This is the most stunning aspect of not only did we fail to decapitate, but we haven't suppressed that which needed to be suppressed. And if, you know, there's some reports that the President, United States, having been briefed on the consequences of his actions, initiated an outreach through Italy to his Iran, asking for a ceasefire because we have lost this war. I just want to make that point right up front. We have lost this war in 10
B
hours, in about 10 to 12 hours.
E
We lost this war the moment we fired missiles against Iran because we don't have a plan that can be implemented and we are going to run out of ammunition. This is what the generals told the admiral that was fired from the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the President. We don't have the resources to do this war. If you do this, we're going to lose. Did you see JD Vance's post just a while ago?
C
I mean, you know, can you summarize it for our audience?
E
Well, basically, he talked about the decision to invade Iraq years ago, and he said that there was a horrible mistake and we ended up killing lots of Americans, lots of innocent Iraqis, and we accomplished nothing. I hope he said we have learned our lesson. We haven't. What he's saying is we haven't learned our lesson. JD Vance articulated aggressively against this war. And now we're in this war and we're going to lose this war. And again, it's not just losing. I mean, that's just, you know, maybe it's time America, you know, tastes what defeat is, is like, maybe might humble us. But how many Americans right now are throwing up, stumbling around their home, you know, puking, because we have murdered over 80 Iranian school children, girls, we, the United States of America, we the people of the United States, who sit by silently while we have these Online warmongers out there cheering this war on. You know, I believe in freedom of speech and people should be allowed to speak, but, you know, we should de platform not with the government power, but the power of the people. Anybody who is out there articulating aggressively in favor of this should be de platformed, meaning that nobody should ever follow them and they should lose all social networking connectivity because their voices are disgusting. Their voices, you know, are promoting an illegal war of aggression. And that's what we've waged here. This is not a war of necessity. This is a war of choice. This is a war that doesn't have any legal predicate. There was no justification for this. The president made a case about Iran's nuclear program that is not backed up by the facts. There were ongoing negotiations underway where the Iranians were putting everything on the table. The offers they put on the table would have resolved every aspect of the concerns of the United States about a potential Iranian nuclear program. And so this wasn't about nuclear weapons. This wasn't about anything other than simple regime change to appease Benjamin Netanyahu and an Israeli regime that seems to have hijacked the United States. You know, this president is staring political disaster in the face. Midterm elections are coming up, and Make America Great Again has clearly been exposed as a fraud. It's Make Israel Great Again. And, you know, I think, you know this. I'm just so disgusted by what happened and what is happening. And, you know, I have good friends in Iran. Professor Mirande is a very good friend of mine. I had a Iranian journalist who's interviewed me several times contact me and asked me if they were going to be targeted. I said, unfortunately, yes. And she said, well, great, I'll be dead at 27. She's still alive. She's still talking to me, but she's scared. She had to evacuate the place where she works. I was talking to another Iranian that said, I got to go. I got to go. Because literally their lives are at risk because we, the United States of America, have decided to bring war to their country.
C
And not just their country. I mean, Bahrain, Dubai. We've seen the Burj Khalifa nearly hit today.
E
I'm not going to lose any sleep over the Middle east countries. Kelly. I'm sorry. These are. These are despicable Gulf Arab regimes that have sucked up to the United States. They've stabbed Iran in the back one too many times. They provided bases for the United States. They were telling Iran one thing to their face and telling the United States another. These are people who told the United States to go forward with regime change. But make sure you accomplish your mission. In Bahrain, it's a majority Shia state ruled by a despicable Sunni, you know, ruling class. Maybe it's time that they be dragged through the streets and that the Shia population takes over. Maybe it's time the Shia population in eastern Saudi Arabia rises up and it removes the Saudi Arabian oilfields from control of the Saudi government. Maybe it's time the Shia of the Middle east stand up and stamp out Sunni tyranny. But I'm not going to cry for anybody in this Gulf Arab states, you reap what you sow. You sowed the wind, you reap the whirlwind.
C
You know Kuwait very well. Obviously, this just in, the Kuwaiti International Airport was just struck and destroyed. So what can you say about Kuwait's involvement here and why, you know, again,
B
these targets specifically, and again, these are civilian targets now. So, you know, what do we make of that? Our expert who was just on said a lot of times this, this could be misguided missile launches that are intercepted with electrical warfare. Are they targeting civilians?
E
I don't think the Iranians are targeting civilians. I do. But first of all, Kuwait International Airport is not a civilian target. It's an airport where American military aircraft land next to the airport, American military bases. It's a mode of communications, mode of transportation. Airports are the most legitimate target in times of war. So, no, they're striking that to strike a tower. I think Matt Ho got it right. You know, there's a lot of electronic warfare at play. And these, these drones will come in. The Iranians have done their best to upgrade their drones to avoid or to overcome electronic warfare. But, you know, war is war and they're put off. If you have a ballistic missile coming in and you get a near strike and it's pushed off a trajectory, it's going to hit a target it didn't mean to hit. Right. And so there will be civilian casualties. But the point here is that these are not innocent nations. There's innocent people that reside in these nations, but the Gulf Arab states are not. They have been plotting against Iran for decades now. And they had supported this American action, and now they're paying the price.
C
The Israeli Air Force, according to reports, intercepts have just named this operations Lion's Roar. 200 jets, 500 targets. The largest sortie in Israeli Air Force history. And they called it the Genesis as the opening strike. So this is just the beginning of all of this. So maybe militarily Scott, you can take us through what we see next. Speculation about using some of the lesser advanced weapons to sort of overwhelm air defense systems. And you know, Iran saying that you haven't even seen what we have, our capabilities yet. What do you expect to unfold over the next 24, 48 hours?
E
Well, first of all, there's some talk out of the US Military that the initial phase of this campaign is a four day campaign, day and night. So if that's the case, what we're going to see is just nonstop sorties flying into Iran to, you know, follow through on regime change, on decapitation, to suppress Iranian security targets, to take out air defense and to suppress ballistic missile launch capability. But according to the President, also to strike ballistic missile production capacity. There are various facilities near Tehran that appear to be being targeted by the the United States and by Israel. And so we're going to be basically seeing, you know, 72 hours of, or I'm sorry, it's four days, that 24, 48, 96 hours of strikes. And then there ostensibly would be a pause in which the United States would be hopeful that the Iranian people would rise up and remove their government power while we rearm, re equip and look for new targets. But I think we've got this completely wrong because it doesn't appear that the Iranians are balking, are hurt, are confused, are stumbling about. They are responding in a very forceful manner and as you pointed out, they haven't used their best. I think tonight there's some video evidence that they may have fired a couple of their more advanced missiles. We shall see. But the point is they have very advanced missiles and these missiles will do extreme harm on the targets that they're aimed at. And you know, Israel is going to pay a very, very heavy price, an extraordinarily heavy price, maybe a fatally, you know, fatal level of cost. American military installations likewise are going to be hit. And I do believe that the various governments that have been supporting the United States war against Iran are going to be hit. The Iranians have been preparing for us. They shut the Strait of Hormuz. That's never been done before. So there's an economic phase to this conflict as well.
B
Now the currency that has also been burned up is this idea of nuclear de armament. Because now Iran has been struck first. There's no way that they would now go to talks with the United States any longer and say that we need to not have weapons. They continue to be attacked first by Western forces. So is that ruse over? Are we going to do that shit again? What do you think?
E
Well, I mean, first of all, let's make it clear the Iranians don't have a nuclear weapons program and are not pursuing nuclear weapons, and they have no intention of doing so. Regardless of what's been done, the reason why Iran is going to win this war is because they don't have nuclear weapons. They're going to win this war because they've built a very effective conventional military strike capability that will drive its enemies to its knees. What I believe it will happen from this conflict is that Iran will be able to get sanctions lifted and be brought back into the international community more readily because the whole ruse, as you put it, about using nuclear weapons as an excuse for regime change is over. Iran will, you know, rejoin the international community. International inspectors will return to Iran. Iran's nuclear program will be brought back under safeguards, and Iran will pursue its peaceful nuclear energy program as it had in the past. That's what victors get to do. And Iran, I do believe, will be victorious in this war. The United States is going to run out of ammunition, and when that happens, we will have to withdraw from this conflict because we have no ability to continue this conflict and we lose all leverage over Iran. At that point in time, Israel is going to be physically defeated in this conflict. This is a war of existential proportions. I don't believe that the United States is going to be able to pick up the phone and have this war stop. I believe Iran has already gotten the upper hand and will continue to apply force effectively against Israel, the United States and the Gulf Arab states to the point that when a diplomatic solution is arrived at, and I do believe that Russia and China are going to be pushing for a diplomatic solution. You know, peace will break out, but peace that is acceptable to, to Iran, which means that for the first time, people are going to have to sit down, shut up and listen to the Iranians and what they want. And they don't want a nuclear weapon.
C
This was just released by the idf. Hitting an animation they just released. Scott, if you want to take a look at your screen here. Strikes on aerial defense systems across Iran. This is the, this is what the IDF says they were targeting these aerial, these SA65 sites. Maybe you could speak to this.
B
And they're calling it the largest military flyover in, in its history, scrambling over 200 jets for these targets, according to Al Jazeera.
E
I mean, Iran has been building a very effective defense industry and Israel has been tracking it. And you know, these, these are some of Iran's most modern air defense systems and Israel is, is making a play at destroying them. Again, having done this for a living in war, just because you have a point on the ground that you think something's at and you're able to fly an airplane to that area and drop munitions on that target, that doesn't mean you actually achieve what you think you're going to achieve. The Iranians aren't stupid. And the idea that they're going to leave high value targets, targets in the same place over a sustained period of time in the lead up to a conflict so they can be bombed by the largest flyover in history is absurd in the extreme there, you know, I'm sure that there will be bombs put on target and I'm sure there will be assets that couldn't have been evacuated. But as the Iraqis told me once, after being bombed by the United States over and over and over again, they said, you guys are really good at blowing up buildings and we're really good at pouring concrete. But what you're not good at is destroying what was in those buildings. And I think you're going to find out that's the case here, too, that the United States and Israel are blowing up a lot of buildings and we're not killing anything because the Iranians are smart. They've been preparing for this conflict since 2005. Throughout Iran, there's a system of caverns dug into the side of mountains and hills where this material has been evacuated. There are alternative evacuation sites. You know, Israel's talking about hitting. What did you say, 500 targets or 500 targets?
C
Was the. Yeah, 200 aircraft, 500 targets. Operation volumes were.
E
But the Iranians have created an additional 1500 targets by dispersing this, and they will continue to disperse. Now we're in an intelligence game where you have to collect intelligence and evaluate intelligence and identify targets and then put together a target strike package and strike the targets before the enemy actually re evacuates. The Iranians aren't going to be staying in one place, they're going to be moving. And unless Israel controls the skies for 24 hours, they won't be able to interdict. This is a losing proposition for Israel,
B
which is why it's so comical when President Trump is like, oh, well, we really surprised them. We've been signaling to them that we wanted a war with them for at least two decades. So to your point, they've been prepping for this for as long as John McCain has been salivating over the idea of this, which he's getting his way, you know, from somewhere in hell.
E
He's in hell cackling, hopefully in pain. But the, the, you know, Foreign minister, Iraqi came out and said they tried to kill our leadership. They said they got one or two military commanders, we've replaced them, but they got nobody else. So yeah, Iran was ready for this. And the important thing is that in being prepared for this, they apparently prepared in a way that didn't tip off their preparation to Israel and the United States. Because we would not have launched this strike unless we had a high degree of confidence that the targets we were hitting would be in fulfillment of the mission that we put forward. We wouldn't waste all of these extremely high value, very expensive precision munitions in the first wave of the attack just to strike empty buildings. Because that it appears, is what we hit. A bunch of empty buildings with a significant amount of collateral damage for Iranian civilians, but almost zero impact on the target sets that we're trying to, to eradicate.
C
New video in from Bahrain. This is the US Navy Fifth Fleet. This is a 360 degree air radar system that was just hit by a few hours ago by Iranian drones. So this is like a $30,000 drone that just struck a 300 million dollar US Navy fleet aerial surveillance system.
B
You know what, I cannot wait till April 15 to replenish that with my tax filings.
E
Well, yeah, I was just thinking the same thing. My wife and I are going over our taxes and it's just like, you know, the amount of money we're going to be sending, we have sent, we're going to be sending to the US Government. The American people just have to. And you know, this isn't the worst, that's just one radar. At Al U died base in Qatar, we had a whole series of very expensive radars that we built. They were part of the early warning system that we've established throughout the Middle East. So then when the Iranians launch their ballistic missiles, this will detect the launch and start feeding data into the missile defense shield and everything. The total value of these radars in the billions of dollars. They don't exist anymore. The Iranians have destroyed them. The Iranians have destroyed, you know, we could evacuate our people, but we have been installing these extraordinarily high ticket infrastructure in the Middle East. This entire infrastructure architecture is being eliminated as we speak. The total amount of money that will have been destroyed by the Iranians by the time they finish will be well over $100 billion.
C
New video in from that school that was struck. If you're just joining us and now this, this is from Dropsite News, confirming that that school was struck in Tehran. And of course, kids go to school from Saturday through Thursday there. So people are like, why are kids going to school on a Saturday? They do. And you can see these bloody backpacks piled up there. At least 70 people killed, including 60 children, according to Dropsite News. And this was in southern Iran. And they're still digging through the rubble right now trying to locate the children. And you can. There's plenty of photos and videos now of them pulling out these little bodies, which is just, you know, this is, this is what the United States and Israel have done. Absolutely horrible.
E
You know, it's. First of all, the strike on these, these schools wasn't by accident. This isn't a case of a drone being thrown off by electronic warfare. These schools were struck by the most advanced precision guided munitions in the Israeli and American arsenal. Which means that we, our intelligence was bad. You know, in that. That tells us a lot about what's going on here. Let me just explain this a little bit more. During Desert Storm, when we started the strike, the quality of the intelligence we had about the target deck was actually quite high. If I pulled out a target folder and it said that we're striking this target at this location, they identified the target. I could point to a packet of intelligence data that said, yes, this is the target construction material. This is what's in it. This is what needs to happen. This is the munition we decided to use. This is the impact point, the desired effect, the whole thing. A good target package. But then as the war went on and we started blowing up all these targets and the Iraqis kept performing, we had to start looking for alternative targets. And suddenly you started seeing that the support packet thinned out and stopped existing at all. And yet we, we still had the target package. You open it up and there's a building that we're supposed to bomb. But now it says it's something, but it turns out to be. Not that we started guessing. And what this tells me is that the Israelis and the Americans are guessing up front. When this war started, we don't have the best intelligence that some of the targets that we're hitting are guesswork. And, you know, then we have to factor in the last thing. Why were kids at school on a Saturday? It's not just because they go to school on Saturday. It's because they were led to believe that there were negotiations, right? They were led to believe that Marco Rubio was traveling to the region on Monday. And that of course, that means there could be no war. So they went, their parents sent them to school because they believed their children would be safe at school. Right.
C
The US State Department confirmed, and I tweeted out yesterday that I believe it was a ruse. Right, the U.S. state Department confirmed that Marco Rubio was traveling there on Monday. And I heard from sources in Tel Aviv who said, we think it's a ruse. Like in Israel, we're telling you it's a ruse. So I tweeted that out. So these poor little children go to school cuz their families think, oh, Rubio's coming, their talk's coming. And it was all, it was all too. It was all a ruse.
E
All a ruse in support of a politicized attack plan. This is an attack plan that again, there is no legitimate national security reason for us to be going to war with Iran. There is none. This is purely about domestic American politics and it leads into our support for Israel. This is about Israeli pressure and how from a domestic American political perspective we're unable to stand up to Israeli pressure. This is what happens when Marian Adelson bribes the or buys the president for $100 million. This is what happens when you stack the the cabinet deck with Zionists. And this is what happens when you have politicized intelligence and a politicized military. This is the danger of Pete Hegseth. You know, we're supposed to have civilian leadership that stands up in defense of the Constitution, which means in defense of the nation. Instead we have this testosterone laden, you know, pro Trump cheerleader who thinks it's more important to bench press £315 than it is to actually go through the target deck target by target by target, to make sure that what we're striking is righteous and it lends itself to a military action that is actually being conducted in defense of the United States. This is a war of choice. It's not a war of necessity. And therefore it makes it an illegal war of aggression. And I'll just pound this point home all over again because people hear that term and they roll their eyes. This is what we voted for. They said, you know, I don't really give a damn what you voted for. What I care about is the Constitution of the United States of America. And this war operates in total contravention of the Constitution, in total contravention of the United Nations Charter. Now for all those MAGA chest thumpers that say, I don't care about the United Nations Charter, therefore you by definition don't care about, about the United States Constitution. Because the Charter is a treaty obligation, signed by a President, United States, ratified by the United States Senate, therefore becomes the law of the land, the supreme law of the land, in accordance with the Constitution. So if you are saying we can operate outside the framework of the Charter, what you're saying is the Constitution doesn't matter. Pete Hegseth doesn't even know how to spell the Constitution yet alone read it and understand it. And we have a whole bunch of mouth breathers out there, oxygen thieves that are literally backing him up. This war is as illegal as it gets. As illegal as it gets. And if there ever was justice, Donald Trump and every person who signed off on this war will be hauled before a court of relevant jurisdiction and held fully accountable for the crimes they have committed.
B
Now, the United nations, though, is condemning this on social media. But I feel like my HOA has more power to stop this than the United Nations. You were a former United nations weapons inspector. So what are they going to do? So what? We've done it anyway. We effed around and found out. So what?
E
No, look, one of the issues with the United nations is that when it comes to matters pertaining to international security, it is totally dependent upon the five permanent members of the Security Council to do the right thing. I was a United nations weapons inspector. The only reason why I had any legitimacy and any effectiveness was that I operated under a Chapter 7 resolution, which means it's backed up by the threat of use of force that was passed by the Security Council of the United Nations. So when we went into Iraq, we were literally backed by the, the, the will of the world. Today, you're not going to get a resolution passed out of the Security Council that isn't going to be vetoed by one of the five members because we have a permanently divided Security Council and we have a United States that has basically said that it's going to forego every notion of justice and international law doing the right thing on behalf of this rogue nation called Israel. So the UN is, you know, they know what the law is and they know what should be done. But getting action out of the U.N. don't blame the U.N. blame the United States, because the United States has broken the United nations, especially when it comes to anything dealing with the state of Israel and military force in the Middle east region.
C
I want to get your take on this. You touched on it briefly earlier and before we wrap things up, Scott, you talked about the advanced weaponry and how Iran could sustain this for years. We heard from the IRGC General Ibrahim Jabarri, who posted this and basically giving a message for Trump. And I just want to play what he says here. He says, let me re rack this. Trump should know that we are equipped with the most advanced capabilities today to fight with you. For years at the start of the war, we used whatever we had in storage. But as it continues, we will launch our strongest missiles. We will unveil weapons that you have never seen before. We will bring those out in the following days. And he goes on from there. So maybe you could just talk about some of those weapons and what that might look like. Well, sure.
E
First of all, let's start off with what he said and what you said about preparing for years. I think it was in 2005 that Dick Cheney started to, then Vice President Dick Cheney started to talk about the need to go to war against Iran. And we actually had the US Government preparing war plans. I remember visiting the School of Advanced Military Studies in Fort Leavenworth where their class was looking at an Azerbaijani option, where the United States would surge troops into Azerbaijan and then, you know, launch an offensive down the Caspian Sea coast to take Tehran. The Iranians were worried about this. Iran at that time divided their country into 12 autonomous military districts. What this means is that they were anticipating that the United States would seek, decapitate the leadership in Tehran to remove its ability to communicate effectively with the rest of the nation. And so what they did is they divided the country into these 12 autonomous military districts, each of which was self sustaining, self governing, and capable of not only defensive operations, but offensive operations. This was in 2005. So they've had from 2005 until today more than 20 years to, to, you know, develop this capability. In each one of these autonomous districts, there are underground cities that contain massive quantities of missiles, massive quantities of munitions, etc. You know, these are designed to survive the, you know, there's duplication of effort. You don't have everything in one place. So Iran is prepared to, to carry out this existential conflict for years, for years. We're not. We think we're going to be done in four days. Iran's like, no, we're here for years now. What they've done too, is because of Operation True promise and the 12 Day War, the Iranians have learned a whole bunch about how the United States fights, how we do missile defense architecture. They've studied the radars, the radar signatures, how the radars communicate. They've done cause and effect analysis. The whole 12 day war was about testing out their system. It wasn't until the end of the war that Iran started firing their more advanced missiles in ones and twos that were penetrating the defense shield at will. They didn't need to overwhelm it with clouds of missiles and drones. So they've gathered this intelligence, and they've been upgrading their missiles. They had already had missiles capable of penetrating. They proved that. But since June, they have gone in and they have built new warheads, they've modified warheads, they've built new systems, they deployed new systems that are designed to defeat the most advanced air defense systems in the United States and Israeli arsenals. And these are the weapons that this. This Iranian general is talking about. I don't know how many of them they. They have, but, you know, they have enough, I think, to hit every target they want to hit. And when they're launched, they're going to hit the targets they want to hit. On top of that, the Iranians have these drones. They have tens of thousands of these drones. You know, the. The radar that was destroyed in. In Muharik and in Bahrain was destroyed by a drone, right? A $30,000 drone destroyed this, you know,
C
300 and this one. Scott, we just got word that this $1.1 billion system in Qatar, the early warning system for the entire region, was just destroyed. So in Qatar, I was talking about.
E
That was. I was talking about earlier.
C
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
E
They've taken up there. By the time they finish taking out our architecture, they'll have destroyed about $100 billion worth of equipment, and they'll have destroyed it using maybe $100 million worth of weaponry.
B
I want to ask you. This is something that's been haunting me because, you know, you were always so good at breaking down the war in Russia, and I thought the Biden administration could not have been worse for bringing war to that region. And now I did not see this coming. Do we think that a Kamala Harris administration would have done something so reckless? This is haunting me. I'm asking you for a personal. Because most of us libertarians were like, okay, we're gonna vote for the Trump administration because the Biden administration can't stop itself bringing war to Ukraine. What. What do you think? How do you reconcile that as bad
E
as the Biden administration was, and understand I still am going to defend my vote for Donald Trump because of Russia. And I do think the Kamala Harris administration probably would have gotten us into a direct shooting war with Russia, which maybe we wouldn't be having this conversation, because we'd all be dead, but on the Middle East. The Biden administration wasn't as controlled, I believe, as the Trump administration is by the Israeli government. I mean, Donald Trump has literally just sold out the entire farm. The other thing is, the Biden administration, as bad as they were, at least went through the pretense of constitutionality, a respect for Congress, a grudging respect. They still were exercising unilateral executive authority and things of that nature. But they never once. You never heard Joe Biden say or I don't believe you would have heard Kamala Harris say that I am a dictator, that the rule of law doesn't matter. You know, the Supreme Court compounds sand and you know, Congress, who cares? And so, you know, the reason why we're at war today is because the Supreme Court doesn't matter, because Congress has neutered itself, because this president has no concept of how important it is to respect the office of the presidency and how to what it means to defend the Constitution. And I don't believe Kamala Harris would have been this bad. So I don't believe we would have been involved in a war like this because, you know, the whole idea of this constitutional republic we have are checks and balances where sanity can be injected into an insane situation. And I don't believe that we would have allowed ourselves to get to the situation. I do believe that Joe Biden would have found a way to make a deal with or Kamala Harris would have found a way to make a deal with the Iranians on their nuclear program. This is a president who never had any intention of making a deal. This is a president who caved in to Benjamin Netanyahu's desire for regime change, getting rid of Iran. The Islamic Republic is about promoting Greater Israel, and we don't need to speak about this hypothetically. We saw Tucker Carlson Confront U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee about this. And Mike Huckabee said that he supports Israel taking all of the Arab lands. And there was no. Normally you'd be fired for this, but there was no significant pushback from a White House that has already been captured by people who think in a similar fashion.
C
Yeah, exactly. They're right. Lockstep. They are totally controlled by Israel, 100%. Scott, before we get you out of here, this just in from Saudi Arabia. You were talking about Saudi Arabia earlier, but we just got new video of Saudi Arabian oil fields now being attacked as well. So they are up in flames.
E
I don't mean to laugh, but now we're getting into the energy infrastructure phase of this war. And it's over. I mean, if this doesn't stop now, we're doomed.
C
I already saw lines this morning. I ran out this morning to grab some coffee before our special report, and I already saw people lining up to get, to get gas in the cars.
E
Well, I mean, we didn't see that. We were driving around and we didn't see the lines yet. But this is existential to the survival of this country. Now, for the first time, I'm scared. I mean, because I didn't. I understand what's going to happen if this becomes an oil infrastructure war. This, everything we own here, everything is gone, it's finished. The dollar becomes useless. I don't know how we're going to survive. So this truly scares me. The concept of missiles hitting radars and all that kind of stuff disturbs me from a moral standpoint. But if this turns into an infrastructure war, we are going to see a global economic catastrophe that the United States simply is not going to be able to survive. I mean, Donald Trump has to be understanding that his. Not only will he lose the, the midterm elections, but there's a possibility that in addition to losing the House, which means he will be impeached, he will lose the Senate to the degree that he can be convicted. And, you know, his term may end with him in handcuffs in an orange jumpsuit in Fort Leavenworth. Maybe that's where he belongs, but he's going to take this country down with him. And I'm truly scared now because that, that's the most frightening thing I've seen right there is oil fields on fire. It's something Iran said that, that they would play that card. I had hoped that the Russians and the Chinese would have constrained them from doing this. Shutting the Strait of Hormuz is a reversible prospect. When you start destroying oil production, infrastructure, this is irreversible because the things that are happening here, when it goes up in flame, you're not just burning resource, creating pollution, all that. But, you know, oil fields have to be maintained. They have to be managed. There's pressures that have to be done. There's a science to drawing the liquid out of the ground. And when you start bombing it and it starts going on fire, that science is out the window. And so, you know, not to be oversimplification, but we could be depressurizing this. We could be allowing water that has been pushed out to come in, and we could be ruining these oil fields forever. And so, you know, what used to be one of the world's Largest proven reserves of energy is now going to become just a useless puddle of, you know, liquefied muck under the ground. I wish you hadn't shown me that, because now I have nightmares. I'm. I'm truly, for the first time, literally scared for the future because it's over.
B
This could be the poetic justice on the United States. We have crippled Iran with sanctions, meaning they couldn't get medicine. They couldn't expand their society in the same way that they wanted to. They couldn't prosper in the way they might have otherwise crippling our. We will put these sanctions on ourselves. So now is the time to make sure that you have medicine that you have that this is. We will have done this to ourselves.
E
Yeah, yeah. Get some fresh water. Go fill up some gas cans. But even then, it's a joke. Okay, so I go fill up some gas cans. Great. I just sustained my generator for four and a half days. And then what? Oh, well.
C
And just finally here was getting word from Iran that anybody heading into the streets of Hormuz, any ships coming through this region, will be attacked.
E
So they sank one already. There was a ship that tried to force the straight, and Iran sank it.
C
Here we go.
B
Yeah.
E
Yeah. All right, let's. Again, the straight. Hormuz didn't hit my panic zone because it's, it's an on, off switch, meaning that, you know, they've shut it off. And yes, that restricts the flows, but, you know, you make a political solution and you, you click it on and everything's okay. But when you start destroying oil production, infrastructure, that's irreversible. So hopefully this was a mistake. Hopefully this was an accident. Hopefully this is limited and won't continue. But if this, if this trend goes on, you're going to be seeing the Middle east literally ablaze, and that is the end of the global economy.
C
I hope you're right. I hope that was just a mistake and an isolated incident. So we'll keep our eyes on all of this, Scott, and we just want to thank you for your analysis today and jumping in with us on such short notice as we watch this unfold and try to get true reports out of that region. Thank you so much, Scott. We always appreciate it.
E
All right, Clayton, thanks a lot.
C
Thank you.
B
All right, well, thank you for joining us for redacted Special Report today. Woke up, rolled over and was like, I don't want to check my phone because I knew, yeah, I just going
C
to bed last night knowing that this war started. You know, it's like you knew it was coming.
E
Right.
C
First thing in the morning. All right, what
D
it's from over here, you know, in a completely different country,
E
seeing it affect it, everything here as well.
C
So talk about that. You know, you're in Thailand right now and, you know, so they've shut down gold and silver sales and transactions. Is that right, the banks there?
E
Yeah, because it, because it just became too volatile.
F
Volatile.
E
It's like up and down, up and down too fast. So they just completely closed the market.
C
I mean, this is like what silver was built for. This craziness. Right now you're seeing like the, the US Dollar going to be incinerated if this continues. Well, thank you guys for joining us. What you're seeing here is that a different angle strike on that U.S. 5th Fleet, U.S. navy fleet in Bahrain a few hours ago. So we're getting different angles now of that drone strike that hit and hit that command center there. So again, different infrastructure, satellite systems, air surveillance systems, US Bases in Qatar and in Bahrain and in the United Arab Emirates all being attacked with these drones and missile strikes. And so Iran saying you haven't seen. You haven't seen nothing yet. Like we are. We haven't even used our most sophisticated weapons for what's about to come. So. All right, well, we will have reports out through over the weekend here on the very latest on all of this. Thank you. Thank you for keeping it here on redacted. Thank you guys so much. Be safe out there. God bless.
B
And what can we do? What do you think? Like, over the weekend, you know, again, thinking about stocking up on certain supplies perhaps, but then also, you know, take breaks from X, stay off X. Yeah, it makes me especially mad to see people championing this. Riles me up. You know, try and try and stick with the experts and don't get yourself crazy about this.
C
And maybe call experts, not the experts. Maybe call your members of Congress in your district and demand that this stop. Not that Congress has any teeth at this point. And you have members of Congress saying, yeah, President doesn't even need to call us. You have other members of Congress saying that this is absolutely illegal. So that's where. Anyway, thank you for subscribing to our channel. Turn on the little bell notification here on YouTube and rumble when we go, go live. We will send out an alert to let you know that we are live. So thank you guys so much for subscribing and we'll see you very, very soon. Have a great rest of your Saturday.
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Host: Clayton and Natali Morris
Date: February 28, 2026
This urgent, unscripted episode covers the unprecedented outbreak of war between the United States, Israel, and Iran, with a deeply critical lens on mainstream narratives and government motives. The hosts and expert guests analyze the rapidly evolving military, political, and economic consequences, focusing on debunking official claims, highlighting humanitarian costs, and probing possible scenarios and motivations behind the conflict.
"This is not a war of necessity. This is a war of choice... a war that doesn’t have any legal predicate."
— Scott Ritter, 49:32
"We lost this war the moment we fired missiles against Iran because we don’t have a plan that can be implemented and we are going to run out of ammunition."
— Scott Ritter, 49:32
"No air defense system is impervious... If we can't knock down a drone, then we've got some real problems."
— Col. Daniel Davis, 11:28
"Intelligence... is all what you make of it, and intelligence has certainly been used before to justify the lies—again, the Iraq war the best example of that..."
— Matthew Ho, 36:26
"This could be the poetic justice on the United States. We have crippled Iran with sanctions... We will put these sanctions on ourselves."
— Natali Morris, 87:10
"Maybe it’s time America tastes what defeat is like. Maybe it might humble us... How many Americans right now are throwing up, stumbling around their home... because we have murdered over 80 Iranian school children, girls, we, the United States of America."
— Scott Ritter, 49:55
| Timestamp | Segment & Key Topic | |-----------|--------------------| | 01:31 | Clayton & Natali: Opening—overview of war’s outbreak | | 03:31 | Summary of confirmed & claimed strikes in Iran, Israel, Gulf | | 05:12 | Discussion of school strike, civilian deaths | | 07:57 | Introduction of Col. Daniel Davis (military analysis) | | 08:26 | Davis: US/Israeli objectives, critique of planners | | 11:28 | US air/base defenses penetrated by Iranian drones | | 13:59 | USS Gerald Ford "going dark"—tactical concerns | | 16:34 | "Tepid start" assessment of scale & intent | | 23:36 | Strait of Hormuz close—oil/market impact | | 30:05 | Matthew Ho joins—macro analysis, consequences of escalation | | 36:26 | False intelligence, repeat of Iraq war lies | | 41:10 | Bahraini, Qatari, and UAE drone/missile strikes confirmed | | 46:26 | Scott Ritter: "We're at war," US/Israeli war plans unraveling | | 49:32 | "We have lost this war..."—Ritter’s blunt assessment | | 59:26 | No Iranian nuclear program, "ruse is over" | | 65:57 | Bahrain US Navy fleet’s $300M air radar destroyed by $30K drone | | 67:30 | School attack in Tehran, civilian aftermath | | 71:03 | "Purely about domestic American politics and Israeli pressure" | | 80:10 | $1.1 billion radar system in Qatar destroyed; $100B US infrastructure losses expected | | 83:32 | Saudi oil fields attacked—Ritter: "We are doomed" if this expands | | 87:10 | Natali: US faces "poetic justice" as sanctions boomerang | | 89:44 | Impact already global: Gold/silver markets shut in Asia | | 91:28 | Hosts urge viewers: Contact Congress, prepare, avoid misinformation on social media |
The conversation is rapid, urgent, and at times openly emotional and angry, sharply critical of US and Israeli policy, the military-industrial complex, and mainstream media’s depiction of events. All guests steer clear of official talking points, focusing instead on real-time intelligence, historical context, and human suffering.
Redacted News provides a stark, unfiltered overview of the outbreak of war between the US, Israel, and Iran, warning of dire military, economic, and humanitarian consequences. The episode exposes the limitations of Western military strategy, the moral and practical failures that led to the war, and the possibility that the conflict may upend the global order. Guests urge immediate de-escalation, honesty about the war’s origins, and serious consideration of the economic and human toll yet to come.
Calls to Action: