A (5:35)

You talk about what's needed and that's gotta be a sigh of relief. But also part of this, the interesting conversation that you're having because you guys have known each other for a long time, you would consider him, I think, to be a genuine, sincere friend.

B (5:50)

Yes.

A (5:51)

And so there's obviously part of the reason why you guys have such a long meeting is, yes, you're friends, you're, you know each other well. But there's gotta be an urgency from his perspective of, hey, I need to get a lot of things done and I need your help. And you probably have a lot of questions. How much of that two hour meeting is like, let's go, what do you need? We gotta get through this.

B (6:14)

Yeah, that was certainly a lot of it is me asking, what do you need from the United States right now? And he was very gratified that on the ammunition front, that need has been filled and he needs America to stand with him. To stand with him. Look, the hostage deal is releasing hostages, but there are multiple waves. And I would say Prime Minister Netanyahu is very directly focused on eliminating Hamas and also on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And he is laser focused on that, quite rightly. Iran is weakened and weakened badly right now. And it's weakened because Hamas was one of its major proxies and it's badly, badly decimated. Hezbollah was another major proxy, and that is badly decimated Syria. The government of Bashar Assad, another proxy for Iran, collapsed because Iran is in such weak situation. But the result of that is Iran has a real incentive to try to develop nuclear weapons. And we talked a lot about stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

A (7:20)

Where are we now in that timeline? Because we haven't talked about that in a while here on this show. And I think it's an important point because the last administration really was kind of letting Iran do what Iran wanted to do. How concerned is he and how close do they think they could be to actually getting that?

B (7:35)

He is very concerned. I'm very concerned. And you look at Barack Obama. The Iran nuclear deal, I believe, accelerated Iran's progress towards getting nuclear weapons, allowed them to build centrifuges, allowed them to enrich uranium. The Trump administration quite rightly came in and ended that Obama Iran nuclear deal. And you and I have talked about before, that was a major battle within the Trump administration. Both the State Department and Defense Department under Trump argued that we should stay in the Iran nuclear deal. Rex Tillerson was the Secretary of State. Jim Mattis was the Secretary of Defense. They were both vociferous on staying in the deal. And I probably had two dozen conversations and meetings with President Trump urging him to pull out of the deal. And he agreed, and he did. And what it ended up doing was it turned Iran around, because what followed from that was the maximum pressure campaign that put economic sanctions in place, that cut Iran's oil exports and sales in place, and that really had the regime incredibly weakened and teetering. And one of the things that I pressed President Trump very hard to do and that he did in the first term, was invoking the snapback sanctions in the United Nations. And that, again, put enormous pressure on Iran. And as a result, they didn't even enrich uranium above 5% when Trump was president. But in November 2020, the Iranian regime gambled, and unfortunately, correctly, that it could start rushing to a nuclear arsenal and that the Biden administration would let them. And so In December of 2020, the regime approved a new law calling for major nuclear advances. In January, they started enriching uranium to 20% at Fordo, which is. Which is the underground bunker built into a mountain that the Obama deal had left open. And you know what the response was of Biden in February, right after he was inaugurated, February 2021, the Biden administration rushed to the UN to rescind the snapback sanctions that President Trump had put in place. And under Biden, they allowed the international sanctions to expire. And we now know the result today, the Ayatollah's nuclear breakout time is nearly zero. And that is a direct consequence of repeated decisions from Biden. And I believe now we have a White House and a president who's not going to allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

A (10:17)

You talk about not allow them to. Is that enforcing sanctions? Is that the possibility of military being used? I mean, what does that look like? And what is best for the US and also for Israel? I'm assuming some of that was talked about.

B (10:33)

Yes, yes, yes. Sanctions, economic pressure, cutting off their oil, cutting off their finances, and if necessary, using military force not to invade Iran, not to try to turn Iran into Switzerland. But if they are on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, using military force, either Israel or America, to take out their nuclear weapon capability to protect America, to protect Israel. And that is something President Trump has been very explicit about. And it's something certainly that Prime Minister Netanyahu and I discussed this Evening.

A (11:08)

We've had a lot of sanctions on Iran, but unfortunately they've not been enforced certainly in the last administration the way they were supposed to. So when you look at enforcement aspect of this, and we've talked about ghost ships, ghost oil that they've been able to get out to the black market and still prop themselves up, is that changing quickly? I mean, granted, we're on the third week of the Trump administration, but how long does that take to actually turn into effect where they're feeding, viewing it within the government in Iran?

B (11:36)

Listen, this is something I said on election night in November, in my election night victory speech. You were there, Ben. I said tonight was a very, very bad night for the Ayatollah in Iran because President Trump is being reelected. We're getting a Republican Senate, a Republican House, and that has changed things dramatically in terms of enforcing sanctions, going after, going after the oil sales. Look, oil is critical because that's where Iran gets the vast majority of its revenue. When Trump came into office, Iran was selling a million barrels a day. After he used serious sanctions on oil sales, we dropped that from a million barrels a day down to 300,000. Joe Biden refused to enforce those oil sanctions. And Iran, when Biden came in, they were selling 300,000 barrels a day. It skyrocketed to 2 million barrels of oil a day. That is what funded Hamas. That is what funded Hezbollah. That is what funded October 7th. That is what funded terror against Israel and against America. And so having a president with willing to stand up is really significant in terms of Israel knowing that America has her back. And by the way, I got to say, one of the things that was really striking. So I talked with Bibi about October 7, about the horrors that unfolded about how Israel responded and they responded going after Hamas and how quickly the Biden administration was undermining them. But I got to say, it got even more significant because you recall when Hezbollah began accelerating and escalating in the north of Israel and attacking more and more, and you'll recall that Israel made the decision to use the pagers, to use the pagers to explode and to take out a significant number of Hezbollah terrorists. So Bebe told me the inside story of that. And I gotta say, it is fascinating. I told him, I said, listen, if somebody wrote this as the plot of a movie, nobody would believe it if it was a Mission Impossible story, okay, we're going to go undercover, we're going to get an Asian company to produce pagers and sell them to Hezbollah and convince them that they're really from Asia, when in fact, the Israelis planted tiny explosives within them, and then Hezbollah is going to distribute it to each of their terrorists so that Israel could detonate it. You would not believe it. Now, let me tell you something that is. Is stunning, and this has been publicly reported, but it's also when Prime Minister Netanyahu made the decision to detonate those pagers, do you know what they didn't do?

A (14:30)

What?

B (14:31)

They didn't let the Biden White House know about it.

A (14:34)

Really.

B (14:35)

And there's a reason they didn't let the Biden White House know about it. Sure. Because so many people in the Biden administration were undermining Israel on a daily basis that they had very real concerns if they let the Biden White House know about it, that Hezbollah would be tipped off and they dispose of the pagers. And so it would not take out the terrorists. Think how messed up that is when Israel did not have the confidence to trust in letting the United States, letting the White House know how they're taking out terrorists because. Because they couldn't have confidence that America would. Would. Would not leak that to. To the Hezbollah terrorists.

A (15:20)

Well, you mentioned the pager, and there was something interesting that happened, the joint press conference with Bibi and President Trump, and that was that Netanyahu gave Trump a, quote, golden pager. It was clearly, I think, in reference to the. The Lebanon attack. Did you ask him about that? It was obviously a gift.

B (15:38)

I didn't talk to him about the pager that he gave Trump, but he did describe. He did describe, like, testing the pagers. And in fact, it was interesting. It was a fairly small amount of explosive in the pagers. And when he said his team was laying out the plan, and this is a plan that initiated years ago, initiated long before October 7th. And he said it was just a few grains of explosive, but small enough to be undetectable. And he was asking, okay, is this. Is it enough explosive to detonate and do real damage to the terrorist who has it? And they said, yes. And Bibi told me the way he tested it is he said he literally took one of the pagers and threw it as hard as he could at his wall. And he said it exploded and put a pretty sizable dent in the wall. And he said, okay, that's a good chunk of explosives, by the way.

A (16:25)

I mean, I love the fact that that's what Bibi would do, because it's totally. It's kind of how he is. I mean, he's a. All right, I'm all hands on deck. Is this enough? All right, let's see. How much is enough? I mean, that's amazing, because that's not how it would be done here, I can promise you that.

B (16:40)

Well, I'll tell you something else we discussed. So as they continued to take out Hamas and then to take out Hezbollah, one of the real pivotal moments was taking out Nasrallah. Nasrallah was the head of Hezbollah in Lebanon. And Bibi walked me through the decision making. Nasrallah was in an underground bunker, and they were having vigorous debates about whether to take him out and in particular, what the timeframe would be on his being there. And I gotta say, it was striking, number one, the timeframe on detonating the pagers, that they had reason to believe there was an urgency, that they had to detonate it when they did, or there was a real risk they wouldn't be effective. Likewise with Nasrallah. They had intelligence on where he was in an underground bunker, and they had reason to believe that there was a limited timeframe when he was vulnerable. And so he walked through the decision making on taking Nasrallah out. Now, you know what? When they did that, again, they didn't tell the Biden White House for the same reason. Now, pause and think about it.

A (17:47)

In other words, to be clear, you're saying that Netanyahu was like, we couldn't trust our, quote, biggest ally.

B (17:54)

Yes.

A (17:54)

With the Biden Harris administration. We couldn't tell them the truth. We couldn't be honest with them. We were worried that they would not only, I would assume, undermine, but share that intelligence with the people that they were actually trying to kill, which would be the terrorists.

B (18:06)

Yeah, they were very concerned that the Biden administration would essentially warn the head of Hezbollah to get out of harm's way. I mean, that is profoundly disturbing.

A (18:20)

It is shocking, especially after what happened. And you mentioned the hostages several times. Let's dive into that as well, because there had been.

B (18:29)

Well, before we do that, I want to make a point about Nasrallah. One of the things that Bibi really emphasized is he said Nasrallah was critical to Hezbollah and to the terrorists because he was a charismatic leader. And he said it was striking. So Israel had taken out most of Nasrallah's chief deputies, and it wasn't until September 27th of last year that they took out Nasrallah himself. And Bibi said even with most of his cheap deputies taken out, Nasrallah was waging the war and doing so relatively effectively that he was an effective leader for an incredibly dangerous terrorist organization. And so Taking him out had a profound effect, weakening Hezbollah, because his leadership, without it, they were in utter chaos. And in fact, he said that taking Nasrallah out was the critical piece that resulted in Bashar Assad falling in Syria because Assad relied on Hezbollah terrorists to help remain in power. And so taking Nasrallah out be viewed as really a pivotal moment in critically weakening Hezbollah and critically weakening Hezbollah's patron, Iran.

A (19:52)

All right, so that's some pretty big news. So without that piece of the puzzle, you're saying there's a chance that Assad would still be in charge right now in Syria? Not more than hiding in Russia, I.

B (20:05)

Think I would say more than a chance, a direct but for cause.

A (20:10)

So you put all that together, and as awful as the attack was on Israel, the focus after that attack has been unbelievable. And doing what they need to do to protect their people and make sure this never happens again is just truly amazing. To see the leadership of Netanyahu, the people around him, their military services, their intelligence services, the list goes on and on. That also is got to be so sad to watch that this is now where they are, right? Like, there's. There's this continuing war. You've got the worries that you just mentioned with Iran, and there's the other big worry, and that is there are still hostages. So where are we on that? What did he have to say about the hostage they currently have in this hostage deal? When. When are we going to see more be released? Hopefully?

B (20:59)

Well, many of the hostages have been released or have been rescued by. By the IDF at this point. The women and children have all been released. The only hostages that remain are men, and there are roughly 20 hostages. They don't know for sure how many are still alive. Some may not be. Some they certainly hope and believe are alive. And Prime Minister Netanyahu is very focused on continuing to try to bring them home. He told me early on, he said one of the senior members of his government said right after October 7th that we need to think of the hostages as essentially dead, that we're not gonna be able to do anything about it. And Bibi told me he strongly rejected that premise and said, no, we can wage war on Hamas. We can take out the military leaders, we can take out the terrorists while doing so in a way to try to protect the hostages and bring them home. And I will say that they've had remarkable success in doing so. But the release of the hostages accelerated only after Donald Trump was reelected.

A (22:10)

So you look forward with that. You look at Iran, and when is that going to come to a head? I mean, are we talking in the next days, weeks, months? Because we've been hearing a lot about Iran over the last four years. We heard a lot about it when Trump was in office from 16 to 20. But there does seem to be a different level of urgency right now. What does the next month or two look like?

B (22:31)

Look, there is a real urgency, there is a real risk that Iran, we know they're close to a nuclear breakout. They could attempt to test a nuclear weapon because at this point they're badly weakened and trying to get a nuclear arsenal. There's a real risk that the Ayatollah views that as the one way to regain their strength. And that's incredibly dangerous. And I can tell you Israel is committed to preventing that from happening. And I believe America is as well.

A (23:05)

What is America's foreign policy now when it comes to Iran? Obviously sanctions. Implementing those sanctions, suffocating them financially is a big part of that. But if they're still this close, is our foreign policy and the DoD and the President's wishes, are they drastically different than they were even maybe day one? Because now they have the intel of just how close we are. Is that what Bibi's point of being here is?

B (23:30)

Well, look, I think the policy now is maximum pressure, and that means cutting off the money. You know, at some level, it's not complicated. Don't give billions of dollars to psychotic lunatics who want to murder you. You would think that would not be a controversial proposition. And yet during four years, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris flowed over $100 billion to Iran that in a very real sense funded the death squads on October 7th and it funded terrorism against America. I'll give you another example. Look, the Democrats are right now going nuts over usaid. And both the Democrats and all their acolytes in the media are pulling their hair out because President Trump and Elon Musk have halted the funding at usaid and they're exposing all sorts of abusive payments, things like $2 million for sex changes in Guatemala, which, which I gotta say anyone who listens to that says, why the hell are US taxpayers paying for that kind of nonsense? Well, at some level it's nonsense, but there's also money USAID put in that is not just an infuriating left wing woke political agenda, but is dangerous. So USAID under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Gaza. And, and, and that went, much of it went directly to Hamas. Millions of tens of millions of that were in cash that could never be accounted for. And. And they knew that the money they were pouring into Gaza would benefit Hamas. In fact, the. The Biden administration formally waived U.S. anti terrorism law because they concluded that it was, quote, likely that the money they were sending would be used for terrorism. And so ordinarily, under US Law, if it's likely money will be used for terrorism, you're barred from sending it. But the president, under the law, has the ability to waive that law. And so rather than not fund the terrorists, they waived it. I got to tell you, I tweeted about that today. Elon Musk reposted it and just said, wow. And just. That tweet has had millions and millions of views. But it gives an example. What the Biden administration was doing, in a very real sense, was funding the enemies of America and funding the enemies of Israel. That's dangerous. And that ended on January 20th.

A (25:59)

Let's talk about the humanitarian side of this and the real needs of the people in Israel. What did Bibi say from that standpoint? Because there is obviously a great humanitarian need. We're talking about all this money with Doge that we're finding that we're giving to all these people, many of them that are. It's just waste and fraud and abuse and absurd things like transgendered plays in certain countries when, you know, as an American, I don't mind helping our allies in times of need. Israel is a great example of this. There is so much money, though, that's being used in such fraudulent ways that I do think there's a hesitancy now to just say, okay, what do you need? Because it seems like everyone was taking from us and abusing it. I think Israel is very different, and that's why I want to bring this up. But what are the needs?

B (26:47)

So let me say, do you know what the amount of economic aid and assistance is that we give to Israel?

A (26:53)

How much?

B (26:55)

$0.00. We do not provide economic aid to Israel. Israel is not asking us for money to feed its citizens. Israel is not asking for money to provide housing or clothe its citizens. Israel is not asking for money for relief. The only assistance the United States provides to Israel is military aid. Each year, we provide roughly $3 billion in military assistance, but that's. We do no economic assistance. We're not paying welfare. We are providing military assistance. And do you know why we do that?

A (27:32)

Why?

B (27:33)

This is something critically important to understand. We provide military assistance to Israel because it is good for America. Israel. Think about this for a second. Everyone who hates Israel, hates America.

A (27:49)

Bingo.

B (27:49)

And by the way, those who hate Jews, hate Christians. And everyone who Israel is fighting against, they're doing so to protect Israel. Of course.

A (28:01)

Well, there's a reason why it's almost simultaneous. You hear death to Israel chants and death to America chants. A lot of times they're intertwined.

B (28:08)

The Ayatollah refers to Israel as the Little Satan and America as the Great Satan. And so, listen, one of the things I said to Bibi, and I've said this to him many times, I said, thank you. Thank you for killing terrorists, for taking out Hamas, for taking out Hezbollah. These are lunatics that want to murder Israelis, and they want to murder Americans. And they have. Look, October 7th was a horrific terrorist attack against Israel, but it was also a horrific terrorist attack against America. Many Americans were killed. Many Americans were taken hostage. And so we provide military aid to Israel because it keeps America safer. And it also is incredibly frugal as a monetary matter, because the benefits we get from Israeli intelligence. The Mossad is one of the most effective and potent intelligence networks in the world. And the Mossad has incredible intelligence on Hezbollah, on Hamas, on Iran, on Al Qaeda and ISIS and all enemies of Israel, but also enemies of America. And historically, they have shared that intelligence with us. If we tried to recreate the benefits we get from Israeli intelligence and their military, it wouldn't cost us $3 billion a year. It would cost us tens of billions of dollars a year. And so we make that investment because it keeps America safe. And. And they spend that investment, to be very clear, on taking out the people who want to kill Americans.

A (29:45)

When you look at the money and you look at what's happening, and you look at the meeting today that you had and the needs that are there, I think there's a couple of just overall themes. One, we've. Israel now knows that America does, in fact, have their back. Two, they can start sharing intelligence and talk about honest plans to protect Israel and America because they can trust this administration. And that seems to be maybe the most valuable part of this. Three, we both have a true, genuine agreement in our foreign policy that we must stop Iran from gaining that nuclear weapon. And that also means now you gotta figure out how you're gonna stop it from happening. And that could be using military prowess to do it. Which brings me to my final question to you. Donald Trump's a guy that has been very proud about saying, I haven't started any wars. Um, I get us out of wars, and I. I try to end them. Would you look at this as a war or more of a just a straight up attack on a nuclear weapons site. How should Americans look at this?

B (30:53)

Well, listen, it's important to understand President Trump is right. He has not started any wars we did not have. And in fact, he ended wars. He inherited the war with ISIS from Barack Obama. ISIS had a caliphate, had territory about the size of the state of Indiana. And Trump within months, defeated ISIS altogether and ended that war because they were defeated and conquered the caliphate. There are some who try to say that America first foreign policy is isolationist, is just withdrawing from the world and not engaging with our enemies. That has not been the foreign policy of Donald Trump. It's worth remembering that when President Trump, in his first term, he gave the order to take out General Soleimani, the Iranian leader responsible for the murder of over 600American servicemen and women. The Iranian leader who had played a critical part in planning, planning terrorist attacks against the United States and against Israel for years. And Soleimani, along with Nasrallah, were probably the two most important terrorist leaders on the face of the planet. And President Trump ordered General Soleimani taken out, and Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered Nasrallah taken out. And now neither one of them are able to threaten America or Israel.

A (32:19)

It's incredible. I'm glad that you guys got to have this meeting. I also just am really thankful, as you described it, that now I think Israel can trust that they have a partner in the US and they're not trying to. They're not having to hide from the United States what they're trying to accomplish. And we have the same goals.

B (32:37)

Yes. And by the way, another aspect of it. So look, the efforts to attack Israel, you saw them directly through terrorism through October 7th. You saw them through Hamas and Hezbollah. And to be clear, the Biden administration was responsible for a very substantial part of the funding for that October 7th attack. But you also saw it through lawfare, through using international institutions to go after Israel. And one of the most profound examples of that is the International Criminal Court, which has indicted Bibi for committing war crimes. And that decision is grotesquely false. It was an anti Semitic attack on Israel, but it is also a profound threat to America. Israel is not a party to the International Criminal Court. Neither is America. And the International Criminal Court, there's a real risk of it being used to go after American officials and American soldiers. The same enemies of Israel want to use the ICC to accuse American soldiers of committing war crimes when we stand up to terrorists. And so, you know, just a few days Ago in Congress, we voted on legislation to sanction the International Critical Criminal Court. And I'll tell you, it was really sad. Every Democrat in the Senate, except one, except John Fetterman, voted no. They all voted against Israel.

A (34:12)

Amazing.

B (34:13)

And, and to be clear, is there.

A (34:17)

Going to be hell to pay politically, you think, for this? I mean, the Democratic Party has become really, a lot of their leaders are just straight up anti Semitic. Is there going to be hell to pay for that at some point?

B (34:27)

Well, there hasn't been so far. And the Democrats feel that there are no consequences. Chuck Schumer was among the leaders who met with Netanyahu and was trying to give excuses for why he and all the other Democrats voted against sanctioning the icc. Today, President Trump issued sanctions as president, and they were very strong sanctions. That's one thing Bibi was very happy about, is he now had a president that would stand up to the International Criminal Court for going after him. Look, Bibi is not able to travel to much of Europe because they're European nations who have threatened they will arrest Bibi if he steps foot on their soil. That is a profound attack on the government of Israel. Think about it, that there are many European countries that he simply won't go to. Now, let me ask a simple question to anyone listening. Trump sanctioned the ICC today. Why didn't Joe Biden. The ICC did this under the Biden's presidency. And the answer is, I think the Biden administration wanted the ICC to go after Benjamin Netanyahu. And I think we're going to see facts come to light in the weeks and months ahead that show some real complicity of the Biden administration for the lawfare attacking Israel. And that really underscores the difference one election can make. And thank God we have a president now who will stand up for America and who will stand up and stand alongside Israel.

A (35:55)

Yeah, it's incredible. Great show. This is when I love doing this because we get to hear things that you wouldn't hear anywhere else. So don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Make sure you hit that subscriber auto download button wherever you are listening to this podcast so that you don't miss a single episode, especially ones just like this and the center. And I also do a week in review on Saturdays for some of the big highlights you may have missed during the week. So make sure you check that out on Saturdays and we'll see you back here on Saturday for the week in review.