Transcript
Narrator (0:00)
Every day, local businesses open their doors with more than just a plan. They bring persistence, ambition and a vision for what's next. And America's banks bring the tools and strategic guidance to get there. From storefronts on Main street to warehouse floors, businesses are leading the way. With support from banks, banks are providing what it takes for businesses to operate today and plan for tomorrow. Building opportunity, fueling economic growth Paid for by United for a Strong Economy Israel.
Political Analyst (0:30)
Didn'T wake up one morning and decide to start a war with Iran. What we are watching unfold right now is not the beginning of a conflict. It is the culmination of over four decades of aggression by the Islamic Republic of Iran and an outgrowth of one simple fact. Israel will not allow a genocidal regime that has announced its intention to destroy Israel to acquire nuclear weapons. The tensions that have undergirded geopolitics of the entire Middle east finally exploded into the open, and not in a backchanneled proxy war kind way. The State of Israel conducted Operation Rising lion, launching targeted strikes across Iran and taking out nearly all of their top military brass, hitting military bases, nuclear reactors and Iran's nuclear scientists. For decades, Iran has declared its intent to destroy Israel, what it calls the Little Satan, as well as America, the Big Satan, funding terrorist operations and paramilitary operations in the region, including the murder of hundreds of American troops in Lebanon and Iraq, the devastating October 7th attacks, attacks on Israel from Hezbollah in Lebanon, attacks by the Houthis in Yemen, and an attempted assassination of President Trump. In response to Iran's attacks, Israel first tamped down Iran's most noxious proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. But recently, Israel carried out a direct preemptive attack, conducting surgical airstrikes deep inside Iran without apology. This was not a tit for tat. This was again the inevitable outcome of decades of calculated provocation, nuclear blackmail and terror financing by the Iranian regiment. Certain people and organizations like the UN will continue to hyperventilate about escalation and destabilization, as if what is currently happening came out of nowhere, or as if Israel started it. They would prefer to have Israel just sit there while a genocidal Islamist regime gears up to lob nuclear missiles at them. So let's be clear, Israel is not starting a war. Rather, Iran has been at war with Israel through its proxies for decades. The only difference is that now Israel is finally going straight to the source, cutting off the head of the octopus that has extended its terror tentacles across the Middle East. Everything happening right now, every missile, every airstrike makes logical, strategic and more importantly, moral sense. This is fact. Israel and Iran nuclear enemies. We begin not in Iran, but in Iraq. In June 1981, Israel launched Operation Opera, a bold preemptive airstrike that destroyed Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad. At the time, Iraq had been pursuing nuclear technology under the guise of peaceful energy development. Familiar. But Israeli intelligence determined that the reactor, constructed with assistance from French engineers, ah, the French, and partially financed by Italian companies, was in fact intended to produce weapons grade plutonium. At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Israeli intelligence feared that if Iraq acquired nuclear weapons, it would pose an existential threat to the Jewish state. With confirmation of Hussein's intentions, eight Israeli F16A fighter jets, each carrying a pair of 2,000 pound Mark 84 unguided bombs, took off from Etzion Air Base in the Sinai Peninsula. Accompanied by additional fighter jets providing cover, the pilots flew low to avoid radar detection, traveling more than 600 miles across Jordanian and Saudi airspace. Within 80 seconds, the Iraqi nuclear reactor was destroyed. The mission was a stunning success. Immediately after the world condemned Israel, the UN Security Council unanimously condemned the attack, including the American ambassador, Jean Kirkpatrick, who later explained how upset she was to do it. And the U.S. state Department under President Reagan also issued criticism. Though privately Reagan expressed concern and admitted that he understood the logic. It was only about a decade later, in 1991, when Prime Minister Begin's strategic foresight became clear. During the Gulf War, American troops confirmed that while Iraq's nuclear capacity had been diminished, Saddam Hussein did in fact intend to develop nuclear weapons. Because Israel had taken nuclear proliferation off the table a decade earlier, American troops were left only to deal with Scud missiles. This entire episode established what is now known in Israel as the Begin Doctrine. Israel would act unilaterally and preemptively to prevent their hostile enemies from acquiring nuclear weapons. The precedent for foreign policy had been set. Security and peace maintained through deterrence and preemptive aggression. It turns out that President Trump's present day peace through strength approach is not that much different. Meanwhile, Iran was watching all of this. The Islamic Republic, less than two years old at the time of the Osi Rock attack, absorbed a powerful message. If they wanted a nuclear weapon, they would have to build their program in deep fortified secrecy, underground, distributed, plausibly, deniable. While Israel had dealt with Iraq's nuclear ambitions decisively in 1981, by the early 1990s, the newly entrenched Islamic Republic of Iran emerged as Israel's biggest threat. The supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini and his successor Ali Khamenei, immediately popularized the phrase death to America and began pushing for Israel's annihilation. As a result, Iran turned its attention to nuclear technology, initially under the pretense of civilian energy production. But behind the scenes, Iranian leaders were covertly laying the groundwork for a weapons program. Under the supervision of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and later the military linked Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, Iran began developing secret nuclear infrastructure. Reports from Western intelligence agencies in the mid-90s pointed to undeclared enrichment facilities, a rapid increase in centrifuge procurement and possible weaponization research occurring in military labs outside Tehran. The Iranian regime relied on an international black market to obtain the sensitive technology they needed for proliferation. Through ties with Pakistani nuclear scientists, Iran acquired designed gray centrifuge and its component parts. Naturally, North Korea and Russia, strategic opponents of the United States, also provided technicians.