Clay Travis (29:21)
I think that's incredibly well said. And here are a couple of other examples of that that I think are significant. We've talked about the Iranian women's soccer team in Australia refusing to sing along with the Iranian national anthem, and the fact that the families now of those women have been. Have been arrested, have been attacked, and many of the women are abandoning their claims for asylum in Australia. I believe we're down to two. And they're going back home to face incredible danger, potentially sexual assault, potentially imprisonment, potentially even death. And some people out there say, oh, I don't know what you're talking about with death. There's no. They're not going to do that, Clay. Like, there's this cadre of people out there that wants to defend Iran and say, oh, you're just falling victim to propaganda. This is from Martha McCollum saying that she is going to be speaking with a former Iranian national wrestling champion. This individual who just shared that Iran hung, hanged. Some of you out there have been saying I've been using the wrong past participle here. Hanged a man named Salah Muhammadi, he's 19 years old. This is the front of the New York Post today for those of you who maybe buy that newspaper, listening to us W o r or are active on social media, they share the front pages of their newspaper. 19 year old wrestling champion, he was hanged today for the crime of protesting in January and demanding basic human rights for the people of Iran. They hold, they hold hostage. I think we almost played a cut there, but I want you to think about that for a moment here. 19 year old young guy is so in support of human rights that he decides to go protest in his country for basic human rights. And he has been arrested and to make a, a symbol of him, to try to send a message, to try to terrify the people of Iran from standing up against their government. They hanged him Yesterday in public. 19 years old Iranian wrestling champion. The women on the Iranian soccer team being forced to return to the country because of what's being done to their families. Some of them may face a similar fate. And I believe we have an audio cut of a former women's Iranian soccer player being interviewed by Martha McCollum. I believe this was yesterday, guys. Can we play that cut now? I think it started to play just a second ago. They hold hostage their families, the regime. This is the DNA, the DNA of the regime. So this is their tactic to like threaten your family. And in that moment, because I was in that situation and it's really hard, this is about your future or about your family. This is a big like guilt on your shoulder. At the same time you are thinking about your future. You are so happy because you don't have to wear that hijab. You feel freedom, but at the same time you have to think about your family because they're going to lose everything. They're going to torture, they're going to face even imprisonment or rape. So this is good and this is evil. And again I said one of the big challenges that we face is how do you try to create an Iran that is better for the vast majority of the 90 million people that live there? And is there going to be any sort of uprising that could return a form of moderate leadership to Iran? That's the challenge because so far in order to try to implement something like that, it requires a Lot of troops on the ground. And frankly, a lot of you who served in Iraq and a lot of you who served in Afghanistan know that even with troops on the ground, trying to create a government like that largely failed, that cost us trillions of dollars and a massive amount of lives and injuries and all of the different insane consequences that came from that. One question that, that I have, and I don't know the answer to this, but as someone who has studied military history, I do wonder whether the modern era of drones has changed the calculus in terms of an ability to foment a revolution without requiring troops on the ground. What do I mean by that? Right now, we have tactical air superiority all over Iran. I shared the story from the Wall Street Journal earlier this week of a top Iranian official who thought he was safe sleeping in a tent in a park in Tehran. They tracked him down and they killed him there. I think there is such a wealth of intelligence data out there right now that if you are in a position of prominence right now in Iran, you can be killed remotely with a drone or a missile strike. I don't know that we've ever had the technology to consistently be killing the next man up, so to speak, who is rising to the level of leadership in Iran. And I do wonder, as we now probably certainly have killed hundreds of top leadership in Iran, how far down the flowchart do you go until you start to find some people looking around saying, hey, I don't want to be the next target. I don't want to ascend to this next leadership rung because I'm going to die the minute that I do. And at what point does cold political calculus and rationality start to govern the decisions that the leaders of Iran are making? Are we getting closer to that? Are there people that we know that have been working with Mossad? Israeli intelligence might have been working with United States intelligence as well, who are far enough down in the flowcharts that we know that at some point, if they get elevated to power, we have reached someone that we can work with because they understand and have been in some way concerted allies with the US Or Israel in the past. There was a joke going around in Israel that the biggest issue that's going on right now in Iran is that the only leaders left are all working for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, but they don't know about each other other, which is kind of a dark humor idea, right? That you've got three or four top leaders in Iran, but they're all cloistered off from each other and they don't know that they've all been sharing intel with Israel. And so we're trying to figure out how to reconcile that. That's dark humor. But I do think it gets at the larger question, which is a significant one of at what point do we feel like we've got a leader that we can deal with? Here's the other thing. Whoever emerges as a leader in Iran knows that at any moment they could be killed because Israel is going to know everything about them and everything about their movements. So at some point, and this is me being a little bit more optimistic maybe than, than Buck is, I think we're going to find someone like Adelsey Rodriguez who is working well as the leader of Venezuela right now. That will be a form of partner partner. Here's the other thing and this is why I'm somewhat optimistic and a lot of people are not talking about this. Look at the comments that are coming out of Qatar. Look at the comments coming out of Saudi Arabia. Look at the comments coming out from other Middle Eastern countries. None of them are rising up yet in favor of Iran in any respect. In fact, everything they're doing is condemning the overall Iranian government. I said before, yes, Russia may be providing some intel, but to who and how valuable is it? We don't know about locations of American troops. China has done nothing and President Trump is raising as a pretty significant issue, hey, everybody should be trying to help us right now. This is a post that Donald Trump made just in the last few hours. Without the USA, NATO's a paper tiger. They didn't want to join the fight to stop a nuclear powered Iran now that the fight is militarily won with very little danger for them. They complain about the high oil prices they're forced to pay but don't want to help open the Strait of Hormuz, a simple military maneuver that is the single reason for the high oil prices. So easy for them to do with so little risk. Cowards. And we will remember President Donald J. Trump. We will remember indeed. And a lot of you will remember that I went over to Israel back in December of 2024 and I toured the country during a relatively momentary ceasefire. And I was able to see the work that the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews does. This is a group that is not, that is not political in nature. They are building bomb shelters, they are providing security to vehicles for people who are first responders. They are creating hospitals that are underground so that people can be taken care of in a time of danger. And they are helping to feed and clothe people who are poor and struggling in Israel in a time of war. We talked about good versus Evil and the significance of recognizing good versus evil. The international fellowship of Christians and Jews is fundamentally on the side of good and they are fighting against those who would foment evil. If you want to join me and you want to join Buck in donating, you can donate by calling 888-488-IFCJ again. Bomb shelters, hospitals that are underground, things that help Israelis in the Holy Land. You can also go online@ifcj.org we know the organization, we trust the work. The website again ifcj.org Geek out with the guys on the Sunday Hang with Clay and Buck Podcast A new episode every Sunday. Find it on the Iheart, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
