Speaker 1: And welcome to the Big Podcast. How are you happy Monday?
To you today, the twenty third day of June, year
of our low twenty twenty five. My name is Tom Sullivan.
So as we gather around anything happened over the weekend,
I missed something. Yeah, I know what happened to the
two weeks. So that's the president, that's what he does.
He basically was faking out the world when he said
he was going to give them two weeks and he
decided to go in and drop the Bunker Busters supposedly,
which that's why I want to get into today. We
got a lot of reaction from a lot of different
people about what happened over the weekend, what happened Saturday
evening our time, and your reaction is welcome. Is I'll
remind you again that we'll love to take your phone calls.
We can't take them live, but if you give the
phone number a call, it's basically the comment line and
we'll go through and play a number of them as
we go through the week. The phone number here is
eight five five two nine five sixty six hundred eight
five five two nine five sixty six hundred. You can
find that phone number and the links to the podcast
on my website, which is simply my name Tom Sullivan
dot com. So, uh, the military strike took place, and
I mean, there's just there's so many different ways to
look at this. I've seen the photos, You've seen the photos.
I'm not quite sure what the photos mean. We really
don't know about the fact. In fact, a number of
officials are basically conceding the fact they don't know the
fate of Iran's nuclear or i should say uranium stockpile.
We know that they have been rapidly enriching uranium and
they have enough for many, many bombs. So think about it.
It's not lineal, it's logarithmic. The fact that sixty percent enrichment.
First of all, they shouldn't be enriching any If you
don't want to build a nuclear weapon, then you don't
enrich what. You don't enrich your uranium. But there is
sixty percent. But the IAEA inspector the other day we
played for you, he said it would take probably two
days to make it weapons grade from sixty to ninety.
And the question then is where is all of that?
Because everybody was focusing on Fordoh, and we bombed the
Bajibs out of Floridah, but was the was there a
lot going on in Florida. We don't even know if
we've damaged Florida. We know thatot I know. I look
at the photograph too, and there's a couple of little
tiny holes there that weren't there before. But we don't
know what's going on down under the earth, and that
will take some time. Some of the people commenting, we'll say, well, well,
we sent those big bombs in there, and we sent
in a number of them. Let me look up my
little cheat sheet here about the number of bombs that
we had. The full payload of bombs was dropped. According
to the President, there were seventy five precision guided weapons,
twenty four Tomahawk cruise missiles, fourteen well buster, yeah, the
bunker busters fourteen they call them ordnance penetrators. There were
seven B two bombers. That was a great fake up
because they had a bunch of them going on Saturday,
going out over the Pacific heading toward Guam, and that
was the big news report. Well, they did have a
number of them go I think there was something like
nine that went west and they're still there. And the
question is are they basically going to keep them in
Guam for a while to basically be a backup. But
the seven that went east and out over the Atlantic
and over Europe and then finally over the target, it
was an eighteen hour flight. Now, I don't know about you,
but I think of anything more than five hours drives
me crazy. Eighteen hours and they had to refuel, which
is very, very tricky, and they had these heavy bombs
on board. I mean, what military mission that never been
done before, and the bomb has never been used before,
and so this was all first time stuff that they did.
One hundred and twenty five aircraft plus there were some
submarines involved. Yeah, seven B twos going east, nine B
twos going west. Pretty amazing to say the very least.
But with all of that, we still don't know what's
going on down underneath the earth. Now. Some people have
speculated that, well, the Iranians moved a lot of their
enriched uranium. I doubt that is. I doubt that's likely
because we have, obviously our satellites, have our spy settlites,
the ones that can read a license plate, have been
watching those sites very carefully for quite some time. And
if they moved anything out of those storage areas, I
would be shocked. And if they moved them, we probably
know where they moved them to. So we did hit
a number of sites, but it was it was interesting,
the fact, militarily at a level I've never imagined. So
they did their eighteen hour flight, took care of they
were over the target site for about twenty minutes, and
then headed back home, back to Missouri. So they went
from the midwest of this country to the Mideast, dropped
their bombs, and then flew all the way back.
Speaker 2: And I.
Speaker 1: Commend them tremendously on all of this. So as far
as the reaction goes, I'm not sure if the photo
evidence really convinces you of anything. It doesn't me. I mean,
you have to put some faith in the fact that
we did damage their property. But we'll see.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: The Israelis today were pounding away on a variety of
different sides. They're still shooting missiles. They went after they went,
they went after a prison, the Evan prison, And apparently
the Evan prison is where they hold a lot of
the political prisoners, and the idea behind that is to
blow the walls so that the prisoners can be released
from the prison. Don't know if they have how many
security guards there to keep them from leaving, but if
they're able to leave, the theory there is that these
are political prisoners and they will be the ones to
try to get an upheaval going in Iran to try
to overthrow the regime. So that's where the political prisoners are.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: They're also blasting a number of airports around Iran because
a lot of the airports in Iran are joint commercial
slash military airports. They're hitting a university should it Beheshi
University where apparently that is where the professors, scientists, professors
and students, so to try to basically make it so
that if the regime tries to rebuild the people that hurt.
A lot of people commenting today about the fact that well,
you can't vomb it out of their brains, Actually you can.
You can kill the people that have it in their brains,
and it looks like that's kind of what they're doing.
And Irani an official met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow today,
obviously going over there to figure out if Russia can
help them out. The IAEA. They're the ones that inspect
all of these nuke sites. They are not sure where
Iran has stockpiled all of their enriched uranium. Now again,
I doubt that they've moved it without us knowing, but
we don't know all the different sites where apparently they
may be. So let's go through some of the reactions
that we have, creative our moves. We'll get to that
and the price of oil. Fascinating because the price of
oil went up on this news on Saturday evening and
basically has come back down again. Then we'll get into
all of that. Bitcoin fell a little bit and then
went back up to where it was gold very little change.
So the financial markets around the around the world are
not yawning, but they're not panicking. That is foreshore. So
let's start off today. Who do we have up first
here today? Let's start up with the oh A Senator
Fetterman from Pennsylvania. He is coming more and more Republican
every single day. Here's John Fetterman.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I mean for me, I'm sure.
Speaker 5: I mean there's going to be a lot of people
in my party they're going to disagree with the strike
with and Iran, and I actually support that. I've been
always calling for that thing. I think it was entirely appropriate,
and again there might be votes on that. So so
for me, that's not a war. That was a very
limited military exercise and it struck that and then that's
where we're at. So so really it really wasn't about
unstack consecutional or it's anything like that. It was like
a very very limited military engagement and then it took
them out, damaged them severely. I mean, of course, no,
she knows it, I know it, we all know it.
That's not going anywhere. And you know he's been in
peach twice and now he's still our president as well
now too, so it's not going anywhere. And I don't
think that's helpful. And I think if you throw that
term around that actually diminish is what the severity of
what impeachment is really reserved for Sometimes I'm like a
decision that President Trump did is like maybe like reflexively
you have to be opposed that. For me, again, I've
been always calling to destroy these nuclear facilities. Now let's
talk about the context in the middle of all that
now too. Now, our party has been often wrong and
they were pushing for a ceasefire last year and now
Israel pushed through that and has broken Hamas and Hezbollah
as well now too. And now here it is right now,
Israel has air supremacy over Iraq right now, and now
here's where I rack, I mean, excuse me where I
am is right now? Their capabilities are severely limited. And
now that was an entirely appropriate to finally take out
those nuclear facilities. I mean, I've kept the hostages up
in my office ever since they've been taken there as well.
I've had the honor of meeting with countless families and
actual hostages as well too, that have been held underground
for over five hundred days. The world seems to forgot them,
but I certainly haven't, and a lot of people in
Israel have and is will too. Let's bring them home
and let's hold Hamas accountable, and now let's never forget too.
Send them home and disarm, and all of the tragedy
in Gaza would be over hold them accountable. Why won't
the media and more people hold Hamas accountable for what
they've done and as well as Iran as well too.
They're the ones that created those proxies, and that's also
part of why it was entirely appropriate to take out
their nuclear facilities. And that's why I'm going to unapologetically
stand with israel I. Don't pull test that it's for me.
It's like, I'm going to stand on what I know
is the right thing and what's the truth.
Speaker 1: That I've been talking a little bit about the hostages
that are being held in Gaza and one other item.
It kind of got buried because of all the war news,
but they did really well. They didn't release the Israeli
defense forces found three of the hostel stages bodies. They
were dead deceased, and so three more have come out,
but they are being returned to their families. Deceased hostages
from Gazam And now to the military analysis of what happened,
General Jack keene We was in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really quite stunning.
Speaker 3: And as time moves on, we have a tendency to
forget what the realities of history. The regime took over
in nineteen eighty Athletic Revolution in nineteen seventy nine, and
in nineteen eighty three they blew up two of our embassies,
one in Lebanon, one in Kuwait. And when folks moved
out of the US embassy in Lebanon, they blew up
the annex. They also took down the marine barracks there.
Two hundred and forty one marines killed then. And then
they also blew up Air force barracks in Saudi Arabia
in the nineties. And then as we moved into the
war in Irat, the Iranians developed put together the scientists
that engineers an advanced ied that could take down anything
on the battlefield. Up to that point, people were putting
mortar rounds and artillery rounds buried them in the ground.
A vehicle comes by, remotely blow that vehicle up. This
would penetrate from the side. It took down scores of tanks,
scores of valley vehicles, all with soldiers in him. It
was a remarkable weapon, and they instructed the militias do
not shoot these at Iraqi security forces so many wastes
among civilians. These are only for Americans that go after
the biggest vehicles, because that will intimidate the Americans. I
was taken to a boneyard by a brigade commander when
I was assistant portray us during the surge period in
two thousand and seven, and he showed me scores of
tanks and valley vehicles that have been destroyed. The official
count a number of American's dead as a resulted at
six three. I asked General Austin, he was the last
four star commander. We spent years together at Fort Bragg,
and he said, well, he said, I know what the
numbers are, but in my judgment, looking at this, it's
much closer to two thousand. So we add all what
I just said to you in a two thousand. He claims,
that's right up where the World Trade Center. And what
took place in the Pentagon is they have been killing
us for years. They took us hostage for a period
of almost ten years, and they killed the CIA station
chief at Elebanon as well. And listen, during the last
four years under the Biden administration, in our bases in
Iraq and Syria, they attacked us no less than three
one hundred and fifty times. Corilla, who is the commander
then and the commander now, who organized this strike, recommended
to the Biden administration, we're shooting back at the militias,
but to stop this, we have to shoot back in Iran.
He provided them one hundred and twenty targets only military
no economic, no engineer, no nuclear, and they rejected all
of it. We never did it, and we never took
on the Houthis by going after Iran, and the president
walks out of office with three hundred and fifty attacks
taking place and no response to Houthi's taking control of
the Suez Canal in a red sea and no response
to stop them. The Israelis knocked out the advanced S
three hundred and S four hundreds from Russia, and Russia
does very good missile defense systems on a parallel to us,
and they took care of that in October, and then
they came back as a result of the initial stage
of the Operation AVO about business the same way we do.
The first thing we do we're going to deal with
a country, a nation state, is to bring down their
air defense systems. We don't bring anything else in until
we've done that. They took down the remaining seventy air
defense batteries that existed, all.
Speaker 2: Of them. That is why no shot was fired.
Speaker 3: Now that the B two's, they obviously are stealth bombers,
and we have stealth fighters participating in that, and they
would likely not be detected in any event. But what
the Israelis did deserve huge amount of credit. I think,
you know, whether this ends at the negotiating table on
a battlefield remains to be seen. I think the Iranians
have their own time schedule, and they've proven that to
us in the past. I think what the outcome is
that the nuclear sites, all twelve of them are particularly
the ones in question here that we're involved in, will
be a factor in what they're going to do. But
I think that, you know, the first choice is President
Trump is offered it to them that they comes to
the negotiating table and try to work something out with US,
which would be full dismantling of nuclear ballistic missiles. I
think National Security team would also put down on a table,
look at supporting proxies is over. We're not putting up
with this anymore. Your malign aggressive behavior the region is over.
We go to a cease fire and remove sanctions. The
second thing is they have the choice just to continue
what they're doing against Israel. No attacks on the United States.
That's a possibility, I think it's unlikely. The third thing
is a symbolic response limited kind of like they did
have to custom solo money limited. Very good targets from
their perspective, is a rock Because they're so close to
it and they have sheeld militia, it can move missiles
and rockets into the country and not be detected. They
may fire some of their own They would do that
symbolically to demonstrate to some of their own people that
they're handling this problem, that they are seeking retribution for
the humiliation that they suffered. But there is deep humiliation
and there's deep division on what has happened here, and
many of the people in the power structure are frustrated
by the fact that they've lost all of their air
defense systems, that their military sites have been destroyed, and
most of all their nuclear sites.
Speaker 2: There's a huge amount of frustration.
Speaker 3: So does that drive an unrestrained, consequential attack because of
that passion and because of that zelotry. That's certainly as possible,
and that is what we are regarding ourselves against the
most US bases, other assets in the region, possibly something
in the homeland, but I think our guys will be
on top of that in terms of kind of intelligence.
Those are kind of the options that they have available,
and if they hurt us, whether it's a symbolic attack
or a major attack. The Trump administration has told them
specifically what the consequences are and they will be held accountable.
Speaker 1: So there was some retaliation later today in the afternoon
where Iran had fired some missiles ten missiles at the
Qatar at a base that we have in Qatar in
a very rural area. Guitar is a small country, but
the base that they have is rather remote and it
did not do any damage. And now the word is
coming in that they actually notified Katar and said we're sorry,
we have to do this. We're not going to actually
hit anything, but we had to throw the missiles your
way because the American base there, and they also fired
one missile toward one of our bases in i Rock.
So it was at least at this point it was
a symbolic response, just to show their people that they
are doing something. So since we're talking about basically warhawks,
generals and people that are in the military, this is
their business. John Bolton has always been known as a hawk,
and he piped in today with his reaction to the
events that took place over the weekend.
Speaker 4: I don't think we know, although I think there are
a lot of alarmist predictions out there about how far
they're going to go if they attack American forces, American
civilian personnel carry out terrorist operation to any American president,
including Donald Trump, would have to respond very forcefully. And
I think this is a question inside topped Iranian decision
making circles. You know, they've had one military enemy since
October the seventh and the mass attacks on Israel. It's
not going well for Iran. Do they really want to
come after the United States and have not just two
military enemies, but the biggest military enemy they're ever going
to face.
Speaker 2: Maybe they will.
Speaker 4: We'll see other things people have talked about, like closing
the Strait of Hormuz and preventing oil and gas exports
from the Gulf. That it's possible that they would try that.
There'd be one country that would be really upset by
closing off those exports, and that would be one of
Iran's only friends in the world, China, which depends on
oil and gas from the Middle East critically. So I
think Iran's got a tough decision. I think the notion
that they would come back and negotiate.
Speaker 2: Seriously is illusory.
Speaker 4: They have used negotiations for thirty plus years to beguile
the West to drag out their program is simply a
ruse for them to buy more time. So look, they
didn't accomplish everything in one night. What a surprise. There's
still a lot to do. But this is the right thing.
And the next step, as you also asked about, is
regime change, and I note that President Trump is moving
apparently in the right direction on that too, given his
latest tweet. I don't think you need boots on the ground,
but I think there is a critical element here. Many
of the opponents of this bombing campaign have said, you know,
you can destroy all of the facilities physically, but you
can't destroy the knowledge that Iran's nuclear scientists and technicians
have to recreate the program. That's absolutely correct, and that
was precisely what the Bush administration had in mind, given
that Saddam Hussein had held together three thousand nuclear scientists
and technicians he called his nuclear mujahide who, once he
was free of UN economic sanctions, once he was free
of UN weapons inspectors, would have permitted him to go
back to developing nuclear weapons, which he'd been trying to
do for well over twenty five years. I think the
Iranian situation is very different. I think the people of
Iran are as dissatisfied with the current government as they've
ever been since the Islamic Revolution of nineteen seventy nine.
And hopefully these strikes on the nuclear program, along with
everything else that Israel has been doing for the past week,
is sufficiently destabilizing that we'll see fragmentation at the top
of the regime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's one.
Speaker 4: Known about Libya no longer has a nuclear weapons program. Look,
level of dissatisfaction across Iran is really pretty incredible on
many different levels. Since twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, when
there were riots over economic conditions that were brutally put down,
the economy has not materially improved since then. The dissatisfaction
is still there. Young people, something like sixty percent of
the population is under thirty, know they could have a
different way of life.
Speaker 2: They can see it across the Gulf in Dubai and
Abu Dhabi and Doha.
Speaker 4: The ethnic groups large ethnic groups a Zaris, Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs,
comprising between forty and fifty percent of the total population
depending on your estimates. Don't like the Ayatolas, and two
years ago the Masiamini murder by the authorities, young Kurdish
woman who wasn't conforming to the religious dress codes, brought
young people and women out all over the country against
the regime, a fundamental challenge to the regime's legitimacy, not
just to complain about having to wear the hajab, but
saying the Ayatolas do not speak the word of God,
which threatens the regime. All of that still exists, and
now they see their terrorist proxies in ashes. The Aside
regime in Syria has fallen. The nuclear and ballistic missile
programs are being systematically destroyed, uncounted billions of dollars sped
over decades. What has that done for the people of Iran?
That's why fragmentation at the top. If you break the
control of the government, it may lead to to a
very very difficult situation. But I think the government could fall.
Maybe it will have to wait until the Iahtolahamed. He dies.
He's only the second supreme leader in Iranian history. He's
eighty five plus years old, he's sick, and he's been
in power for thirty six years. They have no clear
succession mechanism this is a very unstable, unpopular regime.
Speaker 1: I played for you a couple of minutes ago the
comments of Senator John Fetterman. There's another Democrat that has
been at high levels of various administrations, Leon Panette. He
was a Defense secretary, he was the head of the CIA.
He's a very bright man, democrat retired, and this is
his observation about the fact that Donald Trump pulled the
trigger and went after the nuclear facilities in Iran.
Speaker 6: Well, first of all, as a former secretary of Defense,
whether one is four or against, these attacks, they were
conducted with great precision and great planning by our military
to really place our bombers in place over thousands of miles,
our ships, our subs or pilots, and be able to
get everything in place in order to conduct very precise
attacks on three targets, which they did. I think is
a tribute to the United States military. And I'm proud
of our men and women in uniform and the way
they did this attack. The questions.
Speaker 3: Secretary, excuse me for interrupting, but do you think President
Trump made the right call?
Speaker 6: I think we have made very clear that the United
States would not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.
I think there was an effort to try to negotiate,
but I think the bottom line was that Iran was
not interested in negotiating and willing to do anything to
stop their enrichment and bomb capability, and so I don't
think the United States had any alternative but to conduct
this type of attack. But as always, the question is
what is the endgame? And that is I hope something
that the President and his national security team have thought about,
because if this only results in a prolonged war in
which the regime continues its effort to use the enrichment
that it does have, and that's something I think we
need to understand. That they have a large quantity of
enriched fuel that is still ready to go, and if
they continue to proceed, even though it may be over
the long term, it raises a real question about what
should the United States and Israel do to make sure
that doesn't happen. That is not an easy challenge to
overcome by either the United States or Israel unless they're
willing to put boots on the ground, and I don't
think that's something either one wants to do. I think
their military capability has been greatly weakened. You know Israel
deserves credit for having weakened Hamas, weakened Hesbelah, and now
weakened Iran, and so there are a lot of questions
about just exactly what their capability is going to be.
But the real issue here will is whether or not
the regime is going to continue, And as far as
I can see, even though with these attacks, it's clear
that the regime will continue and they will use whatever
capabilities they have in order to make sure that they
are now going to proceed, I think with their nuclear ambition,
that's a concern. That's a concern. Will they negotiate now,
I don't think so. They have every reason to basically
continue to do what they were trying to do before,
and so that reasons a real question. What will the
United States and Israel do to make very clear that
Iran does not have the enrichment capability or the bomb
making ability that this was all about. I don't think
there's any question that this is a watershed moment for
the United States and the Middle East. We have now
engaged militarily with Israel in going after Iran.
Speaker 2: We are now.
Speaker 6: Basically fighting this war together, and that means that the
United States and Israel are going to have to continue
to put pressure on Iran through attacks in the future,
because if Iran does not agree to negotiation, the United
States and Israel have no other choice but to continue
what will be a prolonged Middle East war, something that
I think Trump had promised we would never be engaged in.
I would think the objective of the visit is to
try to determine whether Putin will continue to provide support
to Iran. Just as Iran provided support to Putin in Ukraine,
they are now there to basically cash in with the
Russians to try to get the weapons and equipment and
drones that they're going to need if they're going to
try to conduct any kind of retaliation. I think that's
what this meeting is about.
Speaker 1: So this may not be over and we'll find out
what the meeting with Russia is all about today, whether
they come to their aid that they give them more weapons,
if the regime is going to stay in power. There's
a lot of what IF's out there. I always like
to get the view from Peter. Peter was one of
two Americans that interviewed Osama bin Laden. John Miller was
one when he was with ABC News and Peter Bergen,
and Peter is a Mid East expert, especially regarding the
various terrorist groups and everything else. This is his response
to the first effort at retaliation by Iran where they
sent ten missiles towards Qatar, toward the military base that
we have in that country.
Speaker 7: Well, first of all, this Cutter is a small country,
but this base is in a very remote part of
the country. It's a big basis the biggest US base
in the Middle East. It's up to ten thousand service
members can live there. You know, this is where the
war against ISIS was conducted. This is where the war
in Iraq was sort of conducted because it's the forward
headquarters of Central Command. This is where the Afghan war
was conducted and also the withdrawal. But it is, as say,
very isolated. On the other hand, there are a lot
of American service members who are generally speaking living there.
It's also interesting Cutter in Iran shared the world's largest
gas field, and you could see from the Qatari government responses,
I mean they're not thrilled that this happened, because you know,
their relationship with Iran are actually, while not necessarily warm,
they share a pretty big common interest, which is the
world's largest gas field. So Iran also took a bit
of a gamble here. You know, we've seen plenty of
Iranian activity against American targets in Iraq. As far as
I know, this has never happened in Kuta, which is
somewhat closely aligned to Iran. The cousin Solomoni responds by
Iran in January twenty twenty. It was pretty limited. Now,
there were no American fatalities when they responded, but there
were dozens of American soldiers who had traumatic broke brain injuries.
We later learned we may learn something like that in
this case. I think it's interesting. Anderson on Sunday, the Huthis,
who have been on by Iran for many years now
and had actually had a ceasefire at the United States
over the last several weeks, started talking about how they
might respond. If you combine the fact that they controlled
the approaches to the Red Sea and also these three
to mine the Straits of four moves, that could have
a pretty big effect on oil markets. On the other hand,
you know, this may be it. It would be wonderful
if it was. That said, look at the Salmon Rushdie
attack you know, in nineteen eighty nine, Iran put a
multimillion dollar reward on Salmon Rushdi's head because of a
novel he wrote they found blasphemous and it was, you know,
decades later that he was assaulted and very seriously attacked
in New York State. So the point is this may
be it for the moment, and don't forget that. John Bolton,
Mike Pompeo, Brian Hookubo is a senior State Department official
working on Iran, and President Trump himself are all under
the threat of some form of assassination because of the
Casm Solomoni hit, which happened back, you know, five years ago.
So this may be it for the interregnum. But that
doesn't mean that the Iranan regime is somehow going to
suddenly decide that they don't plan to take any kind
of action as a result of what has happened.
Speaker 1: So is that it is that all Iran is going
to do to respond. Nobody knows the answer to that,
but I'll tell you the authorities in a number of
the major cities in this country are on high alert.
John Miller, former NYPD counterintelligence sky, has this to say
about at least for New York City.
Speaker 8: Well, the good news is that the command and control,
the top ranking people in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corp
As the top people in Hesbola, have suffered greatly in
the past number of months and in the past number
of days. So from a command and control standpoint, they're
really damaged. One thing we have to consider though, is
one of the things the elements of Iranian intelligence operations
that has not been affected by these recent attacks are
the pieces that are placed overseas. So you have Iranian
operative throughout Eastern Europe, throughout Western Europe, and throughout the
United States. How do we know this. We know this
because in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, twenty twenty,
in the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force, we took
down a number of cases involving either Hezbola operatives acting
on behalf of Iran or straight up Iranian operatives working
for the Ministry of Intelligence of Iran carrying out gathering
information on targets, infrastructure targets, tourist locations, government locations, or
even planning assassinations of Iranian dissidents in New York. One case,
you're very familiar with or government officials who were involved
in the in the assassination of General Tassum Sulimani. So
it's not a loose network. It's something that's been operating
here and abroad for a while, and that's one of
the things you'd have to look out along with cyber well,
one of the things you know that the FBI, the
NYPD this weekend has really been engaging with law law
enforcement partners, not just in New York but across the nation,
private security partners, particularly Jewish organizations, Israeli installations, to say,
let's raise up their awareness because what we found in
every Iranian plot that we dealt with in New York
City was each one came with extensive pre operational surveillance.
So what you're looking for is who is that person
who is assessing your security, who's hanging out by the
back of the location, who's looking at the cameras instead
of other things to look at. That's one thing. The
other thing is you've got to be mining your human
intelligent sources and your signals intelligent sources to say, what
are we overhearing, what are people telling us? The whole
thing about the Iran target in particular is that you know,
you saw things like the attack on Salomon Rushti. From
everything we know about that, that appeared to be a
classic lone wolf attack, but one that was generated by
a series a drumbeat of propaganda against that target. In
the attempt to assassinate of the Iranian dissident in Brooklyn, MASSI,
we saw first an attempt to kidnap her, working with
people that were hired on the ground here working for
Irani intelligence, and then a plot to skip the kidnap
part and just kill her. When you look at the
critical infrastructure, what do they look at? They looked at
JFK Airport, They looked at Rockefeller Center, they looked at
the stature of Liberty, they looked at the Federal building downtown.
They looked at all of the categories. Developed these files
and then sent them back to Lebanon where Hesbala, you know,
and it's Iranian handlers kind of looked at these and
what were they looking for? Not just tell me about
the location, but find the vulnerabilities that we could exploit
for an attack. So if there's a time to make
sure you're on guard from that kind of thing. And
I'm not saying it's panic. I'm just saying, if there's
a time when tensions are high enough and that their
tools are low enough, that this may be some of
the last things in their tool kid this is the
time for heightened awareness.
Speaker 1: So in other news that happened over the weekend, we
got to get these in as well. Mahmood Khalil was
released from ICE attention in Louisiana. He has returned to
Columbia University campus. He was there on yesterday and he said,
I'm grateful to be standing freely next to you all.
He's not in any way humbled, not at all. He
wants to continue to protest and argue against our government.
As a Green card holder and a Columbia University grad,
he just well, I think he graduated, so you've got that.
He said it felt like kidnapping. And then on top
of that, we had a judge order Kilmar Abrego Garcia,
the guy that was sent to El Salvador. That the judge,
a Tennessee judge yesterday ordered the release of Abregio Garcia
while he awaits a federal trial on human smuggling charges.
He's not expected to go free because ICE said that
they will take him into custody if he's released on
the criminal charges, and he can be deported before he
has a chance to even see a judge. But the judge,
Barbara Holmes, US magistrate judge, scheduled a hearing for Wednesday
to discuss the conditions of his release, so he's still
in custody. The US government has already filed a motion
to appeal the judge's ruling, and even the judge herself
acknowledged in her ruling that determining whether he will be
released is, as she wrote, a little more than an
academic exercise, because ice will likely detain him rather than
let him be released from that jail in Tennessee. So
with that, let's check the markets and see, it's an
interesting story right there about the oil prices shot up
on the news that there were Saturday night, the attack
on the nuclear facilities in Iran, and then they came
back down again, and the markets today started off where
they're back and forth, very fairly tame but volatile. And
when all was said and done, you would think that
the markets would be a major reaction, and instead the
Dow up three hundred seventy four to forty two thousand,
and five eighty one, SMP went up fifty seven, Nasdaq
up one hundred eighty three.
Speaker 2: Gold.
Speaker 1: Now I usually the fight to safety with down a
buck to thirty three eighty four, and the price of oil,
which had gone up to seventy five seventy seven. I
think on one of the quotes I saw, came back
down down six dollars for the day to sixty seven
dollars for one barrel of oil. So again the reactions made.
A bitcoin fell back below one hundred, there was ninety
nine thousand and some change, and now it came back up.
It was it's one hundred and three thousand this afternoon.
So that's it for our reaction to what happened over
the weekend. Of course, everybody's holding their breath, going what's
going to happen next? But right now this is consuming
all of the news barrels that I could find. Thank
you for coming by today, Have yourself a wonderful rest
of your day. We'll be back with this tomorrow. Hope
to see you them