Daily Review with Clay and Buck - Jun 23 2025
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Welcome, everybody, to the Monday edition of the Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. I am back.

from France and very happy to be here with all of you. Still not 100% on the voice. Sorry about that. Got a little sick when I was abroad. No shock there. I don't know, man. This Miami situation, Clay, my immune system is not what it used to be. If I don't have perfect weather and the beach nearby, it all collapses. Anytime you leave and go anywhere now that you're in perfect weather all the time around, a little bit of a subtle shock. You got to get back to the New York City. Got to get back to Eden and

you know, rat infested pizza parlors in New York City to to get the immune system back up and running. You know, communism, one of the things you wouldn't expect, maybe good for the immune system. Speaking of New York, we got a lot of stories. Obviously, the Iran situation will dive into. I haven't had a chance to talk to you about it yet.

I'm gone just about a week, and sure enough, Clay almost gets us into World War III. Who knew? Clay, what are you doing, buddy? I thought you might throw a party. I didn't think you might start a global conflict. But we've got a lot to get into with Iran and the strikes there. Over the weekend, as you know, President Trump ordered the bunker busters to be used and substantial damage done to the three main nuclear facilities in Iran. We've got also some

Live updates on that one coming from the news wires here in just a moment. I mentioned New York City, though. This guy, Zoran Mamadani, who is really a shocking socialist. I mean, he's a straight out of he's actually even crazier, I think, than Bernie Sanders in some ways. He is surging ahead in the Democrat primary polling in my old hometown of New York.

which is just going to be disastrous if he ends up as much as I, I don't know. I despise Cuomo because of what he did during COVID, but I don't think he is a complete lunatic. I think this guy's a total lunatic. Politically speaking, he's out of his mind. Mom, Donnie. So we'll get into that. We've also got, gosh,

So much, as is generally the case on a Monday, the president weighing in on what will happen if anybody decides to mess with us. The Iran strikes obviously occurred over the weekend. The U.S. involved last week. I remember Clay and I were in the Oval Office a few hours later. The strikes on Iran occurred by the Israeli Air Force. That was last, not this Thursday, the Thursday before, right on Thursday before that.

And so here we are now, really two weeks into this.

This conflict and over this weekend, President Trump ordered the deployment of our two point four billion dollars apiece. When you add the full scope of the program in B-2 bombers, also Tomahawk missiles fired from our nuclear subs. So two of the three parts of the nuclear triad involved in the strikes, our nuclear triad involved in the strikes on these reactors and these research sites.

facilities that the Iranians had been operating and refused to negotiate their way out of this story right now. And look, my assessment, some of you were asking, and it was really because I was overseas and I was six hours ahead. And myself, you know, I had to make sure that I was, uh,

paying attention to world events while also representing us abroad for our wonderful advertisers or possible advertisers. But, Clay, I think that a lot of what you've shared on the strikes, I would agree with in terms of its incredible military precision tactically. Both the Israeli and American components of this have been outstanding.

Remarkable. And the Iranian response has been far more inept and weak than I would have even anticipated. We could have witnessed what I would call the greatest aerial strike success, certainly in this century and perhaps even going back a century.

Now we are waiting to see what comes of this. Clay, we've got the imminent threat. This is the big headline across Fox News and other sites right now. Look, this is the concern, right? The concern is what is the...

The blowback, what are the consequences of these strikes? We worry about terrorist cells. I think that's the highest likelihood threat, but also the lowest impact threat against U.S. strategic interests. Some lunatic somewhere, God forbid, but shoots a few people or worse, that's not going to change the trajectory of the war in the Middle East. It's just a spite act of a terrorist or spiteful act of a terrorist.

But you have something here where you have military action that is apparently imminent from the Iranian regime firing at bases in our U.S. base in Qatar. So striking, obviously, Qatari soil and going after or rather, you know, in the sovereignty of Qatar, going after U.S. bases placed there.

If this happens, I think we can expect a major escalation, a retaliatory escalation, Clay, from Trump. And I think that this is the concern a lot of people have. What we've seen so far has been a remarkable success. What happens next is the big question. Look, I think welcome back and glad to have you back stateside. And I think that Trump had to make.

the most consequential decision of his presidency so far, and I think he made the right one. And so Saturday evening, we attacked the B-2 bomber pilots, all of the individuals who fired the shots from our submarines. It's an incredible statement for American know-how, and I think you also have to extend it. We have talked a lot about this. There were no leaks, right?

Trump 1.0 was a sieve. Everything immediately got out. Trump 2.0, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, obviously Trump himself, everybody in the national security team, Tulsi Gabbard, they delivered a magisterial plan and performance in terms of the attacks. Now, you went through this once before, right?

To me, the question that we are monitoring as we are speaking to all of you is how will Iran respond? And there seems to be an expectation that they will respond in some way by attempting to attack American forces in the Middle East, which is not dissimilar to what happened. And you could probably speak to this very well. After Trump killed Qasem Soleimani and so many people out there said, oh, Mike, you remember that?

World War three was trending. Everybody lost their minds. There were injuries to American troops. Thankfully, no deaths. And then it was like, OK, Iran got to have their public reprisal against the great Satan. But it was not a substantial response in terms of its devastating impact by any stretch of the imagination.

and we moved on. I wonder what the decision is going to be of the Ayatollahs from a face-saving perspective. What will they do now, I think, is one of the questions that lingers. I think you would sign off with me on...

Trump's decision to wipe out much of the nuclear capabilities of Iran sent an important message. It was necessary since Iran seemed to have no interest in actually negotiating. We kind of forecast that this would be likely the outcome. I think the vast majority of the Trump supporters, voters, all of you out there listening agree. Some disagree, and that's okay. It's healthy to disagree. We should have big debates in public on major issues. But I think now the question is what's next.

Well, I also think that it's not a finished situation by any means. And so for anyone to come to a conclusion on this, you know, you have to remember, everyone, I worked in that Office of Iraq Analysis, it was called actually, OIA, and

of that had been the place that was also responsible for before I got there, so don't blame me, for the WMD analysis, largely, in Iraq. And to look at what the Iraq war was, now that's a full-scale invasion. It's very different. I understand this. And one of the problems we have here is that people can pick their

You know, is this World War II and Neville Chamberlain situation? Or is this Gulf of Tonkin incident? Everyone can pick whatever the historical analogy they want is for the situation and try to find a way to fit this in. This is a, no surprise, is a unique and complicated circumstance that is specific to exactly what we are seeing here. Meaning, you can draw some lessons from other things here,

But nothing else is a roadmap for this because this is still happening and this is different from everything else that we have seen. Can the government lie to you? Yes, absolutely. Is mission creep a real thing? Absolutely. Should there be concerns about those as well as other aspects of this? Yes, there should. However, so far what we've seen is the Iranian nuclear program brought to an end with minimal success.

casualties both on the good guy side and minimal civilian casualties on the Iranian side. And the response from the Iranians has been almost nothing. Let's just call it what it is. The Iranians have been, I think, taken very much by surprise by how effective these strikes were. And as I said initially, when this first happened, when the Israelis opened up,

If you have a great capability to counterattack somebody, you don't let your entire military leadership get wiped out in the first hour of the war. Okay? That's the truth. There's no playing possum here. There's no, oh, wait, we're lulling them into a false sense of security by letting them take out most of our major military assets, most of our military leadership. No, of course not. So you're talking about a largely...

defanged Iranian military, certainly for external operations at this point.

It's very different when you get into something like nation building or counterinsurgency or regime change or anything like that. Then it's just people walking around the streets with AK-47s can ruin a much larger army. We've learned that lesson, but we're not there. So we need to line these things up with where we are. And I just, Clay, one thing, I was observing a lot of this as I was in France and doing my thing and smoking my, actually, I did not smoke any Galois because that would have been,

That would have been bad for my cold. But I observed all these things, and people want to declare things that they were either right or wrong based on what's happened, and I would just say that nobody knows yet, really. If you've been saying World War III would break out right away, yeah, clearly that's not true. The notion that the Iranians were going to be able to turn to Russia and China, and those two countries were going to militarily intervene against the United States, that's insane.

And I saw a lot of people saying that. Unfortunately, that's just not based on any reality of anyone who understands really how national security works at the most fundamental level because there's no interest in those countries in doing that. Why would they do that? It doesn't make any sense. But then again, we're waiting to see, as we talk to you right now in real time, if there are major strikes on U.S. military bases and what that looks like and what our countermeasures are. So I just say to everybody, we don't know yet. We're watching this as it goes. I think Trump made the right call.

I think the Israelis so far were far more successful than most people anticipated they could be this quickly. Now we see what happens next. Now we see what the next phase is. So we'll take calls on this and dive into it more here. And Clay's watching closely on the monitors as we see him. And obviously we're thinking about our troops, too. And we don't want we don't want to have any losses on our side.

So we'll watch. I think what you hit as we go to break here, Buck, is is super significant. Iran is isolated.

and pay attention to what people do, not always what they say. There's nobody in the Middle East that is actually lined up aggressively behind Iran. In fact, most of them are behind Israel and the United States. And on top of that, this idea that somehow China or Russia were going to get involved. China and Russia don't actually want, I don't think, a nuclear Iran. I don't think they trust Iran.

the Ayatollahs with nuclear weapons. And so they have been very muted in their criticisms as well. Some countries are going to chirp

But in terms of actions, I don't know that we have ever seen Iran more isolated in terms of actual support and backing, which is why the idea of, oh, what comes next, World War III? No, actually, there aren't people allied with Iran who are willing to put themselves on the line over this. Now, again, we may well get an Iranian response officially live on the air.

as this show progresses based on the way things are looking right now. We will update you on the latest there. But in terms of everything falling apart after this strike, to me so far it feels like the Soleimani assassination where Iran talks a big game but isn't able to actually respond in a significant way and maybe doesn't even want to respond in a significant way. I was aware, Clay, of the highest level discussions recently

back in the Iraq War days, I want to say, you know, late in the Bush administration, early in the Obama administration, in that era, high-level discussions about what to do when it came to the IRGC Quds Force and Soleimani and the consensus on the policy side, not from the war, the war fighters wanted to take him out because he was killing more fellow war fighters.

He was just handing these EFPs, explosively formed penetrators, to the Shia militias to deploy specifically against our troops. They wanted to take him out. Policy community said, oh, no, it'll create so much of a, you know, we'll have to worry about the Arab street so much or whatever. They were wrong.

So on the Qasem Soleimani thing, we saw the results. We saw what happened. The people that said you can't hit that guy, they were wrong. And Trump proved them wrong. So now we see it's going to take a little more time. We see taking out the reactors, the U.S. getting involved in taking out the reactors. Was this a brilliant masterstroke tactically and otherwise to end the Iranian regime's nuclear ambitions for the foreseeable future? Or was it is it something else? We'll see.

We know that the media is getting...

very fired up about these stories this week. But what's not getting a lot of attention is a study under review of our nation's largest assets and whether they can be monetized for the benefit of a sovereign wealth fund. There's at least one guy out there who's had a history, a long one, in D.C. and Wall Street who's paying attention to this. His name is Jim Rickards. He's one of those in-the-know people with great insights on a potential forthcoming opportunity with huge benefit to our nation and to you in particular. Jim Rickards is tracking the possible creation of the first-ever National Sovereign Wealth Fund.

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Welcome back into Clay and Buck. We're still waiting for the updates if and when they come in on this reported imminent threat against a U.S. military base in Qatar. We've also got more updates from the region on what Israel has been hitting. You see, Clay, they blew the doors off of or the gates off of the infamous Evin prison in Iran, which is where they keep prisoners.

political prisoners, high-profile prisoners. He's really just blew the gates open. It's on the front page or on the – it's funny. I say front page as if I actually, like Clay, read paper papers. But it's on the website. I was walking around trying to find paper paper this morning in Michigan. I'm doing the show from up here, and I finally found paper paper to sit down and do all my reading.

You and my dad. I don't even know. You guys can both also maneuver it around like it's no problem. Yes, Laura gets driven crazy by the amount of sound. And even if there's an article on multiple pages, she's like, I don't even want to read it. I don't know why they have to put it on two pages. I co-sign with her on that one. But here is from the weekend. I wanted you to hear it from President Trump himself. Remember, this is a big decision made by the commander in chief.

to follow up the iranian strikes with a military capability only the united states has uh... that really goes to among our most expensive and a high-tech and and uh... sensitive from a uh... you know classified and proprietary perspective i mean this is something we can do no one else on the planet can do what the u_s_ military did with the strikes in iran president over the weekend at about ten eastern time

on Saturday address the nation he had JD I'm click I carry and I watched it live as it happened I'm sure many if you did as well but just you can get a sense as to what the president's view of the strikes this happened on Saturday some you might not even heard it this is cut one play it a short time ago the US military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime

Fordow, Natanz and Esfahan. Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise. Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror. Tonight I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular

He made it very clear. First of all, he's a spectacular success.

And, you know, President Trump in what I think will be one of the more memorable moments of not just his second term, but really of his entire presidency, presidency, when all is said and done. It's a big moment, Clay. We've been talking about the Iranian nuclear facilities and possible strikes on them for decades now. I mean, this is a conversation going on for a very long time.

But notice this, Clay, and this is the part of it that I think has to be factored into our calculations about the success of this and about the risk-reward calculations. He's let the Iranians know, if you mess around now, that's it. We did our thing. We hit your facility. If you come at us with some terror strike or you do something somewhere, we can hit you a lot harder wherever we want to hit you. It's not worth it to you.

So the question is, what is the calculation made by the mullahs, by the Iranian regime itself? That's what remains to be seen, and we could be finding out at any moment. Yeah, reports that the expected attack is in Qatar. I mean, question for you.

If we have all of the intel about where the attack is coming from, and theoretically we're going to remove our troops to keep them safe, how much of letting them have a couple of missiles land is just for show? In other words, it almost feels like...

allowing your sparring partner to kind of catch you one in the ribs when you know it's coming and it's not actually in any kind of significant danger because you're giving them the opportunity to look like, hey, we returned fire, even though, look, on a scale of 1 to 10, our attack on them was a 10. If they punch back with a 1...

It's like, okay, nothing really happened, but you're allowing them to save face a bit. I mean, how much of this is, in other words, kabuki theater or almost sparring on our side at this point? This brings up, and I know a lot of you, and we'll take some calls and some talkbacks on this, because in MAGA world, as you all know, there are very, very fervently held beliefs on this particular issue that are not all in alignment.

Okay? You really have a non-interventionist, what are we doing, have we not learned the lessons wing of MAGA right now? And then you have a

Israel needs to not live under the specter of nuclear threat from lunatics. And this is the time and we can do it and we've done it. And, you know, you have these two different I'm very aware of this. I've been reading and a lot of, you know, some of the big voices on one side, some of the big voices on the on the other side. So we have room for this discussion here. But, Clay, to the point you're making, it's about, well, do we want you know, there's we want. Let me be very clear about how I'm saying this.

There's what we'd like a regime change to occur.

And then there's, do we want to take part in any kind of regime change? And do we realize, if we go with number two, what the implications of that may be? Like, there's these different phases or different tiers. I think that the Trump administration wants a new government in Iran, but I think they're very careful about not involving themselves further in overthrowing the existing government because we don't want to be in a situation where

There's mission creep and we're doing more. And I completely share that sentiment. We should not be rebuilding or in charge of Iraq. You were there. So serving the country. So, I mean, you know, which I know a lot of listeners were. I was not.

Most listeners were not. I would imagine your perspective, but I was interested to hear your perspective on this in particular. There are obviously differences between Iran and Iraq, but your perspective would be, but I'm curious to hear, having seen the United States try to engineer a government in Iraq,

Now, Iran was involved in helping to try to stop that from being in any way successful. Deeply involved. I mean, it really subverted our efforts in the most malicious ways they could, but yeah. And I think a lot of times people miss that, that Iran has been a malign influence basically on anything that could be good in the Middle East for some time to come. But...

Having been there, I imagine you don't think it's a good idea to have boots on the ground trying to impact in the event there were regime change that decisions made by the Iranian people.

That would be an absolutely horrible idea, and it's one that I would vociferously oppose in whatever ways are available to me, having seen, not just the reality in Iraq, the reality in Afghanistan. I was in Afghanistan in 2010, and it was when Obama had decided that this was the good war and Iraq was the bad war. And anybody who was in Afghanistan then, and remember, I had a...

I was essentially like delivery of, I was almost like a highly classified gopher. I would deliver classified among principals in theater. So I would take the stuff to the ambassador. I would take the stuff to the four-star general. And I mean, hand-carried, like, you know, hard copy stuff. And I just remember any of these, and I had to read the assessments. I had to be familiar with what was going on.

If you knew what was going on in Iraq, I mean, in Afghanistan in 2010, you knew that the policy was failing and had no chance of success.

But what happens is that everything gets cleaned up when you get to the, I wasn't in the military, but the guys would say, when it gets to the division level and then the command level, all the assessments from brigade and battalion and company, all this stuff that the guys are actually seeing, it gets cleaned up to, yeah, no, we're doing great. It's working really well. Because the four-star doesn't want to tell the president, your ideas suck and this is never going to work.

Or, you know, our ideas suck and this is never going to work. So, yeah, that is a lesson that I think was learned very painfully by us in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And so that's something that we have to keep in mind here. But I think that right now we're not there. Not everything is, you know, just like not everything is Vietnam, that everything is World War II.

this is its own situation. And so far, what we, do you, do you have an update on that? Yeah, we just got breaking news reports of explosions in Qatar. Uh,

and this is from Barack Ravid, I believe, who's a reporter at Axios. Sorry to interrupt, but an Israeli official says Iran has launched six missiles towards U.S. bases in Qatar. So as we were telling you that it was likely to happen, we will keep you updated on the absolute latest there. But that report just coming down in the last two minutes or so. Well, yes. So to your question, though, so there's the regime change conversation.

that factors in now to everything that comes from this, you know, the aftermath of the U.S. strikes and the nuclear facilities? How do we avoid getting drawn into that? I think there's pretty clear...

I shouldn't say universal or clear agreement, but there's pretty widespread agreement among MAGA. Democrats just hate Trump and they hate everyone. They just need to figure out why they exist other than hating Trump. And that's their own problem. In terms of Republicans, in terms of the Trump voters out there, there's I think a broad rejection of any intervention that would require U.S. boots on the ground or anything like that. But

That's one thing that we have. Now, though, we look at the escalation, the back and forth that would happen after something like this. Clay, if Iran hits military bases, that is a proportionate response in some way to what we did that would not, it doesn't mean that we're going to

allow them to do it. It doesn't mean that we don't necessarily exact a price for them doing it, but it wouldn't result in, I think, an escalation where we go, okay, now we're really going to make things more painful for Iran, substantially more so than we already have and than the Israelis already had.

If they do something horrific, I mean, I don't want to get into it, but something Al Qaeda style, which is really the concern here. The concern is that the Iranian regime, the IRGC, who is every bit of me, look at the bombing of their, well, that was a military target, but you look at the bombing of Marine barracks, they've been involved in mass casualty terrorism in the past. If they do that against a civilian target, then I think the question turns to, or the likelihood is that the Trump administration will,

goes and takes out the remnants of senior Iranian leadership. I think Trump has intimated that. Essentially, okay, if you order, if the Ayatollah orders mass casualty civilian murder anywhere in the world against Americans, Israelis, then you are Mullah Omar with bin Laden and the Taliban. Then we're in a whole different world of how we're going to handle this. So that's what I think remains to be seen. If they just strike our military bases, I don't think...

Not that that's we told them not to do that. We may hit their bases more in retaliation and say, are you done yet? Are you done yet? But if they do something against civilians, then I think that you might just decide we might decide to decapitate what's left of the regime. That's what I think could happen.

Trump is in the Situation Room, by the way, which suggests we'll give you the latest on this. Again, reports that six different missiles fired by Iran at Qatar and our military base presumably there. Again, this is we will give you the latest. There's video out there showing those missiles coming in. It's night in the in the.

Middle East right now, at least in Qatar. And we'll give you the absolute latest on that. But the reason why it suggests that we were very well aware that this was coming is because the president was already in the situation room. And I'm sure they are monitoring in real time what exactly happens

So we will give you the absolute latest when we come back. But Israeli citizens certainly appreciate solidarity. Our nation has shown them over the past 630 days since the October 7th Hamas terror attacks. Billboards on display today in Israel with the words, Thank you, Mr. President, along with a picture of President Trump just 12 hours ago.

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Clay Travis and Buck Sexton telling it like it is. Find them on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Iran has responded. So far, it appears that they telegraphed their actions. They are seeking to dial back after we kicked their ass on Saturday night.

Either they don't have the ability to actually do anything to us, which is probably true, and or they are afraid of what we might do in response to them. And, Buck, I loved on...

Saturday night when Trump came out about 10 p.m. Eastern, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, and J.D. Vance all arrayed behind him, spoke for about three and a half minutes. And then his top spokespeople, Rubio, Vance, and Hegseth, all spoke Sunday publicly and I thought did phenomenally well. But this, sorry, this Marco Rubio versus Margaret Brennan on, I think it's Face the Nation or CBS News or wherever the heck she works, is

Every time that it occurs, it just is an absolutely epic beatdown. And let's just play a couple of these cuts. This is Rubio against Margaret Brennan about cut 12 here, just to give you a sense of the intellectual evisceration that took place on CBS Sunday morning. This is what it sounded like. It doesn't matter if the order was given. They have everything they need to build nuclear weapons.

Why would you bury things in a mountain 300 feet under the ground? Why do they have 60% enriched uranium? You don't need 60% enriched uranium. The only countries in the world that have uranium at 60% are countries that have nuclear weapons because it can quickly make it 90. They have all the elements. Why do they have a space program? Is Iran going to go to the moon? No, they're trying to build an ICBM. No, but that's a question. That's a question.

That's a question of intent and you know in the intelligence assessment that it was that Iran wanted to be a threshold. How do you know what the intelligence assessment says? I'm talking about the public March assessment. And that's why I was asking you if you know something more from March. But that's also an inaccurate representation of it. That's inaccurate representation of it. That's not how intelligence is read. That's not how intelligence is used. Here's what the whole world knows. Forget about intelligence.

What the IAEA knows, they are enriching uranium well beyond anything you need for a civil nuclear program. Okay, that's point one. Do you want to play? Let's play point two here because I do think it goes into the essence of the attacks that are being levied here by left-wing media, which it should be mentioned here.

Many people out there said, oh, my goodness, if we do this, thousands of American troops are going to die. It's early, but we eviscerated, it appears, the Iranian nuclear opportunity going forward. And Iran basically rolled over and played dead.

To your point, Buck, they are effectively, after 46 years of Ayatollah rule, a third world country that's being, frankly, passed rapidly in their own region by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar. Countries that they used to look down on for generations are now having way stronger economies, way better, frankly, military, and way more success as a country. Yeah, Iran...

is an ancient and proud civilization that for the last 50 years hasn't brought low by moron theocrats who make everything worse for everybody in the country.

That's what's happened. You know, it's a bit like you talk to Cuban-Americans down here in South Florida about Cuba, a beautiful island with great people who have been immiserated and enslaved by communist imbeciles since the Castro regime took power. Right. I mean, this is unfortunately what can happen in some of these places. But here we've got Marco Rubio cut to you want to play this one. Right. He continues on dealing with Margaret Brennan. Play it.

Why would you enrich uranium at 60% if you don't intend to one day use it to take it to 90 and build a weapon? Why are you developing ICBMs? Why do you have 8,000 short-range missiles and 2,000 to 3,000 mid-range missiles that you continue to develop?

Why do you do all these things? They have everything they need for a nuclear weapon. They have the delivery mechanisms. They have the enrichment capability. They have the highly enriched uranium that is stored. That's all we need to see. Especially in the hands of a regime that's already involved in terrorism and proxies and all kinds of things around. They are the source of all these abilities in the Middle East. No one's disputing that. I'm not doing that here. And they were censured at the IAEA for that enrichment and for violating their non-proliferation agreements. I was simply asking if we had intelligence...

that there was an order to weaponize because you said weaponization ambitions. We have intelligence that they have everything they need to build a nuclear weapon and that's more than enough.

Here's a question for you, Buck. If Iran has no interest in having nuclear weapons, why do they need to enrich uranium and be pursuing nuclear energy in any way? They sit on one of the biggest oil fields in the world. They have more energy access than almost any country anywhere. Okay, so you're asking the basic and obvious questions that people that...

oppose this, have to just refuse, they can't address, can't deal with this at all. That's my question. What would be the reason they would be burying uranium enrichment mines, basically, for lack of a better way of characterizing it, beneath mountains, while being on top of oil fields if they weren't trying to create nuclear weapons? It's even worse than that, Clay. If they were willing to

play ball with the international community. Remember, they're signatories to the non-nuclear proliferation treaty, which they just violate this. But put that aside. Treaties, right? This is like Pompey Magnus of ancient Rome. Don't quote laws to men with swords. Like, okay, fine. We're in a power dynamics-based world, not a treaty and obligations-based world. Okay.

If they were willing to work with the international community, such as it is, if they were willing to play ball with America, Europe, et cetera, and stop doing the things that they're doing that are destabilizing and that make the region so miserable, quite honestly, and so much violence, I mean, the French would build their reactors for them. And people would help them if the regime was willing to have real inspections, play ball, and do what has been asked here for a long time.

civilian nuclear power, there are ways that that could be achieved and done. Of course, you ask the question, which is maybe even more important, well, why would they even want that considering how much oil they have, which is just easier for them. And the answer is that they want to have a nuclear weapons capability. You see this, if you are a regime of bad actors for the last 50 years or so, if you have nukes, you don't have to worry really about external overthrow.

That's the lesson that a lot of people take from this. And that's why North Korea gets to be North Korea. North Korea is a perfect example. You can be a religious zealot run theocracy that has hell-bent on... By the way, that's basically what North Korea is. They just worship the Kim dynasty instead of Islam. But it actually really is kind of a theocracy. In a sense, it's a necrocracy because the founder, Kim Il-sung, is still kind of worshipped as the head of the Communist Party. Right.

But to your point, again, from a from a international affairs response, I have actually seen some of the members of the Clinton administration saying publicly now we blew it with North Korea. In retrospect, we should have have had attacks on their nuclear capabilities. Bill Clinton considered it in 1994. I even saw Rahm Emanuel come out and say it. And I

I think most people out there would say, Hey, it'd be better if this crazy North Korean dictatorship didn't have nuclear weapons, but because they have them, they basically have power in perpetuity because the risk of attacking them is nuclear war. And that is the lesson that I think Iran has taken now by attacking, uh,

this regime. We are trying to prevent another North Korea, but we're also sending the message to other countries that may make the rational choice. Hey, we need to have nuclear weapons to their consequences for pursuing these. And also, Buck, this is why I think the response from China and from Russia has been muted, because deep down they don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons either.

Yes, of course. They can't trust Iran. These countries, the non-aligned countries or whatever you want to call them, that will work together. These are places, you know, Putin's right-hand man can't trust Vladimir Putin. You think the Iranians, these people will only, these are countries that only will work together insofar as it is zero cost to them and in their immediate interest, no interest.

interest as long as the oil flows these countries don't give all they don't care who's in charge in iran that are the chinese get a lot of oil from iran because the sanctions uh... and and you know they want that or the keep flowing and uh... you know that the the russians i know this seems strange people the russians actually by a lot of iranian oil to even the russians have a lot of world their own right this is has to do with refining and and the global markets

But, Clay, the World War III thing never made any sense because there's no countries that are going to come to the aid of Iran.

that want to lose their own soldiers in some conflict with Israel and or with the United States. So that's not going to happen. The thing for me that's the biggest open question right now is what do we want? If we're going to take this forward beyond where we are, it is possible, folks, we wake up tomorrow and Iran has managed to do something horrible and kill a lot of people somewhere, and that will change the dynamics in this conflict dramatically.

I mean, that is possible. So far, we haven't seen that. And what we've seen from Iran has been pretty contained and pretty predictable. Right. So what do we want? Meaning, what do we truly the American people want? Now, the first thing is we want this to not be our problem and for us not to be involved. I get that. That's like first principle. That's numero uno here is, OK, we don't want to make this our problem. But in terms of if we can.

to foresee a future where we don't have to. Wouldn't it be nice? I mean, how often do we sit around talking about, you know, the future of Kazakhstan, which, by the way, has a lot of natural resources. People think of Borat. It's actually a very large country, a lot of natural resources. I think it has a tremendous amount of, not potassium is what Borat always says. I think it has a lot of natural gas. Someone check me on that.

But my point is we don't care about that. You know, Kazakhstan does its thing. Yeah, they don't have free speech and whatever. It's not our problem. We don't have to worry about this. We really want Iran to be in that category. Yeah, it's just not our problem. And so if not, our problem is what we want from Iran. What does that look like? How do we get there? And is that the

The Iranian regime just kind of sputtering along as it is defanged, as I've said, or do we really want to see what happens if people start dragging the, you know, the IRGC and the besiege, which is their really their brown shirts. And if I mean, they're their street militia, if you will, of the regime, if we start, if they start getting dragged out in the streets and beaten by, you know, the civilians with pitchforks and torches, so to speak, is that what we want? You know, I,

I don't know. This is where we get into the I don't know. Again, not us doing it. I'm just saying, what do we really want in Iran? I think that's the question at this point going forward, and we can spend some time on it in this third hour because, to me, the question that...

And by the way, Elon Musk, turn on Starlink. Let the Iranians actually see what's going on in the rest of the world, because, Buck, what they're going to say internally is we responded in kind force and wiped out the United States forces in the Middle East. Right. This is what Iranian state television is going to say internally.

But bigger picture, what a lot of these young people in Iran are saying, when I say young, I mean people 35 and younger, either you're having kids or you are. That's where we are now in life, Clay. We're like, we're all these whippersnappers in their 30s. Yeah, all these young guys.

They are looking around now. At some point, embarrassment and anger starts to set in in Iran because you see people in Saudi Arabia having a better life than you. Bahrain. Qatar's having the freaking World Cup. Saudi Arabia is going to have the World Cup. They love soccer.

Why is Iran getting left behind? It's one thing if the U.S. and Israel are better off, okay, but when your fellow Arab and Muslim countries are leaving you behind, and you, to your point, Buck, used to be a proud member of the Persian Empire. Go study world history, ancient history. They were ahead of the curve.

They were long ahead of much of even Europe back in the day, and now they're falling behind quality of life. They can't even keep the power on so they can take elevators in buildings. These are real questions that I think are going to start getting asked by the Iranian people, and where does it lead? That's the question. What comes next? What should come next? That's the question for all of you. Call us. Talk back on the iHeart app. You know what to do.

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Pretty much a non-event, I mean, so far as no casualties, no major destruction. The missiles were intercepted. And the Iranians, it is now reported, coordinated, like told America, we're firing. So that really is then, Clay, assuming that's all true, it is like a stage-managed response from the mullahs. And so we should continue to keep an eye on this, but it looks pretty...

Pretty contained for now. Wanted to take some of your commentary thoughts into consideration here. Lines are open, 800-282-2882. We have, I thought this was funny, VIP email from Brian says,

Liberals are against anyone having nuclear power anywhere except for Iran. It is funny. Iranian nuclear ambitions are sacred. Anybody else's nuclear power is scary. But Iranian nuclear stuff is sacred, according to the Libs.

I saw this and I thought this was kind of a checkmate on the argument against nuclear strikes, strikes to prevent nuclear weapons on our behalf by Trump. They said, oh, now we're really in danger. There's no telling what Iran's going to do now.

And my argument was, well, if you think that Iran is a huge threat now, weren't they a way bigger threat with nuclear weapons? In other words, I would rather them, if they're going to attack us, have less effective weapons than more effective weapons. I thought that was kind of they were checkmating themselves with their own logic. And they would say, well, now they're more likely to strike us. I actually think we have ensured and we're now seeing this that

that they don't have the ability to hit us with anything is the essence of this. And I mentioned it earlier. If we could go back in time and Bill Clinton in 1994, I saw Rahm Emanuel say this, could have a do-over, he would have tried to wipe out North Korea. They said Jimmy Carter got over there. Missile program, not the country, the missile program. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we don't want to kill everybody in North Korea. Like our other caller who's like, hey, we bomb them and we bomb them again and we bomb them some more. It's like, hey, buddy, it's a lot of bombing. North Korea nuclear weapons back in the 90s, if we could have restricted their access to them...

That would have been a really good thing. And I think the lesson that we learned from that is we cannot allow these rogue dictator states to have access to nuclear weapons because it's logical for them to want them because it preserves their power. Because once you have them, Kim Jong-un, your point basically has created a theocracy built around his father.

And and you have to bow down and worship him. We don't it's not a good thing that they at some point could have a guy just decide to bomb a nuclear weapon there. But we don't have the ability to take him out now and to take out their nuclear weapons. We can't allow Iran to be the equivalent of North Korea in the decades to come. Let's do a talk back here from Brian in Worcester, Massachusetts. This is talk back, D.D.

Hi, Buck, Brian from Worcester, Mass. I just wanted to get your take on you have these leftist journos out there this weekend saying that, oh, Iran, because Trump telegraphed it so soon, Iran actually moved most of their enriched uranium out of those sites and they still all have it. I mean, I don't believe that, but I'm just wondering what your analysis is on where they're getting that intel, quote unquote, from and what you think the truthfulness of it is. Thanks.

Yeah, I don't buy that, and here's why. The Israelis have this whole place mic'd up, okay? This is one thing that we know. If they know where to put the tactical missile strike in an apartment building so that it only kills the nuclear scientist, you are not...

about to believe, I don't think anyone should believe, that they would allow the evacuation of the most sensitive material from the sites that are going to be completely saturated with intel, surveillance coverage, all of that, right? So I do not buy... Yeah, did they try to get some stuff out of there? I'm sure. But I do not buy that they were able to salvage their nuclear program with some last-minute trucks and that the Israelis who are flying constant airstrikes let that just roll. That's the key.

That's the key. Just logically think through this. If you know that's a nuclear site and suddenly you bring the nuclear site out of the bunkers to put it on to trucks and Israel has complete air superiority, you're actually making their job easier.

So the logic of that argument doesn't stand up to your point, Buck, because Israel would just wipe out the trucks filled with the nuclear armaments. And it would be way easier to do that than have to go into the side of a mountain, a

Like we had to do with the bunker busting bombs. Also imagine that's your job. It's like you, you have to move the enriched uranium. Last week, Buck, I was saying, I don't know whether Iran had pulled all their guys out, but can you imagine going into the four now the side of the mountain for the last few weeks when at any moment, you know that the U S could decide to just wipe you out. That's like the worst job in the world. Um,

And I hope for those guys' credit or safety, I don't want anybody to get killed who doesn't have to get killed. I hope Iran didn't have them still going into the mountain just waiting for the bunker-busting bomb to come in and wipe them out. I mean, that's a tough gig. Some folks on the right are going to, I think, have to take a little bit of a moment to collect themselves, maybe even take a chill pill.

and calm down about some of this stuff. I've seen some really bad analysis of this from some... You're like, well, why...

Why don't I name? It's not about naming individuals, and people can see what others have said. I'm not about, and neither is Clay, taking shots at or undermining anybody on the right, certainly in the commentary sphere. Politicians, we have to hold due account, so sometimes we're going to get a little salty about what a Republican senator is voting for, whatever. But other people that are commenting, they have their audiences, and they have what they do. But that's all a way of saying, Marjorie Taylor Greene here,

saying that we are entering World War III and nuclear war, she needs to calm down. That's actually not what we are doing right now. Play 37. Six months in. Six months in, Steve. And here we are, turning back on the campaign promises, and we bombed Iran on behalf of Israel. Yes, it was on behalf of Israel.

of Israel. We're entering a nuclear war, World War III, because the entire world is going to erupt. And you want to know the people that are cheering it on right now? Their tune is going to drastically change the minute we start seeing flag-draped coffins on the nightly news, on Fox News that brainwashes all the baby boomers, and on CNN that brainwashes all the Democrat baby boomers. And that is exactly how this is going to go down.

That is not how this is going to go down. I'm not saying, look, we've left open. I said that this thing could change overnight. There could be something that happens and there's an issue and we have to handle it. But what she's saying is that somehow Donald Trump would have to be so inept, poor at decision-making, lacking in strategic vision that as commander-in-chief, he would allow us to get drawn into a situation where the entire world at some level, right? I mean, not every country, but where many countries are at war with each other. That's crazy town stuff.

And I can say that very confidently. And if I end up being wrong, well, who will care? Because it'll be the middle of World War III. It's reckless to say this stuff. It's okay to say we shouldn't strike Iran. Well, we already have. So that's, you know, I don't begrudge anybody there. I don't agree with the strike. I don't, you know, because bad things are going to happen. But when you're claiming that we're in the midst now, or rather we're entering World War III and nuclear war, you're saying crazy stuff that is scaring people and preventing society

sober assessment of what's going on and adult conversation about what should happen now. So I very much disagree with Congresswoman Taylor Greene's assessment here to the point where I think she sounds like a jackass and it's not a good thing to be doing. I would just say pretty straightforwardly, World War Three requires that Iran have an ally. Can you name one country that

that has lined up behind Iran. This is where I think that there has not been enough pointing this out. The Middle Eastern countries want Israel to do this, right? They may say again publicly, oh, Israel's like what? Saudi Arabia wants Iran to not have nuclear weapons. The UAE, Qatar, all of them agree with what we did and what Israel is doing. They're even China and Russia, right?

haven't said a word hardly in defense of Iran. This is also like, think about this. You think the Chinese give a crap about what happens to Iran? They do not. Okay? The Chinese Communist Party doesn't care about what's happening to Chinese people for the most part, okay? They definitely don't care about a few nuclear sites getting hit in Iran. Whatever their diplomats say, no one's even going to remember tomorrow, and their diplomats are just hoping they don't get thrown into some dark cell and tortured to death.

by Xi Jinping. So, yeah, it's not... This is not some... There's no way. It's just crazy. If anything...

China is looking at this and saying, oh, maybe we need to reconsider invading Taiwan. I knew he was going to go to Taiwan. I'm just saying, I don't know what would happen because we have the strategic ambiguity perspective as it pertains to what we would do if China tried to take Taiwan. But I definitely think that the Chinese noticed, holy crap, the U.S. flew all around the world to

the nuclear capabilities of Iran, and the Iranians didn't even know we were in their airspace. Maybe the U.S. has got military capabilities that would be a threat, and maybe they would stand up for Tehran. Well, maybe also, just bringing it back to Trump and World War III and all these conversations that are going on right now. By the way, I think very few people are actually making the case. There are some big voices that are saying,

We're not we're not in World War Three or a long way from from anything that would require or that should involve that level of it's hysteria. OK, that's hysteria. That's not that's not what's going on here. Maybe Trump has learned the lesson, though. You know, it's amazing to me some of the people that have turned and again, MTG is a member of Congress. So I have a little more. But some of the people on the right that I'm seeing, including some that honestly look, I like and think are really good on a lot of stuff.

they're not good on this. And I think in part it's they've gone too far in the direction of everything now is the Iraq war and WMD lies. Everything is...

is a 20 year war in Afghanistan that ends up with the Taliban coming back into power. It's like, well, you know, we, we, we've seen that there are plenty of things that happen that don't result in this. And just because whether it's, you know, airstrikes in Syria, which by the way, Trump did in the first Trump administration, nobody even remembers them. That's all you have to know about how much mission creep there was there. No one even remembers these missile strikes that we did. Remember this? There was talk about chemical weapons usage, which now there's a lot of debate over whether that even happened. Put that aside. Um,

I think Trump maybe did learn the lesson, though, Clay, and the lesson is you could hit people and then use hitting them as part of the framework of understanding of do you want to get hit again or not? Behave. You don't actually have to. Remember the Colin Powell thing of, you know, if you break it, you buy it or whatever? I mean, that was his, you know, that was his philosophy.

Witticism that caught on with so many people. No, actually, just because you bomb nuclear reactors doesn't mean you have to have 82nd Airborne landing on the outskirts of Tehran, seizing the airfields and being in charge of like Iranians plumbing for the next 10 years. Like we don't actually have to do that. Trump's not going to do that. I mean, that's what I see from all this. I think the lesson has been learned. The other thing I would say here, some of you are saying, OK, how does this impact my pocketbook?

Price of oil down 7.5% as I am talking to you, down $5.50. I was talking about this with Buck Off Air. If the big concern had been, oh, the Strait of Hormuz, how is this going to impact the overall price of oil? You know where most of Iran's oil goes? China.

So the last thing that China wants is Iranian oil fields getting attacked because it increases the cost of their oil and gas, which is about 2% of the overall population, overall supply. But overwhelmingly, China benefits from discounted Iranian oil and gas because of the sanctions that are in place. So again, a lot of the analysis here has not been sophisticated, and I think it builds on this, Buck.

It's just an overall expectation of catastrophe everywhere. Sometimes catastrophe happens.

But if you expect all the time for everything to end in catastrophe, most of the time you are going to be wrong. And again, I think what we are seeing in the reaction from Iran is it's very muted. It's nowhere near World War Three. And I would just say, if you expect World War Three to happen, you have to name at least one significant country that is willing to go to war to protect Iran. I don't think there's even one of them.

Just FYI. Yeah, I mean, you think the Russians have a lot of extra manpower to throw into situations? The Russians have had to bring North Koreans to come help them out. And that's for a fight that is very central to the Putin-Russian-Kremlin ethos. So, people, look, you do need to know something about something to have a lot of ideas about that thing. And there are a lot of people out there right now who don't know nothing about nothing. All right? And they're really...

really flapping their gums on this stuff in ways that I think are unhelpful. Again, they're entitled to America. I just think they don't know what they're talking about. I'm also entitled to say that. We are on a talk radio show.

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You don't know me yet, but I bet we have something in common. We all wish we were better functioning humans. Maybe figure out how to sleep better, have more meaningful relationships, cook more. That's search for practical knowledge. It's my job at The Washington Post. I host a podcast called Try This. Every episode is like an audio class, and we learn together. I'm Christina Quinn. Now you know me. Check out Try This wherever you're listening. ♪

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