And the president also taking it a step further with one of the strongest worded truth social posts that we have ever witnessed. Early this morning, he tweeted out or put on truth social this: he says, A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. He says, I don't want that to happen, but it probably will.
However, now that we have complete and total regime change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen. Who knows? Only a matter of time before we find out. Joining us now, Brian Stern, former U.S. Army and Navy counter-intel officer.
He joins us, and he is, of course, the head of Gray Bull Rescue. Brian, I want to get to what is perhaps the most historic, daring, successful CSAR combat search and rescue ever in the history of books. It's going to be taught in war colleges forever. Ever, but, but I want you first to just respond to the stakes certainly seem high, and we don't really know what's going to happen. What's your assessment of it?
I think it's just that. I think that President Trump is trying to strategically communicate en masse to the people of Iran, to the people of the world, certainly to the people of the United States. I think care must be taken. Care must be taken. I think we as America saying that we're going to wipe out a whole civilization in America sounds a little out there.
But frankly, in the Middle East, this is how people speak.
So I think this message is very much for the people of Iran. The problem is they're probably not listening.
So I think care must be taken from the president's perspective to understand that like, yeah, we're hearing this, we get it, we see it, or maybe we don't get it, but we do see it. But his intended audience, I don't know if they're receiving it as well as they could be, should be, or that he wants.
So I think some discussion has to be had there a little bit. You raise a great point, Brian, and that is, as someone who was, you know, embedded with Lieutenant Colonel Ollie North for years. During the invasion of Iraq, and spent a lot of time in the Middle East, it is a different language over there. They deal in a different currency, and maybe you're right because that language is interpreted differently and heard differently because it's more attuned to their language. The big question is: there are still, there's a couple questions, but one of the big questions is: is President Trump really going to follow through?
Critics are saying, well, he's probably bluffing, but there's been nothing to suggest that he doesn't mean what he says when he talks about striking power plants and bridges. And the Iranians are hearing that message, they're taking it clear. Reportedly, the Iranian regime is calling on youth to form human chains now around power plants. What's your take on whether or not the president means what he says? I'll tell you this.
President Trump and I went to the same high school. In fact, my Kydray guy was a very famous guy named Teddy Debias. And President Trump actually wrote about Teddy Debias in one of his books. What I can tell you is that I don't believe President Trump to be bluffing. He may mix words.
He may mince words sometimes. He may play possum. He may play strong. But at the end of the day, he's from Queens. You know, he means what he says to the extent, he's going to do what he thinks is right.
And if that is perceived a particular way, that's fine. But the reality is, is he already knows what he's going to do. That's already going to happen. But for the Iranian regime, I also would say I kind of, I don't know if it is the wisest tact to punish the people into some into regime change that tends to not really work out too well.
So I think that, again, care must be taken strategically. President Trump. Goals are very, very, very easily understood. But we're seeing a more united Iran on the ground, not fractured. The people taking to the streets thing doesn't happen when we're attacking them of any country, of any country.
In New York, we experienced this right after 9-11. People forget, we forget that on September 10th, 2001, Rudy Giuliani was the most despised man in New York City. We got attacked by noon on 9-11. He was America's mayor, united with the fire department, the police department, and everything else because we were attacked. The Iranian people, we just need to be careful that targeting civilian infrastructure may have an unintended consequence that may actually have the reverse of what we want if we say we want regime change, if that is a stated goal.
That is quite a sobering insight. And you're right, Brian, you know, when you look back and think about how that played out, I thought it was interesting because there is now, in addition to, you know, the reverse of what you want to happen happens, there's those calling that if we target anything without a military nexus, civilian infrastructure, that it would be equivalent to war crimes. Yesterday, President Trump at the White House was asked about that. Here's what he said. This is cut to listen here.
Are you concerned that your threat to bomb power plants and bridges amounts to a crime? No, no, no.
Well no, no, I'm not. I hope I don't have to do it. But again, I just said 47 years they've been negotiating with these people. They're great negotiators. Why would that be?
And because they're not going to have a nuclear weapon. And if somebody that takes my place someday is weak and ineffective, which possibly that will happen, because we had numerous presidents that were weak, ineffective, and afraid of Iran. We're never gonna let Iran have a nuclear weapon.
So he's very clear, they cannot have a nuclear weapon, but yet the war crimes thing is out there. Where do you come down? Again, I think a lot of this is messaging and I think a lot of this is how from a tactical perspective and a military perspective, the intent, meaning if we attack, we blow up a bridge, which is a piece of civilian infrastructure, but if that bridge is the connective tissue between nuclear storage and nuclear command and control, well, then I'm very sorry, but it's fair game. Right.
So, you know, we dealt with this in Ukraine during the war in Ukraine, where the Russians were attacking trains. And people said, Oh my God, can you believe it? They're attacking trains.
Well, it's a war, and that's it sucks that it's a war. But the reality is, those trains have military hardware on it. Frankly, that's a fair target that is different than a maternity ward. A maternity ward with pregnant mommies in it. That is a war crime.
Attacking a train filled with munitions on it is fair play.
So I think this is all about how in 2026, where wars and messaging and politics and elections and all the things, and the court of public opinion is judged on Instagram and sound bites. Extreme caution must be taken by President Trump to message this properly. I don't believe that he's going to commit a war crime. I don't think that at all. I don't think we are the next Russia.
And I don't think that at all. I think that's all kind of silly arguments. At the end of the day, what he wants is very, very, very clear. And he's demonstrated. He's demonstrated that that he'll do what he needs to do.
To get to where we need to be, which is a defanged and non-nuclear Iran. And if that means we have to take out a bridge that is very horrible for the people that are impacted by that, and we're very sorry. But at the end of the day, we have our goals and our objectives. Yeah, well said. And, you know, I know all too well the Russian war crimes spent months in Kyiv, Ukraine, and covered the civilian targets we're targeting.
And by the way, Iran is launching at civilian targets in Israel and Gulf states every single day, civilian specific targets with impunity. Hey, listen, I got to go to your wheelhouse that you are very familiar with, and that is Rescues. Let's talk about this combat search and rescue. Remarkable going in not only to get the pilot, Dude 44 Alpha, and of course, Dude 44 Bravo, the backseater, the difficulty of getting, it's amazing that his seer training to get as far and high as he could with the injuries he was able to get. Get 7,000 feet up in a mountain crevice in the Zagros Mountains, but yet the CIA deception, along with the CESAR package, it included 155 aircraft with the Navy SEALs, with the PJ guys, and Delta Force.
When you look at what we've seen, what's your take? There's so a few things. Number one, number one, we have not done this as a military. In a very long time. Meaning, we have not, you know, at Grable Rescue, we just completed our 809th mission.
We've worked Russia, we've worked Gaza, we did Maria Karina Machado from Venezuela, we've done all these kinds of operations, right? Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep behind enemy lines. We tend to do it a little clandestinely. We tend to do it more. We're more Donnie Brasco, we're less Blackhawked out, right?
Yeah, so. We need to remember that as a military, as a special operations, as a special operations force, as the joint conventional force and special operations forces and the intelligence community, we have not operated deep, deep, deep behind enemy lines against a peer adversary in a really long time. The Iranians are not the Taliban. This is not Somalia. Jessica Buchanan was rescued from Somalia by a bunch of guys in flip-flops.
Formidable and dangerous, don't get me wrong, but they didn't have missiles. They didn't have aircraft. They didn't have radar. They're not shooting down airplanes, which is what led to this operation in the first place.
So we need to, one of the big things to remember is that this is the first kind of thing like this, deep behind enemy lines. This is not Maduro, which was a remarkable operation by itself. This is worse because we're rescuing an American citizen who was hurt. When you do these ops, getting in is no big deal. Getting out is the whole show because you're plus one, and you've already, and by doing this, you've broken a lot of china.
There's glass on the floor.
So when you when the when the boys show up They can show up very nice and quiet, but once things get loud, they stay loud. And you're moving plus one with a colonel.
Now, what's interesting about that, who's wounded, who's wounded and injured.
Now, what's interesting, which no one's really talking about, is Dude 44 Bravo is a full bird colonel. His next rank is Brigadier General. What does that tell us? One, he's been around for a long time, he knows what he's doing. Also, he's been around for a long time.
This is not Maverick, where it's Tom Cruise who's playing volleyball. He's in Middle East. This is a guy with gray hair, okay? This is a guy with gray hair who's very good at what he does, but I don't know about you. I've been around a long time climbing a 7,000-foot mountain with a broken leg and wounded sounds like absolute misery and crap to me.
22-year-old me could do it and go, yeah, that would be a good story. Almost 50-year-old me sounds like, that sounds like horrible.
So when we talk about the remarkable nature of Dude 44 Bravo, the idea of just his seniority is remarkable. If we go back in time, there was a very famous operation in Vietnam called his call of sign was Bat 21, one of the greatest war movies that was ever made with Gene Hackman and Danny Glover. It's a very similar thing, a Fulbert Colonel. Uh, named Icele Hamilton was shot down in Vietnam, and he was a full bird colonel on the run from the Viet Cong. And it was, it was, again, one of these just really awesome, awesome operations.
So, the other part of this thing is the deception piece is kind of glossed over. Yeah, when doing operations like this against a peer competitor like the Iranians, like we've done in Venezuela or Russia or these other places, the deception piece. Is central to success because they have a huge amount of resources. They have a lot of people, they have a lot of capability. The battle space is theirs, the terrain is theirs, they can punish the people, they can do all kinds of things, they have a very robust intelligence service, they own the streets.
The deception piece. is critical. Yeah. During Maria Carina Machado, one of the reasons why things worked out so well is we had a very large deception operation that confused Diostado Cabello to the extent that he was on Twitter. Saying he knew where she was, which was completely and totally figments of our imagination.
Yeah. You see, it's important. It is indeed. And Brian, we've got to leave it there. We're up against the clock.
But, you know, the fact that this deception piece was able to buy time for the operators to go get Dude 4-4 Bravo, amazing. And to your point about it not happening in a very long time, it's important our listeners know that SEAL Team 6, the DevGrew Group, and JSOC itself were all created out of the failed 1980 Iranian attempt under Operation Eagle Claw to go and get our hostages from that embassy. It was a disaster. Americans died. In this case, they not only got a gray-haired lieutenant colonel, they got out without a single casualty.
Brian Stern, always great to have you on and get your insight. Thank you, sir. And remember, we are donor-funded, GraybowlRescue.org. All right. All these operations cost money.
They do.
So when DevGrew does it, they got a big budget. We have a tiny budget.
So we always need help. GraybowlRescue.org, you're doing great work. Thank you, my friend. Thank you. Appreciate it, Griff.
