One thing is pretty clear, almost every Democrat is against Israel and against the Iran War. They say it's a war of choice when we've had an enemy for 47 years. Rebecca Heinrich joins us now. Rebecca, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Rebecca, when you saw that Wall Street Journal story over the weekend, I was amazed to see how much it's right.
Because since the MOU was signed sixty days ago, Israel excuse me, Iran has rebuilt a lot of their arsenal. They are continuing to foment havoc in the other Gulf states, and they are preparing what I think is for more of a battle with the U. S. Do you agree? Yeah, I agree.
And this was the problem I always had with the MOU. I'm thrilled that President Trump has said we're not even going to reapproach the MOU again. We're done. And if you remember, even at the time when the MOU was just beginning to get implemented, President Trump said, look, it might not work. And I don't think it, he basically alluded to the fact that he didn't have a confidence that it would work.
And if it didn't, then we would ditch it. And he did within three weeks. But just, it wasn't neutral. It wasn't just that it was bad and didn't work. It was bad.
And it did enable the Iranians to get much needed cash because the blockade works, economic sanctions work. And so you choke out the IRGC's ability to fund its proxies and rebuild its forces. But as soon as that MOU was in place and they could sell oil again, they made some cash. And so we're seeing the bad fruit of that now in the form of them rebuilding some of their capabilities. But right now, that cash is stopped.
And the thing is, Rebecca, from our perspective, They had the deal of the century. They had the deal with the sentry for 60 days, and they threw it in the street by continuing to attack in the strait. And fomenting unrest in the Gulf states.
So, of course, we left it. I mean, I was abhorred when I read what was actually in the MOU. And the Iranians said, yeah, we killed it, but we don't really care.
So they why do you think they want they seem to want more of a confrontation?
So, this is something that's really hard for Americans to understand because we think that. People basically want the kinds of things that we want, at least maybe want peace and prosperity and mind our own business and take care of our families. And if you can just give the Iranians even enough cash that maybe they'll just get busy rebuilding their own country. And that's just not what the IRGC wants, Brian. I mean, the IRGC are the ones that are in control.
Their identity is completely tied up in fighting the West, in exporting Shia Islamism. I mean, that's not something that they just say for control. They actually believe it. And so because the IRGC is in control, they don't want to deal with the United States. I mean, to your point, this was the deal of a century.
I mean, these people could just take all of this money, keep the straight open, stay in power, rebuild their own military, and they couldn't do it because they're so dedicated to attacking the United States, attacking these ships. And the IRGC believes, Brian, that they can out-muscle and outlast. And have greater political will than President Trump. And so that's what they're doing now. They're gonna push it now, basically try to embarrass him, I think, all the way through the midterms.
Right, but the thing is. If the president's going to take action, I mean, their leverage would be up until November. After November, the President's not going anywhere, but they want to see if they can get the House and Senate and get to another party. They believe any other President would be easier than this President, and they're right. No other President's attacked them at all, let alone 2025 when we took out their nuclear program or set it back, and let alone in 2026 when we followed up on it over in February.
What is your thoughts about the President taking military action before Labor Day?
So I think, I mean. couple of things, just a couple of big points. First of all, the point you just made. I mean, I used to work on Capitol Hill and I did defense policy for a Republican member of Congress from the House Armed Services Committee. And I worked on the, worked against the JCPOA, okay, tried to help members of Congress to understand what the Obama nuclear deal was.
And there really was this view among this, almost like Republicans didn't all believe it, but basically bipartisan expert consensus that you couldn't deal with the Iranians militarily, that you basically had to just sort of buy them off and have this nuclear deal that wasn't really going to work. President Trump completely blew that out of the water. I mean, his action in Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury, I think, dramatically had a positive impact on what the United States can now do for the Middle East. And so it's hard to overstate how important and good it was that President Trump decided to take this military action.
So I think that that's just really important. The second thing, though, I do think he's got to finish what he started here with the Israelis. And that means the sooner the better to take the fight back to the IRGC. He's got to take it to their headquarters, to their ability to reconstitute their forces. And I do think, Brian, he's got to go after the energy infrastructure and the bridges that the IRGC primarily uses to keep this war going.
That's the next step. And the sooner he does that, the better. I don't think he should wait till after the election. I don't either. Isn't home where we all want to be?
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I think it's not just economic power, leverage that we're going to have to exercise over them. I think we have to continue to hold out the credible use of military force. It has to be these two elements of leverage together that will eventually get them conditioned to even make a real compromise.
So, yeah, they have to be known by force.
So, what would get their attention? More hits in Tehran? What would get their attention? I mean, we went to school, I imagine, over the last 90 days about what they've moved and where a lot of their missile manufacturing comes from.
So what would be different about uh a re uh a reintervention.
So, I actually think about this a little bit differently than my friend Michael. He's great, but I actually, my way of thinking is not to change their minds, change the Iranians' minds. I mean, at this point, the people who are in power, who are negotiating, are completely dedicated ideologically to the Islamic revolution.
So, we have to eliminate those people. We have to eliminate, I think, the IRGC leadership. And this is what the Israelis were really good at when we were flying wing-to-wing with the Israelis.
So, I think that you go after, you have to target what the enemy values, not what we want them to value, but what they value. They value their survival, the IRGC leadership, their ability to reconstitute their forces. And so, that's what I think that the United States with Israel should go after in this next round. And we've left that in part because there were people, I think, Brian, around the president who were afraid that if the IRGC was demolished too much, that you would have regime collapse. And that would be present other problems.
But I think that's what we want. We want regime collapse. And the other thing that the IRGC fears, they fear the Iranian people. And so I would go back to Admiral Cooper and say, Admiral Cooper, at the beginning of the war, you talked about potentially telling the Iranian people when we were ready for them to come out and overthrow their government. Can we get back to that contingency?
What do you have planned?
So I would get back to that, threaten what the IRGC fears, and then go after that. And then, if there are other individuals inside Iran, maybe in the Iranian army or something, that can take over, that would be a good change, of course. But IRGC leadership, we're not going to change their mind. You just have to eliminate them. I know.
And we need Israel involved for that, don't you think? Absolutely. The Israelis are a force multiplier for the United States. I mean, for somehow, it's gotten in some people's head in this country that the Israelis are a liability. I mean, if you look all around the world, who are our best allies who are willing to put skin in the game, fight alongside us, who have extremely incredible intelligence and military capabilities, it's the Israelis.
It's Ukrainians, by the way, too, but it's definitely the Israelis. We got to fly alongside them, I think, again, for this second round of military action. Yeah, I mean, so far, the people are paying the price. We see that rents rose 31%. We know about their currency is basically worthless, or they try to get minimum wage up 60%.
They don't know where that money's coming from.
So you have people selling their hair online. They can't get it to get it to work at all.
So unemployment is skyrocketing as well, but yet they don't seem to feel that pressure that people would be in the West. I mean, we're paying another dollar for gas, $1,000 a year, and people think that's hard. Think about what the Iranians are going through, but it's just their government doesn't. doesn't care what their people are going through. They don't care.
And that's why it's so important too that the United States differentiate what we're going after. We're not trying, it's not the entire country, it's the regime apparatus. And the United States is pro the Iranian people. And President Trump has been pretty consistent about this throughout. I mean, look, I mean, part of what really compelled President Trump to take this military action was the fact that the regime slaughtered tens of thousands of Iranians protesting in the streets.
And President Trump said that was intolerable for the United States.
So we need to have a very robust strategic communication to say we're pro-the Iranian people, we're against the regime, and we have to go after specifically what the regime values. Again, it's survival, it's control of the Iranian people, and it's their ability to reconstitute their military capabilities. From what your research does and your sources say, when it comes to munitions, we're worried about. You know, what happens after this conflict, but we have enough for this conflict. We'd love more interceptors for sure, but we have more than enough, and more assets are in the area now than they were before Epic Fury started.
Yeah, I mean, Brian, we have enough munitions for this particular conflict. This is something that the military would have assessed before we went into the conflict to show the president that this is what we could sustain, this is what we can do. And so we have the kinds of munitions specifically for this particular fight. We definitely have to rebuild our defense industrial base. But I just want to point out some of the members of Congress that have been so defensive and supportive of President Trump and his decision to go after the Iranian military capabilities have also been the ones who have been beating the tables against the Democrats, telling them you've got to invest in our defenses, rebuild our defense industrial base.
So it's both.
Some of those congressmen from the senators are Tom Cotton, Roger Wicker, Tim Sheehy, I mean, Rick Scott. I mean, all of these people have been saying, we need to go faster on rebuilding our munitions, but we can do both. We can handle this war and we can rebuild our defense industrial base and get some new companies on contract to rebuild our munitions. Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing a press conference with Tom Cotton. Another one with Roger Wicker, another one with Tim Sheehee.
And just say, hey, by the way, fully support. The president wants to go back to action. You might not have any choice. It would help if just more than one person gave that message. I completely agree.
I mean, look, we've got some really great, articulate senators who can get out and carry that message. I mean, I just saw Senator Cotton talking about how Arkansas is just going gangbusters right now at producing more munitions for the United States. I mean, if you look at history, Brian, you're a great history buff. I mean, when the United States needed to really rebuild its military capabilities during World War II, I mean, we got the whole country mobilized to do that. And part of that, though, is carrying the message.
The nature of the threat, it's not just Iran. We've got China with some, you know, coming, really contesting the United States, the Russians, the North Koreans, the Iranians, they're collaborating. If we want to maintain the peace and we want to have strong American sovereignty, we want to handle our own problems domestically, we have got to get on a war footing and get our military adapted to these current fights. And I'll tell you, we've got really eloquent senators who can talk about what their own states are doing to make that happen. Yeah, and maybe they could take some of the questions and they go deep.
And I would love to see. Markarubio hands-on diplomatically. I'm not a big fan of Steve Witkoff. Jared Kush is doing a great job with Hamas, but I don't think it's possible to focus on Ukraine. Uh Iran.
And Hamas, I don't think and even Henry Kissinger at 40 years old couldn't do that. No, and if you look at when Marco Rubio, when he's very quiet and he, President Trump really trusts him and he kind of deploys him when there's a crisis that really we can't get out of. And then Marco Rubio goes and he gets his own diplomats in there and he makes progress. We saw this with Lebanon and Israel. We saw this with Greenland when President Trump wanted Denmark to cooperate with the United States to secure our interests in Greenland.
Who did he send out there to handle this? It was Marco Rubio. And it's Marco Rubio now who I think is dealing, is trying to help with trying to get these Gulf states now, and he's having some success to come up with land routes to move oil so we can get around the Strait of Hormuz in other ways.
So he's an extremely talented guy, just looking at the outcome of what he's able to do. Marco Rubio is kind of the fixer, Brian.
So I think if, yeah, more Marco Rubio, the better, I think, to solve some of these problems. I think more Rebecca Heinrichs, the better. That helps our show. Rebecca, thanks so much. Thanks, Brian.
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