Ep. 2058 - EPIC: Israel KILLS Hezbollah Leader, Totally REWRITES Middle East
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Well, folks, it was a big weekend in news. We'll get to all of it in a moment. First, your reminder, join DailyWire Plus for extensive coverage of the 2024 election season, including tomorrow night's VP debate with our exclusive pre and post backstage show. With DailyWire Plus, you get daily uncensored ad-free shows from the most trusted names in conservative media. Stay informed with facts mainstream media will not share. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe to become a member today.

I'm going to begin today by mentioning that in our description today, we have a link to places that you can help people in North Carolina in particular who are getting absolutely hammered by the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Hurricane Helene tore through some of the panhandle of Florida and then it moved up into Tennessee, South Carolina, and it absolutely pulverized

parts of North Carolina. According to USA Today, more than 2.1 million people remain without power on Sunday across the southeast in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, including more than 460,000 in North Carolina, where the storm pulverized homes, trapped residents, spawned landslides, submerged communities under raging floodwaters. Nearly 70 people have died across multiple states since the record-breaking storm hit Florida's Big Bend as a Category 4 hurricane with 140 mph winds

on Thursday and then moved through Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas before weakening to a post-tropical cyclone. The death toll is, in fact, expected to rise. The videos coming out of North Carolina in particular are astonishing. I've seen entire towns that have been wiped away. So your ability to help?

would be absolutely appreciated. We've dropped a link in the description of the episode to charities available to help people who have lost their homes and who are suffering in North Carolina. Now, the big news of the weekend is that Israel basically just reshaped the entire politics of the Middle East. And we'll talk about what this means for the 2024 election, because it does have, in fact, pretty significant electoral ramifications, given the fact that the Biden-Harris White House has absolutely blown it

on foreign policy. First, it is important to note exactly what happened. So if you've been following the news from the Middle East for the past few weeks or for the past year or so since October 7th, what you will have noticed that after October 7th, Hezbollah, which is a massive Lebanese terrorist group, it is really an Iranian proxy group

but it's also a party in the Lebanese government. Basically, Lebanon has been turned into a chaotic hellhole by Iranian and Syrian intervention in the state. Hezbollah is a major part of the government over there. They are also, of course, a major terrorist group. In 2000, Israel pulled out of southern Lebanon in an attempt to basically draw back and say, we don't want to police this area of Lebanon. That area of Lebanon before that had been used by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Hezbollah as a launching point for terror attacks on Israel. Israel had then repulsed

fought to keep a buffer zone in southern Lebanon to make sure that southern Lebanon was not used as a launching off point. In 2000, Israel completely withdrew in the same way that they withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. So, turns out the unilateral Israeli withdrawals tend to be really, really stupid and they don't work well. Okay, just doing a little bit of history here. So, in 2000, Israel withdraws unilaterally from southern Lebanon. Then, in 2006, Israel

There is a fairly major war, about a 34-day war, between the Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon and the Israelis. The Israelis go in. They pound southern Lebanon pretty hard. And that is concluded with a UN resolution, UN Resolution 1701, which calls for demilitarization of southern Lebanon from Hezbollah to be guaranteed by UNIFIL, a UN-sponsored set of fake troops. Immediately upon Israel withdrawing again,

That entire area is taken over by Hezbollah. It is armed to the teeth. And so the widespread perception in the aftermath of October 7th was that the greater military threat was not Hamas in the south to Israel. The greater military threat was Hezbollah in the north to Israel. They were reportedly armed with up to 200,000 rockets. They also had a bunch of sophisticated weaponry that was capable of hitting towers in Tel Aviv.

And so one of the things that Israel had to contend with throughout the war that they were fighting with Hamas was the possibility of Hezbollah getting in. And then they would be in the middle of a two-front war. Well, as it turns out, because of the Biden administration's pressure on Israel and the fact that they've drawn so many stupid ideas from the Obama administration about the Middle East,

Because of that, Israel doesn't just face one front war in the south. They face not just a two-front war. They face essentially a seven-front war. It also included the Iranian-sponsored Houthis in Yemen. It included the Iraqi-Iranian-sponsored terror groups in Iraq, Iranian-sponsored terror groups in Syria.

Direct Iranian attacks from Iran, attacks from the West Bank sponsored by Iran. Basically, Iran motivated all of its proxies on October 7th and beyond to attack Israel in the hopes of sinking any sort of nascent peace deal between Israel and the Sunni Gulf Arab world. That was the thing they were trying to forestall. They were hoping that by initiating a conflict, that it would turn into a broader Muslim versus Jew conflict as opposed to a Shia versus Israel plus Sunni conflict.

which is the way the Middle East was breaking down. The Abraham Accords were largely about Israel and the Sunni Gulf Arabs deciding that Iran was a greater threat. And they were going to basically get together. They were going to develop together. They were going to shake hands. They were going to move into the future together in opposition to the Ayatollahs in Iran. And so Iran could see that that was being fostered. And so what they tried to do was initiate a Muslim-Jew war on October 7th.

And part of that was Hezbollah being activated in the south of Lebanon to shoot rockets into Israel. So for approximately 11 months, Hezbollah has been shooting rockets into Israel. So we're seeing 8,000 and 10,000 rockets have been fired into northern Israel, forcing Israel to evacuate large swaths of its north.

Some 70 to 100,000 Israelis are not living in their homes and have not for nearly a year at this point. Get some more on this in a moment. First, every year when Apple releases the new iPhone, the big carriers play the same old game. Sign your life away for the next two years and get a free iPhone. Don't do this. With Pure Talk, you can get great savings on the new iPhone 16 and you can still get an affordable data plan that fits your needs on America's most dependable 5G network. How would I know? Because I have the new iPhone 16 from Pure Talk. Bottom line, stop falling into the same traps and overpaying for data you're not going to use.

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Well, a couple of weeks ago, Israel decided that it had enough, that enough was enough. And so Israel initiated Operation, what people call Operation Grim Beeper, the single most hilarious and effective anti-terror operation in history.

It turned out, as you will recall, that Israel had 15 years ago or so founded a beeper company, a fake beeper company. Mossad had done this. They put together a fake beeper company in the knowledge that Hassan Nasrallah, who is the evil terroristic head of Hezbollah, we'll get to him in just a moment,

That evil terroristic head would eventually realize that all of his communications were being hacked and he would move to dumb methods of communications like beepers. That's why Hezbollah's entire infrastructure, their terror infrastructure, they're using beepers like they were in some sort of episode of Seinfeld from 1995 or something. The reason they're using beeper is because they were afraid that if they used iPhones, Israel would hack the iPhones essentially. They'd be able to monitor all their communications. They started using beepers in about February or March of this year.

Israel had not only known that, they had sold them the beepers they were using. And so simultaneously, they blew up all the beepers a couple of weeks ago, thereby not only handicapping and blowing the balls off of hundreds, if not thousands of Hezbollah terrorists, but also destroying their entire method of communication. They then followed that up by bombing all of their walkie-talkies. When they moved from the beepers to their secondary mode of communication, their walkie-talkies, it turns out, oops, they bought those from the Israelis also.

So it turns out that the clever Jews had clevered again and all of those blew up. So now their methods of communication were gone. Their top infrastructure was largely damaged and they didn't really have the ability to do anything because Israel had such great intelligence penetration into Lebanon that it was simultaneously launching massive air assaults, some 1600 air assaults over the course of some 36 hours, destroying about half of Hezbollah's long range weaponry.

So what did that mean? What that meant is that Israel, over the course of the last 10 months, has basically taken Hamas out of play. Hamas is still holding about 100 hostages, maybe half of those people, maybe alive, stationed around Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas, if he is in fact still alive, which is unclear at this point, because nobody's heard from him for weeks, so he could theoretically be dead. And those hostages could just be sort of dispersed, being held by terrorists all over the Gaza Strip at this point. No one really knows.

But in terms of what Israel has accomplished with Hamas, Israel in the aftermath of October 7th has wrecked Hamas. I will say this. The mark of a first world country, the mark of a proper military is not that you never get surprised. The mark of a proper country is that if you do get surprised and you get hurt, you hit back so hard that the people who hit you no longer exist, nor do any of their friends.

So the mark of America being a first world country is that when we get hit at Pearl Harbor, we then proceed to launch two of the most destructive assaults on our enemies in world history, on the Japanese and on the Germans. The mark of the power of the United States is that after 9-11, we took down two countries. These are marks of actual power. So Israel gets hit on October 7th. It's a massive disaster, the worst intelligence and human disaster in the history of the state of Israel. And they proceed to completely root out Hamas,

And they have this threat in the north and this threat in the north has been used by Hamas as a rationale for not surrendering the hostages because they are hoping Hamas was hoping in the Gaza Strip that eventually if it came down to it, Hezbollah would get full scale in the war and the intimidation factor of Hezbollah in the north would force Israel to make all sorts of concessions to Hamas, including leaving them in power in the Gaza Strip.

So Israel has now completely taken that off the table because not only did they wreck Hezbollah's forward operating power, and remember, Hezbollah is an arm of Iran. So Iran has now had its two knights taken off the board. Hamas has been taken off the board. Hezbollah has been effectively deballed. Hezbollah has been really, really hurt. And that was before what happened on

on Friday. And as for Iran itself, what Iran has shown is that Iran does not actually have the forward operating capacity in the absence of its proxies to attack Israel in any sort of serious or sophisticated way. You remember earlier this year, they tried to launch an attack on Israel. They fired 300 cruise missiles and drones at Israel. About half of them, because they were crap, fell into Iran themselves. And the rest of them were shot down by Israel and its Western allies, including, by the way, Jordan and some from Saudi Arabia, apparently, who

Saudi Arabia shot down some simultaneously fired missiles from the Houthis. So what does that mean? It means that Iran has basically demonstrated that it is a paper tiger. Iran needed to be viewed as something really, really scary in the region because that is the only rationale for Israel and the allies not taking out its nuclear program.

Only if Iran is scary does Iran get to continue to bargain with the United States and the West and have the United States and the West under people like Barack Obama and Joe Biden sign them billions of dollars of checks because they're so scary. Because, oh, no, what are they going to do? So Israel has been pursuing the single most effective military operation in modern history. Israel in Lebanon has lost zero soldiers, zero troops.

And they have proceeded to take out virtually all of Hezbollah's long range military capacity and their entire leadership structure, all of it. Because here's what happened on Friday. It's a leader, as I mentioned, of Hezbollah is a man named Hassan Nasrallah. Hassan Nasrallah took over Hezbollah in the early 1990s.

He's sort of a charismatic religious figure. Obviously, he also happens to be a genocidal Jew hater. He also hates Christians. If you know your history, what you'll realize is that Lebanon used to be a Christian country. It used to be run by Christians. And then because of the influx of people from the Palestine Liberation Organization, because of the influx of Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, the influx of Syrian Muslims, because of that, Lebanon, which is always multicultural and multi-religious,

has turned into a chaotic civil war-ridden bleep show. Lebanon is a disaster area. And that is because of Hezbollah in large part, which is the single most powerful proxy of Iran in the region. We'll get to more on that in a moment. But first, no matter what happens over the next four years, one thing remains constant. The need to protect your own loved ones. And that's where Policy Genius comes in. Let's talk about reality for a moment. If something were to happen to you, would your family be able to cover those expenses?

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That's policygenius.com slash Shapiro. So who, what is Hezbollah? Well, number one, they're responsible for hundreds of American deaths. They're responsible for the Beirut barracks bombings. But not only that, they're responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Syrian Muslims who are siding against the Assad regime. The Assad regime has worked with Hezbollah. They're responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Lebanese Muslims and Christians.

Hezbollah is a State Department designated terror organization. In fact, Hezbollah is an Arab League designated terrorist organization. And they've made their agenda very clear going all the way back to like 1985. In an open letter published February 16th, 1985 in Al-Safir, they say, we are often asked, who are we, the Hezbollah? And what is our identity? We are the sons of the Ummah, the Muslim community, the party of God, Hezbollah, the vanguard of which was made victorious by God in Iran. They're an Iranian front group. And they say,

It's an anti-American...

and therefore anti-Israeli, because Israel is, of course, an ally of the United States, anti-Semitic terror group. Hassan Nasrallah himself has suggested that the slogan of Hezbollah ought to be death to Israel. He has not been shocking about it. He said this in 2005, quote, is an aggressive, illegal, illegitimate entity which has no future in our land. Now, remember, in our land doesn't mean Lebanon. In our land means Israel itself, like Tel Aviv.

He says its destination is manifested in our motto, death to Israel, which, you know, isn't quite Nike's just do it, but it's a motto. I guess we've got to go with one. Hezbollah has also angrily threatened to destroy U.S. hegemony in the Middle East.

And of course, they've attacked a couple of U.S. embassies and the Marine Peacekeepers barracks in Lebanon, as mentioned, as well as American targets in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. And they've carried out terror attacks as far flung as in South America. Hassan Nasrallah is the head of Hezbollah. So it's not just that Israel took out everybody under Hassan Nasrallah. They did. On Friday, in what has to be one of the most bad war moves in modern history, they took out Nasrallah himself. So here's how it went down.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, flew to the UN and everyone was like, what are you doing? Why are you flying to the United Nations? You're in the middle of a war. They had already initiated all these operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon. So what are you doing? Why are you leaving town in the middle of the actual criticism of him in Israel for having left? And so the question is, why was he doing that?

And there was a lot of speculation that perhaps he was doing that because he wanted to meet with Team Biden because Team Biden, Saudi Arabia, the French, the French have sort of a vestigial interest in Lebanon because Lebanon was a French protectorate from effectively 1920, the end of World War I until 1944 when they gave autonomy to the Lebanese. They continued to give military support to the Lebanese regime.

So there's all these countries and they came forward. They said, we want a 21 day ceasefire. And Israel's like, are you kidding me right now? Like with whom? With Hezbollah? They can ceasefire anytime they want. All they have to do is pull all their forces north of the Latani River and none of this goes on. It's all over. But they're not doing it. So ain't no ceasefire. But there's a lot of speculation that maybe Netanyahu is going to come to the United States. He's going to make nice. He's going to be a little more conciliatory. Because why else was he showing up? So that was the perception domestically in Israel. It was the perception in the press as well.

And it happened to be the perception in Lebanon by Hassan Nasrallah and his team. So apparently, according to reports, Monday of the week that Netanyahu went to the UN, on Monday, the IDF, the higher levels of the IDF, and remember, the IDF and Netanyahu do not see eye to eye politically. Many of the top members of the IDF would not vote for Netanyahu. They're not members of Likud. It's a very diverse coalition right now of people who are pushing to end the threat to the north in Israel.

There's video of Yair Golan, who's the head of the Labor Party. Yair Golan is very much to the left, standing in northern Israel, pointing at the mountains of Lebanon and saying, we need to be over there. We can't be over here. So there's widespread unity that Israel should finish the job now and clear out southern Lebanon sufficient that Israelis can live in Israeli territory.

So people were pretty pissed that Bibi was going to the UN. At least there was a lot of consternation. What is he doing? Why is this happening? So apparently on Monday, the IDF went to Netanyahu and they said, listen, we want to take out Nasrallah. If we're going to do this, we've got to hit the head of the snake. Enough of this. We can't be hitting all the people who are around him and not him. We can't be taking out all of these resources and then allow them to reconstitute. The momentum is ours. We know where he is. And when we get his exact location, we want your approval to kill him.

And Netanyahu on Monday apparently said yes. And then he flew to the United States. So apparently, like the hour before he was supposed to speak at the United Nations, he got a call from the IDF and they said, we now know where he is. We have eyes on him. We know exactly where he is. Do we have your approval to go ahead with the operation? And Bibi said, absolutely, do it. He then got up at the United Nations. So in a scene very much reminiscent of the end of Godfather 1, where all family business is put to bed,

where Michael's at the baptism. Meanwhile, Clemenza's shooting Tattaglia. That's basically what happened at the United Nations on Friday. So Netanyahu gets up and he gives a barn burner of a speech at the UN. Like really a barn burner. It's a great speech. It's like a historically good, and Netanyahu, of course, is a very good speaker. This is a historically good Netanyahu speech. And he says, listen, I have a message for you in Tehran. If you F with us, you're going to find out. F-A-F-O, man. I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran. If you strike us,

We will strike you. There is no place in Iran that the long arm of Israel cannot reach.

And that's true of the entire Middle East. And that was a big line because the perception of Israel after October 7th is that maybe Israel was the paper tiger. Maybe Iran was on the move. Now, again, a lot of that had been promoted by the Biden administration, which upon coming into office had basically distanced itself from Saudi, had distanced itself from Israel and had tried to make overtures via cutouts like Robert Malley, who may in fact have been working hand in glove with the Iranians with Iran. As you can see from the footage of this U.N. speech,

It's basically empty in there. All of the Muslim nations walked out. Now, a lot of that's for show. A lot of that is for show. The Sunni Gulf state Arab nations are ecstatic about what Israel is doing right now. Israel is wrecking all of their enemies. All the same people that Israel is wrecking right now are enemies of the Sunni Gulf states. The Houthis, who Israel, after they killed Nasrallah, have been hitting,

So the Houthis fired a cruise missile at Tel Aviv after the killing of Nasrallah. Israel waited three, four days, and then they blew up a couple of ports. So while the Biden administration is sitting with its thumb up its butt, while the Houthis hold up all shipping in the Red Sea, the Israelis are flying a thousand miles to blow up ports with sorties. So you know who's ecstatic about that? Saudi, because Saudi's been at war with the Houthis for a decade.

You know who's ecstatic about what's going on in Lebanon right now? Everybody in UAE, everybody in Saudi, everybody in Bahrain, everybody in Morocco, everybody in Egypt. Okay, the Egyptians are never going to let this out of the bag, but this is the reality. Jordan is ecstatic about what's happening right now. Jordan can never say it, but they are. Okay, so that's the actual logic.

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He mentioned up front at the beginning of the speech, the section from Genesis where it says the blessing that those who bless you will be blessed and those who curse you will be cursed. And he mentions also that Moses says this a little bit later on in the Bible. And then he points out, here's a map of those who are blessing us. It's the Abrahamic horse nations. And here's a map of those who are cursing us. And that would be the Iranian axis. Ladies and gentlemen.

As Israel defends itself against Iran in the Seven Front War, the lines separating the blessing and the curse could not be more clear. This is the map I presented here last year. It's a map of a blessing. It shows Israel, Israel and its Arab partners forming a land bridge connecting Asia and Europe. Now look at this second map. It's a map

Look at the second map. It's a map of a curse. So ladies and gentlemen, the question before us is simple: Which of these two maps that I showed you will shape our future? Will it be the blessings of peace and prosperity for Israel, our Arab partners, and the rest of the world? Or will it be the curse in which Iran and its proxies spread carnage and chaos everywhere? Israel has already made its choice. We've decided to advance the blessing.

We're building a partnership for peace with our Arab neighbors while fighting the forces of terror that threaten that peace. And then he points out that Hezbollah has basically emptied northern Israel and he's not going to stand for that either. He says enough is enough. Hezbollah turned vibrant towns in the north of Israel into ghost towns. So I want you to think about this in equivalent American terms. Just imagine if terrorists turned El Paso and San Diego into ghost towns. Then ask yourself,

How long would the American government tolerate that? A day? A week? A month? I doubt they tolerate it even for a single day. Yet Israel has been tolerating this intolerable situation for nearly a year. Well, I've come here today to say enough is enough. So while Netanyahu was saying enough was enough, F-15s were en route to bomb Hassan Nasrallah's headquarters.

And that's precisely what happened. According to the Wall Street Journal, a series of Israeli attacks killed many of the Lebanese militant groups' senior leaders, blew up its electronic devices and destroyed some of its vast arsenal of missiles. Some plan to use this meeting, where they were meeting 60 feet below the surface of a bustling working class neighborhood in southern Beirut. They plan to use this meeting to express frustration that Iran was restraining them from responding more forcefully to the Israeli attacks, according to people familiar with Hezbollah's discussions.

Around dusk, explosions shook the city above. Israel's air force struck the bunker with about 80 tons of bombs. According to several people familiar with the situation, the attack used a series of timed chain explosions to penetrate the subterranean bunker, a senior Israeli military official said. Nasrallah's death leaves a void at the top of the world's most heavily armed non-state militia, which is designated as a terrorist group by the United States. It was a transformative event for the Middle East.

But it's bigger than that.

It's a reshaping of the entire region, what is happening right now. It's an astonishing move by Israel because not only have they taken Hamas off the board as a workable piece in the Iranian proxy war, they have now effectively castrated Hezbollah as a serious forward operating base for Iran. So what does that leave on the table? They're the Houthis. Israel has been hitting them. They're presumably our militias in Iraq.

Those Shia militias in Iraq have been aiming at Americans. Americans have been hitting back. And that leaves Iran directly. And Iran directly is, frankly, not capable of doing serious damage to Israel if their assault earlier in the year showed anything at all. In fact, Israel is significantly more capable of doing serious damage to Iran's nuclear facilities and oil fields than Iran is capable of doing the other way around.

Israel has been attempting to cut off the supply lines from Syria into Lebanon in order to isolate Hezbollah. There are militias in Syria, but one of the things that Israel has been doing also is hitting targets in Syria and they're preventing the shipping of Iranian materiel into Lebanon. In fact, over the weekend, the Israelis told the Lebanese, if you allow Iranian planes into your airport, we're going to blow up your airport. So there were Iranian planes en route when this happened.

The Lebanese called up the Iranians and said, turn those planes around. We can't do this. You know what turns out is an amazing foreign policy? FAFO. It's an amazing foreign policy. We'll get to more on that in just a second, but first, let's...

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Shipping in the Red Sea with near impunity to fire at American ships without serious retaliation to kill Americans in Jordan, for example. The Israelis, a far smaller country, Israel country, 7.5 million Jews, about 2 million Arabs, 9.5 million people total in Israel. That country is taking on all comers right now and wrecking them.

And their intelligence apparatus is astonishing. They have penetration in all these areas. By the way, one of the reasons they have penetration into places like Lebanon and places like Iran, where you will remember they killed Ismail Khania, the political head of Hamas just a few months back, is because there are so many people in these places who hate these regimes. There are a lot of people in Lebanon who hate Hassan Nasrallah. There are Syrians who are literally handing out candies in the streets after hearing that Nasrallah was dead.

When it comes to Iran, the people of Iran don't like the regime. It's just the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the world's largest terrorist organization, which is in charge of this terror regime. Ayatollah Khamenei, by the way, has been in hiding. He's afraid that the Israelis are going to kill him. He's afraid he's going to pick up his cell phone and there'll be a bomb in it. So what Israel right now is showing is the power of strength and the Sunni Gulf states...

are going to sign back on because here's what they see. They see that Israel is the future. They see alliance with Israel is the future. They see that Iran is the past. And despite the fact that the Biden administration has blown it six ways from Sunday, Israel is demonstrating that despite the leash being held by the Biden administration, the slow walking of aid, the soft arms embargo, the Joe Biden idiotic midnight phone calls telling Israel not to go into Rafah, telling Israel not to go take the win with regard to Iran. Despite all of that,

Israel has said, no, we are going to protect ourselves. And that is smart. And that is good. It means a better Middle East for the United States, by the way. It means a Middle East with a series of allies who are stronger than American enemies because Iran hates the United States. They literally chant death to America. He's been a chance death to America. These the Houthis, their literal slogan is death to America, death to the Jews.

And strengthening the alliance against this would be the smart move. Joe Biden, being a moron, has not done that. He has done precisely the opposite. In fact, the Financial Times actually reported that in the days after October 7th, Israeli warplanes took off with instructions to kill Nasrallah. And Joe Biden got on the phone and said no. The White House demanded Netanyahu not do it. So what did the Israelis do this time? They said, guess what? We ain't going to call. We're not calling. In fact, we'll come to the United States and we'll use it as a cover story.

We'll come to the United States, says Netanyahu. I will speak at the UN. And then while I'm speaking, I will deploy the warplanes. And five minutes after Bibi got out of the UN, the bombs dropped on Israel and killed them. It's an amazing move. It's truly an amazing thing. And then, as I mentioned, they've also been bombing the Houthis. The bombing of these seaports in Yemen on Sunday after the rebel group launched a couple of ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv is yet another sign that Israel is not going to take the sitting down anymore.

that there's no more Mr. Nice Zionist over there, which means there are now all sorts of opportunities in Lebanon, by the way, because with Hezbollah weekend, it turns out there might be other powers that could fill that space. Either the Lebanese government is going to fight Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and pull those forces out, or Israel's going in and they know it. By the way, France could be helpful here. France has been shipping all sorts of material over there and about Israel getting involved in southern Lebanon. Maybe the French should actually do something useful for a change. Wouldn't that be nice?

So this is the opening of a new era in the Middle East. It's not just me saying this. It's people on the left saying this. Dennis Ross, former special assistant to Barack Obama, and Stephen Tehan, a research director of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute who worked in the U.S. State Department at Time Magazine. They write, "'Just when the prospect of peace in the Middle East seemed further away than ever, the dramatic death of longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah significantly alters the balance of power and offers a renewed opportunity for peace.'"

The broader opportunity comes from what has accompanied Nasrallah's death, the systematic degradation of Hezbollah's capabilities over the last month. The entire operational leadership of Hezbollah has been emptied. You would have imagined that if they killed Nasrallah at the beginning of this war, there would have been 10,000 rockets flying. That was the Israeli estimate. There'd be 10,000 rockets at night flying into Israel. There'd be 10,000 to 12,000 Israelis dead. As of current count in this current round of conflict, the Israeli count is zero.

That's unthinkable, like biblically unthinkable. Like if you don't believe in miracles, this would be a good time to start believing if you're just looking at the stats that have been presented on the ground as to what is happening militarily. Like a thousand years from now, as a Jew, a thousand years from now, there'll be a Jewish holiday. Just saying.

This is reopening all sorts of avenues that were thought closed. Jared Kushner has a fantastic post on this. So Jared, who has stayed largely out of the limelight since leaving politics, since helping broker the Abraham Accords, he says,

This is a great point. With Hezbollah out of the picture, what's the deterrent against the West taking out their nuclear facilities? The reason why their nuclear facilities have not been destroyed despite weak air defense systems is because Hezbollah has been a loaded gun pointed at Israel.

Iran spent the last 40 years building this capability as its deterrent. President Trump would often say Iran has never won a war but never lost a negotiation. The Islamic Republic's regime is much tougher when risking Hamas, Hezbollah, Syrian and Houthi lives than risking their own. Their foolish efforts to assassinate President Trump and hack his campaign reek of desperation and are hardening a large coalition against them.

Iranian leadership is stuck in the old Middle East while their neighbors in the GCC are sprinting toward the future by investing in their populations and infrastructure. They're becoming dynamic magnets for talent and investment while Iran falls further behind. As the Iranian proxies and threats dissipate, regional security and prosperity will rise for Christians, Muslims, and Jews alike.

Israel now finds itself with the threat from Gaza mostly neutralized and the opportunity to neutralize Hezbollah in the north. It's unfortunate how we got here, but maybe there can be a silver lining in the end. Anyone who's been calling for a ceasefire in the north is wrong. There is no going back for Israel. They cannot afford now to not finish the job and completely dismantle the arsenal that has been aimed at them. They will never get another chance.

He concludes, he says, the right move for America right now would be to tell Israel to finish the job. It's long overdue and it's not only Israel's fight. More than 40 years ago, Hezbollah killed 241 US military personnel, including 220 Marines. That remains the single deadliest day for the US Marine Corps since the Battle of Iwo Jima. Later that same day, Hezbollah killed 58 French paratroops. And now over the past six weeks or so, Israel has eliminated as many terrorists on the US list of wanted terrorists as the US has done in 20 years.

He said, the Middle East is too often a solid where little changes. Today is a liquid and the ability to reshape is unlimited. Do not squander this moment. Well, I don't think the Israelis will. I think that Biden-Harris will do their best. We'll get to that in just one moment. First,

The 2024 vice presidential debate between J.D. Vance and Tim Walz is coming to Daily Wire Plus tomorrow night. But let's face it, these debates are better with friends, especially friends who can spot every lie and false promise, which is why we're doing a special backstage with pre-show analysis from Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, Jeremy Boring, and of course, yours truly. Plus, stick around for a post-debate breakdown with insights you won't hear from the mainstream media. So instead of yelling at your TV alone, come yell with us. The VP debate, tomorrow night, 8.30 Eastern on Daily Wire Plus. Well, as you would predict,

The usual sources are very upset. So Iran, of course, is very upset. Ayatollah Khamenei, who is literally in hiding right now, he put out a tweet announcing that Iran was in a state of mourning. They're also presumably going to raise some red flags of revenge or whatever. They're going to go into their flag stash again. They're going to put up their red flag of stupidity. And they put about their purple flag of disappointment and their orange flag of angst and all the rest of their flags and all the rest of that sort of stuff. But meanwhile, he's hiding because he understands that he is now stuck between a rock and a hard place. The rock is...

that he has been abjectly humiliated by the Juden. The Jews have really humiliated him here. And because they have really humiliated him, this makes him vulnerable. At the same time, if he ups the ante here, Israel will clock him into next week. Israel has been prepping for 20 years to hit the nuclear facilities, to hit the oil fields, to do serious damage.

And by the way, people are forgetting that after Iran fired those 300 cruise missiles and drones at Israel, and none of them did any damage, after that happened, Israel retaliated by firing a piece of ordinance that was so technologically sophisticated. It was literally directed very short distances from where the Iranian nuclear facilities were. It was a warning shot. And the Iranians didn't even see it on the radar. So Israel has capacities they've not yet unleashed here. First world countries fighting third world countries. It turns out kind of a military tech imbalance.

Mahmoud Abbas was also in mourning. So Mahmoud Abbas, he's the supposed moderate. So whenever you hear morons say that Mahmoud Abbas should lead the Palestinians into a brighter future, understand that he too is a radical pro-terror piece of trash whose regime actually pays people to kill Jews.

He put out a statement, Mr. President Mahmoud Abbas extends his condolences to the Lebanese Hezbollah on the martyrdom of his secretary general, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. His majesty also gave his deepest condolences to the Lebanese government and the Lebanese brotherly people on the martyrment of the civilian victims who have fallen as a result of the heinous Israeli aggression and the continuation of the war of genocide against the Palestinian and Lebanese people.

By the way, Israel, super bad at genocide. It turns out they're fighting the most targeted military operation in literally human history between what they have done to Hezbollah in the north and what they have done to Hamas in their south. Other pro-terrorists who are out there promoting and being sad, that'd be Rashida Tlaib. Shocker, shocker. Quote, our country is funding this bloodbath. Sending more of our troops and bombs to the region is not advancing peace. The US government are conspirators to the war criminal Netanyahu's genocidal plan. Again, they're really super crappy at genociding.

at genocide. This is not how genocide works. Also, if there is funding that's going the wrong way, it would be the funding to say the UNRWA or the funding to Hamas or the funding to Iran. Those would be the wrong direction of funding. And herein lies the problem for the Biden-Harris administration. I said this has political ramifications in the United States and it absolutely should. The

The only reason any of this is happening is because Joe Biden is a moron when it comes to foreign policy. Robert Gates, former Obama Secretary of Defense, said Joe Biden had never made a good decision on foreign policy, and that is true. And there's only one person in his near orbit who's even worse than he is, and she's running for president right now, and that's Kamala Harris, obviously.

So Joe Biden, even Joe Biden, was forced to put out a statement saying, yeah, by the way, we're pretty happy Nasrallah is dead. Quote, Hassan Nasrallah and the terrorist group he led, Hezbollah, were responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade reign of terror. His death from an Israeli airstrike is a measure of justice for his many victims, including thousands of Americans, Israelis, and Lebanese civilians.

The strike that killed Nasrallah took place in the broader context of the conflict that began with Hamas's massacre on October 7th, 2023. Nasrallah the next day made the fateful decision to join hands with Hamas and opened what he called a Northern Front against Israel. Okay, so far so good. The United States fully supports Israel's right to defend itself against Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and any other Iranian supported terror groups. Just yesterday, I directed my Secretary of Defense to further enhance the defense posture of U.S. military forces in the Middle East to deter aggression and reduce the risk of a broader regional war.

All of this so far is really good.

And then... Now, the real reason...

that Biden can't just say good. Again, this all would have been over within October, November of 2023 if the Biden administration had said, Israel, go to it. Go to it. The controls are off. Do what you need to do. Take out Hezbollah. Take out Hamas. Do what you need to do. If that had been the position of the administration all along, this thing would have been cleaned up by the new year 2024.

Instead, they decided that they were going to take the middle road, the middle position. And that was because, of course, they have political aims in places like Michigan. So what we now know about Vice President Harris, she apparently is so far backing President Biden's diplomacy-focused strategy in the Middle East. Oh, diplomacy, you say, because that's clearly what's happening, tons of diplomacy happening.

Your diploma's seeing the hell out of this one. Amos Hochstein, the doltish, cloddish negotiator the United States has been sending to Lebanon and then to Israel and then to Lebanon and then to Israel and then to Iran and then to Israel. They're sending him all over over there. And he has accomplished zero things, zero.

The problem, of course, for her is that if Israel continues to win, there are going to be pieces of her coalition that are super ticked. And you're going to see a lot of campus unrest over the course of the next few weeks. Because the thing that people on campus hate the most is watching the Israelis defend themselves. They hate it. Hate it. And you can see the split inside the Biden-Harris administration. So John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesperson, he says, listen, nobody is mourning Nasrallah's death.

I don't think anybody's mourning the loss of Mr. Nisrola, a known terrorist, a guy with American blood on his hands as well as Israeli blood on his hands. This is a terrorist organization. He was the leader of it. And I think people are safer without him walking around. Well, yes. But then you have Lloyd Austin. So Lloyd Austin, the secretary of defense, looking very uncomfortable, saying, guys, the best solution is always diplomatic. Always it's diplomatic.

Listen, if you could have diplomacy your way out of this one, don't you think that might have happened over the course of last year? It turns out a great solution is to kill people trying to kill you. That's an awesome solution, actually. So we would hope that we don't see a ground incursion because if that happens, there is a chance that the conflict could broaden into what could be a regional conflict.

So, again, we think the best solution going forward is a diplomatic solution. Well, I'm glad that you think that. That's really fun. And I'm sorry that you don't want to see a ground incursion. You know who also doesn't want to see a ground incursion? Anyone in Israel. The Israelis don't want to lose sons and daughters in southern Lebanon. They have no interest in doing that. You have accomplished zero things. If the United States said to the Lebanese government, guys, Israel can do whatever it wants. You know what? If they're going to do a ground incursion,

Go at it, man. If they did that, the Lebanese government actually have an interest in not trying to hold out against all of this.

Once again, the weakness of this administration, the weakness of Kamala Harris, the weakness of Joe Biden, they've made the world a bloodier place. And it is only because Israel is doing historic things right now that the Middle East is being reshaped anyway in the absence of American leadership. Well, the United States can't afford to lose its power, lose its influence. And your business, you can't afford to lose time. That'd be a dumb thing to do. Time is the most precious resource. Since I'm always on the go, I'm always looking for ways to maximize efficiency.

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No contract. That's stamps.com, code Shapiro. Again, stamps.com, code Shapiro. Go check them out right now for the special offer, stamps.com, code Shapiro. Well, meanwhile, Kamala Harris, she headed down to the border to pretend that she's actually tough on the border, which of course she is not. She's got a big problem in the polls with Latinos, apparently. According to a brand new national NBC News Telemundo poll, she has the worst level of advantage for a Democrat.

in four election cycles. Right now, she's winning Latinos, but only 54 to 40, with 6% saying they're unsure or would not vote. That's a 14-point advantage, but that is not nearly Joe Biden's advantage in 2020. In 2020, Joe Biden had a 36-point advantage, not 14, 36-point advantage on Donald Trump. In 2016, Hillary Clinton had a 40-point advantage on Donald Trump. In 2012,

Barack Obama had a 39 point advantage on Mitt Romney. So honestly, God, this is one of the things that's very difficult for me to understand about how they're even constructing these likely voter samples. If Trump is only losing by 14% among Latinos, if that's real, and if Donald Trump is also outperforming among black voters, which he seems to be,

And if Donald Trump is outperforming on male voters, which he seems to be, how is this even a super tight race? Now, it seems to be a tight race by every poll. As I mentioned last week, that could be poll grouping. That could be a bunch of risk-averse pollsters. It could also be that they are trying to model out an electorate that's going to have heavy mail-in voting.

According to an NBC News poll, 51% of all votes in this election cycle will be early. And those heavily trend toward Democrats, which again is setting the stage for another one of these red mirage nights. Okay, so just be aware. That's the thing that's going to be talked about for the next five weeks. A lot of the mail-in voting, which gets counted last by law in states like Pennsylvania, is counted after the day of voting. Day of voting, Trump is expected to win in most of these states. And then the mail-in voting starts to come in and that trends more toward the Democrats.

So that's why you got to wait a little bit later on into the night to see exactly where the voting is just so you actually know. It's also why if you're a Republican, please early vote. Go out and vote right now. Don't wait. I know there's pushback. Well, they're going to throw out my vote. If you're worried about that, vote early and then go to the polling place in Castle Provisional.

But do it now. Get out of the way because you don't know what's going to come up on voting day. In any case, Kamala Harris headed down to the border to try to pretend that she's actually tough on the border. She said she's going to take action to close the border, actually, which is really exciting. She's in Douglas, Arizona. Amazing news after three and a half years of the most open border policy in American history. To reduce illegal border crossings, I will take further action to keep the border closed between ports of entry.

Those who cross our borders unlawfully will be apprehended and removed and barred from reentering for five years. We will pursue more severe criminal charges against repeat violators. OK, well, so she's real tough now. She's so tough that she's even wearing her like, look at me. I'm on the border jacket, which is really exciting.

And there's only one problem, of course, which is in 2019. She literally said that Donald Trump was creating fictional problems at the border, which is weird because they weren't fictional. We have a president of the United States who has created a fiction about a crisis at the border. And he is the United States government and its workers around his vanity project called the wall. It's a vanity project. Well, again, you're going to believe this lady that she's going to shore up the border. And meanwhile, Donald Trump aggressively campaigning.

He used some language that got everybody very upset. He said that Joe Biden has become mentally impaired over time, but Kamala Harris was always mentally impaired. And frankly, it's a funny line. I don't really see any huge problem with it. They used to call George W. Bush unbelievably stupid. They're constantly suggesting that Trump himself is mentally impaired. Now you're going to get all offended. Now you're really going to start clutching your pearls. Sure. Joe Biden became mentally impaired. Kamala was born that way.

And everybody got very upset. No, no, you can't say that. All he's saying is she's dumb. He's allowed to say that. And you know what? You're always calling him dumb. So that's just the way it works. He then pointed out in more important news that she has completely erased our borders, which of course is true. Kamala Harris inherited the most secure border in U.S. history.

And as Bordasar, she then set the all-time record for illegal immigration into our country every single year. And many of these people were stone cold criminals and murderers.

She willfully and deliberately erased her own nation's borders, a crime so wicked as to defy description. Okay, well, he's not wrong about that. Now, the one thing that everybody I think is sort of keeping an eye out for is the cut down on information.

In the lead up to 2020, obviously, the media and social media, they combined to shut down stories that were harmful to Democrats. And there's plenty out there that's very harmful to Kamala Harris. Is that what we're going to see? Well, John Kerry has his way. That is what we're going to see. This guy was the special envoy on behalf of the Biden administration for years. Here he was at the Orwellian World Economic Forum saying the First Amendment has to be stopped. It's allowing too many people to say things that John Kerry doesn't like.

Look, if people go to only one source and the source they go to is sick and, you know, has an agenda and they're putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence. So what you need, what we need is to win the ground, win the right to govern by hopefully having, you know, winning enough votes that you're free to be able to

to implement change. My goodness, my goodness. How much these people truly hate many American principles in favor of their cliquish global regime. It really is quite frightening. Okay, coming up, we'll get into the Kamala Harris campaign's war on masculinity. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code SPHERA at checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. The stage is set. The stakes are sky high. Senator Vance, Governor Waltz, face off.

But who will land the knockout punch? Don't watch the debate alone. Experience it with the most trusted names in conservative media. Daily Wire Backstage brings you unfiltered commentary, fighting wit, and expert analysis you won't get anywhere else. Join Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, and Jeremy Boren for a debate night you'll never forget.

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