Are We Fixing Iran or Making Things Worse?

0:00Well, Rabbi, another Sunday, another war in the Middle East. Only this one has our feet in it. What to do? You know, this war represents a brand new paradigm in Middle East politics. Let's take an airplane as a model. You like to think that a plane has a pilot and a co-pilot and then sitting behind them as an engineer navigator. This plane has two pilots or two co-pilots, Netanyahu and Trump, but pull them out and say Israel and United States are sitting next to each other, co-piloting the Mid-East plane. Sitting behind them, navigating an engineer

1:00is Saudi Arabia. Up until now, Israel has sort of been a player and on the sidelines and sometimes a victim, sometimes an aggressor, sometimes being pacifists. But now Israel is in control and will be with the United States and with Saudi Arabia. This is the change in the paradigm that I see that I'm waiting for our newscasters to get away from the casualties and the bombing and some illogistics and start talking about what this means, the change. I think it's a very dramatic change because these three players now control the Middle East. But a lot of people are going to say that's a good thing because up until now, we've had many, many, many years of regions trying to exert their influence and many of them

2:03use that influence to point to Israel as the villain in everything that's going on. Everybody sort of has subtly behind the scenes acknowledged that Iran is a terrible problem for everyone. But nobody's been able to do anything about it. Should we be happy that now it's come to all right, enough talk. Let's go beat the crap out of it. I think this was a inevitable joke with Iran supporting Hezbollah, supporting Hamas, the Houthis, and threatening to close the straits of Hamas. I've said before Iran is the problem, and I think this was inevitable. Somebody was going to say, you've crossed that proverbial red line, we've had enough, Iran has to be stopped. Even if there's no change in the government, to set Iran back so they don't have nuclear weapons, to stop them from supporting

3:08these proxies, the killing people and terrorism, to stop them munking around in things, and then leave the Middle East to Israel, the United States, the Saudis, and Saudis' other friends. And some of the other Arab countries are the minor players behind Saudis' influence. The goal is to take Iran off the map out of the Middle East, and a change in regime would be nice. I don't think that's going to happen. It has to come from the country and the people, but what can happen is Iran can be taken off the plane board. But this is going to happen if there is a regime change to go along with it. When the Shah was in power, it wasn't until there was a regime change, and people overthrew him from within the country, that a lot of the criminal actions he was doing were taken care of,

4:11but then they were replaced by religious fanaticism, which, as you and I have both said many times in the past, is never a good idea. Don't you think this bombing, this assassination, murder, or righteous killing, if you want to look at it that way, is going to just increase fanaticism among the regime, intensify their hatred of the West and Israel, is this going to cause more problems? I don't think we can say yet if it's going to cause more or less problems, what I can say is this is a problem that had to be stopped now. Something had to be done. Israel was working with Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis were going to recognize Israel's sovereignty. So what did Iran do? It pushed Hamas to cross from Gaza, to take hostages, to create a situation so that the Saudis couldn't publicly recognize the state of Israel. That was all done by Iran.

5:16It was all manipulated by Iran, but now the Saudis have come to realize that whatever may have happened, they're throwing their lot in, when Israel took out, was it the 12-day war, when Israel took out all the nuclear things, not a single Israeli plane was shot down. It was a clear avenue in. Israel intelligence is really good, but not that good. And even now, the fact that they knew there was something going on, the fact that they could go in and take out Khomeini. All of this is Saudi intelligence, but that's why I said in my airplane, we have two pilots, the United States and Israel, and we have an navigator, an engineer sitting behind them, a Saudi. And all of this is because of the cooperation. Each one is doing their piece. Iran has to be taken off the chart, has to be taken out of the Middle East. I think a regime

6:18change will come about if enough damage is done, and if economically, here we are to profit. If enough money is lost, if the country goes bankrupt, then I think we're going to see some, an internal, maybe a civil war, an internal strike, but we can't base our present actions on what may or may not happen, Joe. I don't think a monetary incentive has ever worked before. It has influenced decisions, but ultimately, the poor suffer. As we all know, the poor get poor. And I don't know that any solution is worse than bombing and killing people, and I dread that. I know war is sometimes necessary. I think even Obama said that. I make cartoons about that. I don't know how to make a cartoon about this because I can't get a handle on it. I don't understand

7:22what's the right thing to say? What's the wrong thing to say? So many things about this disturb me on so many different ways. To you to think about this, because I need your help, I think we all need help getting a handle on what's right and what's wrong. Yes, it's a good idea for the tough beat cop to go and drag a guy into an alley, who's a drug dealer or a pimp or something like that, and beat him with his night stick and tell him, don't do that anymore. But that's television. In reality, I want my government, I want my police, I want my military to follow certain rules because they've been trained not to do those things. And when they do them with such transparency, and without concern for the consequences, I get worried. All of this is very worried, some Joe, because war is certainly worse than hell, because the people in hell deserve it. In the war, people who don't deserve it get killed and lose. However, when we step back and we

8:30look at the world, and we realize that the world isn't fair, the world isn't based on good moral decisions. Alliance is a made based on money and profit and land grabs. Look at Russia invading Ukraine and it continues. We live in a world Joe where there are nations and people that want to destroy and conquer. And unfortunately, the only way to stop it is the war. We're caught in a spiral. And I think it's time that there are pacifists and all these other people's wake up and smell the coffee that we are in a world where there are individuals who aren't going to play by the rules, who aren't going to sign agreements. And they're going to take, take and take. And unfortunately, the only way to stop it is through arms and fighting. And like I said,

9:33it just leads to more death and destruction. We now have to accept what we're living through and what we're living in and see if there's a way to pat it down or ameliorate it or have enough defense so that those that want to conquer territories that aren't theirs, like Russia is doing to Ukraine won't do it. Hitler did it because he knew no one would stop him. Putin's doing it because he knows no one will stop him. And what Iran was doing by supporting their proxies was they knew no one was going to stop them. And they have to know someone's going to blow the whistle and raise a little orange card, red card, green, whatever they do in soccer and say no. And unfortunately it's war zone. Well, I got to disagree with you on this one, Rabbi. I think there's a way to do this that does not involve shooting. The United States chose to, they could line up behind Ukraine

10:38and say, okay, no more bombs, no more missiles, or we're going to shoot back along with the Ukrainians. And Russia would stop there. I believe Russia would stop there. I agree with you. They would definitely stop there. And I think that's what we're seeing now in the Middle East. The United States, Israel and the Saudis are saying to Iran, get out. Right. But I don't think Iran as a religious led government is going to listen to that kind of reason because in the back of their minds, two things. One, all my soldiers are going to be up front getting shot at. And two, they're all going to want to be shot at because if they die, there'll be martyrs and go to a straight to heaven. And that is a mentality that's very hard to fight with logic. I'm not asking for logic, Joe. I'm asking for what we're watching. I'm asking for blowing up the missiles, blowing up the palaces, stopping them with something they understand. And that's,

11:46well, okay. I'll meet you out on the playground and we'll do it out. Thank you, Rabbi. I'm not sure we resolved anything or even came up with a logical conclusion or observation. But I think more than any other episode we've had, this summarizes the confusion that all this has generated. Thanks as always. And I think as Americans, we have to be careful of not becoming more polarized. Because then we're going to be creating more problems for ourselves. I think we need to look at ourselves and say, it's a bad situation. Is there a way out? What can we do to get rid of Iran?