Name: Emergency Podcast: Iran, Israel, & Imminent Destruction | The Tim Dillon Show #486
Uploaded: 2026-03-07T01:15:06.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Emergency Podcast: Iran, Israel, & Imminent Destruction | The Tim Dillon Show #486' from The Tim Dillon Show on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-03-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Emergency Podcast: Iran, Israel, & Imminent Destruction | The Tim Dillon Show #486' from The Tim Dillon Show on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-03-07. Transcript available.

Emergency Podcast: Iran, Israel, & Imminent Destruction | The Tim Dillon Show #486

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Tim Dillon Show. We have two great
reporters here that I'm
really excited to have on. We have Ryan Grimm, who's returning from DropSite
News, and Jeremy
Scahill, who's the author of Dirty Wars, also a great documentary. Jeremy,
first to you, you've
looked at a lot of different conflicts that the United States has been involved
in. What makes
this unique as a challenge? Forget the morality of being there. We're going to
get to that in a
moment. But do you think we're winning this war? And if not, why not? And why
didn't George W. Bush
do this? I mean, why has no other president done this? I mean, this is a
seemingly a unique set of
challenges. I think generals told Trump that before we went in, yet he went in
anyway. In your
estimation, why is this so incredibly difficult? Yeah, I mean, first of all,
Tim, like you mentioned
the Bush era. And I think one of the factors here that is kind of extraordinary
is that Dick Cheney
and the Bush team, they also were sort of lawless gangsters when it came to
like respect for the
constitution and basic civil liberties and congressional procedures regarding
war. But
they look like, you know, sort of constitutional law scholars compared to what
the Trump administration
is doing on issues of war powers, etc. And, you know, one factor here that I
think really has to be
emphasized is that the leadership of the Democratic Party, they completely sat
on their hands in the
whole buildup to this. Trump was telegraphing that it was going to happen. They
didn't have any kind
of a public debate on it. The gang of eight gets briefed by Marco Rubio. All of
these guys know
that this thing is imminent, and they delay a vote on the War Powers Act. Now,
it wouldn't have passed
anyway, like they wouldn't, you know, the Democrats, enough of them are in full
support of this that it
wouldn't have actually made a huge difference to him. But the point of it is
that that's where an
actual debate happens, where like members of Congress have to go on the record.
And so the Democrats
sort of cynically exploited this because a lot of them actually want regime
change in Iran and support
the agenda. But they also hope that, you know, Trump screws it up, and it
becomes bad for him
electorally. But on a tactical level, the US is approaching this answers your
question, the US
administration is approaching this like it's going to be Venezuela, that they're
going to be able to just
lop off, you know, the leadership in Iran, cut a deal with the number, whatever
they're on now, number 10,
you know, ranking guy, and then Trump's going to sort of own the oil and go in
there. Or they're talking about it sort of like
Libya, where you take out Muammar Gaddafi, then you have ground forces that are
working with
you. They've completely misread this. Iran has been building horizontal
institutions since 1979. It is not just a dictatorship of one, and you kill the
supreme
leader, and all of a sudden, the state collapses. This is a multi decade
project with cross sections of
society running security, the economy. There's also a religious dedication on
the part of some of their
largest security forces that is not wed to one individual. And so I think what
we're seeing is
that Trump's people are talking about this like a sporting event. Certainly,
the US has overwhelming
firepower. You know, Pete Hegseth, who's sort of drinking buddy as defense
secretary, is, you know,
is really braggadocious, you know, and arrogant in the way he's talking about
it. The Iranians are,
we were told that they were basically wiped out, Trump saying 60%, 64%. Last
night, after
Pete Hegseth held a press conference saying the Iranian attacks are abating,
the Iranians launched
some of their most ferocious attacks at US targets throughout the Middle East.
They did heavy bombing
of Israel. What's clear is that the Iranians actually have succeeded in
targeting a number of
high end US radar systems that are their early detection. And so you're
starting to see more Iranian
hits on bases. I think that the US death toll quite probably could rise. But
the idea that you're just
going to overthrow this government is a massive miscalculation. And if they
want to do that,
they're going to have to send in, you know, 100,000 plus American troops, and
then it's going
to be an utter bloodbath. So what does that mean? It means at the end of the
day, the only winner here
is sort of the agenda of Israel. Because I don't think Netanyahu so much cares
who comes into power
in Iran, as much as he wants that state shattered, he wants to convert it into
a failed state. He wants the
US to bomb their conventional military. He wants to ensure that there is no
nation state with a real military
capable of serving as a deterrent against Israel's agenda.
Ryan, what do you think? Donald Trump is there. A lot of what Jeremy said is
sort of has had to be known to
generals. The military is telling Donald Trump this. They're telling him it's
going to be difficult. I mean, that was even
leaking out. They were saying things like, this is not a cakewalk. Why does he
pull the trigger and decide
to go in? I mean, from your reporting, why do they take out the spiritual
leader of a Muslim country during
Ramadan and expect that then the entire, you know, regime is going to unravel
and then they're going to win
popular support. What pushes him into this in the 11th hour?
I think Trump has been told so many times that you can't do a certain thing.
And then he has done
that thing. And then it has gone fantastically for him. And, and I think the
latest one to Jeremy's point
was Venezuela. And we said, you can't, you can't just go into the country and
grab the president and his wife and
take them back out and not lose a, you know, a single American service member.
And then just say that you run the
country that you can't do that. It's not how, it's not, not how things are done
yet. He did that. And it, from,
from his perspective, it worked out, you know, phenomenally for him. And he has
said, he has said,
like, I'm on a roll. Like, let's go, let's, let's hit Cuba. Like, I'm feeling
good. Like he's, he's,
it's 3am in Vegas and like, he's feeling great. And he's also like been under
enormous amounts of
pressure from Israel. And then you have the Secretary of State saying, well, we
were going to, we were
definitely going to do it at some point, no question about it. But the reason
we did it now is because
we heard that Israel was going to do it. We knew what we would be attacked in
response if Israel did
that. So we just decided we're going to go along with Israel and start this war.
Now, not, not
considering the other option of saying, Hey, those are our weapons you're using.
You know, how about you
don't do that? Yeah. It seems to me that this, this whole thing seems backwards,
you know, in the
sense that we're arming Israel and we're providing them the, the money to do
this. So how did we get
to a point? And maybe Jeremy could, could jump in. How did we get to the point
where the president of
Israel is sitting in the Oval Office? And this is according to the secretary of
state. It's not a
conspiracy theory, telling the president of the United States, we're going to
do this with your
money and weapons, whether you like it or not. And suggesting that this is the
secretary of state
didn't say this, but there has been reporting and the credibility of it, you
know, I think it's
relatively credible that they had discussed potentially using unconventional or
nuclear weapons
at a certain point or a certain stage in the conflict. How did we get to this
point where
the president of Israel is telling the president of the United States, we're
doing this with your
money anyway, and you better get on board to minimize the damage? Because if
you don't get
on board, perhaps we'll have to use nuclear weapons.
You know, sources we also talked to that had some degree of access to the
decision-making process
leading up to this war. We're saying that, you know, since the Venezuela
operation, Tim, Trump started
to like walk around opining, including in like intelligence briefings, that he
wants to go down
in history as the president that forever changed Iran, you know, that sort of
avenged the 1979
revolution and the taking of the embassy. And I think that he really got fluffed
up by a lot of people
that, you know, you're, you're, you're going to like experience greatness here
and that we're going
to run the deck. You know, Trump won when he was first in the white house in
after that 2016 election,
remember how the disdain he had for like John Bolton and the neocons and the,
and the deliberations
that went into that one strike that Trump authorized at the Baghdad airport,
where they killed general
Qasem Soleimani, you know, the head of the IRGC, the most elite force in Iran.
But Trump came out of
like Bolton's era as his national security advisor, denouncing him and saying,
if it was up to John
Bolton, we'd be in world war three. Well, you fast forward to Trump 2.0 and
what I would call the
sort of neocon Netanyahu wing of the MAGA movement, which they're the most
dangerous figures in the
American political scene that they kind of took over this entire portfolio. And
part of it is that
Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner is up to his neck in Gulf money. He's very
invested in Israel on an
ideological and religious level. You have Miriam Adelson, who, you know, Trump
basically has said
is, is calling shots and is the most, he called her the most influential and
powerful Israeli in the
world. You know, when he went to announce that he was ending the Gaza war, when
it, when he spoke at
the Knesset and you have these people, they completely captured Trump on this
level. I don't
think Trump is an ideological guy. I think that he got fluffed up. He has a lot
of business going on.
He's simultaneously the president and he's looking out for his business, his
family business, his cronies
business. And I, I think these guys just convinced him, you're going to do
something great. That it's
like, you know, building the Coliseum on a foreign policy level. And the
reality is they are engaged
in action right now that is going to make the world less safe for a long time
to come. It's totally,
no matter what your politics are, this is totally contrary to American interest,
to the basic safety
of Americans in the world, to our perception as a nation state. He twice used
the false veneer of
negotiating with another country to then launch military strikes. They did it
in June of last year.
They said, oh, we have another negotiation coming up. Days later, they do 12
days of massive bombing
of Iran. They do the same thing this time. If the whole, it's a huge scandal,
Tim, because what the
Iranians put on the table went far beyond what Obama was able to get in 2015
from them. It was a massive,
massive series of concessions from the Iranians on that nuclear issue. The Iranians
were talking about
also having negotiations on conventional weapons, including talking about range
of ballistic missiles.
That's what I was told by Iranian officials, that they actually were willing to
discuss that if the
nuclear arrangement was reached. So Trump could have called it a huge win. He
could have said,
I did what Obama couldn't do. I did what Biden couldn't do. And he could have
made an actual deal
that every expert on nuclear weapons and Iran would have said, that is an
extraordinary achievement
to get to the Iranians to that point. It's just proof that none of this was
actually about actual
security. It wasn't about nuclear weapons. And in terms of the generals, I'm
sure that Trump was
sitting in briefings where these guys were laying out for him how strong some
of Iran's missile
capabilities are and the potential damage to American troops. Now, there's six
confirmed American
military deaths thus far. Do you believe that number? Do you think the number
of casualties is being
accuratel