FOX News host Mark Levin lists the qualities of a great leader, the success of the mission in Iran, and the “genius” of U.S. and Israeli military technology on Saturday’s broadcast of “Life, Liberty & Levin.”

MARK LEVIN: They’re tightening the noose, it looks to me, in the Iranian regime, and that’s a good thing. And I just want to make a point, because this is really an extraordinary time for this country and we, the American people. What makes a great leader, a statesman and a president? There are many characteristics and qualities that I could list, and I’ve given a lot of thought to this in recent days, and most of the time, with the passage of time and sober reflection, history will be the judge and will be a good judge. The truth is, contemporary media and academia and politicians are too invested in one outcome or another to be reliable, which is why they’re more often wrong than right. Yet there are exceptions, and today we are witnessing an extraordinary leader and president who spent most of his life as a captain of industry-several industries, in fact-who gave up an enormously successful career to serve his country, a country he so dearly loves. And in doing so, he overcame unimaginable barriers, political and legal, and an assassin’s bullet to save a nation, our nation, in desperate need of a great leader, a nation that was facing domestic ruin and international scorn, a nation led by a ruling class that was incompetent, self-serving and, in some cases, hated the very people they were supposed to serve and represent. That ruling class and its control over the instrumentalities of government and media did all it could to come between we, the people, and this leader, to prevent him from becoming president of the United States. And one day, I will expand on this in exquisite detail. But for now, suffice it to say that, despite all the aspersions and libels cast at this man and at those of us who recognize what history will one day make abundantly clear, we Americans are fortunate that Donald Trump is our commander in chief. We are fortunate that he came along when he did to lead this country out of a downward spiral, back to greatness, and tonight, where he leads the free world. Now, a lot of people are saying, people who know better, what’s the mission? Why are we acting now? And so forth and so on. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s just appalling to hear Democrats and commentators and others make these statements when they know damn well what the mission is. We’ve faced this for 50 years. And Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, they were envoys that met with the enemy three times to negotiate a deal, a deal that was very simple. Give up your nuclear arms, give up your material, stop terrorism, stop slaughtering your people. And what happened? Well, we know what happened, because Steve Witkoff told me last week in a radio interview, the Democrats know what happened, the media know what happened, but they ignore it. He said the Iranians were pretending to negotiate but were obfuscating the whole time. That’s what he said. He said the Islamic Republic had enough enriched uranium to make 11 nuclear bombs within 10 days. Do you know why he said that? Because they told him that. They were bragging about it. They had an inalienable right, they told him, to their large stockpile of enriched material and would not give up at the negotiating table what the Americans did not win in the 12-day war last June. That’s what they said. The Iranians were, Witkoff told me, the most disingenuous of any people he had ever negotiated with. Even Hamas was more reasonable than the Iranians. He said the negotiators didn’t have the flexibility or delegated responsibility to make decisions on the spot. They were hiding the ball. They wouldn’t give them a written agreement that he could share with the president of the United States, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and our nuclear experts. They were just hiding what they were doing with enrichment of ballistic assets, Witkoff told me, but disguising their research development program. The Iranians even refused to hand over a draft paper with their written position. How earnest is someone who wants to make a deal, Witkoff said, and doesn’t want to give you the agreement to read and to share with your decision-making team? The tells were so obvious and just so often. And so, after three negotiating sessions, they reported back to the president, and he said, Mr. President, they’re lying to us. There are deceptions all over the place. The facts are unassailable. And from the outset, the Iranians asserted that uranium enrichment was Iran’s right, and they declared, they declared their large stockpile of enriched material, approximately 22,000 pounds, that it was off the table for negotiation. This could yield about 11 nuclear bombs if further enriched, and they said it would, and they could do it in 11 days. That’s what our president was facing. He was also facing a history with this regime that played Obama for a fool and played the Democrats for a fool and the U.N. and the Europeans for a fool. That Obama deal, which the president took us out of because he didn’t want Iran getting a nuclear weapon, and it ensured that Iran would get a nuclear weapon in 10 years, they violated on May 8, 2019. They violated it on July 1, 2019. They violated it on July 7, 2019. They violated it on September 5, 2019. They violated it on November 5, 2019, November 16, 2019, January 5, 2020. And that was enough. And that was enough. So the president launched, with our allies, Bibi Netanyahu and the Israelis, one of the great, most spectacular military operations we’ve ever seen. And it’s just begun. It’s a week old. With the technology, with the resources, with the coordination with another country, with the air forces working in symmetry, intelligence in symmetry, the decapitation of the regime within hours, and then the further decapitation as they kept picking new people. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this in any war under any circumstances. In six days, in six days, the establishment of air superiority, the destruction of their command and control centers, the degradation of their missile and drone capabilities, complete naval superiority, nuclear site targeting, the ones they were rebuilding and new sites we didn’t know about, leadership decapitation, sustained precision strikes, air defense shields like we’ve never seen in human history, systematic targeting. What you’re seeing now is incredible and due in large measure to the genius of our industry, the genius of our technology, the genius of the Israelis and their technology and their intelligence, the two militaries working together. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this. Our commander in chief, Israel’s commander in chief, best friends in constant communication. It’s amazing. I call this a peace mission. You know, lightweight, say, some peace mission. Look at all the bombs that are-peace mission. Once this regime has ended, 92 million people will be free again to make a choice, 92 million people. We will be free from a nuclear threat that was hanging over our head for half a century. We will be free from the terrorism that this regime has supported and funded throughout the world, throughout the world. He’s killed up to 50,000 people. He did-now he’s dead, Khomeini-torturing, raping, imprisoning mostly young people. We saw those pictures. We saw those videos. We couldn’t stomach it. It was so horrendous what they were doing. I want you to think about something. What if President Trump didn’t do this? What if he didn’t do this? Imagine the enemy having 10,000, 20,000 ballistic missiles, and imagine having ballistic missiles that could hit the continental United States. Oh, they were that far away. How do we know? Because they tested one with the support of Russia, right into Siberia. And guess what? It worked, 7,000 miles. Hello, New York. Hello, Washington. Hello, the East Coast. And it would be beyond that. By the time the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans were giving them the access to technology, they would have been able to hit us. What would we do then? What would we do with 10,000, 20,000 ballistic missiles? You just heard Lucas talk about what’s going on with Bahrain. They’ve attacked 14 other countries, including countries that I thought that most people thought were their allies. They’ve hit Qatar, for God’s sakes. Saudi Arabia. They even hit Turkey. Azerbaijan. Don’t say that fast three times. They’re hitting whatever they want to hit. Now, ladies and gentlemen, imagine them having nuclear warheads. And if you read carefully, they’re also working on chemical warheads and biological warheads. This is a 7th century barbaric, primitive regime. Their fundamentalist ideology of Islamists, jihadist Islamists, is you’ve got to blow away everything that’s in the way of you, the Islamists, imposing your will on the rest of the world. It could be countries. It could be groups. It could be individuals. It could be entire populations. Why do you think they wanted nuclear warheads? Nobody was bothering them, certainly not in the neighborhood. Why did they want nuclear warheads? Why did they want missiles that could reach our country? I mean, they keep threatening us. They keep telling us they’re going to do these things to us. You know, Witkoff and Kushner, they were there. They were bragging about what they had. They didn’t care. President of the United States, how many more warnings can he send? One aircraft carrier, another aircraft carrier, bombers, jet fighters? Hey, look, we’re serious. Really? Well, we have a right to do all this. What are you going to do about it? Because they believe in death. That’s what they believe in, especially ours. Well, now they get to check out their ideology and see where they wind up. And what else, ladies and gentlemen? Well, look at all their allies they had. First of all, a man was just convicted. A Pakistani national charged with attempting to organize an assassination plot against our president on behalf of the Iranian intelligence has been found guilty of murder for a hire in the last 24 hours, and terrorism charges following a jury trial in Brooklyn. The federal jury took two hours to convict Asif Merchant, 47, after testimony from a confidential informant to undercover FBI agents who posed as mafia contract killers, wrote the New York Daily News, and they went after Pompeo and Bolton and anyone else they could get their hands on. I’m put up with that. We’re red-blooded Americans. You try to take out our president? I’m sorry. That in and of itself is an act of war. But they’ve been working as part of an axis of evil with the communist Chinese, the communist Chinese who want to take Taiwan. That island of Formosa has never been part of mainland China. They don’t care. They’ve threatened Japan, Australia. They threatened South Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, and they threaten us. That’s no joke. You want to see a real military? They have a real military. And they were relying on Iran for oil, and more than that, Iran and China. What did they get from Iran to China? They got cheap oil. 3.4 percent of China’s total seaborne oil comes from Iran. What else? The Belt and Road Initiative. Through 2021, 25-year strategic partnership, China pledged $ 400 billion in investment in Iran’s infrastructure, banking, energy sector, cementing its role as Iran’s primary trade partner. Not anymore. Alternative energy corridor. Iran served as a crucial link for China’s land-based belt and marine road projects, providing a route that can potentially bypass U.S.-dominated maritime choke points. Not anymore. Geopolitical counterweight. Iran acts as a forward base that helps counterbalance U.S. influence in the Middle East. Did I say not anymore? Yes. Proxy network access. Tehran controls network groups from Gaza to Latin America, offering Beijing a way to disrupt or strain U.S. resources. Mr. Xi must be very, very upset tonight. Maybe he’ll take out another one of his generals or something. What about Russia? Well, Iran is a primary supplier of the Shaheed attack drones, one-way kamikaze drones, which they’ve used to kill thousands and thousands of Ukrainians. Extensively used by Russia to strike Ukrainian infrastructure. What else? Iran helped Russia establish a facility in Tatarstan. Have you noticed everything ends in stan over there? Tatarstan, Kazakhstan and whatever stan. But that’s just the point. To manufacture Iranian designed drones domestically, reducing Russia’s reliance on direct imports. Reports indicate Iran has transferred short-range ballistic missiles to Russia for use in Ukraine. Not anymore. That’s done. Isn’t this positive, by the way, Democrats? Aren’t you pleased by this? Aren’t you happy this is going on? No, you’re probably not. What else? Terrorism. Iran has funded primarily, the primary funder, Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, popular front for the liberation of Palestine. What else? All the militia groups in Iraq. What else? The Houthis in Yemen. Terror groups trying to overthrow Bahrain, a big ally of the United States. What else? Terror groups and militia groups in Syria and even al-Qaeda. Now, for people who say, you know, the American people don’t support this. I don’t know. What do you think the American people would think if a nuke was launched our way, or if they could hit us with ballistic missiles? Polling? Seriously? Okay, I got a poll for you. The latest poll shows that 92 percent of MAGA supports the president of the United States. These articles of MAGA split. MAGA is not split. You got a couple nut jobs who are not MAGA, who are like neo-fascists out there. They have their own little audiences that apparently don’t represent anybody. So I wouldn’t sweat that media. MAGA is not split. We’re behind the president of the United States. And I want to get quickly to one other point, war powers. You know, ladies and gentlemen, I get sick and tired of Democrats who wave around a constitution they don’t even believe in. Remember, they used to say white supremacists wrote this, slaveholders wrote this. And then they start citing things like declaration of war, declaration of war. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve had 125 military actions since the beginning of this republic, and 11 declarations of war, five of which were during World War II, and the last one was 1942. Show me anywhere-I challenge Hakeem Jeffries-show me where in the constitution that Congress has to authorize military action. Show me. Show me the language. Show me. It’s not there. What declaration of war? We know what that means. Because the first draft of the constitution-you see, ladies and gentlemen, this is what we call Madison’s Notes. And not one of those knucklehead Democrats have ever read Madison’s Notes. I know, I’m kind of a nerd. I study this stuff left and right. They took out the phrase make war in the original draft of the constitution for Congress and changed it to declare war. And then under Article II, they gave the president the power as commander-in-chief to set foreign policy and national security. No president has ever gone to Congress and said, will you please give me permission to take military action? They may want a declaration of war to sort of back up what they’re doing, on a few occasions, but the power to make war belongs to the president. And no War Powers Act passed by statute in 1973 can fix that. You know how I know? Because Barack Obama said it was unconstitutional. Biden said it was unconstitutional. Clinton said it was unconstitutional. Pelosi said it’s unconstitutional. Hillary Clinton said it’s unconstitutional. Until today. Now it’s constitutional. One last thing, if I may. I want to take a moment to thank those six brave soldiers who gave their lives for our country and their families. May God rest their souls. I’m sure the president’s right, there likely will be more, but God bless them. Tremendous heroes. I’ll be right back.

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