Tucker Carlson said the wise decision would be to declare victory and walk away in a monologue on the joint US-Israeli bombing of Iran.

TUCKER CARLSON: So how do we respond to this? Because this is only 36 hours in and because you don’t want to make things sound worse than they really are, you know, we could go through all the many, many risks, some of which are becoming even clearer than they were. You don’t want to go through them all. But clearly the United States is not going to benefit from staying longer in Iran. And sorry, Tom Cotton, putting troops on the ground, boots on the ground, whatever you call it, committing young American men to go die in Iran is not in our interest at all. And it would cause not simply heartbreak in the families of those killed, but it would cause potentially real turmoil here domestically and render already fragile social fabric. So where do you go from here? Well, get out right away. It’s just that simple. Of course, it’s also incredibly complicated. But the first step is deciding that we’re leaving. You know, it’s only been less than two days, but it’s pretty clear that we’re not going to gain anything more. And how do we know that? Because no one has explained what we’re there to gain. No one has described the mission. Ask anybody, what’s the point of that? How will we know when we’ve won? And some of us spent 20 years asking, what are we doing in Afghanistan? Shut up. Are you pro Taliban? No. But I would like to know when we’ve won. Sorry, you can’t know that it’s classified. Okay. But now is the time to be totally honest. We’re not going to get anything more than we’ve already gotten, assuming we’ve gotten anything by staying. And the longer we stay, the greater the risk. What are the risks? Oh, well, here are just two that you should be paying attention to. One is that Israel gets really hurt. And in case you think this is a long video attacking Israel for Nazi reasons or antisemitic reasons, it’s not. It’s merely an effort to try and think through what’s good for the United States, but also as someone who wishes Israel no harm to think through clearly what’s going to be terrible for Israel. And one thing that’d be terrible for Israel is getting hit with a hypersonic missile, which as of right now, Iran has not yet fired. And they may never, but let’s say they did. What would Israel, which is a country the size of Maryland, how would it respond? How could it respond? Well, it might respond with nuclear weapons, which it has, and which it has threatened to use before. And which is, it has implied it might use many times. One of the reasons you can’t let Israel go alone is they imply like, hey, don’t make us go crazy and do something wild. And that would include the use of nuclear weapons. Not saying it’s going to happen, God forbid, but it could. And if Israel was legitimately threatened, not performatively threatened, but actually threatened like with a hypersonic missile into downtown Jerusalem, then yeah, it might. And in that case, who knows? Because nuclear weapons have not been used since August of 1945, but a number of countries have them, including Pakistan and possibly others. And so it could get there. And you’d hate to be in a spot where you were relying once again, as we did in June on Iranian restraint, relying on the Iranians to call your air base in Qatar before hitting it and giving you a warning. You hate to say that, but if you find yourself in a place where you’re relying on the restraint of a country you have described as morally diseased, a terrorist nation, a Nazi country, as they’re telling you on Fox, if you’re relying on their reasonable behavior, you may have exposed yourself a little bit. So if this continues, you could see potentially things going really crazy. And of course, the craziest of all would be a nuclear exchange. And that could happen. That’s not off the table, ask anybody who’s dealing with this or thinking about it. Doesn’t mean it’s going to, again, God forbid, but it could. And the possibility, even then it could is terrifying. That’s number one. Number two is Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, which was built on apparently built on the site of the second temple. If you’ve been to Jerusalem, a big gold dome, a whole complex. Um, and that is one of the holiest sites in Islam, not an expert on Islam, despite many accusations, but, um, it is, it appears to be co-equal in Islam from what I can tell with Mecca and Medina. It’s a, it’s a huge deal. And since 1967, it’s been under the control, the military control of Israel. It’s actually controlled legally by Jordan, but it’s a holy place for every Muslim, about 2 billion of them. And there are people, Orthodox Jews in Israel, not all some, and some evangelical Christians in Texas, not all, but some who would like to see it blown up and replaced by this third temple. And I’m not going to get into the theology of it, which is deranged, uh, and demonic actually, but it’s a fact that people want this. And that is the beginning of, uh, really of the end for the world as we know it, because that would set off looking for religious conflict, killing the Ayatollah didn’t get you there. Okay. Blow up the mosque. Uh, and then you will be there. And that’s not good for anyone. It’s certainly not good for the United States. And if this continues, there are already people in Israel, at least one well-known rabbi is calling for a false flag against that mosque, just blow it up and blame the Iranians. And the truth is whether the Iranians blow it up intentionally or unlikely, but let’s just say, or by mistake, or there’s a false flag by Israel and blames Iran. It doesn’t matter if it blows up, that’s not a solvable problem. That’s the end of everything that we know. And that’s an enduring generational thousand year, as long as the world lasts religious conflict that no one wants to be a part of only the craziest darkest people want any part of that at all. That’s the opposite of what we want. And that could happen. So the point is once things start getting crazy, they can potentially indeed, they tend to get really crazy. And so stop the craziness. So how would we affect that to the extent that we can at this point, declare victory and go home or pull back. It’s hard to negotiate with the Iranians. They’ve turned down our offer three times. Yeah, true. Iran has decided to the extent they decide anything who knows who’s actually making the decisions completely being made by compartments. Or it seems that way, but to the extent that the Iranian government can respond as a cohesive whole, they have responded. No, we’re not negotiating with you. Okay. She can’t negotiate with them. We’re stopping defensive measures only. We don’t want this. The global economy is at stake. The global order is at stake. American lives are at stake. American prestige is certainly on the line. Our ability to control anything beyond our borders or maybe even within them. We’re out. We killed the Ayatollah. We came. We did it. We’re going home. At this point, that would be a wise decision. And it was very clear from the outset, whatever revisionism people want to add to the story, but it was very clear that Donald Trump did not want an extended war in Iran, certainly didn’t want a protracted boots on the ground war, certainly doesn’t want the kind of war that Tom Cotton wants, obviously. And we are on the way to getting that really quickly into a lot of suffering. So declare victory, get out.

RealClearPolitics Videos