Dan Bongino says the threat from Iran went far beyond its nuclear program, pointing to cyberattacks, assassination plots, and intelligence, warning of the potential for a much wider regional war:
“I had the privilege of working for President Trump, and you get the President’s Daily Brief. And although I can’t elaborate on some of the specifics, speaking in generalities, the Iranian issue had to be dealt with or your gas prices would have been $8 or $10 a gallon. Not only would they potentially control the Strait, you would have had an entire disruption, a regional war. You would have seen, you know, the Houthis involved. You could have seen scenarios 10,000 times worse than what we see now. And just to add to that, it wasn’t just the nuclear threat. But you had things like cyberattacks, given the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence that we’ve seen. The Iranians don’t care whether their cyber grid gets wiped out or not. They’re not interested in deterrence by mutually assured destruction. They don’t care if everyone is destroyed, as long as you’re destroyed first. There was also one more thing, Sean. It was not just the nuclear threat and attacks on our grid. It was also the potential for lethal plotting. The assassination attempts over and over and over again had the potential for massive disruption. I mean, we didn’t need another Archduke Ferdinand moment.”