Iran's Big Surprise - July 29, 2026

**Ana Kasparian** (0:12)
Welcome to TYT, I'm your host, Ana Kasparian, and I am really looking forward to a discussion that I will have with friend of the show, Ken Klippenstein, in the second hour of the show today. I will be interviewing him on his ongoing, what feels like series of reports, in regard to the United States inching ever so close to a minority report type situation. Pre-crime, yeah, authorities going after Americans for pre-crime. It's here, it's not really getting much attention from legacy journalists, but Ken Klippenstein continues to do excellent reporting on that. So we will have him on the show in the second hour to discuss that. Of course, we've got some pretty big updates in the ongoing Iranian war. We will also give you some updates on the testimony by Anthony Fauci before the Senate Armed Services Committee. I just, no, it wasn't the Armed Services Committee, but he did testify before the Senate today. And I'm honestly beside myself over his behavior, and we'll get into all of that a little bit in the first hour of the show. But as always, just want to encourage you to like and share the stream if you're watching us live. For our members, we will be getting into a video featuring one of my favorite drop site reporters, Julian Andrioni. And the fact that he had to deal with one of the most juvenile, ridiculous senators imaginable.
So we're going to show you some video of that and discuss and have a little bit of a good time making fun of said senator. So tyt.com/join to become a member. And one other thing I wanted to remind you all of, if you're watching and you're wondering, hey, you know what? I'm subscribed to TYT. Why don't I get notifications? You guys are uploading all this content that I don't even get to see because I'm not notified about it. You just gotta ring that bell.
By ringing that bell in the digital sense, I mean, just click the bell icon and then you'll get the notifications. All right, well, without further ado, let's get started with what can only be described as further escalation and expansion of a devastating war in the Middle East.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:18)
President Trump tells Fox News about Iran. We are going to beat the effing S out of them. He went on to say, we'll be hitting them hard, they're going to get a beating. So clearly the United States is going to respond to what the president described as a surprise attack. He says US forces had just minutes to shoot down these incoming Iranian ballistic missiles.

**Ana Kasparian** (2:42)
Well, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has carried out a surprise strike against the United States Air Base in Jordan, which really does mark the first time Iran has decided to carry out an offensive attack against a US base. Now when it comes to surprise attacks, as we know, the United States certainly specializes in that. But in this case, it was the Iranians who decided to escalate the situation following news that Donald Trump had decided to pause bombing Iran due to the fact that we're running low on interceptor missiles.
So news hits that Trump was convinced to stop bombing because of the interceptor missile situation. That is a vulnerability that Trump knew about a year in advance, by the way, and I'm going to prove that by providing the receipts in just a bit.
We should have never started the war, but now it appears Iran has us cornered because of the lack of military capabilities necessary to effectively respond for a prolonged period of time. We should have never entered this war. Let's be very clear about that. Now it is likely that Iran is willing to gamble on this escalation due to the fact that Trump continues to make all sorts of unhinged threats against Iran's civilian infrastructure. And then he likes to couple that with the reality that we're low on missile interceptors.
How is that a smart thing to do as the leader of this country? It's not, it's a dumb thing to do. But something tells me that we're in for a long series of dumb things Trump likes to do. So earlier Wednesday, Iran said it had targeted a US base in Jordan in response to aggressive actions by the US military. And Jordan said its air defenses intercepted five Iranian missiles. Now Trump said that the US only had minutes to respond and be able to intercept those attacks from the Iranians. But nonetheless, as you heard in the video earlier, Donald Trump did in fact say that there will be a response. There will be retaliation. And of course he used the foul language in order to send that message to the Iranians. Now the New York Times reported that just last week hundreds of Jordanian political, legal and other figures actually signed this open letter to their government and they're trying to send a message to the United States as well. This was a letter that they signed last week. So this is prior to the latest escalation featuring Iran doing a surprise strike on a US military base in Jordan. But the reason why they put this letter out is because unlike the Jordanian government, the people of Jordan want the United States out of their country. And I don't begrudge them for wanting that. I would want that as well, because simply hosting US military bases in your country, especially if you happen to be in the Middle East, essentially ends up making you a target. It'll drag your country into a war that they shouldn't be involved in. And that's what the people of Jordan, at least when it comes to this letter, are trying to communicate here. So this is a rare rebuke and public challenge to the Jordanian government. And I just want to give you a quick excerpt of it, where they say, quote, we maintain that their presence exposes Jordan to security, political, and economic risks that serve no national interest. And increases the likelihood of our country being dragged into a regional conflict to which it is not a party. Something tells me that our gulf allies certainly feel the same way. At least the people living in those countries feel the same way. And I've been saying for quite some time now that the governments or the leadership in these countries are in no way indicative of how the people of these countries feel about Israel or about hosting US military bases. Now, the presence of US forces and these bases has basically exposed the Jordanians to danger. Including, by the way, debris falling from Iranian missiles that are intercepted.