Iran And The Death Of Qasem Soleimani “€“ With Rudy Atallah

Air Date: 01/13/2020

Guest: Rudy Atallah

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

Faith and the Culture

RICK:
Was Trump wise to take him out Qasem Soleimani?

What will the impact be? Who was Soleimani anyway? Click the link to hear special guest Lt. Col. Rudy Atallah give important context to this important strike. https://wallbuilderslive.com/soleimani-rudy-atallah/
Rick:
Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture, this is WallBuilders Live where we’re talking about today’s hottest topics on policy and faith and the culture, always from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Every single issue, we address it from that perspective. David Barton is America is premier historian and the founder of WallBuilders, Tim Barton is a national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders and my name is Rick Green, I”€™m former Texas Legislature and America’s Constitution coach.
We appreciate you joining us today, we’ve got a special guest today and we want to get to him as quick as possible, specifically to address some perspective on the Middle East situation. The strikes, was Trump authorized and what he was doing, was this the right thing to do from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective? Our guest, Rudy Atallah is going to address that today. And Rudy, just so you understand me. This is a guy that’s been in and around this at the highest levels and at the deepest levels for years, 21 year career in the Air Force including significant experience in Special Operations in intelligence and counterterrorism.
Rudy is the chief executive officer of Light Mountain Research and we work with these guys for some incredible operations that they do to rescue. They oversee the evacuation and rescue of persecuted religious minorities all over northern Iraq and Syria. Just in the past year, their team has successfully relocated more than 15,000 Christians in the cities displaced by the conflict and they’ve rescued countless Syrian Christians from Isis controlled territory. So their efforts are very important, they make a real difference.

Welcome Rudy Atallah

Their team has funded and rebuilt Christian homes, provided territory housing, they just do an incredible, incredible work. But Rudy has great perspective on what’s happening in the Middle East and so we’ve asked him to come on today and help us put this in context, You know, who was this guy that that the Trump specifically made the decision to take out and you know, what’s the strategy behind it and what’s the impact going to be, not only on our relations with Iran, but the entire region? Stay with us, our special guest Rudy Atallah here on WallBuilders Live.

ConstitutionCoach.com

Hey, friends, this is Rick Green, America’s Constitution coach and co-host of WallBuilders Live. 2020 is upon us and every one of us has a responsibility to preserve freedom for future generations. We want to equip you to be the catalyst in your community.
Bring people together and get them excited about being a biblical citizen. You host our Constitution class, our biblical citizenship class right there in your home, in your church, at your community center, we’ll give you the tools, we’ll train you. David Barton, myself and others will be the ones on the videos doing the teaching. You pass out the workbooks put on the video and then have a great time of fellowship, engaging and equipping and inspiring each other to make the difference in your community.
www.constitutioncoach.com is the place to sign up. We’re going to do a free webinar about how to do this. On January 16th, you can sign up right there at www.constitutioncoach.com, we look forward to visiting with you and equipping you to be the catalyst in your community to preserve freedom for future generations. Got to do your part. It’s 2020, let’s all go out and make a difference.

An Unhinged President Throwing Bombs?

Rick:
Welcome back to WallBuilders Live, thanks for staying with us today, Rudy Atallah back with us, [inaudible 03:40] across an incredible career 21 year career in the United States Air Force, spanning aviation and special operations to intelligence and counterterrorism. But what we love about you most is what you’re doing with White Mountain research and all the things you’re doing to save persecuted Christians. And anyway, we just love you brother, appreciate you and thanks for taking some time, we got a lot of questions for you today.
Rudy:
Of course, love you too.
Rick:
And, you know, we’re watching this unfold in the news and of course, if you watch you know, the fake news out there, we got an unhinged president just, you know, throwing bombs around and not thinking things through and we know that part is not true and there’s a strategy behind this. You’re in the middle of this stuff all the time, how important was this strike, do you think it was a good move taking these guys out and what do you think the consequences will be? These are geopolitical world question for you to answer in like 10 minutes, Rudy, so no challenge today.
Rudy:
I’ll do my best. Well, I cannot emphasize more how important this strike was. I mean, it literally dwarfs killing Bin Laden, it’s even more important than killing Baghdadi. This guy was a monster. I mean, in every term. What I mean by that, just to kind of give you an example.

What Did Obama”€™s Cash Injection Really Do?

When the previous administration decided to dump cash on Iran, especially when they began giving them pallets of cash and then also giving them a long-term program and all of this was just for the JCPOA, basically the program that Obama put together in order to delay Iran’s nuclear program and all it was the late tactic, it wasn’t going to stop them from going after, you know, building their nuclear capabilities.
This cash injection was given to Iran, it helped bolster in the region. And specifically, Iran used a lot of that cash to fund the IRGC program, basically, the leader of this IRGC group is Qasem Soleimani, the guy that we killed.
And what he was doing was essentially bolstering what we call the Iraq”€™s Popular Mobilization Forces, OPMF, which is also known as the PMU, the Popular Mobilization Unit. What’s important about those guys is they ran 40 militias across Iraq and these militias are basically responsible for attacking Christians, for attacking Yazidis, for attacking the US Embassy more recently, for just doing all kinds of things. This was part of a greater plan. Because what Iran did is they saw that Iraq is a good place for them to start moving weapons; from there through Syria and once they’re inside Syria, then they can attack Israel. And this is why Israel did over, you know, close to a thousand strikes inside and you know, within the period of a couple of years and all very specific targeted, you know, attacks on weaponry that was floating into the country through Iraq.

Who Was Qasem Soleimani?

Now, just to tell you also more what Qasem Soleimani was up to, the guy that we killed. He was also instrumental in making sure that, you know in December 2016, you know, Iraq approved a law that incorporated this group, the People’s Mobilization Committee which encompasses these 40 militias, all of them into the Iraqi Armed Forces. Essentially, making it part of Iraq where, you know, Iran would have dominance in Iraq and that way they can do anything they wanted to inside Iraq.
Rick:
And that one, Rudy, we got to come back to that, because the whole Iranian influence over Iraq is something we see. I didn’t realize how much influence they had. So we got to come back to that one. Could you back up though and point out what you just said with regard to the importance of the cash. Right? I mean we all talked about how crazy it was to give him $150 billion, but when this came out, they had also given in that, the this 1.5 or 1.8, whatever it was billion in cash, you just pointed out why that was such a big deal, that funded did these attacks, right?
Rudy:
It funded the attacks and it was able to purchase people politically in order for Iran to get its agenda established inside places like Iraq, inside places like Syria and of course, Lebanon and this is why Hezbollah got so bolstered. Here’s what adds to it and here’s where it’s important for the listeners to understand.

Kicking the Can Down the Road

Not only that, but the Obama administration turned a blind eye completely to Qasem Soleimani, the guy that we just killed, in everything that he was doing with Hezbollah including Narco trafficking, weapons trafficking, all this stuff in order to appease Iran so they can get them to the table to negotiate on the whole nuclear thing. Iran was just simply giving them the head nod and trying to pretend that it was doing the right things, but in all essentially, the Obama administration was kicking the can down the road and bolstering Iran’s capability across the region. They wanted hegemony, basically, they wanted to control this crescent from Iran or Iraq or Syria into Lebanon and have total control which would directly threaten Israel and it would directly threaten Christians Yazidis and all minorities in the region and it continues to be a problem. So removing Qasem Soleimani out of the equation essentially, it takes the puppeteer, the mastermind behind all of this out of the equation. And now with additional sanctions on Iran, this is really going to cripple them.

Look inside Lebanon; the people in November were against the government because Iran has control over the Lebanese government. Inside Iraq, over 300 plus people were killed while chanting and fighting against the Iraqi government is controlled by Iran, they don’t want Iran in. Inside Iran, over 1,500 people were killed in November, courtesy of guys like Qasem Soleimani, the guy that we killed, all of them wanting to the Iranian regime to cease, they trying to take it down. And so this has just been, it’s a regional thing, everybody hates this Iranian regime, they wanted to go away and the master puppeteer behind that was this guy, this commander Qasem Soleimani that president Trump took out.

Defense Secretary, CIA Director, and More

Rick:
And if I read Petraeus right, he said this guy was like, in our terms, you know, a combined you know, defense secretary, CIA director, I mean all of those things combined, I mean he was the pivot point.
Rudy:
Yeah, he was considered the number two guy in Iran, he answered directly to and to Khomeini himself and also a lot of that money that injection of cash was going into his coffers, into the IRGC coffers, essentially to continue this big plan forward, to have control over that entire region, which includes you know, Iraq through Lebanon.
Rick:
And I guess back when Obama did this, when he gave the cash, I mean to people, our sworn enemies to do this, most people didn’t know about the cash part, only the $150 billion which is still ridiculous. But as people sounded the alarm, I got to imagine, guys like you that were, you know on the ground, behind the scenes knowing what the problems were and the challenges, you had to know that was going to create all kinds of problems and that’s why some people were standing up saying don’t do this, don’t do this and frankly, it’s a big part of what got Trump elected. I mean, he campaigned on I’m going to undo the Iranian deal of course, the cash you can’t undo, but some of these things you could see what it was going to do and yet, the Obama administration still did it.

Iran and Iraq

Rudy:
Yeah exactly, I mean look from 2003 to 2011, you know, Iran was behind, especially the IRGC was behind the killing and maiming of 17% of America soldiers in the region. So you know, throwing cash on top of Iran meant that this expansion of killing Americans and maiming Americans was going to increase and that’s exactly what Qasem Soleimani was after.
Not only that now, here’s another piece that most people don’t talk about, you won’t hear in the news, is that Iran was also responsible for diverting at least 42 rivers and springs of water going from Iran into Iraq. Now, the Iraqis rely on the Tigris and Euphrates. So what’s happening is between them and the Turks, the Turks were building dams as well. They’ve reduced the water flow going into Iraq by 50%, what that”€™s done, it’s created major suffering amongst the people and that’s why the Christians are suffering, that’s why the Yazidis are suffering, it’s creating these mass migrations into these quadrants where people are looking, you know, to survive, so they go and they mess up and these big clumps and these areas and this is where you know, these militia groups come in and take advantage of all these individuals.
Rick:
Man, yeah, I had never heard that. That is the first I’ve heard of those types of subverted efforts on the Iranians part. Rudy, we’re way overdue for a break, we got to take a quick break, folks, Rudy Atallah, our special guest today. Stay with us, you’re listening to WallBuilders Live.

Resources for You!

Hey, this is Tim Barton with WallBuilders. And I know you hear my dad and Rick talk a lot about our founding fathers, about the original intent of our nation, the constitutional heritage that we have and really we’ve seen how far we’ve slipped away from that. And I know a lot of us as we hear my dad and Rick talk, think I wish there was a place that I could go and I could see these documents and I could read and learn about the founding fathers firsthand, see the things they did.
And I want to give you some websites today that can help you accomplish that very thing. If you get online, you can go to places like Library of Congress and you can look under their century of lawmaking or historical documents. You can go to the Avalon project, to the Founder”€™s Constitution, the Google Books or even the internet archives or you can just go to WallBuilders website. We have a section for our library. Then under that section, we have different subgroups for historical documents, historical writings, even a place where you can get helpful links to find out more information about other websites where you can do research for yourself and find the truth for yourself.
Friends, this is a time that we need to know who we are and where we came from. www.wallBuilders.com is a great place to go.

The Response In America

Rick:
We’re back on WallBuilders Live, Rudy Atallah, our special guest today, former lieutenant colonel in the Air Force and 21-year career, special ops intelligence, counterterrorism, you name it and in just a great expert for us to have, to put this in context what’s happening with Iran right now. Rudy, to talk to me about the response in America and just kind of the public relations if you will for the Trump administration’s strategy here. You know, if you’re an average Joe when you’re watching the news and you’re watching some of the commentary out there, one would think that this guy was, you know, somehow a good guy and that we’re the bad guys for taking him out. It’s shocking to me to see some of the Democrats on Capitol Hill even, you know, defending the guy. As you said a monster and yet, they’re defending him and saying, we shouldn’t have taken him out. I don’t remember–I know we’ve always had, you know, conflict among our politics, but in a situation like this seems like we usually come together and say hey, you know, good that America has taken positive steps here to take out terrorists and yet we actually see in the politics in America right now one of the parties defending the terrorists and saying we’re the bad guys for taking him out. Help me process this, have you seen that before?
Rudy:
No, I’ve never seen that before and the problem is, you know the Obama administration designated Qasem Soleimani, but they were too scared to take him out, because they were worried that it would essentially unravel John Kerry’s you know, shell diplomacy for the JCPOA which is unfortunate that’s how they were thinking. Because this guy is terrorist, but they designated him.

Trump Sent a Strong Message

What Trump did essentially by taking this guy out of the equation, he sent a strong, strong message to Iran, basically saying you take out, you harm one American person, it doesn’t matter who they are and I will respond unproportionally against you and I will go full tilt against you, so do not mess with us. And what that’s done really to Iran for the first time is it’s cause them to step back and think twice before responding. I mean, look, when they fired missiles, you know, into Saudi Arabia and they were damaging the refineries for Saudi Aramco, they were very accurate in their targeting. You know, they can be very accurate in their targeting.
When he took down a US drone, they were very accurate in their targeting. But in the response that they sent to us was able to save face with some of their people, because the Iran is confronted with two conflicting parts inside the country. You have those people who are just going, okay, Qasem Soleimani should be avenged and the rest of them saying, A, we don’t want to pick a fight with the United States and B, we hate these more loss, we hate this regime, we want it to go away.

Sanctions

So Iran under these sanctions that Trump keeps putting on top of these guys are so hurting financially now, that they know that you know they’re teetering on potential future collapse if they don’t take their steps the right way. So if they go to war with the United States, it’s going to cost him so much. When they had the uprising inside Iran and they killed 1,500 of their own innocent civilians on the ground, it was costing Iran closer to $25 million a day in order to go after and put down these uprisings that were popping up all over the country. They can’t afford to continue to pay all of this and now they’re having additional sanctions.
So if they go to war with us, you know, Trump has sent a really, you know, straight out message, I will nail you to the wall and for the first time ever, everybody you know, across Europe, they won’t say it directly, but there’s a sigh of relief. I mean the Danes wanted Qasem Soleimani out, the Brits, a lot of countries wanted this guy out and wanted Iran put back in its box, the only person to stand up to Iran was President Trump.
Rick:
How did you like his, at the press conference, first we’re out of his mouth before he would say good morning, when he said as long as I’m president in the US, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. You know, he’s making it clear what our position is and just like with Ronald Reagan, they know this guy has proven for the last three years, he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do.

Cyber War

Rudy:
Absolutely and that’s exactly the language that Iran understands. They do not understand anything else but, you know, a very strong iron fist, you know saying don’t mess or else. And you know, and now you’ve got the United States, you’ve got Israel, you’ve got United Arab Emirates, you’ve got Saudi Arabia, you’ve got the UK, all these countries are focused on Iran, their laser beam. Iran has to tread very carefully in its next steps. Doesn”€™t mean that they’re not going to try to do their attacks through their proxies the way they normally do. Right now by the way, there’s an ongoing cyber war between us and Iran. And”€¦
Rick:
I saw where they did the thousands and thousands of attacks on the city and that’s when I know nothing about, man, we need a whole another program for that. But I didn’t realize they were, you know, I knew we were dealing with that from China, but I didn’t realize Iran was so involved in that.
Rudy:
Well, they pay proxies all over the world to help them. So they pay people in China, they pay people in other countries to do a lot of the hacking for them. But remember, you know, the more economic sanctions, the more money we take away from them, the harder becomes for them to do what they want to do. And you know and this puppeteer being out of the way, you know, their master strategist is gone. So this makes it even more difficult for them.
Rick:
Rudy, we’re out of time. Man, we so appreciate your input and your expertise and your time. God bless you, brother, look forward to getting you back again soon.Rudy:
Thank you very much. God bless.
Rick:
That”€™s Rudy Atallah.

Moment from American History

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. Many today wrongly claim our founding fathers were largely atheists, agnostics and deist. Certainly, some founders were less religious than others. But even they were not irreligious, consider Benjamin Franklin, definitely one of the least religious among them, yet when the delegates at the Constitutional Convention hit an impasse in their deliberations, it was Franklin who called them to prayer, invoking numerous scriptures to make his point. As he reminded them, God governs in the affairs of men and if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable than the Empire can rise about his aid, we have been assured in the sacred writings that except the Lord build the house, but they labor in vain that buildings. I firmly believe this. So even the least religious of America’s founders public prayer and dependence on God.
For more information about the faith of the founding fathers, go to www.wallbuilders.com.

Strategy

Rick:
Welcome back, thanks for staying with us here on WallBuilders Live. Special thanks to Rudy Atallah for joining us today and giving us some perspective on what’s happening in the Middle East, so appreciate his work through White Mountain Research and all of the efforts to rescue persecuted Christians and all of the things that he does in the Middle East. Just phenomenal, a lot of which we can”€™t even talk about on air. But certainly appreciate, just trying to take this issue and say, you know, what’s the real impact. I was actually really surprised at how the responses from Congress and from the media tried to make it look like, you know, that there was no strategy, that nobody in the White House actually talked about, what would happen if they made this decision, if they took these steps away, which is just insane. I mean, we all know that a president does not make these decisions lightly and that there’s a whole team and that there’s great discussion and that they plan and all of those things.
Now, you can disagree with whether or not this was the right move. Ironically, you know, this was something that Hillary Clinton said she would probably do if she was president this is something that you know as Rudy mentioned that the Obama administration actually designated this guy as one of our enemies. And you know, I mean, it’s all Trump as Sean Hannity calls it, “€˜Derangement Syndrome”€™, it’s just people no matter what he does, they’re going to come out against it and say that it was the wrong move.

A Historical Perspective

And so that’s why we wanted have Rudy on to say, let’s take the politics out of this and let’s just address this from a historical perspective of what’s happened in the region and from an analysis of who this guy was and the pivotal role that he played in the Iranian strategies to undermine the US and to literally kill American soldiers. And as Rudy called him and as the president called him, he was a monster and needed to be taken out. And of course, there is the biblical and constitutional perspective on this issue that we need to talk more about and we’re going to be addressing that in the coming days with David Barton and Tim Barton.
And just from a constitutional perspective very quickly as we’re closing out the program, let’s not forget I mean, yes the Congress has the power under the Constitution to declare war, but the President as the commander-in-chief has the power to respond immediately when necessary and there’s not time to go to Congress and get permission to do these kind of things and the Constitution doesn’t lay out how long and when that permission has to come. But there are congressional acts that deal with that and laws in place on when, you know, how long he can be engaged in a conflict like this before he comes and has to get permission from Congress and none of that has been violated. All of that will be confident followed to a tee.

Trump Has Followed the Constitution

This is a president that that frankly has shocked me in terms of how constitutional he’s been. I did not expect that. I said back in the 2016 campaign, this is a guy I’m worried about, that he will ignore the Constitution and just do what he wants because that’s what he’s been able to do his whole life and he’s done the exact opposite of what I thought. Over the last three years, he has been very careful to follow the Constitution, to make sure that his executive orders are constitutional and within the laws that had been passed by Congress. And so I fully expect he’s going to do the same thing here. And if he doesn’t, we’ll call him out on it. That’s one thing we certainly do here on WallBuilders Live, regardless whether they”€™re Democrat, Republican, we’re equal opportunity critics. We’re going to be truthful and adhere to that biblical, constitutional historical perspective regardless of who’s in office and we’ll continue do that with this president as well.

Iran And The Death Of Qasem Soleimani “€“ With Rudy Atallah

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