More U.S. forces head to the Middle East as President Trump prepares the public for a weeks-long campaign. We're already substantially ahead of our time projections, but whatever the time is, it's okay. Whatever it takes, we project it four to five weeks. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley. It's Tuesday, March 3rd, and this is Morning Wire. Isolated and alone, the Iranian regime crumbles as more countries signal support for Operation Epic Fury. All of them are no doubt providing intelligence support, and I would suspect some of them are providing cyber support as well. And as Texas continues to reel from the mass shooting in Austin, voters in the state head to the polls today for crucial primaries. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know. This episode is sponsored by Brick House Nutrition. You've probably heard about those weight loss injections that everyone's been talking about. And for good reason. 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The joint U.S.-Israel operation in Iran has reached its fourth day with potentially weeks more strikes to go. President Trump delivered his first live remarks on Operation Epic Fury from the White House yesterday. Here to update us on the latest is Daily Wire contributor Tim Pierce. So Tim, news on the conflict is flooding in every hour, and we're hearing more now from the president. What did he say? Yeah, the American military has continued to pound targets deep within Iran, and President Trump has sounded optimistic about the way the operation is going. In fact, he said that the operation is way ahead of its initial four to five week time frame. But that optimism has been tempered with the tragic news of more American deaths. News broke Monday morning of a fourth death in the attack that had killed three service members on Sunday. Here was President Trump honoring them in remarks, his first live remarks since the start of the operation from the White House on Monday. Today, we grieve for the four heroic American service members who have been killed in action and send our love and support to their families. In their memory, we continue this mission with ferocious, unyielding resolve to crush the threat this terrorist regime poses to the American people. Then U.S. Central Command announced two more service members' deaths later in the afternoon. CINCOM said they were, quote, previously unaccounted for service members from a facility that was struck during Iran's initial attacks in the region. The losses have been expected, and the president says he is prepared to see the operation through. And what can Americans at home expect to see out of this operation in the next few weeks? Yeah, that is the question that Americans most want answered now. And President Trump has offered more on that front. He laid out the objectives of Operation Epic Fury yesterday as well. First, we're destroying Arendt's missile capabilities. Second, we're annihilating their navy, we've knocked out already 10 ships. Third, we're ensuring that the world's number one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon. And finally, we're ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm fund and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders Now one goal that was not included in the president list is that of regime change So it appears to be somewhat of an open question War Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday that this is not a regime change war, though he essentially said that if regime change does happen, so be it. And of course, President Trump multiple times now has called on the Iranian people to rise up and take control of their government from the religious extremists that have controlled it since 1979. But regardless, the U.S. and Israel still seem to have plenty of targets to work through before they can say the job is finished. And toward that end, the president told the New York Post on Monday that he would not rule out putting American troops on the ground. According to the Post, Trump said that he doesn't, quote, have the yips with respect to boots on the ground. But he appeared to hedge. He said he would say he probably wouldn't need them or that he didn't think they were necessary. Now, as far as public perception of this conflict, we have some initial polling on how Americans are reacting. What does that polling tell us? Right. Trump said that he is committed to the operation regardless of polls, that he is focused on doing the right thing. But it does seem to be at odds with Americans' feelings on the Iran strikes. A new Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted on Saturday and Sunday says that Americans feel like Trump was too quick to approve the strikes against Iran. Now, a majority of Republicans back the move, but that support falls to about one in four when Democrats and independents are included. About 43 percent do not support the strikes, while about one in three Americans are unsure. So there is still a lot of room for opinion polls to move on this. And for its part, the White House seems intent on swaying the public to support the operation. The president and the White House has taken every opportunity to tell Americans about the decades-long abuses and attacks made by Iran against Americans, starting with the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and continuing to the present day with attacks on U.S. bases in the Middle East and a plot on Trump's life. Well, the list is long and doesn't even include the atrocities against the Iranian people. Tim, thanks for reporting. Thanks for having me. Have you heard of Gold Belly? 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So if you're looking for that perfect gift or you want to impress your friends and family with an epic meal the next time you host, head over to goldbelly.com to get 20% off your first order with promo code WIRE. That's goldbelly.com code WIRE for 20% off your first order. A growing list of countries have expressed support for the U.S. operation in Iran, and that support may become more important should the conflict stretch on for weeks. Meanwhile, Iran appears to be increasingly isolated. Joining us now to discuss the role other countries may play in the military campaign is Brigadier General Mark Kimmett, who's had decades dealing with the Middle East at CENTCOM. First of all, thank you so much for coming on. Certainly. So we've seen this series of missile attacks from Iran hitting other countries in the region. Do you foresee any of those countries taking more substantial action to aid the U.S. in any substantive way in the future? Well, there are indications that both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will participate as part of a coalition. I don't know if that's been formalized yet, but adding their capabilities into the mix right now would be tremendous assistance not the least being their significant stockpiles of precision weapons that obviously we got pressure on our forces in terms of using them but still having those precision weapons both attack and defense for our other requirements around the world Speaking of our stockpiles, President Trump alluded to the fact that we have weapons around the world that we can access in the future if this does go on for a long time. Is that correct? That's correct. We have prepositioned stocks in most of the areas of operation or potential operations, for example, to support PACOM Pacific Command, Indo-Pacific Command, to support Europe. All of our combatant commanders have ready and available stockpiles in case they need to go operational. I was a planner at CENTCOM 20 years ago. Obviously, Iran was one of the plans, and it was never anticipated to be a short war. Now, we've seen Iran be largely defanged over the last two years since October 7th with their proxies greatly debilitated. Does that shorten the timeline of what you would have projected a couple of years ago? It always depended on whether the proxies would participate in armed aggression. October 7th changed everything. That drew the proxies in. Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, the Hasid in Iraq, and every other proxy that starts with H. They have been severely defanged, but they are not completely powerless. I think everybody's watching the Houthis. If the Houthis start their attacks again, that could put a real strain on, again, that ammunition consumption that we talked about earlier. Final question, and one that a lot of Americans are, of course, very worried about. Do you see the prospect of putting troops on the ground in Iran anytime soon? No, I don't. Look, I think, and this may be a long answer, but it's important to understand that what we are trying to do, in my belief, is since negotiations failed on the issues of nuclear enrichment, proxy operations, and the ballistic missile program, since the negotiations failed to achieve an agreement, We are trying to achieve an agreement rather than at the diplomatic table on the battlefield. What I hope more than anything else is that we don't decide to do more and allow mission creep in this operation. People are talking about helping the protesters. People are talking about things such as putting American troops on the ground. I hope we have learned our lesson over the last 20 years. I believe that our end state ought to be that the military operations force the Iranians back to the table and far more conciliatory towards not only America's interests, but the interests of Israel and the region, which means no nukes, no proxies, and a severely degraded ballistic missile program. If we can achieve that, that's what we set out to do. And let's not expand and broaden the mission to do other less important things, less important to American interests. Right. This is an administration whose mantra is America first. So we'll see if they see the situation through that same lens. Brigadier General, thank you so much for talking with us. Sure. Thank you for having me. As Texas reels from a mass shooting the FBI is investigating as a potential terror attack, voters in the state are heading to the polls for pivotal primaries that could determine the balance of power in the Senate. Joining us now to discuss is Daily Wire political reporter Cameron Arcand. So Cameron, let's start with this tragedy in Texas over the weekend, which is of course looming over everything happening in the state. We've learned a lot more over the last 24 hours. What do we know about that shooting and the suspect? So the suspect has been in the United States since 2000. He immigrated here from Senegal and he had a long rap sheet of prior arrests including a lawsuit that the New York Post reported on for reckless driving in New York City So it very interesting to kind of see the development here He became a United States citizen in 2013. We're already seeing some pushback and some people asking, how was he able to become a citizen? Why is he still in the United States as we had this conversation about immigration nationwide? In terms of the actual shooting, the investigation, Local police have said, you know, they don't want to speculate on a motive just yet. However, we've already seen strong evidence here, and the FBI has already said that they're looking at this as a potential nexus for terrorism. The guy was wearing a shirt that said, you know, property of Allah, right? And he was wearing another shirt that showed the Iranian flag and not the lion and sun flag that came before the revolution that we saw there. It was the, you know, the current flag there. So this is really showing some of that, those concerns that are currently in the country right now. And to remind everyone, this tragic shooting in Austin, Texas, early Sunday morning, took place at a bar and resulted in the death of two individuals and 14 others were injured. Now, this was a concern when President Trump was floating the idea of an attack on Iran, that there were these sleeper cells in the United States and some of them could activate and carry out terror attacks. Is there still a concern that there's more like that out there? Yes. So I asked War Secretary Pete Hegsteth about this today. Here's what he had to say. Across the interagency, in full coordination, of course, we're paying attention to any potentialities there. This is a former regime, a regime that seeks to export that ideology and try to sow terror. We're ready for that. We've seen these types of folks before, and the American And people can rest assured that we're vigilant on that. So for some context here, there's been concerns about sleeper cells within the United States for some time now. Last year, as tensions escalated, the Department of Homeland Security actually put out a bulletin outlining some of these potential concerns, including if there was ever going to be a direct call for jihad globally and how that could impact the U.S. homeland. Of course, right now, the big debate is that DHS does not have the proper funding that it needs in order to fight some of these things. And that's the argument that a lot of Republicans are making in Congress. They want to see an end to this shutdown over some of the federal immigration enforcement tactics. But in the meantime, the top concern over here is about some of those potential domestic terror threats, especially as we're seeing people around the country, particularly in areas with high populations of Iranian Americans like Los Angeles, out in the streets rallying in support of the actions that we've seen. Now, all of this comes with the backdrop of the Senate primary that's being held today. What have the candidates said about this shooting and what should we know about those races? So the Senate candidates have spoken out, expressed their thoughts in regards to the shooting. Most notably, we saw Attorney General Kim Paxton saying that he would agree with a ban on immigration from those who are Muslim coming into the United States. But in terms of the primary itself, we're going to see a very, very competitive night in Texas. On the Democratic side, you have Representative Jasmine Crockett and State Senator James Tallarico that are going to be battling it out. And on Republican side, you not only have Paxton, you have incumbent Senator John Cornyn as well as Representative Wesley Hunt. None of them were able to secure a Trump endorsement unique to them. But whoever gets those top two slots will then go on to a May runoff election that is expected to happen if no candidate hits over 50 percent in this race. And whoever wins that primary on May 26th will then become the Republican nominee. Well, a lot of eyes on Texas today for all of those reasons. Cameron, thanks for reporting. Thank you. Thanks for waking up with us. And for those listening to the show, you can also now watch the show free on Daily Wire+. We'll be back this evening with more news you need to know.
