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Tucker Carlson’s Iranian Nuclear Fairy Tale
Tucker Carlson speaks at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, Oct. 21, 2025. Photo: Gage Skidmore/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Here is what Tucker Carlson recently said about Iran’s nuclear program:
“What are the chances Iran would actually launch a nuclear attack? History suggests they’re zero.”
“Could the Iranians obtaining the bomb wind up being a good thing?”
“North Korea’s nuclearization has undeniably stabilized the Korean Peninsula.”
“Would it incentivize Israel to drop its stated goal of controlling Gaza and the West Bank?”
These are not stray remarks or provocations. They form the scaffolding of an argument Carlson is now advancing openly: that a nuclear-armed Iran might be beneficial — stabilizing, sobering, even morally clarifying.
This is not merely wrong; it is the intellectual architecture of appeasement, rebuilt for a new generation and a new dictatorship.
In the 1930s, Western commentators insisted they were not defending Adolf Hitler — only understanding him. Germany, they argued, had been humiliated. It had legitimate grievances. Accommodating these “reasonable concerns” was framed as sophistication, not surrender. War, after all, was the greater evil.
History remembers how that ended.
Carlson’s Iran argument follows these echoes of appeasement. It reframes aggression as insecurity, ideology as negotiable, and the regime’s victims as inconveniences. Carlson’s past flirtation with rehabilitating Hitler while recasting Winston Churchill as the reckless villain of World War II is not incidental. It is explanatory.
Carlson’s case rests on a crude premise: no rational state would ever use a nuclear weapon because doing so would be suicidal. History, he says, proves this. No member of the “Axis of Evil” has fired a nuke. Only the United States has.
This confuses outcomes with intentions, and treats deterrence as a law of nature rather than a fragile political achievement.
Deterrence worked during the Cold War because adversaries shared assumptions: regime survival as the highest value; stable command-and-control; and a strategic culture that treated nuclear weapons as last resorts — not instruments of ideology.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is not a status-quo power seeking security. It is a revolutionary theocracy animated by theology, grievance, and openly messianic ambition. Its leaders glorify martyrdom. Its proxies — Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis — treat death as strategy. Israel’s destruction is framed not as rhetoric, but as destiny.
Deterrence is determined not only by whether a regime can be deterred, but also whether it wants to be.
Carlson points to North Korea as proof that nuclearization produces stability.
This is a category error.
North Korea has not stabilized the region; it has frozen it in permanent coercion. The peninsula remains one miscalculation from catastrophe. Pyongyang engages in nuclear blackmail, missile launches over Japan, cyber warfare, and weapons proliferation abroad. Its population remains imprisoned and expendable.
More importantly, North Korea does not pursue regional hegemony through transnational militias and proxy wars. Iran already does — all without nuclear weapons. A nuclear umbrella would not restrain Iran’s behavior. It would shield it.
Carlson suggests nuclearization might make Iran less oppressive by relieving fear of Western “decapitation.”
This reverses cause and effect.
Iran’s repression is not defensive. It is foundational. Women are beaten and murdered for removing headscarves. Protesters are executed after summary trials. Gay people and minorities are systematically crushed. All because of the regime’s identity and ideology, not fear.
None of this is caused by US sanctions or Israeli action.
Nuclear weapons would not protect Iranians from their rulers. And nuclear weapons would further protect the rulers from their people.
History is unambiguous: authoritarian regimes do not liberalize when their security is guaranteed. They consolidate.
Carlson also suggests a nuclear Iran might “incentivize Israel” to abandon its security posture. This requires an inversion of both morality and causality.
Israel’s security policies are shaped by experience. Every withdrawal — from southern Lebanon to Gaza — was followed by rockets, terror, and massacre. Before 2023, Gaza was not occupied; it was ruled by Hamas, an Iranian proxy whose charter openly calls for genocide.
To frame Israel as the destabilizer in a region saturated with Iranian-backed militias is not realism. It is willful blindness.
A nuclear Iran would not compel restraint. It would compress decision timelines and make miscalculation existential.
Carlson’s argument treats ideology as irrelevant, extremist theology as cosmetic, and history as a grab bag of comforting analogies. It asks Israel and the entire international community to absorb existential risk so others can indulge fatigue and moral vanity.
This is not realism. It is surrender dressed up as sophistication.
And this is how many catastrophes throughout history began: not with madmen shouting, but with influential people calmly explaining why the madmen should be accommodated — why their threats aren’t real, their ideology isn’t serious, and their victims are an acceptable price for someone else’s peace.
History does not whisper when this happens. It screams — and then it counts the dead.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.
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YouTuber Ms. Rachel Apologizes for ‘Accidentally’ Liking Instagram Comment Calling to ‘Free America From Jews’
Ms. Rachel. Photo: Wiki Commons.
Children’s educator and YouTuber Ms. Rachel admitted on Wednesday that she “accidentally” liked an antisemitic comment on Instagram that called for America to be “free from the Jews.”
The YouTube star, who creates toddler learning videos, apologized for the apparent mistake after a social media user privately messaged her on Instagram and pointed out that Ms. Rachel liked the antisemitic comment left on one of her posts. The private message promoted Ms. Rachel, 43, to issue a public apology in a video that she posted Wednesday on Instagram for her 4.8 million followers.
The YouTuber, whose real name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, explained that she thought she deleted the hateful comment but accidentally hit “like and hide” instead. The avid critic of Israel, who has shared online posts accusing the Jewish state of “genocide” and has 18.6 million subscribers on her YouTube channel, got emotional in an Instagram video while explaining what happened.
“I thought I deleted a comment, and I accidentally hit ‘like’ and hide,’” she said in an Instagram video. “I don’t know how or why. I’ve accidentally liked comments before. It happens. I’m a human who makes mistakes. I would never agree with an antisemitic thing like the comment. We have Jewish family, a lot of my friends are Jewish. I delete antisemitic comments.”
The issue reportedly began when Ms. Rachel shared a statement from her notes app on Instagram that read “Free Palestine, Free Sudan, Free Congo, Free Iran.” A social media user who replied to the post wrote, “Free America from the Jews” and the comment garnered four likes including from Ms. Rachel, according to screenshots cited by the New York Post.
The children’s YouTube star insisted she was “so broken over” the incident.
“I feel like we can’t be human anymore online,” she complained in the video. “And I’m so sorry for the confusion it caused. I’m so sorry if anyone thought that I would ever agree with something horrible and antisemitic like that. I don’t.”
“I want to say that it’s OK to be human and it’s OK to make mistakes and I’m old, so I am not as good with touching things online, I guess. I have liked things by accident before,” she added. “Everyone who knows me knows I would never like that.”
In an earlier Instagram post about the incident, Ms. Rachel wrote that “people are allowed to make mistakes” and that she was “super sorry for any confusion it caused.”
“I delete antisemitism ANY time I see it. I am against all forms of hate including antisemitism against the Jewish people,” she added.
The watchdog group StopAntisemitism.org has previously accused Ms. Rachel of spreading Hamas propaganda and false information about Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas war.
Ms. Rachel lives in New York City and her husband is Broadway music director and composer Aron Accurso.
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Discussion: Growing up Hasidic in Vienna
זונטיק דעם 25סטן יאַנואַר וועט אויף זום פֿאָרקומען אַ שמועס מיט איידל מלובֿיצקי (מאַלאָוויצקי), אַ צאַנזער־רביש אייניקל וואָס איז געבוירן און דערצויגן געוואָרן בײַ אַ חסידישער סלאָנימער משפּחה אין ווין, עסטרײַך.
אלי בענעדיקט, וואָס וועט פֿירן דעם אינטערוויו און איז אַליין פֿון אַ חסידישער משפּחה, האָט געזאָגט אַז איידל מלוביצקי „טראָגט אין זיך אַ לעבעדיק לעבנבילד פֿון אַ חסידישער וועלט אין אַ מאָדערנער שטאָט. אין איר דערציילן פֿאַרבינדן זיך פּערזענלעכע זכרונות מיט קהילות־געשיכטע, און ייִדיש בלײַבט די שליסלשפּראַך פֿאַר ביידע.“
די דיסקוסיע ווערט געשטיצט פֿון דער ייִדיש־ליגע.
איידל מלובֿיצקי איז הײַנט אַ ייִדיש־לערערין און קולטור־פֿיגור, אַקטיוו אין פֿאַרשידענע אינסטיטוציעס — צווישן זיי: דער ווינער אוניווערסיטעט, „יונג־ייִדיש־ווין“ און „ייִדיש־זומער־ווײַמאַר“. זי איז אויך אַ וועגווײַזערין און גיט לעקציעס וועגן דער ייִדישער געשיכטע פֿון ווין, וועגן דער חסידישער געשיכטע בכלל, און די געשיכטע פֿון דער חסידישער קהילה אין ווין בפֿרט. בקרובֿ וועט אויך אַרויס אַ דאָקומענטאַר וועגן די בית־יעקבֿ־שולן, וווּ זי ווערט אויך אינטערוויוירט.
דער שמועס, וואָס איז פֿרײַ פֿון אָפּצאָל, וועט פֿאָרקומען זונטיק, דעם 25סטן יאַנואַר, 2 אַ זייגער נאָך מיטאָג ניו־יאָרקער צײַט. כּדי זיך צו רעגיסטרירן גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
The post Discussion: Growing up Hasidic in Vienna appeared first on The Forward.
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Australia PM Albanese ‘Profoundly Sorry’ for Failing to Prevent Bondi Beach Attack
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks at the Sydney Opera House during a National Day of Mourning for the victims of the Dec. 14, 2025, mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, Jan. 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jeremy Piper
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday he was “profoundly sorry” for his failure to prevent the Bondi Beach mass shooting, as the country observed a day of mourning for the victims of the attack.
Police say a father and son opened fire at an event celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah on Dec. 14, killing 15 people in Australia‘s worst mass shooting in decades.
They say the two men were inspired by Islamic State to carry out the attack, which the government has called an act of terrorism against Jewish people.
Flags were flown at half-mast across the country ahead of a memorial event at Sydney’s iconic Opera House, where Albanese apologized to the relatives of the victims in the audience.
“You came to celebrate a festival of light and freedom and you left with the violence of hatred. I am deeply and profoundly sorry that we could not protect your loved ones from this evil,” Albanese said to sustained applause in his speech at the event.
Last month, the prime minister said he was “sorry for what the Jewish community and our nation as a whole has experienced” – an apology that some relatives said was insufficient.
A minute’s silence, including on the country’s main television channels, was held across the nation just after 7 pm in Sydney (0800 GMT) as the memorial event began.
Event attendees lit candles and heard speeches from other lawmakers, as well as Jewish prayers and video tributes.
Buildings across the country, including cricket stadiums in Melbourne and Perth, were also illuminated, while play was paused during the Australian Open tennis tournament to observe the minute’s silence.
The Bondi attack shocked the nation and led to calls for tougher action on antisemitism and gun control, with critics of Albanese saying he had not done enough to crack down on a spate of attacks on the Jewish community in recent years.
The government disputes this, and has already passed legislation tightening background checks for gun licenses, as well as separate legislation that would lower the threshold for prosecuting hate speech offenses.