Tucker Carlson Warns of World War 3 Over Israel

Tucker Carlson appeared to agree with guest Vivek Ramaswamy on his alternate proposal to Israel’s response to the recent attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants to avert an escalation to the conflict in the Middle East, in his latest social media video.

In a clip, posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday night entitled “How to avoid World War III,” which has since been viewed 10.9 million times, the Republican presidential candidate suggested America assist Israel in assassinating Hamas’s top officials and placing their heads on spikes along the border with Gaza, instead of a widely anticipated ground offensive on the Palestinian territory.

Introducing the interview, Carlson said it was “easy to imagine” an escalation in the conflict between Israel and Hamas could draw in numerous global powers—including the U.S., Russia, China and Iran, among others—and stressed that “now is not the time for a world war,” suggesting “we would lose.”

He previously predicted a “hot war between the U.S. and Russia in the next year,” which Carlson also said he thought was one America would likely not win.

Since about 1,500 Hamas militants launched their attack on Israel, killing civilians including children and the elderly, the Israeli Air Force has been conducting an intensive campaign of air strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza.

Israel has indicated it was preparing a much larger offensive in Gaza, however. On Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was “currently preparing to implement a wide range of operational offensive plans,” including coordinated strikes by air, sea and land.

As of Thursday, the Gaza Health Ministry said 3,478 Palestinians have been killed and more than 12,000 wounded in Israeli actions since October 7, according to the Associated Press, while Israel says more than 1,400 Israelis were killed, and at least 199 others were taken hostage in the same period.

A ground invasion of Gaza has pre-emptively been met with warnings of an escalation from Iran. Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed, Lebanese Islamist Shiite militant group, has exchanged fire with Israeli forces in recent days, and has threatened to attack U.S. forces if they intervened in the war on Israel’s side.

Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian told Al Jazeera on Sunday that Israel’s continued assault on Gaza is making a war on multiple fronts “increasingly more probable.” He has also threatened the U.S. over its naval assets in the eastern Mediterranean.

However, the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War said earlier in the week that Iran had signaled “its unwillingness to enter a direct conflict with Israel” without being subject to a direct attack. Instead, it is “preparing for the Hamas-Israel war to expand into a regional conflict” with militants deployed to southern Lebanon and Syria, and “would likely provide material and financial support to its proxies to fight Israel.”

“I am worried that this is going to lead to a war that is not good for Israel, with poorly defined objectives, and isn’t good for the United States,” Ramaswamy told Carlson. “If we’re talking to Israel, one of the things we need is: what is your actual objective?”

The GOP presidential hopeful then went on to outline what he saw as “one sensible version that the U.S. could fully support.”

“Think about a world in which Israel has a clearly-defined objective,” he said. “Say, the top 100 in Hamas. Okay, we want their heads on stakes, line that southern border of Israel and Gaza with those heads as you build a new border defense—there’s your deterrence.”

He added that he thought “the U.S. should help from an intelligence perspective with this. I think the U.S. can be helpful with what me might call the diplomatic Iron Dome.

“Let Israel do this to fully defend itself without the U.N. or anybody else in the rest of the world getting in the way. Get U.S. allies intelligence sharing; the types of things that don’t get the U.S. involved militarily. Israel is capable of doing this. The Mossad is capable of doing this.”

Carlson appeared supportive of Ramaswamy’s proposal, responding: “That seems like a pretty obvious solution—and it seems within the capabilities of the state of Israel and it seems like we can help with that.”

Newsweek approached the Israeli Ministry of Defense via email for comment on Thursday.