John Oliver didn’t know when he filmed his latest monologue for Sunday’s Last Week Tonight that President Donald J. Trump already had ordered bomb strikes on Iran.
The Emmy-winning HBO series opened Sunday’s episode with a card reminding viewers that they taped on Saturday, before Trump’s announcement to the world that the U.S. had targeted three key Iranian nuclear facilities in top secret strikes.
Despite the news update, Oliver did discuss the Israel-Iran missile strikes. He claimed “the arguments for U.S. involvement here aren’t great,” noting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been warning about the imminent threat of Iranian nuclear weapons for 30 years now, and that Netanyahu’s “track record in pushing the U.S. toward instigating regime change isn’t stellar,” citing his 2002 claim that taking out Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 2002 would have positive impacts throughout the Middle East.
Oliver was pleased that not all Republicans are supporting Trump’s war in Iran, highlighted by an already-viral clip of Tucker Carlson pushing back on GOP Texas Sen. Ted Cruz over his lack of knowledge about Iran. “That whole video is a bit of a trap, because you’re either going to be siding with Ted Cruz or Tucker Carlson. Which is a real Sophie’s Choice if she hated both her kids,” Oliver zinged.
He added that Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, had also testified in March that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon; an assertion reiterated by intelligence officials last week.
Oliver also mused about the potential for America to finally unload its 30,000-pound “bunker-buster” bomb on Iran’s nuclear facilities, allegedly buried deep underground. “It’s called a Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which is not only a way too sexual-sounding name for a bomb. It also abbreviates to MOP,” he said. “And I don’t love that you could potentially start World War III by dropping a MOP.”
Seven “bunker-bombs” were used in the U.S. strike, U.S. Air Force General John Cain later confirmed. Oliver noted in his taped monologue that experts believed this kind of strike still would likely “simply set Iran’s nuclear program back by a year or two” at most. “Which is pretty galling, given Trump arguably got us into this situation in the first place after abandoning the Iran nuclear deal back in 2018.”
After playing a clip where Trump told reporters mere hours before ordering the strike that “nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Oliver shrugged. “I mean, I will say, he’s not technically wrong there. The problem is when Trump says that, he thinks it makes him sound like a chess master when in reality, it makes him sound like a cow flying a plane. ‘Nobody knows what I’m going to do. But it’s reasonable to assume it’s not going to end great!’”
Oliver ended his opening monologue on Iran by reminding viewers of the tape-delay once more, but insisting no matter what happened this weekend: “This situation is very worrying. We don’t want to be dragged into yet another war in the Middle East.”
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