Welcome to The Libertarian.

I'm Charles C.W. Cook, and I'm here, of course, with the Libertarian himself, Richard Epstein. Richard.

Welcome once again to your own show.

I'm happy to be here once again.

All right, so in, in fact, I should say this is, and always will be, I imagine,

a production of the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.

And with that out of the way, Iran.

We awoke on Saturday morning to learn that the United States had initiated military action in Iran.

President Trump gave an early morning press conference of sorts from his club in Florida wearing a white hat,

a little bit unorthodox. He had clearly decided to go for it without too much debate and certainly without explicit congressional authorization.

Before we get to the legal aspects here, Richard, why didn't you tell me what you think

of this decision to go into Iran per se?

And when I say go into Iran, this has been serious.

They took out Ayatollah Khammeda Khammeda

Khammeda Khomey. He's now dead. They seem to be taking out others who would fill his shoes.

They even took out Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former but not present leader of Iran. Good idea or bad

idea? Well, in general, I basically think that the president did the right thing, but this is

consistent with my long-term attitude as a kind of a libertarian fork.

And let me put it in the ways that I think most persuasive and also explains why this is not a

risk-free option.

One of the greatest problems that you have to have

is not whether or not you attack somebody. Self-defense is always allowed when the attack is even

...