00:00Did this take the world by surprise? There's certainly been a buildup of narrative coming from the administration that there was atrocities involving Christians in Nigeria and it was in the work of ISIS.
00:13Now the U.S. government, at the behest of the Nigerian government, takes action.
00:18Yes, this really came as a surprise, particularly this, you know, in the eve of Christmas Day, there being the strike on this Islamic State site in Nigeria.
00:26As you noted, this was done in conjunction with the Nigerian intelligence services and military.
00:31But the Nigerian government is really pushing back hard on the narrative that there is religious persecution happening in the country.
00:37They said, yes, there are terrorist attacks happening. This is a problem.
00:39But that Christians and Muslims are both both targeted in these.
00:43This is really a narrative we've seen from Washington.
00:46You know, Trump has mentioned several times he's worried about the persecution of Christians.
00:50We even have Ted Cruz in the Senate, who's tried to get Nigeria labeled as a as a country that is persecutes Christians.
00:56But this, you know, kind of the narrative, at least here, you know, that really appeals to the MAGA base doesn't actually match what we're seeing in terms of the actual conditions on the ground.
01:05More broadly, are we expecting anything to escalate from here?
01:10We we know that there has been this move made.
01:14And is it sort of meant to be a preemptive strike to iron out any further risks of escalation or acts of atrocity or terrorism that's occurring in the country?
01:25We don't know exactly what more is to come, though we do know that there will be something.
01:29Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, you know, said yesterday that there would be more of these attacks to come.
01:34Exactly the timing, the tenor, the location are all still very unclear.
01:38But this is what we are seeing is a real ramp up of U.S. military strikes across the globe.
01:43There were strikes in Syria last week, of course, the buildup in Venezuela.
01:46So this is part of a sort of a broader, you know, more aggressive, more proactive U.S. military than we've seen in quite some time.
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