It's actually really simple.
You're watching an Israel shill get torn apart by a Putin puppet. Iran is one of Russia's strategic partners, so of course Putin doesn't want regime change there.
Carlson isn't defending Iran out of principle, he's just siding with Russia by default.
You definitely get a bunch of that toward the end.
I don't know much detail about the lead up on Ukraine really, but it is interesting the story Ted Cruz tells. He blames Biden for the invasion and then goes to explain HOW it was Biden's fault and it makes me dizzy. He says critical pipelines go through Ukraine and Russia needs control of them and Putin had built Nortstream 2 to go to Germany and Ted Cruz showed personal heroism in getting that stopped in 2019 with a sanctions bill that Trump signed and construction stopped. But then Joe Biden became President and they resumed construction and Joe Biden did nothing and eventually rolled back the sanction and Ted Cruz showed personal heroism again in pushing through a sanction that stopped it and then the invasion started a few weeks later. Doesn't the story as he tells it SOUND like Ted Cruz is the American most responsible for the invasion? Did Russia invade Ukraine because Ted Cruz blocked their attempt to take care of their interests a different way and now their interests require control of Ukrainian pipelines?
I do know some other issues about why Russia invaded. I don't think Ted Cruz' story is the whole picture, but I just marvel at how the way he tells it seems to implicate himself.
Edit - I watched Tucker's initial show on MSNBC like 20 years ago when I used to just run MSNBC all evening while I did whatever I was doing. I found him kind of fun to watch and actually thought he was pretty centrist, but maybe I just didn't watch carefully enough. I haven't watched him more than a soundbyte in a long time, but I find again despite really not liking the guy now, I do see how he'd be fun to watch again if I didn't disagree so much with his actual beliefs. When Ted Cruz brings up Tucker's Russia grocery store video and confronts him about it, Tucker goes to defend himself and Ted Cruz does this weird thing backing up and saying he isn't attacking him for it, he just doesn't understand it and Tucker nonchalantly says "Right. Like when you called me an anti-Semite. You didn't attack me, you were just noticing." Like a minute later Tucker says he thinks one of the worst things that has happened in the Ukraine war is devaluing of the dollar and Cruz says "That's a good point" and Tucker just says "I'm aware. I'm aware". His ability to stay in control of a conversation is fun to watch. I have no sense that Tucker was more right than Cruz in the interview (which is a funny thing on its own because interviewers are not usually right or wrong), on balance, but in totality it looks like he just destroyed Cruz. Cruz got so exasperated and flustered and Tucker, aside from when he laughs at Cruz, keeps his cool and continuously looks like the adult in the room trying to deal with a dope. If I am Cruz I never talk to this guy in front of a camera again. There is no minute in the 2 hours that Cruz want anyone to watch.