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Oct. 7, 2024 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:22
Ray McGovern : The Middle East One year after October 7th 2023.
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, October 7th, 2024.
Ray McGovern will be with us in just a moment on how, in his view, the landscape in the Middle East has changed in the past year.
But first this.
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Ray McGovern, welcome here, my dear friend.
Obviously, a lot to talk about.
One year after October 7, 2023, how has the landscape of the Middle East changed?
I would say 180 degrees would be a good answer to that.
It looks like Netanyahu has, in my view, I've been victimized by the old Greek tragic flaw of hubris.
And whether Biden, Blinken, and the rest of them will try to bail him out in these next four weeks before the election is really doubtful.
Instinctively, one would think that they would have to bail him out.
But I'm suggesting that it's not a sure thing.
And so if Bibi goes ahead all by himself, he may end up all by himself.
I consider the chances of that only 50-50, but it's a reality.
And if Netanyahu has the same appreciation of the correlation of forces here and how much influence he still has in Washington, he might be a little bit reluctant to.
Well, he can't, correct me if you see this differently, he can't fight Hamas all by himself.
He can't fight Hezbollah all by himself.
He certainly can't fight Iran all by himself, and he apparently can't fight the Houthis all by himself.
Well, that's the point, Judge.
Up till now, I've been convinced that He calculates that the U.S. will have to come in to bail him out.
And most of the readings have suggested that is the case with pretty much Blinken running the policy.
The U.S. military having a more marginal role in this than they did in Ukraine where they prevailed over Blinken.
You'll recall when Blinken wanted to have approval for those longer-range missiles to be used in Ukraine.
So in this case, it's a political mix mostly.
It's the election coming up in just four weeks.
Will Biden, will Harris decide, well, wait a second, we ought to tell Netanyahu, knock it off at least for the next four weeks, because we don't want to wage a major war in the Middle East right before the election.
I don't know what's going to happen, but I'm 50-50 on that now.
Everyone else assumes that Netanyahu will just go ahead and blast Iran.
What happens the next day, particularly if Netanyahu, like me, believes that U.S. support, full-throated support, military support for that is doubtful.
Well, is there any chance for American troops on the ground, either in Lebanon or Iran?
That depends on this jewel between the State Department, represented by Blinken, and the military, represented by the Pentagon, and Austin, who, as I say, prevailed on Ukraine.
The last thing the military in the U.S. should want would be boots on the ground, sending those Marines in from those amphibious ships in the Eastern Med.
That's crazy.
That will come to a no-good end, as the Chinese used to say.
Whether the military can stand up this time on a heavily political issue, which really goes right to the election, I don't know.
I think that Blinken probably will win out on this.
The question is whether they'll go ahead before the election and endorse what Netanyahu wants to do and whether Netanyahu will take that reassurance and go ahead and start a war with Iran, of all places.
You've mentioned the election a couple of times, Ray.
Are you suspicious, fearful, looking forward, whatever you want to call it, of an October surprise?
And if there is an October surprise, presumably calculated by the Biden administration to help his chosen successor, what would it be?
What would it look like?
Well, that's a tough one, Judge.
In answer to the first part of your question, yeah, we should all be very, very alert for an October surprise, whether in the Middle East or in Ukraine.
I don't know what form it would take.
Meanwhile, you know, Blinken and Austin, as I see it, are ducking it out to see who will prevail with respect to both areas.
and Biden, to the degree he's a player, will be the decider.
So it's really hard to know exactly what will happen.
It does look pretty bleak for Ukraine.
If Putin restrains himself and doesn't inflict a definitive defeat on Ukraine and NATO, then that's one thing.
I think it goes step by step, as he always has.
Whether maybe Netanyahu will listen to us, that's another question.
I'm one who feels that he has been in the driver's seat for the last two decades or more, and he'll just decide to do what he's overcommitted to do now.
And it will come to no good end.
Is the United States using the Israelis to kill Arabs?
Or are the Israelis using the United States?
I don't know if you can answer this.
This is Gilbert Doctorow versus Larry Johnson and John Mearsheimer.
Or is Israel using the United States to expand its borders?
Well, Judge, it's a both-and, in my view.
In other words, four decades ago and longer back, we had Israel as the U.S. battleship in the Middle East.
We could do all kinds of things, springing from our presence and our blessing for the state of Israel.
That's not always been the case in the last couple of decades.
And right now I've seen that kind of thing.
Biden can be depended on to act on his instincts, and those instincts go with Blinken.
Whether the U.S. military can talk any sense into Blinken, That's a hopeless case.
Whether they get to Biden as they did on Ukraine, I think there's some hope there for peace before the election.
How do you think Bill Burns feels now that we all know that the negotiations were never serious, that Netanyahu never had any intention of a ceasefire for a variety of reasons?
And that he and his colleagues used and duped Amos Hochstein, Bill Burns, Ryan McGurk, whoever the Americans were that were involved in these negotiations.
Bill Burns, a windsock.
A, as the British would say, a stiff upper lip under that mustache.
He's just a cog in the wheel.
You know, he predicted in July of last year that Putin had already lost in Ukraine.
He's been wrong on just about everything, but wrong in the sense he's consonant with what the administration, Blinken, first of all, say.
So whether he'll stand up, whether he stands up on his own two feet, well, you know, here's the real damning thing on Bill Burns.
On the 1st of February, 2008, Sergei Lavrov, newly appointed foreign minister in Moscow, called a man and said, look, do you know what net means?
Net means net.
If you insist on Ukraine going into NATO, we will have to react, okay?
You will provoke us.
Okay, so fast forward 2008-2022.
Whoa, wait a second.
Now, the Russians go into Ukraine.
For lots of reasons, and Bill Burns is the first to say this was totally unprovoked.
The reason, you know, as I've tried to make clear, was membership in NATO, the shelling of Russian citizens and Russian stock in Donbass, and the likelihood that if Ukraine joined NATO, medium-range ballistic missiles would follow, sure as hell, just as they are in Russia.
But hypersonic missiles would give Putin four to five minutes to decide whether he wants to blow up the rest of the world.
That's what it comes down to.
Now, Burns, he says he's a bit player here.
And since he's played his role so well, Did you say big player or bit?
A bit.
A bit player.
sort of like a cameo appearance.
And their head of intelligence And there he is sitting in the cabinet, just as Bill Casey did.
You can't pretend even to give up objective intelligence to serve that up for everybody.
See, if you're one of the people deciding on that intelligence.
So, you know, we had some hope for Bill Burns.
Forget about it.
He's a cog in the wheel.
A windsock, as I earlier, whatever the president or people that dictate things to him, like his nominal boss, Averill Haynes, Director of National Intelligence, or Blinken, or Austin in his earlier days, he'll just go along and fix the intelligence to suit the policy.
That's precisely what was done on Iraq.
And we have that in documents proving that the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy, the policy being invade Iraq and make believe they had weapons of mass destruction.
President Macron of France made a very interesting statement on Saturday, arguing that those who are supplying the weapons...
Take a listen.
Cut number one.
I regret that Prime Minister Netanyahu made a difficult choice and took on this responsibility, in particular for ground operations on Lebanese soil.
And so, yes, if we call for a ceasefire, the consistent thing to do is not to supply weapons of war.
And I don't think that those who are supplying them can call for a ceasefire every day and continue to supply them.
I think that those who are supplying them can call for a ceasefire every day and continue to supply them.
So an open-handed slap at Netanyahu and a backhanded slap at Blinken.
Maybe Biden, too, if he cares.
Well, of course, that's what the U.S. is precisely doing.
You know, people pussyfoot around this thing, okay?
Chaz Freeman.
Although he's an ambassador, okay, does not mince words.
I was on a Zoom with him on Friday night, I guess, and somebody said, now, do you think the U.S. is somehow responsible for the carnage, for the genocide in Gaza?
And he said, the U.S. is wholly responsible for it.
Quote, wholly responsible for it.
Whoa!
In other words, no arms supply.
No genocide in Gaza.
So that's the deal.
That's where we stand.
And Macron now has incurred the wrath of Netanyahu.
I don't know if you've seen how Netanyahu reacted to what Macron said, but Macron is not alive and not alone.
I mean, he's got the Italians, he's got the Germans, he's got the Hungarians, the Slovakians.
He's got lots of members of NATO supporting him, not to mention the Turks.
So talk about NATO being unified as never before.
Give me a break.
It's never been so dissipated in both senses of the word.
Here's a very angry Prime Minister Netanyahu responding to French President Macron, cut number two.
As Israel fights the forces of barbarism led by Iran, all civilized countries should be standing firmly by Israel's side.
Yet President Macron and some other Western leaders are now calling for an arms embargo against Israel.
Shame on them.
Is Iran imposing an arms embargo on Hezbollah, on the Houthis, on Hamas, and on its other proxies?
Of course not.
The axis of terror stands together.
But countries who supposedly oppose this terror axis call for an arms embargo on Israel.
What a disgrace.
I wonder why he makes those remarks in English.
Macron speaks French.
The Israelis speak Hebrew.
Am I picking at a needless detail?
No.
You can see at whom those remarks are directed.
His English, by the way, you'll notice, is American English.
Yes.
We spent a lot of time here, including getting some parts for the nuclear program sent back.
So Netanyahu is really a menace, and most of the world is understanding that now.
Whether Biden and Blinken will prevail in this is really, really, well, that's the big question.
I don't know how it's going to come out, but the next four weeks, in my view, I've been saying this forever now, before the election, is very telling because the pressures on Biden.
I mean, from the Israel lobby and from his own instincts as the arch-Zionist, I've got to be so great that maybe they'll prevail and he will give Netanyahu court blanche to start a major regional war against Iran, of all places, which would bring in Russia and China, not immediately in a kinetic way.
but eventually in a very, very strong political way.
Bear in mind that BRICS, the major meeting, is taking place in Kazan just two weeks from now.
And I think that the Iranians are going to get a lot of support there for most of the rest of the world, because as we know now, the lily white...
Is Israel stronger, more stable, or weaker and less stable than it was on October 6, 2023?
It's weaker and less stable.
Now, once you say that, you have to add, That vengeance is a really powerful emotion, okay?
My information suggests that most of the Israelis still support Netanyahu.
Why?
Well, because he's doing genocide against the Palestinians.
Governor, are you saying most Israelis are afraid of ethnic cleansing, of driving the Palestinians out of Gaza, the ones that they can't kill?
Yes, I'm saying that.
And that really is the sorrowful part of all this.
I thought Israeli citizens were a little bit more justice-oriented, but they're not.
And the state of the Israeli economy and the state of the Israeli military, I gather, is nowhere near as stable, secure, and strong as they were 366 days ago.
That's right.
And, you know, we've been sending generals to the Israeli military, and most people have been interpreting the arrival of the head of CENTCOM, four stars, just recently, as, you know, helping to plan the new Israeli offensive.
I don't know.
I think, you know, why would he want to be unseen when a new regional war starts?
I think...
Because even your own troops, even your own military has really doubts about the utility of starting a major war on seven fronts, if you will.
So I don't know.
This is maybe hope springing from the thought, hopeful and factual.
But that general, I just wonder if he's in saying, look, We don't want a regional war, and the president doesn't want it.
Blinken, you can't listen to anymore because he doesn't really understand these things.
Calm yourself down.
Don't do anything.
Let's see how the election comes out.
Alistair Crook and others report a significant seismic event in Iran on Saturday, yet there are no reports of an earthquake.
Might this have been the testing of a nuclear device?
I don't want to scare people or speculate, but do you have any insight on this, Ray?
I don't.
I have very much doubt that it has anything to do with nuclear from the Iranian side or from the Israeli side.
I hadn't seen that report.
It would be interesting to see how it comes out, but I don't think they're anywhere near nukes just yet.
Bear in mind that Iran has all manner of hypersonic missiles and all manner of other things that they have not used yet that they could direct on Israeli infrastructure, even Israeli citizens, if it comes to that.
Here's what one of our viewers reports.
Seismic activity was recorded in the Kavir, K-A-V-I-R, desert Iran.
A large open desert near Semnan, S-E-M-N-A-N, which rarely has earthquakes.
These geographical references don't mean anything to me.
Do they mean anything to you?
No, I don't know where those cities are.
They're very remote, apparently.
Okay.
Might Moscow and Beijing be waiting in the wings to see if...
Tel Aviv and Washington attack Tehran.
They'll be waiting in the wings, but I think before that, their defense minister, Betel Usof, will be in touch with our Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, to urge caution, to urge us to urge caution on Israel.
This is big.
The stakes are incredibly big.
The Russians have their own people manning some of those very sophisticated surface-to-air missile battalions that they've sent into Tehran and elsewhere in Iran.
They probably have pilots flying the latest aircraft that they've provided to Iran.
So it's sort of a question like the Korean War, for God's sake.
I mean, you had Chinese and Russian pilots manning those MiGs, okay?
Would you have Russian people In the seat of these fighter bombers, Manning, it could come to that.
So I think that, number one, the ties that are open between our defense chiefs, that's a very, very good thing.
What the Russians are telling the U.S., I'm confident, is reign this guy in because no good has come.
We can reign in Iran.
We can say, look, Iran, wait.
We have a treaty ready to be signed with you.
It's all but a defense treaty, Moscow, Tehran, okay?
We're coming to Brooks in just two and a half weeks.
Wait, we're saying that to the Iranians.
Now, look, you need to say that to the Israelis.
Whether that will be persuasive or not, well, as I said, it did work on Ukraine.
Whether it works on this much more politically charged issue remains to be seen.
Thank you, Ray.
Very, very helpful and instructive, as always.
We look forward to seeing you.
With youngster Johnson on Friday afternoon.
Most welcome, Judge.
All the best, my friend.
Thank you.
And the aforementioned youngster, Larry Johnson, will be with us this morning at 11 o 'clock and at 1 this afternoon.
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