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March 25, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
27:10
AMB. Charles Freeman : Will Russia Help Iran if US Attacks?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, March 25th, 2025.
Ambassador Charles Freeman will be with us in just a moment.
Some interesting questions for the ambassador.
If the United States and Israel attack Iran, what will Russia do?
And, oh, Pete Hegseth, you don't even know who you're killing?
You don't even know who the Houthis are?
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Ambassador Freeman, welcome here, my dear friend.
Thank you for coming on early this morning.
What is to be gained militarily by the United States, if anything, by bombing civilians in Yemen?
Judging by the record, absolutely nothing.
Yemen has been bombed by us on behalf of the Saudis.
The Saudis have bombed it.
We've bombed it with the British, and the Yemenis just take it and keep going.
They have stood up.
They're the only Arab country to have actually taken action in response to the genocide in Gaza, and they're not going to relent.
So bombing them is feel-good diplomacy.
It is not anything.
It's performative.
It's not really...
Purposeful. Is it more likely than not that they are funded by Iran?
No, Iran does support them, but they're very independent-minded.
You know, anybody who, when you read the newspapers, you see the Iran-backed Houthis.
You know, the same thing should be done with Israel.
The American-backed Israelis.
Does that mean the Israelis don't make their own decisions?
No, it doesn't.
Yesterday afternoon, this is on the front page of the papers this morning, a revelation was made by the editor of the Atlantic Monthly magazine that he was apparently inadvertently included in a series of text chats.
That involved the senior national security people in the Trump administration, Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Rubio, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, National Security Advisor Mike Walsh and others, as they were debating the desirability of bombing the Houthis and trying to come to a consensus with which to advise President Trump,
it appears from the transcript of this, well, first of all, it appears that it's authentic, that this did happen as unusual as this is.
Well, let me ask you, how unusual is this?
Have you ever heard of this happening where classified plans to kill people would be shared with a person who doesn't have a top-secret security clearance?
No, absolutely not.
A repetition of what Hillary Clinton was charged with, and that is using her cell phone for classified purposes.
The U.S. government has elaborate video conferencing mechanisms which are secure, and that is the normal way in which policy has been debated between principles of the government.
This is exceptional.
I think it's unprecedented.
And the leak, the fact that they included a journalist, the editor of The Atlantic, in their group is absolutely the sloppiest thing you can imagine.
Vice President Vance.
...
seemed to be arguing against bombing the Houthis.
The others were in favor of it, but perhaps the most extraordinary statement on there came from Secretary of Defense Hague says, full disclosure, Peter and I have been friends for years.
We don't agree on many things, but we worked together for 10 years at Fox.
His now wife...
Was my boss for a short time at Fox, and we're both graduates of Princeton University, and we have a lot of mutual friends, just for full disclosure.
But what he said was scurrilous, in my view.
He has reported to have said, the problem is nobody knows who the Hooties are.
So just say Biden failed and Iran funded them.
Good Lord, is that the way the government makes decisions when it comes to killing people?
Well, it is really disgusting, mainly because what that is is the development of a public relations strategy, not a foreign policy strategy.
It's not aimed at doing anything in the real world.
It's aimed at befuddling the American public, and very explicitly so.
So these are the themes that have to be stressed in communication with the American public.
Nothing, by the way, about international publics who see through this.
Here's the press caught up with Secretary of Defense Hegseth at an airbase in Hawaii yesterday.
You probably won't believe his answer, but here it is, cut number 14. Can you share how your information about war plans against the Houthis in Yemen was shared with a journalist in the Atlantic?
And were those details classified?
You're talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who's made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again to include the, I don't know, the hoaxes of Russia, Russia, Russia, or the fine people.
On both sides hoax or suckers and losers hoax.
So this is the guy that pedals in garbage.
This is what he does.
I would love to comment on the Houthi campaign because of the skill and courage of our troops.
I've monitored it very closely from the beginning.
And you see, we've been managing four years of deferred maintenance under the Trump administration.
Our troops, our sailors were getting shot at as targets.
Our ships couldn't sail through.
And when they did shoot back, it was purely defensively or at shacks in Yemen.
President Trump said, no more.
We will reestablish deterrence, we will open freedom of navigation, and we will ultimately decimate the Houthis, which is exactly what we're doing as we speak from the beginning, overwhelmingly.
Thank you.
Well, A, I don't think it's true that they're decimating the Houthis.
B, this is just an absurd answer.
Open mouth, insert foot.
Well, there are lots of things wrong with that.
I'm no fan of Jeffrey Goldberg, who is the editor of The Atlantic, but he is a serious, well-regarded journalist.
He, in fact, redacted much of the report that he wrote on this extraordinarily inept disclosure of classified information.
And he did so on the grounds that it would hurt the United States.
So far from being irresponsible in terms of protecting American interests, he leaned over backwards probably much more than any journalist should.
The second point is, of course, that it's absolute nonsense to say that the Biden administration was acting, quote, Defensively getting shot at.
It was acting to suppress the Houthi's effort to conduct a blockade in the Red Sea against any support, whether Israeli or aligned with Israel, any support for the genocide in Gaza.
When the Israelis temporarily paused the genocide in the so-called ceasefire, which they then violated, The Houthis stood down.
So this is not the sort of silly game that Mr. Hegseth portrayed it as.
And it's clear from the earlier statement, from the discussion itself, that he doesn't have a clue who the Houthis are.
So this is an extraordinarily inept, emotional response to a reasonable question.
Who are the Houthis?
The Houthis are a religious group in Yemen.
They are tribally based.
They have become very assertive, mostly against the Saudis.
They control the greater part of the traditional Yemeni territory.
They are, for all intents and purposes, the government of Yemen.
They are very tough.
The Saudi effort to dominate them failed.
Our efforts to get them to stop their assaults on the Israeli-bound traffic in the Red Sea have failed.
They have openly declared us to be the enemy, and the British, the U.S. and British navies, are in the Red Sea attacking them.
There's nothing defensive about it.
And so, you know, and of course the whole Yemen exercise under Biden and now under Trump is utterly unconstitutional.
We are conducting a war against the state of Yemen, even if we don't recognize the Houthis as such.
When we went to war with the Barbary pirates, Thomas Jefferson took that issue to the Congress because the Congress has the power to declare war.
We have not declared war on anybody.
We're just bombing people.
And are we demolishing them, according to Scott Ritter and Larry Johnson and Doug McGregor?
The answer is no, but from your sources, are we demolishing them, as Peg Seth claimed in that rant on the tarmac in Hawaii that we just watched?
I'm sure we're killing people, a lot of them civilians.
We're probably killing some of the Houthi leadership, but we are not decimating them, the word he used.
And, in fact, the main result of this behavior by us and the Houthis' stand against it has been to raise the prestige of the Houthis throughout the entire Arab and Islamic world.
They are seen as victims of American support for Israel.
Switching gears slightly, although, of course, it's all connected.
Does Iran pose any threat?
I almost feel ridiculous asking you this, to the national security of the United States.
No, it poses a threat to any country in West Asia that aspires to hegemony there.
And that has in the past.
The Saudis were such an aspirant.
They were in a contest with Iran for influence throughout the region.
Israel has now established dominance of the Levant.
It has gutted Syria of all ability to defend itself.
It has taken part of Lebanon as its expanded territory.
And, of course, it's conducted a genocide in Gaza, and it is currently conducting the So Iran is certainly a threat to Israeli dominance of the region.
It is the designated enemy of Israel.
That is, Israel has proclaimed it to be an existential threat.
And the main issue is Iran's nuclear program.
There is still no evidence.
That there is a nuclear weapons program, that a decision has been made by Iran to build a nuclear weapon clandestinely, as of course Israel did, while assuring us constantly at the time that it was not doing what it was doing.
So there is an issue of non-proliferation here, but it's a bit murky.
Neither Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, nor the CIA have found any evidence that Iran has made a decision to build a bomb.
Nonetheless, Israel has been conducting a campaign of assassinations and attacked on Iran with a view of producing regime change there and crippling the ability of the Iranians to enrich uranium, which they are doing, and they are clearly headed for some kind of nuclear latency, the ability to.
Build a bomb on short notice if that becomes necessary, and they make that decision.
But apparently they haven't made that decision.
Everything that Israel is doing and the United States is threatening pushes Iran in the direction of making the very decision that we want them not to make.
Is the United States, in your view, Ambassador Freeman, preparing for war against Iran?
It would probably be an unlawful, undeclared war.
That doesn't seem to deter the modern presidency.
Well, there's a lot of evidence of deployments in the direction of the Persian Gulf.
There are the threats that have been made by our president and others.
In a way, the attacks on the Houthis seem designed to be a warning to Iran that we might join Israel in attacking it.
And, of course, the reality is that the Prime Minister of Israel, Mr. Netanyahu, has had for decades a major effort to enlist us in a war on Iran that would consolidate Israeli supremacy in West Asia.
So if I were Iranian, I would take the prospect of an attack by the United States very seriously, and apparently they are taking it seriously.
And they are redoubling their relationship with the Russians in particular in support of their defense.
What do you think the Kremlin will do if American B-52s show up over Tehran?
Well, I don't think there's no alliance, per se, between Moscow and Tehran.
So I think the Russian response would be quite cautious.
The Russians are very much focused at the moment on Ukraine and European security, less so on West Asia, as they showed when they were willing to abandon their protege Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
So I think the response would be material support rather than a direct response against the United States.
But I have to say that such an attack would really do incredible...
An undeclared war, as you said?
Well, apparently we no longer pay attention to the constitutional provisions under which we're theoretically governed.
But internationally, this would be seen as an unprovoked assault on a major country aimed at consolidating Israeli supremacy in a sea of Arabs.
It would really consolidate the emerging detestation of us by much of the world.
Which is the greater threat to peace and stability in the Middle East, Iran or Israel?
No question that Israel has a record of constantly starting wars, killing enormous numbers of people, conducting genocide.
Iran has never attacked anybody.
It was attacked by Iraq under Saddam Hussein, very likely at our urging.
That is to say, we told the Iraqis that we would have their back if they punished Iran for its Islamic revolution and the hostage-taking of our diplomats that the students there conducted.
But Iran itself has never attacked anybody and not for 200 years.
President Trump's efforts to reset the relationship between the United States and Russia and his wish that it be global in scope and include China, India, Brazil and others as well will be affected by an American military support of an attack on Iran.
Vladimir Putin keep talking to Donald Trump if that were to happen?
Oh, I suspect you would keep talking because we are the only country that I know of.
Until recently, we were the only country that I knew of that considers not talking to be a useful form of diplomacy.
So, you know, the British...
That was when we had the worst Secretary of State in the modern era.
Well, that's right.
But, you know, I mean, of course, I recall a remark by President Nixon, with which I agree, he said, it's not always better to talk than not to talk.
It depends on whether you know what you're going to say.
And I would argue that the most important thing is not talking, it's listening, which we also haven't done.
Okay, let me rephrase my question.
Would an American military support of an Israeli attack on Tehran impair American-Russian relationships?
It would affect them very negatively because it would appear to demonstrate that we are prepared to bully and use force as a substitute for diplomacy, and that will discredit diplomacy.
I mean, the Russians are already very suspicious of us.
Because of our breaking pledges that we made to them about not expanding NATO to the east, because of our abrogation of treaties in the arms control area and other things in which they think they have been deceived by us, I think this would really bring that to a point of no return.
Let me go back to...
The group chat that was released to the editor of The Atlantic.
There are people sitting in federal prisons who've released less information and information less classified than this.
I can think of that 23-year-old airman from your neck of the woods, from Cape Cod.
I don't even remember his name, but he's in jail.
For 20 years for revealing something less critical and timely than what was revealed.
How serious is this, and do you expect anybody will be prosecuted?
Two different questions.
On the first one, how serious it is, very clearly this discussion would have been available in real time to a number of countries with strong cyber espionage.
capabilities, including the Russians and Chinese, very likely the Israelis.
And therefore, therefore, the damage could have been enormous.
Fortunately for us, Yemen doesn't have much But this is a bad practice.
And it makes us appear extraordinarily inept.
It does not add to our reputation.
On the question of whether anybody will be prosecuted, like Mr. Teixeira, the young airman that you mentioned from Massachusetts, that depends on the Justice Department, and the Justice Department does not appear to be exercising an independent role at present.
This is what happens when you don't have any independence at the FBI.
Or the DOJ.
This type of behavior can just summarily be overlooked.
Whereas, and thank you and thank Chris for reminding me on his name, what Jack Teixeira did and didn't harm a soul resulted in a 20-year prison sentence.
Finally, Ambassador, over the weekend, the Gaza Health Ministry announced that the 50,000th The Gazan body had been buried as a result of the IDF slaughter in Gaza.
The number is probably much larger because there are probably many bodies that haven't been discovered.
And as horrific as the number is, you can't even get your hands around it.
There's more people than can fit in Yankee Stadium.
It didn't seem to faze people, this number.
There didn't seem to be the outrage you would expect.
What is becoming of us that we're no longer outraged at death of this enormity?
Well, we have fought on to the dehumanization of the Palestinians, which has been a major public diplomacy or propaganda.
objective of the Israelis, and we're numbed.
We just don't react.
If I can go back to your earlier question, it seems to me that one of the great ironies in the situation where the participants in this classified conversation over cell phones will not be prosecuted, one of the great ironies is that this is precisely the kind of A thing that Americans resented so much that they supported Donald Trump.
That is in the election.
That is to say, there's a group of people in our country who think they are exempt from the law.
They're above the law.
They can do what they want.
This was the argument against Hillary Clinton, that she was arrogant and that she was exempt from the law.
And now we see exactly this phenomenon carried out again.
In the new Trump administration.
I find this incredibly ironic.
Wow. Ambassador, thank you for your time and for your observations.
There was always a lot for us to talk about, and you are very generous and gracious to allow me to go from one subject to the next.
All the best to you, and I look forward to seeing you again next week.
Keep well.
Thank you.
Ambassador. And coming up later today at 10 o'clock this morning on all of this, I can't wait to hear what he has to say.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs at 2 o'clock this afternoon.
I can't wait to hear what he has to say.
Max Blumenthal and very, very studious brainiac, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski at 3. And tomorrow, Wednesday at noon, a person I have longed to interview,
well known to all of you, one of the great characters of all time, one of the great defenders of human freedom, one of the great anti-war activists of our era, George Galloway here Wednesday at noon.
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