All Episodes
Previous Next
April 9, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
30:09
Prof. John Mearsheimer : Trump, Netanyahu, and Iran.
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, April 10th, 2025.
Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now.
What a week, Professor Mearsheimer, with the roiling markets over the tariffs.
Of course, it began with a lunch meeting between President Trump At least the week from our perspective began with a lunch meeting between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu.
At the end of that meeting, I'm going to play a clip in a few minutes, it was reported by the BBC and by The Economist magazine that Netanyahu was bitterly disappointed.
At the time when Trump had imposed the tariffs, he wanted an exception for Israel and Trump said no.
He wanted Trump publicly to admonish President Erdogan of Turkey, and Trump said, he's my friend, why would I admonish him?
And most importantly, he wanted Trump to commit to a war in Iran, and instead Trump announced that the United States would be negotiating directly face-to-face with the Iranians.
Some of our colleagues have commented this was a head fake.
That is, this was concocted between Trump and Netanyahu to give the Iranians a false sense of security.
Some believe that he actually stood up to Netanyahu.
What is your thought on this scenario as I've described it, Professor?
I thought that Trump was saying nothing new.
He's long argued that he wants to negotiate a settlement.
to this conflict.
That's his preference.
It's obviously never been the Israelis' preference, but it's been his preference from the beginning.
It was Biden's preference.
And Trump has said that if he can't get a negotiated settlement, that he'll attack Iran.
And I don't think that changed.
One could argue that he was a little bit Before we get to Iran,
here's President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu in the Oval Office after their three-hour lunch meeting.
I'd like your thoughts on how fundamentally ignorant one of them is and how fundamentally deceptive the other is.
Chris, cut number 10. Do you think blocking humanitarian aid is also an effective pressure?
Well, you know how I feel about the Gaza Strip.
I think it's an incredible piece of important real estate.
The level of death on the Gaza Strip is just incredible.
And I've said it.
I don't understand why Israel ever gave it up.
Israel owned it.
It wasn't this man, so I can say it.
He wouldn't have given it up.
I know him very well.
There's no way.
They took oceanfront property and they gave it to people for peace.
How did that work out?
Not good.
They gave it away for good intention and it didn't work out that way.
I think what the president talked about is, first of all, to give people a choice.
Gaza, Gazans were closed in.
Any other place, including in arenas of battle, I mean, whether it's Ukraine or Syria or any other place, people could leave.
Gaza was the only place where they locked them in.
We didn't lock them in.
They're locked in.
And what is wrong with giving people a choice?
Now, we've been talking, including over lunch, about some countries, I won't go into them right now, that are saying, you know, if Gazans want to leave, we want to take them in.
And I think this is the right thing to do.
It's going to take years to rebuild Gaza.
In the meantime, people can have an option.
The President has a vision.
Countries are responding to that vision.
We're working on it.
And I hope we'll have good news for you.
Gaza belonged to the Israelis and they gave it to the Palestinians.
The first time I've ever heard that.
And the Palestinians...
We're locked in by somebody other than the Israelis and the IDF.
It's the first time I've heard that.
Your thoughts?
Well, I think with regard to Netanyahu's comments to start with, then I'll go to Trump.
I think it's just a series of bold-faced lies.
I mean, the Palestinians live in a concentration camp.
And who put them in that concentration camp?
There's just simply no question.
It's the Israelis who put him in that concentration camp.
And before October 7th, the Israelis would occasionally go in there and do what they call mowing the lawn, where they'd go in and murder a significant number of Palestinians to send them a message as to who is the boss.
In fact, in at least two of those mowing the lawn operations, they killed more Palestinians than Israelis were killed on October 7th.
And then, of course, since October 7th, what's been happening is Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza.
This is the story.
The idea that Ariel Sharon pulled the forces or pulled the Israeli forces and the Israeli settlers out of Gaza and that he was hoping to turn it into the land of peace is a joke,
right? His advisor at the time said that our aim is to put...
The Palestinians in formaldehyde.
That was exactly the word that he used.
This idea that the Israelis have benign intentions towards the Palestinians is ludicrous.
What the Israelis are interested in doing is getting rid of every last Palestinian, driving them out of greater Israel, which of course includes Gaza.
So what?
Netanyahu said is just basically a pack of lies.
What I find quite amazing is that the media doesn't expose this, the mainstream media.
He's allowed to get away with this nonsense.
Anybody with a college education should know that this story or set of stories that Netanyahu is telling are a bunch of bold-faced lies.
But no, he gets away with it.
Nobody calls him on the carpet.
The way we operate.
Trump is getting away with ignorance of such a magnitude that if this were a basic course in the geopolitical history of the Middle East, you'd probably flunk him.
There's no question.
The problem with Trump, let me make two points about Trump.
The problem with Trump is he makes misstatements or false statements or tells lies at such a rapid pace you can't keep up with them.
He makes One false statement, you try to correct it, and he's on to another one.
But the more important point, in my opinion, about Trump is that he has no moral compass.
How can anybody who has watched what's happened in Gaza, whether you want to call it genocide or mass murder, just watching what has happened, and you listen to him describe the destruction, he's fully aware of what's happened there.
Treated in such a cavalier way.
How is it that he doesn't have any basic sympathy for the Palestinians?
I just find this hard to understand on a purely human level.
It's really quite remarkable and I think it says a great deal about him as a human being.
Here he is again talking about turning Gaza into a freedom zone owned and occupied.
Well, you know how I feel about the Gaza Strip.
I think it's an incredible piece of important real estate.
And I think it's something that we would be involved in.
But, you know, having a peace force like the United States there controlling and owning the Gaza Strip would be a good thing.
Because right now, all it is is for years and years, all I hear about is killing and Hamas and problems.
And if you take the people, the Palestinians, and move them around to different countries, and you have plenty of countries that will do that, and you really have a freedom zone, you call it the freedom zone, a free zone, a zone where people aren't going to be killed every day,
that's a hell of a place.
The only thing he didn't say is that, and then my son-in-law can develop the real estate.
Yeah. The question you want to ask yourself is, who's doing the killing here?
The Palestinians have done some killing for sure, but the amount of killing they've done compared to the killing that the Israelis have done, there's a gross disparity there.
It's an open and shut case.
If he wants to turn the Gaza Strip into a giant zone of peace, the biggest problem he faces or the biggest obstacle he faces is not the Palestinians, it's the Israelis.
He, of course, is not going to admit that.
Here's Prime Minister Netanyahu a few hours after he left the Oval Office addressing the Israeli people from the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. Well, you'll hear what he says.
Cut number two.
We agree that Iran will not have nuclear weapons.
This can be done by agreement, but only if this agreement is Libyan style.
They go in, blow up the installations, dismantle all of the equipment under American supervision and carried out by America.
This would be good.
The second possibility that will not be is that they drag out the talks and then there is the military option.
Everyone understands this.
We spoke about it at length.
He starts out by saying we agree.
So the implication is President Trump agrees.
Trump agrees to emasculate Iran so that it would become like Libya.
Remember how Libya ended?
Remember how Colonel Gaddafi was publicly butchered after Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama bombed the most prosperous country in Africa?
I'll let you take it from there.
Well, North Korea, Which developed nuclear weapons, unlike Colonel Qaddafi, has done very well with a nuclear deterrent.
And the truth is, from an Iranian point of view, they would have been much smarter to have developed nuclear weapons a long time ago.
But look, here's the big issue with regard to Iran.
It's not a question of whether they're now developing a bomb or not.
I know a lot of people focus on that.
The problem from the Israeli point of view The JCPOA, the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran,
did not take away either one of those capabilities.
That means that Iran has the capability to make a bomb.
And what the Israelis are deeply interested in is taking that capability away.
Now, Trump walked away from the JCPOA in 2018.
He said it was an unsatisfactory agreement.
That's because it left in place the reprocessing and enrichment capabilities.
So the question you want to ask yourself, when these two sides start talking in Oman on Saturday, what is a possible deal they can work out?
And the fact is the Iranians have made it manifestly clear.
They are not giving up their enrichment and reprocessing capability.
That is the brightest of red lines for them.
So they're not giving that up.
So what is Trump going to do then?
Is he going to sign an agreement where they get to keep those capabilities?
He's back to the JCPOA, which he said was an unacceptable agreement.
So I don't see that there is a potential deal when you look at the substance of what that deal would look like.
And that leaves Trump with no alternative, given what he's been saying, other than to bomb Iran.
But the problem there, as lots of people are talking about today, is given the state of the world economy, bombing Iran, which would be a major league undertaking.
It's not like you go in there, there are two pinprick attacks, and that's the end of the story.
We're talking about a massive air campaign.
Cause a lot of destruction in Iran, and then the Iranians, of course, would retaliate.
And what would be the consequences on the world economy?
One can't say for sure, but one can tell plausible stories where this turns into a real nightmare.
How about $10 a gallon for gasoline in New York City and Chicago?
Exactly. On top of all the turmoil in the economy that is a result of these tariffs.
This is not the time to bomb Iran.
And, of course, Trump understands that.
But, again, I ask you and I ask others, what is the deal that he's going to cut that's going to get us out of this mess?
Maybe he'll get the Israelis to surrender the nuclear capability that they stole from us.
The Israelis are not getting rid of their nuclear weapons for the same reason we're not getting rid of our nuclear weapons and for the same reason that the Iranians.
Morally speaking, how can he sit next to Netanyahu and say the Iranians are not allowed to have a nuclear weapon when the gentleman, and I use the word loosely, sitting next to him has them, stole them,
doesn't acknowledge them, and has signed no treaty regulating them?
Because morality doesn't mean anything to Donald Trump.
This is what I said about Gaza.
This is a man who has watched what has happened in Gaza.
He knows full well what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians.
And his attitude towards the Palestinians is displayed in that clip you played earlier is disgraceful.
What else can I say?
I don't think he has a moral compass.
So I don't think it bothered him that he was sitting next to Netanyahu, who has control over a nuclear arsenal, and pushing the Iranians away from one.
Here's what Trump's first State Department said about the special relationship with the Israelis.
So this is from 2018.
Cut number 16, Chris.
How can you maintain both things at the same time that you have a special relationship with Israel and you want to be the mediator between Israel and the Palestinians?
We've covered this numerous times before.
This administration looks back at the numerous decades of inability to bring peace to the Middle East.
So the administration is determined that it wants to look at things perhaps a little differently.
And that may confound some people.
Let me finish.
And that may confound some people, and that's fine.
But the administration is still saying that we are willing to sit down and have peace talks, and both sides are going to have to give a little.
And that's something that we've not backed away from in
I'm not saying that you're unique in this respect.
Multiple administrations have said, we have a special relationship with Israel, and we're going to be the mediator.
And it hasn't worked out well, so aren't you actually sort of doing the same thing that past administrations have?
No, I think the administration is handling this differently, and there are a lot of examples that I can think of.
Things change the more they stay the same.
I mean, we have a special relationship with Israel.
We've had one for a long time.
There's no evidence it's going to change.
And the idea that we can serve as the mediator between the Palestinians and the Israelis is laughable.
And you see this in the case of Steve Witkoff.
Steve Witkoff, who is Donald Trump's principal mediator when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian issue.
He is a hardcore Zionist.
So when the United States takes a hardcore Zionist and inserts him as the mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, How can you possibly argue that he is a neutral force, that he is someone who is well-positioned not to take sides and to be fair-minded?
You can't argue that.
He is committed to the Zionist enterprise, and he's going to be hostile to the Palestinians when push comes to shove.
Do you accept the accuracy of the reports that it was the Russians who arranged for the direct communications and negotiations between the Iranians and the United States?
I do not find that hard to believe.
I think that one of the reasons that Trump wanted to improve relations with the Russians is that he wants to not only peel the Russians away, From the Iranians.
But he wants the Russians to help him with the Iranians.
He wants to isolate the Iranians as much as possible so that he can pressure them to cut a deal that's acceptable to the Israelis and to the Americans.
I don't think he's going to be successful.
I mean, I think Lavrov will help set up the negotiations.
I don't think Lavrov wants war.
But I think the Russians just watching Trump operate over the past few months understand full well that he's a loose cannon and that you really can't trust him and therefore you want to stay very close to China, you want to stay very close to Iran,
and you want to stay very close to North Korea.
I think all four of those countries understand that.
Here's the Iranian president saying yesterday You want to examine us?
You can come a thousand times and look for nuclear weapons that are not here.
Cut number 17. They keep trying to push the narrative that Iran wants to make a nuclear bomb.
What kind of assurance are they looking for?
You verified us a hundred times.
Verify us another thousand if you want.
Not only that, but the United States intelligence community says I understand what you said about the...
Preparation of the fissionable material.
But the intelligence community says there's no nuclear weapon.
That means the Mossad has told Netanyahu there's no nuclear weapon.
That means Netanyahu's lying.
Netanyahu said 20 years ago to the United Nations, Iran will have a nuclear weapon in two weeks.
And then he said 10 years ago, Iran will have a nuclear weapon in a week.
Well, now it's 20 years later and they still don't have a nuclear weapon.
Well, there's no question that they do not have a nuclear weapon.
And I would assume that the Mossad is telling Netanyahu the same thing that the CIA is telling Trump.
But again, I do not think that is the issue.
The issue is the reprocessing and enriching capability.
That's what spooks the Israelis, right?
There's another dimension to this as well, and that is that In the final analysis, what the Israelis would really like us to do is wreck Iran the way we have helped wreck Syria and other countries in the greater Middle East.
The Israelis would like all of their neighbors to be basically wrecked.
And what they want us to do is not simply eliminate Iran's nuclear capability, but to make it look like Syria.
And a major attack on Syria that then escalated and would be one where we did massive damage to the entire country, they hoped would turn Iran into Syria.
Wow. What happens if the United States and Israel attack Iran?
What do Beijing and Moscow do?
come to their aid militarily.
I think that the alliance will, among those three countries, will tighten up in significant ways.
And they will go to great lengths, the Russians and the Chinese, to defend the Iranians diplomatically, to help them economically.
And I think in the Russian case, they will give them military wherewithal to protect themselves down the road.
The interesting question to me is what the Russians and, to a lesser extent, the Chinese will do if we were to attack Iran and Iran says that it's going to develop nuclear weapons.
It's important to understand that the Russians and the Chinese have been adamantly opposed to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, and they were key players in fashioning the 2015 JCPOA.
But one could argue that the Russians and the Chinese will change their tune on that issue if we were to attack Iran and look the other way when Iran then develops nuclear weapons of its own.
Fascinating stuff, Professor.
No question about it.
But you know, China acquires 90% of its oil from Iran.
If Trump listens to his golfing buddy Lindsey Graham and destroys the Iranian oil facilities, you think China's going to sit by and let that happen?
Look, if Israel destroys, or the United States, or both of them destroy Iran's oil facilities, the Iranians will destroy oil facilities all across the Middle East.
And this will have catastrophic consequences for the world economy.
And what China does after that will pale in comparison to what everybody else on the planet is doing when we have this catastrophic outcome that results from Israel and the United States or one of them attacking Iran's oil facilities.
Switching gears before we go, has ICE been Showing up out of uniform and with masks on and picking up people off the streets in Chicago the way they have in Boston and New York?
No, they've basically focused on the East Coast, and campuses in the Midwest have basically been spared up to now with one exception, and that is that yesterday they put their crosshairs on Northwestern,
but not on the University of Chicago.
So it's mainly schools on the East Coast and Northwestern.
And in fact, it's mainly Ivy League schools.
I saw when they put Northwestern on the hit list, they also put Cornell on the hit list, which of course is another Ivy League school.
But I believe that if they are successful and they're able to get away with this, more schools will be added to that list, both on the East Coast and the Midwest and on the West Coast.
This is why I've long argued that it's imperative for universities to stand up to this and to forcefully fight back against what the Trump administration is doing.
But as we've seen, that has not happened.
Universities have by and large caved in, just like all of our institutions have caved in.
Just like the large and formerly great law firms have.
Tell me if this terrifies you.
Chris, cut number nine.
The president there said he would be willing to take American citizens in the federal prison population.
Is that one of the ideas you're going to be discussing?
Well, I love that.
If we could take some of our 20-time wise guys that push people into subways and that hit people over the back of the head and that purposely run people over in cars, if you would take them, I'd be honored to give them.
I don't know what the law says on that, but I can't imagine the law would say.
Anything different.
If they can house these horrible criminals for a lot less money than it costs us, I'm all for it.
But I have suggested that, you know, why should it stop just the people that cross the border illegally?
We have some horrible criminals, American grown and born, and if we have somebody that bops an old woman over the head, if we have somebody that is in jail 20 times and goes back, has a bad judge or a bad...
Can you imagine that?
No. He thinks that he can ship people convicted of crimes to foreign countries where federal courts can't reach them?
When George W. Bush tried that in Guantanamo Bay, He lost five out of five Supreme Court opinions on that very issue.
Yeah, it's hard to believe that Trump would be saying those things.
It shows what a radical president he is, what a radical agenda he has.
And I would note that the problem is he'll eventually, if he were able to get away with that, come for people like us, right?
He would, you know, cook up some...
Charge against us that, you know, we were damaging American foreign policy because we were criticizing it, and then ship us off to El Salvador.
That's what would happen here.
This is why he has to be stopped sooner rather than later.
This is why universities should have stood up to him.
Law firms should have stood up to him.
Media should have stood up to him.
Hardly anybody stands up to the guy.
There are no checks and balances on him.
It comes to tariffs.
As you have pointed out on numerous occasions, he has to go through Congress to institute a policy of tariffs, right?
Did he go through Congress?
No. He said it's an extreme emergency, and he's therefore free to act on his own.
So he alone put into place these tariffs, which almost pulled down the entire...
International economy the other day before he reversed course.
And he only reversed course because bonds were softening and the government can't exist without bonds.
It's got 37 trillion in bonds out there.
That's correct.
What you're saying is he was not listening to anybody else because he hardly ever listens to anybody else.
He thinks he's a genius and he thinks he knows what's right.
And this is a frightening situation.
And the emergency he cited is the trade imbalance.
And in his own executive order, he acknowledged that the trade imbalance has existed since 1934.
The definition of an emergency and the statute on which he's relying for this authority, a sudden and unexpected event that adversely affects national security or economic prosperity.
How can you claim that a state of affairs that has existed Since 1934 is a sudden and unexpected event.
You can't.
And what I find even more frightening is that he was asked yesterday on what basis would he decide to reimpose tariffs or change tariffs on particular countries.
And he said, I will rely on instinct.
He said, you can't put pen to paper and figure out how to do these things.
I just rely on my instinct.
This is a positively frightening statement.
I guess he forgot about or doesn't know about or doesn't care about or never heard of something called equal protection under the Fifth Amendment where similarly situated entities must be treated by the government in a similar way.
Professor Mearsheimer, thank you for your intellect and thank you for your personal courage.
It's a joy to be able to have these conversations with you.
We'll see you again next week.
Thank you, Judge.
I look forward to it.
Thank you, my dear friend.
Coming up tomorrow, Friday, at the end of the day for the end of the week at four in the afternoon with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern, the Intelligence Community Roundtable.
▲
Export Selection