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April 14, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:19
Larry Johnson : Does the US Understand Iran?
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, April 14th, 2025.
Larry Johnson is here on the latest in Ukraine and the latest on Iran.
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Larry Johnson, welcome here, my dear friend.
I want to spend a fair amount of time on your views about Iran and about the United States negotiating directly or indirectly, but negotiating in the same hotel with them over the weekend.
But before we get there, how is it that so-called military experts, including General Cavoli himself, They can't read.
They have no time to look at social media.
And I guess the intelligence community, whether it's defense intelligence or CIA, is lying to them.
You know, it is all this talk about, oh, boy, the war could be stalemated.
If you listen to Cavoli's testimony, I guess he did a similar version, what he did before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he did for the House Committee as well.
And he struck the same note, same tone, that, oh, yeah, boy, Ukraine's still hanging in there, man.
They got a shot.
Russia's really doing poorly.
Well, it's just not true.
So I did a quick search.
To look at, I did an AI, artificial intelligence search question, said, okay, give me the list of the towns, villages, hamlets, cities that Russia has captured in Ukraine since January of 2024.
Boom! Spit out a long list.
When you ask that same question, but you say that you...
You get two things.
Last August, they invaded Kursk.
So they went into Russia.
And the high point was in September.
And then from September on, they were driven out.
So they haven't been able to go capture and hold territory and, in fact, push the Russians back.
They haven't pushed the Russians back at any point.
In the last 16 months now.
And so that's one important fact.
Cavoli likes to go on about, oh yeah, man, the Russians, they're losing all this equipment, but admits in the next breath, but they, yeah, they replaced it all.
And basically for every one tank we can build in the United States, they're building 30. Okay?
So the reality by any military metric you want to take, whether it is size of the army,
amount of time that new recruits are allowed to train before being put into a combat unit, a number of combat vehicles that are offensive in nature, whether it's mobile art, artillery
or a tank or just a Bradley, something like equivalent to our Bradley fighting vehicle across the board.
Russia is dominating.
this is...
We are winning in Afghanistan.
It's just a matter of days.
Right. He was lying.
And so what Danny has done is he's taken the videos of Cavoli, of Petraeus, And I also got one of Westmoreland where Westmoreland did a joint session of Congress and said, hey, light's at the end of the tunnel.
We're winning.
So I've come to the conclusion there must be a course at West Point where all these guys are taught how to lie to Congress.
But to be serious for a minute, and I appreciate your analysis, what gain is there for Cavoli to be lying like that?
What gain is there for him either to be misrepresenting or cherry-picking the intel?
The whole world knows that Ukraine is on thin ice.
Raytheon. General Dynamics.
Lockheed Martin.
He's leaving his job soon.
Gotta have a job.
Man, he's auditioning.
You know, he's just showing, you need me to go out and sell a bunch of crap?
I'm your man.
Well, that is reprehensible because it's a material misstatement to Congress, which is a felony.
It results in the wastage of American taxpayer dollars, and it results in people being killed.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I mean, there's no accountability in this at any point.
You know, I don't even understand what Trump is doing, candidly, because the United States, if Russia was doing to the United States what the United States is doing to Russia,
we would have declared war on Russia.
We would have seen it as a direct threat to our country, as an attack on us, up to this point.
The Russians have been extraordinarily patient.
Here is Trump's most recent public statement on Ukraine.
And at the end of it, I'm going to ask you if you think that the neocons around him, Secretary Rubio, General Kellogg, Mike Waltz, Sebastian Gorka, really want the war to continue.
But I think I know what your answer will be.
But first, President Trump on...
Air Force One last night, Sunday night, Palm Sunday, flying from Florida back to Washington.
Chris, cut number one.
Do you have a reaction to Russia's Palm Sunday attack?
I think it was terrible, and I was told they made a mistake.
But I think it's a horrible thing.
I think the whole war is a horrible thing.
I think the war is, for that war to have started is...
An abuse of power.
You were told they made a mistake.
Do you mean it was unintentional?
They made a mistake.
I believe it was...
Look, you're going to ask them.
This is Biden's war.
This is not my war.
I've been here for a very short period of time.
This is a war that was under Biden.
He gave him billions and billions of dollars.
He should have never allowed...
If he had any brain, which he didn't have and doesn't have, and now it's being proven, he wouldn't have allowed that war to start.
I would have absolutely not.
That war would never have taken place.
But remember this.
This is Biden's war.
I'm just trying to get it stopped so that we can save a lot of lives.
They happen to be Ukrainian.
Well, either he or the neocons around him wanted to continue because he could...
Stop the intel with a phone call, and he could stop the flow of billions and billions, quoting him with a phone call.
The legislation that authorizes the billions and billions says, subject to the discretion of the president.
Yeah, no, blaming Biden is getting old.
You know, yeah, there's a lot of blame to go around to Biden, but the fact of the matter is, he's been in office four months now, he could have stopped it on day one.
All he had to do was tell Zelensky, he said, I'm pulling out our military advisors.
We're shutting down all intelligence sharing, and there's no more equipment.
So this is done.
We're not going to proceed.
But no, he allows it to go forward.
He's an enabler of it right now.
But sort of, you know, the contrast, though, notice, you know, they're all concerned about a small loss of life of a few civilians in Sumi.
Not that I'm saying that that's okay.
But not a damn word about the thousands of Palestinian women and children being murdered across that land.
Not a word.
Are General Cavoli and other generals micromanaging the war from their perch in Wiesbaden, Germany?
Well, they were at one point.
I mean, they were...
If we were to believe the New York Times, and they came out two weeks ago now, Adam Ento's piece, absolutely, they were involved with detailed planning.
And, you know, they've created, there was an article in the Financial Times of London, I guess, or was it the Times of London, that was along the same line, only this was claiming about all the great things the Brits have done.
But the theme is the same.
We in the United States or in Great Britain, we've made all the great decisions and we've given the best plans.
It's those stupid Ukrainians who won't listen to us.
Larry, this goes back to what you said a few minutes ago.
So let's get this straight.
American armaments, American ammunition, American intel, and now American generals telling them where to aim it.
If that's not the United States of America waging war on Russia, what is?
Yeah, it is.
We are waging war.
We are engaged.
It's an undeclared war.
But if you simply flip the script and ask yourself if Russia was doing this in Mexico.
Would we consider that an act of war?
Absolutely we would.
Do the neocons around Trump, Rubio, Waltz, Gorka, Kellogg, we'll get to General Kellogg's absurd proposal in a moment, do they want this war to continue?
Oh, yes.
No, they don't.
Well, they'd like it to end, only end with a Russian defeat and a Ukrainian victory.
But that's not going to happen.
But they're not willing to let go of it.
And that's, you know, we'll see what Whitcoff is able to, you know, he's on one side of the debate.
I think J.D. Vance backs him up.
I think Tulsi Gabbard backs him up.
But you've got a real split within Trump's cabinet on his national security team.
Between Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, you've got a bunch of bobbleheads.
Have you seen General Kellogg's absurd proposal?
It's almost inconceivable to me the president even allowed that to come out.
Chris, you can put it on the full screen.
He wants Ukraine divided like post-war Berlin.
Part French, part British, part American.
Are these people crazy?
Do they really think that Vladimir Putin would accept that?
Yeah, no, they're living in a fantasy land.
Just a slight diversion to note.
You know what the guiding principle for dividing Berlin was?
General Eisenhower looked at it and he saw where the Berlin Golf Club was.
And that's what he made sure that they carved that out so that we'd have the Berlin Golf Club there because he wanted to play golf.
So that's how a lot of these decisions get made.
Not regarding a grand strategic vision.
It's just some petty little stupid stuff.
And this is just a ridiculous...
Russia couldn't be any clearer on this.
If you foreigners set foot in Ukraine, you're legitimate military targets and we will kill you.
I'm going to play a clip from Pete Hegseth on Fox News over the weekend.
And then I'm going to ask you if the neocons want war with Iran.
Chris, cut number nine.
He's dead serious that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
He's said that for 20 years.
He's been consistent.
That is clear.
But he's also dead serious that if we can't figure this out at the negotiating table, then there are other options to include my department to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear bomb.
We hope we never get there.
We really do, Maria.
But what we're doing with the Houthis and what we're doing in the region, we've shown a capability to go far, to go deep, and to go big.
And again, we don't want to do that.
But if we have to, We will to prevent the nuclear bomb in Iran's hands.
I've gone far deep or big or been even marginally successful with the Houthis, but that to me, I'm trying to be intellectually honest, of course I worked with them for 10 years, but that to me is someone who has an itchy trigger finger, don't you think?
But he's dead serious, Judge.
Didn't he tell you?
He was dead serious.
If you would have played that Phil clip, he said dead serious probably six times.
You know, we're dead serious.
We are dead serious.
Okay, are we dead or are we serious?
You know, which is it?
Pete Hegseth is such an intellectual lightweight that he is the real danger, the foolishness of putting him in that position.
He's only going to do what Donald Trump tells him to do.
He's not one that's going to come and provide Trump with any kind of wisdom.
Or advice, or even a voice of caution to say, hey boss, before we do this, let's think this through.
Let's think through the fact that since March 15th, we've been bombing the Dickens out of the Houthis, and they've shot down four of our Predator Jones in the last two weeks, and we haven't stopped them from being able to fire missiles into Israel.
So after four weeks of intense military effort on our part, We can't stop the Houthis.
There's no way in hell we're going to stop the Iranians, so let's take that off the table.
Let's not even talk about it because it makes us look ridiculous.
How absurd is Netanyahu's Libya solution?
I mean, why on earth would Iran surrender its sovereignty in the face of a mortal enemy like Israel?
Yeah, well, they're not going to do that.
It is one of those, let's call it the Zionist fantasy, that they can relive Muammar Gaddafi's fate through the Ayatollah Khamenei.
This decapitation model that they like to follow.
If only we take out the top guy.
You know, let me cast one other aspect to these peace negotiations that are underway now.
Remember Adam Hochstein?
Was involved with peace negotiations between Hezbollah and Israel.
Right. And when Nasrallah was meeting with his leadership team to talk about those peace negotiations, that's when they were targeted.
Okay? So I can't rule out that this could also be another ploy, like kill Nasrallah.
In order to see if you could arrange a peace delegation coming together where they could be killed.
I mean, let's be that cynical about it.
Because when Witkoff, the deal that he negotiated allegedly with the Iranians is basically, okay, we'll talk about stopping the enrichment of uranium.
They didn't talk about dismantling the missile force, dismantling the military.
Ending all support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.
That apparently is off the table because Iran says, we're not going to talk about that.
We'll talk about our nuclear program.
Witkoff comes back to D.C. Those neocon elements, the Waltzes, the Rubios, the Kelloggs, and David Friedman, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, who's now supposedly going to become the U.N. U.S. representative at the U.N. He's a crazed Zionist.
Mike Huckabee, they're going to punch back on Trump.
Hey, you can't sell out Israel like this.
You've got to follow through.
They sincerely believe that we've got the military force that we can defeat Iran, and yet at the same time, they don't stop and look and say, We can't even handle the Houthis.
But by God, we're going to handle a country that is really light years ahead of the Houthis in terms of military capability?
Just insane.
Do we have the military capability to defeat Iran?
No. I mean, well, do we want to put two million men in the field?
Do we want to use nuclear weapons without regards to the consequences for us?
Yeah, we could do something like that.
It could probably destroy Iran.
But in the process, probably destroy ourselves.
Because the thing Washington, D.C. is not remembering, and Pepe Escobar has talked about this, I've talked about it, over the course of the last three weeks, Well, let's say the last four weeks.
So the first two weeks of March were caught up with Iran, Russia, and China doing a joint military exercise.
After that exercise concluded, there was a meeting in Beijing between Iran, Russia, and China.
Gee, talking about what?
And then last week, a week ago today, Iran, Russia, and China were again in Moscow.
They're coordinating what they're going to do with the United States.
They're not looking at this as isolated episodes.
The U.S. support for the war in Ukraine, the U.S. attack on China via the tariffs, the U.S. threats to go to war with Iran, those are all part and parcel as those countries look at it as a concerted U.S. effort to destroy them.
And they've recognized...
Like my ancestors did in the American Revolution.
We either hang together or we hang separately.
They're hanging together.
Call me cynical, but why doesn't anybody, Trump, Hegseth, even Lavrov, recognize publicly the Israelis' illegal possession of nuclear weapons?
Yeah, that's a great question.
It should be called out.
But, you know, they haven't.
They've gotten away with it.
And, you know, it's one of those, again, having a nuke sounds great.
And sometimes it's great insurance to keep you from being invaded.
But to try to find a place where you can use it without the risk of the blowback, of the follow-up, of making yourself a target of another nuclear state, very, very high.
And when we go into it, how Israel acquired the nuclear weapon explained was a lot at the root of the great animus that existed between Israel and President John F. Kennedy back in 1962,
1963. Larry, thank you very much, my man.
It's dreadful stuff we're talking about, but I deeply appreciate, and of course the viewers do as well, Your great analysis.
We'll look forward to seeing you and Ray at the end of the week as usual.
We'll be there.
All right.
All the best.
Thank you.
And coming up later today at 1.30, excuse me, at 1 o'clock this afternoon, Kivork al-Massian with the latest on Syria and Yemen.
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