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May 20, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
27:29
Pepe Escobar : How Iran Plans to Tackle the US.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, May 21st, 2025.
Our dear friend, world traveler, never sleeps in the same bed two nights in a row.
I exaggerated a little bit.
Pepe Escobar just now.
Pepe, you're in Thailand, but you just got back from Iran.
Am I right?
Yes, Judge.
I have a lot of questions for you about the Iran preparations for either an economic or a military onslaught from the United States.
But first, let's start with your general impressions of Iran.
You wrote a fascinating, fascinating piece about the international north-south transatlanticism.
So tell us, generally, your impression of international commerce in Iran, culture in Iran, and now the sad part.
The attitude in Iran towards Western demonization.
Absolutely.
I wish I had three hours, Judge.
So do I. So it's going to be the Hollywood pitch.
I was extremely privileged because before going to Iran, over a month ago, I had asked our gracious host.
Can you arrange two trips for me?
I want to go to the Caspian, and I want to go to the Persian Gulf, and then the Sea of Oman, because I want to do a special on the International North-South Transportation Corridor, which is Russia, Iran, India.
Three major BRICS notions.
So I got there, and in the first day, it's a gift from heaven.
I had a crew of six, extremely professional.
Because they wanted to turn a documentary about my investigation.
So this was really a gift because we had all the permits, we had all the infrastructure, the logistics were taken care of, and we could go anywhere we wanted and talk to anybody we wanted.
And this is going to be, of course, it's going to go through editing post-production.
When it will be out, it's a made-in-Iran documentary, but it will circulate a lot in Eurasia.
But answering your question briefly, I had finally the full dimension of a groundbreaking geoeconomic development project like the North-South Corridor.
which starts in St. Petersburg, Moscow, goes to Astrakhan, Russian ports, the crossings When you say corridor, is this a highway?
Is it a communications facility?
Is it a series of villages?
What is it?
This is an old school map, Judge.
How cool is that?
Because this old school map was given to me by an Iranian specialist in trade corridors.
So I carry it with me everywhere because it explains graphically and very simple, the itinerary of the...
You can see it on top of St. Petersburg and Moscow.
You see the Caspian.
You see a crossing Iran from north to south to Bandar Abbas.
And then down there, arriving in Mumbai in India.
Wow.
So this is the answer to the...
From St. Petersburg to Mumbai.
To Mumbai.
Across Iran, across the Caspian and across Iran.
So that's why it's so important, because it's the BRICS, these three BRICS alternative to the Swiss Canal.
Faster, cheaper and immune to sanctions.
Let me just repeat that, because the third part is very important.
Faster, cheaper, and immune to sanctions.
Absolutely.
Don't forget that these three bricks are under sanctions.
And there will be more, probably.
So this is a project that has been discussed by the three of them for a long, for years, in fact.
And it started to pick up speed last year, and particularly this year.
Let's say the remaining problem, which I also saw in front of me, is the Caspian.
How from Astrakhan, the Russian port in the north of the Caspian, to the port of Bandar Anzali in the southern Caspian in Iran.
When I arrived at the port of Bandar Anzali, George, my first question is, where is the port?
There's no infrastructure.
It's a very small port, and it's another example for all of us of the devastating effects of sanctions over decades.
So there's no upgrading, no investment.
So you have a very important port in the crucial Caspian Sea.
When you compare to the other ones, like Baku, for instance, which is a mega port, or in Turkmenistan, Turkmenbashi, the Iranian port is something like this.
So it's going to...
Need a lot of upgrading.
So what is the Russian idea?
Okay, we're going to build a railway on the western margin of the Caspian.
It could be ready between two or three years.
And then it's going to be very, very fast.
Or they use a network of roads from southern Russia through Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, arriving in Tehran.
But you only see the challenges when you go there and you actually, you know, it's in front of you.
Same thing when I arrived in Bandar Abbas in the Persian Gulf, which is a megaport in the Persian Gulf.
By the way, Judge, 39 kilometers only away from the Strait of Hormuz.
My first question was, okay, can I see the Strait of Hormuz from here?
They said, no, it's over there because it's 39 kilometers.
And it's always foggy, but it's over there.
And when you leave Bandar Abbas by...
We took a flight from Banarabas to Chabaha.
You go over Hormuz Island, which is one of the most important islands in the street of Hormuz.
And why this is all so important in the middle of everything that is happening.
Don't forget that only a few days ago, there was another American threat.
We're going to block Iran from exporting all their oil.
And we got a response on the record.
If you block our oil, you're going to block everybody's oil, which translated means we block the Strait of Hormuz.
And what does that mean?
Ask Goldman Sachs.
They already gained that years ago.
Collapse of the global economy.
Period.
Barrel of oil going to 200 or maybe 500.
So, you know, they have their cards.
They don't advertise them.
But it was great to see the geoeconomic potential of the corridor on the spot.
And when I arrived at the icing on the cake, which is the port of Chabahar, in the Sea of Oman, close to the Arabian Sea, absolutely impeccable in terms of a booming town.
It's going to be one of the big, big places in the future.
And alongside...
Which was a dream of mine for years.
I wanted to go to the Iran-Pakistani border.
And finally this time I made it, but I made it by boat.
I arrived at a fishing village on the border.
I rented a boat, so I arrived at the maritime border of Iran-Pakistan without Salafi Jihadis, without MI6, without CIA, without cross-border terrorism, you name it.
You wrote about going to a bazaar to buy a rug.
Yes.
And the rug merchant relocated to Portugal.
And the young man who had his rug business, Talk to you about the Western demonization of Iran.
Absolutely.
What did he tell you?
One among many that I had this conversation, Judge, in Tehran, in Isfahan, in Qom when I visited the shrine of We arrived at the shrine at two in the morning.
It's one of the most extraordinary spiritual experiences on earth to wander around the shrine like that in the middle of the night with very few pilgrims reading the Koran.
But this guy that I met, I was looking for a friend of mine who relocated to Portugal because of bad business.
And he told me, of course, look at Turkey.
Turkey has 40 million tourists a year.
We have two or three, literally.
Meaning in all of Iran?
No, yeah, he was saying metaphorically in all of Iran, but applying to the bazaar itself, because the tourists that you see in the bazaar nowadays, most of them are from Central Asia, Persian Gulf, and a few from China.
But the hard-spending Americans, Canadians, Europeans, nowhere to be seen.
Part of the demonization campaign and part of this campaign to basically instill inside people in the West that it's very dangerous to travel to Iran.
On the contrary, it's one of the safest countries on earth.
And I've been to a lot of hellholes all over the world.
It's a completely different story.
Iran is extremely civilized, extremely safe.
Do you have your finger on the pulse?
Yes.
I talked a lot about it in Tehran with diplomats, with high-ranking media executives, with academics a lot, with even theologians.
We had Shiite theology discussions in Tehran.
Just to give you and our audience the level, the intellectual level.
Of Iran, in terms of their best universities, in terms of how capable people are, not only in physics, mathematics.
This is when we visit the IRGC aerospace complex, for instance, where we saw several generations of Shahid drones, several generations of FATE missiles.
But in humanities as well.
In philosophy.
They know the history of Western philosophy from A to Z. And they compare with CI theology.
And they love to discuss this with forums.
So it's really at the highest level.
In terms of Trump, it's complicated.
As usual.
Nobody believes in Trump 2.0 promises to solve the so-called Nuclear deal or new JCPOA 2.0.
Because the fact that Trump canceled the original JCPOA left a profound impression all across Iran.
And I mean the whole specter of society.
So, basically, rule number one, which is what Ayatollah Khamenei is always saying.
We cannot trust the Americans.
But there's the benefit of the doubt this time because, okay, Arakshi is discussing with Witkow.
At least they seem to be understanding each other a little bit.
There's going to be another meeting this Friday in Rome, in fact.
So at least the negotiations continue.
But at the same time, the threats continue every week.
And in Iranian media, it's all over the place.
In Iranian media, in Farsi, it's all over the place.
So you have the front page, Trump saying, if there's no deal, I'm going to bomb Iran.
Then the next day.
If they don't go for zero Iranian enrichment, there's no deal.
And then I'm going to block them exporting their oil.
So this is what, in the Iranian unconscious, this is what's imprinted virtually every day.
Because there's no diplomacy on the American side.
It's basically a threat.
Let me switch gears a little bit.
In your view, is the West, I'm thinking of France, Great Britain, and Canada, beginning to recognize the horrors of the genocide in Gaza?
Apparently, yes, George.
But I would say, to quote Monty Python, a whiff of a sign that they're starting to get the picture.
But not exactly.
Deep, deep inside.
We're going to see the next, because the fact that the legitimation of the genocide by the fragmented collective West is going to be a tremendous blowback to all these so-called political leaderships across the West.
They're starting to see that it's going to hit them sooner or later.
Sooner rather than later.
So they are trying to get away from it.
Right.
Let me play for you a very disturbing clip.
It's in Hebrew, but English translation of a former member of the Knesset from Netanyahu's party, who then left his party to form his own.
But this guy is in the Smotrich and Ben-Gavir category.
However, his wording is simply horrific.
Chris, cut number 10. Every child in Gaza is the enemy.
We are at war with the Gazan entity, the Gazan terror entity, which we ourselves established in Gaza, in Oslo, and in the disengagement.
The disengagement that Prime Minister Netanyahu voted in favor of, that is the enemy now.
Every such child to whom you are now giving milk in another 15 years will rape your daughters and slaughter your children.
We need to conquer Gaza and settle it.
And not a single Gazan child should remain there.
Let's stop telling ourselves this deception, just to score points in this game between pro-BB and anti-BB.
This isn't about left or right, it's about winning this war, and it's about justice.
When will we learn?
When will we learn?
Well, this guy's a maniac.
Does he exemplify the attitude of the Netanyahu regime?
Not only that, Judge, it's even worse.
He exemplifies the attitude of a substantial parcel of the Israeli population.
As serious as it gets.
Our friend Alistair Crook, he knows this by heart.
And it's absolutely true.
Talking to, let's say, Israeli dissidents or Jewish dissidents all over the world.
I talked to some of them in Iran, for that matter.
They all know, yes, most of the population in Israel, they support these psychopathological, genocidal, Old Testament freaks.
That's the problem.
Is Trump as culpable for genocide as Biden?
Nuance.
For the moment, it's, let's say, full support to Israel.
But now...
There's got to be some sort of nuance because even Trump is saying that if he supports Israel 120% as usual, he will be complicit in genocide.
Just like the absolutely infrahuman imbeciles of the European Union.
So that's very, very complicated.
So it's the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, which is extremely volatile, the relationship between Trump and any government in Israel, and the relationship between Trump's donors and the Jewish diaspora.
So it's in several levels, and that's why it's so complicated.
But the United States simply cannot be associated with a genocide in 21st century.
This is beyond suicidal.
Let's get back to Whitcoff.
Will Iran accept an American deal that permits no nuclear enrichment?
Absolutely out of the question.
And we heard this from Ayatollah Khamenei even allowed himself a little bit of a sense of humor this week, saying that this is nonsense, which coming from him is pretty, pretty stiff, you know.
And basically there are three demands which stay for the moment.
No more support for the axis of resistance.
Iran will never accept that.
No more military program, especially ballistic missile program.
They will never accept that.
And no more enrichment for their civilian nuclear program.
They will never accept that as well.
So, to start with, there's zero dialogue to start with, because these are impositions on the American side.
I assume, and we are.
We are all assuming that Witkoff and Arakshi are discussing some details about this on the table.
We don't know.
First of all, because there's no table.
It's the Omani messengers, right?
So it's not direct.
They don't meet person to person?
No, they don't meet person to person.
They don't meet person to person.
Not yet, at least.
Which is completely absurd.
So the Omanis are doing the messengers back and forth.
Why can't it run?
Have a nuclear weapon as a buffer to the Israelis.
The technical answer to your question, Judge, and this is the spiritual Shiite theology answer, because it's un-Islamic.
This started with Ayatollah Khomeini, and it was reiterated by also a fatwa by Ayatollah Khamenei.
Top advisors on foreign policy, including a very important guy who this week basically told the Americas, look, think twice if you're planning to attack Iran.
Javad Larijan.
Very, very important.
He's a former top advisor on everything, including foreign policy to Ayatollah Khayri.
And the IRGC people.
We talked to some of them in Tehran, not with the With the heads, it was very, very difficult.
All of us were there.
We tried to get an interview with the top leadership of IRGC.
It's very complicated.
But what we managed to get from people close to them as well is that we will protect our nuclear program, we will protect our military program, and we won't bow down to...
Any imposition by the Americans.
If they don't respect us and we have a discussion as equals on the table, nothing's gonna happen.
How will, I'm going to use the Pepe Escobar phrase, pardon me, how will Iran tackle the U.S.?
Stated differently, what will Iran do if Israel and the U.S. attack?
Well, we had already a glimpse, which was the first time coming directly from the president, not from IRGC, not from so-called hardliners in the West.
We'll block the Strait of Hormuz, and we're going to attack all your bases, everything that you have in West Asia.
And I'm sure the guys at the Pentagon got this message, because Iran has the capability to do that in a flash.
It was similar to the response that I got from a brigadier general, the IRGC in Tehran, when he said, Operation True Promise 3 is ready to go.
We're just waiting for the order when it comes.
So they're ready.
And there are very few illusions that there won't be a war.
Is an Israeli attack imminent, as CNN reported about an hour ago?
No, no, no.
And in fact, Judge, this was a...
This leak was, I would say, this was leaked by realists in D.C. to preempt the possibility of...
Well, first of all, Israel cannot do anything by themselves.
It will have to be with the U.S. Realists in the Beltway, in the different silos, everywhere, Pentagon, CIA, etc., they know that it will be suicidal.
And if the U.S. supports it, it will be extra suicidal for American interests.
And Israel, if they do this, they will be reduced to a parking lot.
Iran can't do it.
They have enough missiles to do it.
They showed only, I would say, 20 to 30% of their potential in Operation True Promise 1 and 2. So they are very, very confident.
They don't want a war.
They will do, and they are trying to do everything to prevent a war, but they know that...
The only way out for Netanyahu is a war and dragging the U.S. The thing is he cannot drag Trump when Trump starts thinking that he's being manipulated to enter a war that he doesn't want.
Here's Witkoff's latest.
This is not very happy, but here's what he said on Sunday about his negotiations with the Iranians.
Chris, cut number five.
Can you give us a sense of what...
Is the outline of the deal that President Trump wants to get with Iran?
He wants to solve this conflict diplomatically and with dialogue.
But on the other hand, we have one very, very clear red line, and that is enrichment.
We cannot allow even 1% of an enrichment capability.
We've delivered a proposal to the Iranians that we think addresses some of this without disrespecting them.
And so...
That's important.
We want to get to a solution here, and we think that we will be able to, but everything begins from our standpoint, John, with a deal that does not include enrichment.
We cannot have that, because enrichment enables weaponization, and we will not allow a bomb to get here.
But short of that...
There are all kinds of ways for us to achieve our goals in this negotiation.
We think that we will be meeting sometime this week in Europe.
And we hope that it will lead to some real positivity.
And that's where we are, sir.
That's a non-starter, right?
And very, very important.
The key thing that he said, Judge, he...
Totally disrespected the Iranians by saying you cannot even enrich 1% of Iranians even for your civilian nuclear program.
The Iranians take this as the insult of the century.
This is completely absurd.
And they have already been enriching Iranians for their own civilian program for decades.
So it's a complete non-starter.
Where do you think this will be in 6 or 10 months?
Well, Judge, when we try to be realists, you know, in our line of my old school reportage and news analysis line, we stick to facts.
And the problem is the American government and this administration, it's not facts, it's narratives, clashing narratives, superimposed narratives.
Twisted narratives.
Narratives that change from one day to another.
Because there's no tactic and there's no strategy, especially.
And that's why these two, it's very, very important because these are the two parallel key negotiations going on now that will define the next few years, at least, or decades.
Russia-US on Ukraine and US-Iran.
It's not the nuclear deal.
It's Iran as a great regional power, which is something that Israel simply cannot accept.
These are the two parallel negotiations.
And it's no wonder that the U.S. is stuck on both.
Pepe Escobar, pleasure, my dear friend.
I don't know how you do it, but thank you very much.
I have no idea what the time is where you are, but you're as lively as ever.
God bless you.
Thank you for all your insights.
Thank you for sharing the benefits of all your travels.
We'll look forward to seeing you again next week from wherever you might be.
Hope to see you soon, George.
And you know what I mean, right?
Yes.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you, my man.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
So coming up at 2 o 'clock, Matt Ho, who we are happy to welcome back to the program.
And some fireworks on the floor of the Congress involving Marco Rubio, which we'll share with you at that time.
At 3 o 'clock, Phil Giraldi.
And at 4 o 'clock, not a happy man, ready to explode, and always worth waiting for.
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