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June 11, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
33:05
COL. Douglas Macgregor : How Close is War With Iran?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, June 11, 2025.
Colonel Douglas McGregor will be here in a moment.
Just how close is the United States with war against Iran?
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Colonel, welcome here, my dear friend, and thank you very much for joining us.
I have lost my audio of you, but I know you're out there somewhere.
Colonel.
Well, I think that it's possible that President Trump did not understand what the attack was all about.
But as far as Hegseth is concerned, no, I don't believe anything the man says.
But I think President Trump may not have been adequately briefed.
And even if he received a briefing, he may not have been told what the implications were for the attack.
Very few people today ever bring up the strategic arms limitations talks.
And they forget that we continue to observe these agreements that we made with the Soviet Union.
Now, some of them we've bailed out of, but we have not bailed out of the assault talks.
So I think President Trump may be telling the truth, but I don't think Secretary Higgseth is.
By the way, Secretary Higgseth made some sort of comment that he watched it all in real time, Judge.
Who said that?
Here is the comment, as inexplicable as it is, Colonel.
It is clear that he's denying.
Chris, I hear feedback on myself.
I don't know why.
It is clear that he's denying that he knew about it ahead of time.
It is unclear if he's talking about watching this drone attack or all drone attacks.
Chris, cut number 10. Are we seeing the ushering in of a new era of warfare?
The use of drones from afar.
After all, these drones were smuggled into Russia.
Hidden for a great span of time and then activated from 2,500 miles away.
Are we prepared, both defensively and offensively?
It was a daring and very effective operation that we were not aware of in advance and reflects What do you think?
I think the man is not being entirely truthful.
I think he knew it was coming.
He may not have known all the details, but he knew the essential features of it.
And, you know, this question of, is this new in warfare?
It's so frustrating when you deal with both general officers as well as people that know nothing about the military.
They have a very static view of warfare.
Warfare is always changing.
It's never the same.
You know, I guess it was Einstein that was once approached by one of his students or assistants and said, you know, Professor, you asked the same set of questions on the most recent test that you did a year ago in the same class.
And he said, why did you do that?
What's changed?
And Einstein allegedly said, well, the answers have changed.
And I think that's the problem that we have with everybody on military affairs.
The military battlefield, the environment is always changing.
But I think Hegseth undoubtedly was aware that this was happening.
Maybe he didn't understand the implications.
I don't think...
I'd be surprised if he did.
Why were the Russian planes out in the open?
So that our satellites can monitor them.
And we can detect whether or not they are actually carrying nuclear weapons.
We know where the weapons are stored in proximity to the airfields.
So we can see the bunkers where the weapons are stored.
And we can also detect emissions.
This is done on both sides.
We do the same thing in the Midwest and all over the place because we want the Russians to know that we're not planning to nuke them.
I mean, that's what it boils down to.
Does the United States monitor this in real time?
Yes.
In other words, our satellite passes.
We have a schedule and we know when the satellites are going over.
They know when our satellites are looking.
So they're purposely on display so that there is no question in anyone's mind about where are they?
Are they loaded for bear?
Are they going into action?
Are they not?
All of these things have to be made clear.
And this is the beauty of the overhead surveillance and space-based surveillance.
We can monitor all of these things.
Now, if the Russians had suddenly stopped displaying these aircraft and they disappeared into the ether, that would be a violation of the treaties.
But they've never done that.
We've never done that.
Colonel, my apologies.
I'm now back with you.
We had a little bit of an issue.
Isn't it crazy for him to say we didn't know about this and yet we monitored it in real time?
Yeah, I think so.
I think we should have been more honest.
But the honest answer from him, I think, would probably have been, yeah, we knew about it.
We didn't understand the implications.
And therefore, I made a mistake.
No one in power wants to admit that.
So the default position is, I'm sorry, I didn't know.
I have no recollection of that senator.
You know, that kind of thing.
Here's Foreign Minister Lavrov.
I'm going to ask you what you think the Kremlin thinks, but here's what he says the Kremlin thinks.
100% the British and probably the Americans.
Chris, cut number eight.
the Ukrainian side is doing everything possible but it would be absolutely helpless without the support I was tempted to say Anglo-Saxons but probably without Saxons just without the support of the British although you never know probably by inertia some US special forces would be involved in that but the British are actually behind all those things I'm 100% sure So,
Ritter says that means that he has intel demonstrating the certainty of what he's said.
Our friend Professor Doctorow says this is an attempt to mislead.
The British had nothing to do with it.
Well, perhaps Professor Doctorow has access to intelligence and the rest of us do not.
I don't know.
Frankly, I'm not privileged to read the intelligence What I would say is this, that the British frequently in the SAS as an arm of MI6 has done things that we would not do.
We said, no, we can't do that.
We can't expose ourselves.
So the British have stepped up and said, we'll do it.
We know the SAS pulled off a number of actions against the Russians.
Almost from the beginning of the war, several times in different places.
We've had action from the sea, in the Black Sea, against Russian targets.
So I think it's reasonable to assume that the British had a role in this.
And of course, they're by far the most vocal advocates for direct confrontation with the Russians.
Now, as far as we're concerned, we have tried to be more careful about exposing ourselves, particularly our own special ops on the ground.
So I think that's unlikely that we had any Americans involved.
On the other hand, again, we have by far the leading array of surveillance, intelligence, collection assets in space, in the world.
And that array doesn't miss much.
And so I'm sure that we monitored all of this and tracked it as it was developing in real time, as Secretary Hanks has said.
Would President Putin be within the law to retaliate against Great Britain?
Well, I suppose you can make that argument.
I think President Putin, once again, as we've discussed before, has always tried to do everything in his power not to provoke the United States and NATO into attacking him.
He doesn't want a war.
And I think that will continue.
Now, could he do something?
Well, there are a number of things that he could do.
The question that he has to ask is, how does that help his war effort?
Does it make any real difference?
I think he'll probably conclude it wouldn't make any real difference.
And if you look at the state of affairs in Great Britain right now, as this professor David Betts recently outlined, it's pretty close to internal revolution.
So again, if you're President Putin, why would you want to interrupt that?
Right, right.
Let your enemy destroy himself.
Colonel, who controls America?
I think that we have, you know, first of all, these words, the deep state, always bother me.
Because people say, well, that's the bureaucracy.
Well, my own experience with the so-called federal bureaucracy, in whatever form you want to approach it, military, intelligence, or anything else, is certainly in the grip of a lot of inertia.
In other words, to give you a quick example, after 92, when it became abundantly clear that the Soviet Union was crumbling and there was no threat whatsoever from the Soviet side against the West, we continued to do the things, we continued to observe the things, track the things, watch the things that we had done for 30, 40 years during the Cold War.
In other words, nothing really changed.
So in that sense, I think you've got a bureaucracy that's very, very resistant to changing, to adopt a new position or new perspectives.
But when you say who actually controls foreign policy, I think today we have to say clearly oligarchic billionaires who are mega donors, who have effectively bought the hill.
And when I say bought the hill, I mean buy it through contributions.
And they've also made it clear, if you look at the four stars that are out there that have retired, those who have been most vocal in their advocacy for conflict and confrontation with the Russians, with the Chinese, with Iran, they are very wealthy men because they have been hired into firms in New York City, financial firms that reward them for their continued commitment to conflict overseas.
And you also have people that are employed in various so-called think tanks, which is kind of an oxymoron.
I think they're just advocacy tanks, which is, I think, what Chaz Freeman likes to call them.
So I think you have to look at the sources of the money.
And people say AIPAC.
Well, AIPAC is not involved in everything, but it's involved in a lot.
But it is focused really like a laser in what they think is the international Jewish interest.
Not just Israel, but the larger diaspora's interest.
So it would be wrong to say that they control foreign policy, but they have a huge impact.
And there are others with a lot of money in Washington, D.C. that have an impact as well.
I don't think the President of the United States is a free agent.
Is it a likely scenario that elements of the CIA knew about this?
The director did not.
The director of national intelligence did not.
The secretary of defense probably did.
And nobody told the president of the United States.
You know, I can't speak for Tulsi Gabbard.
I don't know what she's aware of as the director of national intelligence because she has a lot on her plate, so to say.
But clearly, Radcliffe would have known everything, I would suspect, from the beginning.
And I don't know who briefs the president.
You'll recall that when President Trump was in office the first time around and Mr. Pompeo was appointed to head the CIA, he personally came across to the White House every morning to brief President Trump.
And he did that for various reasons.
Obviously, he was cultivating him because he wanted to exploit Trump for as much as he could get out of him on his road to the presidency, or at least at the time, so he thought.
But I would think that the CIA director very definitely was aware.
I would think that the National Security Advisor, whoever that is, would be aware.
And I guess at this point, that's Marco Rubio.
So if Marco Rubio is actually involved in doing the job on the National Security Council staff, he would have known.
Hmm.
Do you think that President Putin...
Do you think President Putin will respond to all of this with drama and ferocity, or do you think he'll continue his slow, patient, methodical, winning ways?
You know, this is a very important question because conditions have changed.
The Ukrainian military establishment is in ruins.
It doesn't present much resistance any longer.
Tens and thousands of Ukrainian troops are being slaughtered every week as they try to withdraw, disengage and avoid contact with the Russians.
There are undoubtedly discussions right now at the highest levels in Moscow between President Putin, his advisors, and I would think the general staff.
And I think the tenure of the discussion is as follows.
Do we continue on our current path?
Or do we strike decisively?
And when I mean strike, I'm not talking about missiles and rockets.
Because I think it should have become pretty clear at this point that regardless of how many missiles you launch, how many rockets are launched, and how many critical infrastructure targets are destroyed or people may be killed, that's not going to end the war.
Because Mr. Zelensky will sit quietly in his bunker in Kiev.
He'll collect whatever cash is sent his way.
He'll do whatever he can to maintain the fiction that Ukraine is a real nation state, which I don't think it is anymore, and that he is in control of something, when in reality he controls Kiev and he controls some of the weapons systems that can reach into Russia, but not too much else.
So I think the question is, what do we do?
Do we keep doing what we're doing, or do we move into Kiev and take the city?
Do we cross the river, go down to Odessa?
turn Ukraine's rump state into a landlocked state, which is important because most of the arms and support that comes to Ukraine, perhaps most is a strong word, but an awful lot of it comes from the sea, from the Black Sea.
And then finally, he's already made a decision to send 10,000 more Russian troops to Moldova, to the Transnistrian Republic, which is Russian in the southern and western, Well, that's a stone's throw from Odessa.
So if he's going to do that, he might as well just take Odessa.
He's not going to get an agreement out of anybody.
Nobody's going to sign up for anything right now.
So why sit quietly and hurl missiles at Ukraine when Ukraine is already defeated?
I think that's the discussion that's going on.
I'd be surprised if there were any other kind of discussion.
Is the United States preparing for war against Iran as we speak?
Well, if you listen to General Carrillo's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, I think that's what it was.
He went to great lengths to assure everyone that we are, in fact, prepared for war with Iran and that he has presented a number of options.
He didn't go into any detail.
And he conveyed the impression that, you know, he's ready and willing to fight.
Now, that could just be for the AIPAC audience, because he wants to end up like Generals Keene or Petraeus as millionaires in firms in New York City.
And the way to do that is to swear allegiance publicly to AIPAC.
And that means you go to places like the Institute for the Defense of Democracy.
Tell everybody how much you love Israel and how you're ready to fight Iran forever.
That's what General McKenzie did.
Everybody that wants to be a four-star, wants to be rewarded, wants to grow rich, does that.
Now, that could be it.
But I think we have to take what he says very seriously.
And I think we are ready to do whatever is required in terms of support for Israel if that war should break out.
Here is Congressman Mike Rogers.
An arch neocon and General Michael Carilla in the conversation of which you just spoke.
Cut number 11, Chris.
President Trump's made it clear that if Iran doesn't permanently give up its nuclear enrichment military force by the U.S. may be necessary.
If the president directed, is CENTCOM prepared to respond with overwhelming force to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran?
I have provided the Secretary of Defense and the president a wide range of options.
I take that as a yes.
Yes.
There you have it, whatever his motivation may be, whether it's personal or ideological.
Hasn't the administration gone back and forth, back and forth on all this?
We read in Haaretz that President Trump said to Netanyahu, back off, don't even consider attacking Iran.
We read in Haaretz that President Trump was going to allow the same level of enrichment as the original agreement did, the one that he withdrew from in his first term.
Do you have a handle on where all of that sits now, Colonel?
If you listen to the Iranians, one of their chief negotiators made the following statement.
He said you can have the agreement Effectively is stipulated.
I think it was a maximum of, what, 3.2% or 3.2% enrichment for purely civilian interests or civilian purposes.
And he said, but as soon as we arrive at any sort of agreement, the administration suffers from what he called the BB effect.
In other words, a call from Netanyahu comes in and says, unacceptable, no enrichment.
Then suddenly, President Trump comes up online and says, no enrichment, and the entire agreement is scrapped.
So I think he's right about the Beebe effect.
And the Beebe effect is very real.
And of course, Senator Rogers, no doubt, is 100% in favor of the Beebe effect.
So under those circumstances, I think we have to conclude that we're not going to get an agreement with the Iranians.
Period.
So if there's not going to be an agreement, the next question is, what happens?
Well, you and I have talked about this before.
We both know that President Trump does not want a war with Iran.
In fact, President Trump doesn't want a war with anybody.
That's pretty clear to me.
That was clear to me in 2020.
That's one of the reasons I voted for the man.
But does that make a difference?
And you're back to your other question.
Who's really controlling things?
And my personal opinion is that the, That could happen.
And I think that is still the most likely scenario.
The idea that we're all going to get together at midnight on Friday and attack Iran is nonsense.
That's not the way it'll go down.
I think something is much more likely to happen as a consequence of Israeli action or planning, and then we are dragged in.
Here's former Ambassador Kurt Volker two days ago on this very topic.
Chris, cut number seven.
At what point does Israel do something about it?
Well, I think we're getting closer and closer to that day.
But now they're seeing the negotiation going on between the U.S. and Iran, Does the Donald Trump for whom you voted?
Have the courage to say to Netanyahu, go take a hike.
We're agreeing to 3.2 in Richmond.
They have the right to use nuclear power to heat their homes and to run the sophisticated equipment in hospitals that everybody uses today.
The answer to that one is, I think, no.
Now, President Trump was taken aback somewhat when he discovered that the Russians are negotiating for a contract that would result in the building of several Nuclear power stations on the ground in Iran.
And the Russians have been very upfront about that.
I think that was actually mentioned by President Putin to President Trump.
So then the question is, if that's true, and I think it is, and you are Netanyahu, you are approaching the 11th hour.
Either you strike or you'll end up in a position where you can't possibly have an impact anymore.
The question for President Trump is, can he stay out of it?
And I don't think he can.
You know, it's interesting when I talk to people about Iran, one of the things that I hear when I talk to people on the Hill or others who call themselves analysts in the field, it's as though nothing has changed in 46 years since the Iranian Revolution.
Well, Judge, you and I know that's not true.
Iran is a very different country today from what it was 46 years ago.
Right.
And it is not what it is depicted as being, as this dangerous revolutionary force.
I remember people comparing the regime in Iran at the time of the revolution to the Bolsheviks in Moscow.
The Bolsheviks, of course, immediately struck out to enlarge their control of everything they could.
They marched into Poland.
Their goal was to march to Germany.
They had to reconquer vast areas in Central Asia.
And so people said, look, they're going to be like the Bolsheviks.
We have to stop them dead in their tracks.
Well, that was not true.
Eventually, Saddam Hussein started a war with them.
We subsidized him.
We supported him.
That war went very, very badly.
And Iran emerged from it.
Stronger, I would argue, than it was when it went in.
And Iran today is not a nation of religious fanatics, and nobody over there is anxious to kill Jews.
Contrary to what everybody in Israel thinks.
In fact, on the contrary, I would say that if anything, the Iranians are singularly disinterested in this ongoing spat between Israel and its neighbors.
But it's unavoidably dragged in when its co-religionists, such as the Shiites in southern Lebanon, become targets.
So the bottom line is, no, I think I'm quite certain that President Trump doesn't want it.
The question is, can he really prevent it?
How much does he control?
How many people on the Hill can he count on?
In other words, it's back to the question of, sit down with me, J.D., and let's go through the roster of senators.
How many senators do I control?
How many senators does Bibi Netanyahu control?
And right now, I would argue that Mr. Netanyahu has greater influence and greater control over the Senate than President Trump does.
Here's the president on Monday.
Talking about enrichment.
Yet again, cut number 12. What's the main impediment to getting a deal?
Well, they're just asking for things that you can't do.
They don't want to give up what they have to give up.
You know what that is.
They seek enrichment.
We can't have enrichment.
We want just the opposite.
And so far, they're not there.
I hate to say that.
Because the alternative is a very, very dire one.
But they're not there.
They have given us their thoughts on the deal.
And I said, you know, it's just not acceptable.
I guess he had just gotten off the phone with Netanyahu.
I don't want to be cynical, but the administration's chief negotiator Well, I can't evaluate Witkoff.
You know, he's in a strange position.
He's not really a diplomat.
He's not formally a member of the administration.
He's a close personal friend.
And I think he's done for his friend all that he can do, and I think he's probably said that.
So we're at an impasse.
That's the point.
And how do you get out of the impasse?
I think that Mr. Netanyahu wants the strikes to go forward against Iran, and I think he's prepared to do that.
And again, under the circumstances, I don't think we would lead it, but I think we could easily be dragged in to support it.
Ultimately, into a war with Iran and potentially a lot of other people that we don't want to go to war with.
Now, you know, this business of what's acceptable and what isn't.
You know, if you are going to buy the Israeli argument that Iran is what it was 46 years ago, and if they're given a weapon, they're immediately going to nuke everybody in sight, well, then you have to do anything and everything to stop that.
But if you see Iran very differently as it is, as opposed to what the Israelis say it is, Then the possibility that Iran is enriching uranium for civilian use should not be threatening to anybody.
I mean, where do you draw the line?
Did we immediately draw the line on India and Pakistan?
And to be perfectly blunt, Judge, I think if you look at Pakistan, you could make an argument that that place is a lot less stable and predictable than Iran.
A hell of a lot.
Nobody ever brings it up.
Doesn't seem to matter.
And I think we're back to the bottom line, which is Israel wants a monopoly of control over nuclear weapons.
If it doesn't have that monopoly, that means it actually has to talk to, negotiate with, and get along with its neighbors.
It doesn't want to do that.
It wants the upper hand.
It wants to hold that whip hand in perpetuity against everyone in the region.
And if Iran gets a nuclear weapon.
That changes in their minds strategically what they can do.
Their freedom of action is now constrained.
By the way, Judge, our freedom of action was constrained as soon as the Soviets managed to explode a nuclear weapon.
You remember that very clearly.
As soon as they had a weapon, suddenly the world changed.
And we've lived with that ever since.
And China is another one.
Remember Brezhnev actually proposed to Richard Nixon A joint nuclear strike on China's nuclear facilities.
We must not allow these Chinese to have a nuclear weapon.
And Nixon wisely said, no, we're not launching an unprovoked strike against China under any circumstances.
So I think Nixon was right.
And I think that right now, Trump knows that this is not something we want to do, but I'm not sure he can stop it.
Wouldn't a serious nuclear arsenal in the hands of the Iran government be the best thing for stability in the Middle East?
I don't know.
I mean, that's a question that has to be answered.
But I do think there's an alternative that has been considered in the past that has been outright rejected by the Israelis.
And that is to make the entire region nuclear-free.
And everybody in the region would sign up for it except the Israelis.
And that would have been the best solution.
To the extent we can make vast areas of the planet nuclear-free, we ought to try and do it.
Just as you and I have talked about this before, I'm an advocate for a no-first-use doctrine.
Unambiguous, straightforward.
President Trump should state it publicly.
He and President Putin and President Xi should get together and say no first strike.
We oppose that.
There will be no first use by our countries under any circumstance.
I think that would be very good for the world, but I don't see it happening.
Do you?
The Israelis will never agree to it.
No.
Colonel, thank you very much.
Thanks for letting me go all across the board here.
A very, very fascinating conversation.
Sorry about those little internet blips when we first started, but we recovered.
Thank you for your time.
We look forward to seeing you again next week.
Okay, Judge.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Sure.
And coming up at 3 o 'clock today, Daniel McAdams from the Ron Paul Institute.
Do we still have a constitution?
And Ian Proud at 4 o 'clock, the former British diplomat.
Just what is the British government up to?
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