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June 13, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
34:16
SPECIAL EDITION : SCOTT RITTER : Israel Strikes Iran - LIVE UPDATES
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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Friday, June 13th, Friday the 13th, Friday, June 13th, 2025.
Welcome to this special edition.
It's six o 'clock in the morning here on the East Coast of the United States.
I'm deeply grateful because there isn't anyone on the planet with whom I would rather be discussing and analyzing for my audience what is happening in Israel and in Iran than the person now sharing the screen with me, the great Scott Ritter.
Scott, thank you very much for your time.
Thanks for being up at this hour.
Thank you for your thoughts, which I have seen in summary form.
Let's get right to it.
What happened last night?
What did the Israelis do?
What did they attack?
What did they achieve?
Well, what happened last night was the modern-day equivalent of a Pearl Harbor for Iran.
It was a surprise attack by Israel, supported by the United States.
The goal was to threefold.
First of all, to keep...
So it was a decapitation strike.
Two, they cleared out Iran's air defense system to create the sense of vulnerability upon Iran.
surviving Iranians, meaning that there's no longer an Iranian air defense system that's intact, capable of defending Iran's strategic targets or defending Iran's leadership.
And then three, they carried out decisive actions against important technological nodes that are related to Iran's nuclear program and Iran's ballistic missile program to include operational bases of Iran's ballistic missile forces, This wasn't a war-winning strike, meaning Iran still retains significant capability.
This was a strike designed to draw Iran into a deeper, more existential struggle.
This is a war of survival between Israel and Iran.
This is a strike that's designed to create the circumstances under which the United States will have no choice but to intervene on Iran's side, which is necessary if you're going to bring an end to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is Iran's...
If you intervene on Iran's side, you mean on Israel's side.
On the Israel side, I'm sorry.
Yes, on the Israel side.
Right, right, right.
So was the damage significant?
Did it impair Iran's offensive capability?
What kind of a retaliation can we expect?
Iran has maintained that its ballistic missile forces are resilient, that they are spread out.
They are invulnerable to this kind of preemptive strike.
It's clear that Israel has struck some of these underground facilities that Iran has built.
Israel also apparently took out a number of Iran's ready forces, that is, ballistic missile launch.
It appears that these had been identified and struck by Israel, which is one of the reasons why we haven't seen an immediate Iranian response with missiles, is that they are apparently in the process of evaluating what damage has been done and trying to assemble the forces necessary to carry out a retaliation.
This was a very, very thorough attack by Israel, and it did significant damage to Iran.
What is Israel's true goal here?
Actually, before that, this was just posted by the President of the United States a few minutes ago, and I'll read it since this is his posting on his own website.
I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal.
I told them in the strongest of terms to just do it.
But no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn't get it done.
I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the world by far, in caps, and that Israel has a lot of it with much more to come, and they know how to use it.
Certain Iranian hardliners spoke bravely.
But they didn't know what was about to happen.
They're all dead now, and it will only get worse.
There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter with thee.
I can't read anymore, Chris.
Is there more to this?
Ah, okay.
I'm sorry, my mouse is in the way here.
Hold on, I'll finish reading it.
And they know how to use it.
Certain Iranian hardliners spoke bravely, but they didn't know what was about to happen.
They're all dead, and it will only get worse.
There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal come to an end.
Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.
No more death or destruction.
Just do it before it is too late.
God bless.
I was going to ask you if the United States authorized this, and notwithstanding what Trump said publicly many times, according to this, the United States did.
Not just authorized it, Judge.
We planned it.
This is a joint plan between the United States and Israel that's been in the works for Over a year, continuously updated with intelligence.
What the president just did here is undermine American legitimacy, credibility.
And shows that America is incapable of serious diplomatic engagement.
If I were a Russian, if I were a Chinese diplomat, if I were anybody in the world, what this proves is that America is a two-faced liar, and Donald Trump is a two-faced liar.
He's been promoting a negotiation track with Iran he was never serious about.
There can be no doubt now, no doubt, Judge, that the United States and Israel conspired to make this attack happen.
If you take a look at...
This is where we have to make a deal, make or break.
And the Israelis said, we will withhold any decision about an attack until after Sunday, until after we see what's going on.
The United States wasn't.
What this shows is that the surprise attack by Israel was part of a concerted effort by the United States and Israel to lull Iran into a false sense of complacency, exposing itself, making it vulnerable for the very attack that took place.
The notion that the United States was not cognizant of this is absurd and has just been proven to be a lie by the president's own tweet.
This tweet condemns the president of the United States.
Wow.
How do we know how extensive the damage was and whether Iran is able to retaliate?
Well, Iran's abilities to...
What made Iran different was its ability to put significant infrastructure underground.
And we don't know yet to what extent the underground infrastructure was damaged or destroyed by Israel.
And so it's a wait and see moment.
My feeling is that much of Iran's underground infrastructure survived and that Iran right now is in the process of re-eventing.
They knew such an attack was possible.
And so, you know, they have hopefully planned, hopefully from an Iranian perspective, planned accordingly and will have the ability to retaliate.
You know, what Israel did to Hezbollah, what Israel did to Syria.
This is what Israel has tried to do today to, or last night, to Iran.
You know, we'll find out how successful it is in the coming hours.
Is this a military assault still going on as we speak?
It's noon in the Middle East.
It's 6 a.m.
It's happening right now.
My understanding is that strategic targets inside Iran are being attacked by Israel.
Shiraz has been attacked.
Airfields are being attacked.
I believe that there's going to be a second round of decapitation strikes that the Israelis are going to.
If you remember when Nasrallah was murdered, assassinated by Israel, that they immediately followed up and killed the people that came into his position after it.
The Israelis, and it's something I warned about, there's a gentleman, Professor Mirande, who has been out, you know, Speaking on behalf of the Iranian government, or at least speaking in defense of the Iranian government's policies.
And I had an interesting conversation with him a while back where I said, look, the first Israeli attack will be done by drones.
It'll be a decapitation strike.
And they've proven that capability by assassinating Haniyeh.
On the inauguration day in Tehran, how did that drone get into Tehran?
And he said, well, we're not worried about that.
Well, worry about it, because that just happened.
All your air defense was taken out, your senior leadership was decapitated, and this isn't the first round.
I believe that Israeli drones will continue to operate, continue to hunt down people.
This is an ongoing activity.
Israel says that this will continue for days, if not weeks, a relentless assault against Iran.
So now we have to find out how well prepared Iran is to receive this attack and be able to retaliate.
You keep using the word decapitate.
Was the president of Iran killed?
Was the Ayatollah killed?
Are you talking about that level of people, or are you talking about military and intelligence and scientific people?
Well, we know that the Ayatollah was not killed because the Supreme Leader has issued a statement.
So he obviously is alive or somebody speaking on his stead.
I don't know where the Iranian president is.
That would be the last person I would strike if I were the Israelis, because the Iranian president has always been opposed to...
These are the people who were proposing a strike against Israel.
Every single senior Iranian military leader who was talking about True Promise 3, the need to strike, they're dead.
Now, they've been replaced by other people.
The Israelis, I would imagine, would be seeking to hunt these people down and kill them as well.
The idea is to eliminate those voices that we're articulating strongly within.
Iran's senior circles about the need for, you know, delivering a decisive blow against Israel and keep alive those people who would argue against that, argue for the survival of Iran's economy.
This is the Israelis came out today and said, you know, let us destroy, it was an amazing statement, let us destroy your nuclear infrastructure without retaliation and we won't touch your oil.
You know, your oil infrastructure.
But if you retaliate against us, we'll take out your oil.
So what Israel is saying is that they are going to put the global economy at risk because the first time Israel strikes Iranians, The Iranians have promised a devastating response to the regional oil infrastructure, meaning that Iran isn't going to allow itself to be in a position where it alone loses income generation from oil.
They will seek to strike.
Now, whether Iran can follow through with this is another question, but Israel's playing a very, very dangerous game right now.
And your colleagues on this show told us for a long time that the Iranian nuclear facilities in Richmond and whatever else accompanies that were safely underground.
Did the Israelis somehow penetrate that?
I believe not.
Firdos is still intact.
I mean, this is the stupidity of the Israeli action because facilities like Firdos are underground.
In that facility, there are...
significant enrichment capabilities, modern centrifuges configured in cascades that could enrich the 60% enrichment into weapons-grade uranium, unless Israel figured a way to get humans inside.
And again, you can never write the Mossad off and its abilities, but to get humans inside or to get a...
The idea that Israel could strike with non-nuclear weapons, Firdos, and take it out, or some of the others.
There's a third facility that Iran was getting ready to bring up to speed.
I don't think these facilities restrict.
There are people who are saying that, uh, Natanz is Iran's initial enrichment facility.
The above-ground features of Natanz appear to have been struck and eliminated, and based upon videos that I've watched, Israel was hitting the above-ground targets with bombs designed to create massive overpressure.
So you strike, overpressure, collapse.
That was their intent.
There are some people, including the IAEA, that have suggested that the underground aspects of Iran's Natanz facility have not been destroyed.
There's been no detection of radiation out of Natanz, which one would expect if you collapsed a centrifuge cascade that was actively involved in enriching uranium.
Do we know if any American personnel participated in this?
Military or, you know, fighter pilots, anything like that?
I don't believe there was any American involvement in this, and that was, I mean, in terms of the active involvement, because that's part of the ploy.
This was supposed to be presented as an Israeli-only strike, that Israel had no choice but to undertake this action.
And so the United States is trying to distance itself because we are in a very vulnerable Right
Right now, we are looking at the Iranian response.
What will it be?
Will it be limited to Israel?
Will it include strikes, as Iran has promised, against American military installations in the region?
Will Iran preemptively take out the oil production?
You see the Saudis, Omanis, everybody in the region condemning the Israeli action, saying we had nothing to do with this because they don't want Iran to launch a retaliation.
But no, I think the United States didn't have...
We have provided Israel with the weapons that were used to target Iranian leadership and Iranian infantry.
We did this, he said.
We are the ones who did this.
The Israeli proxy used the weapons we provided to do this against targets we were knowledgeable of.
Meaning we provided weapons to Israel for the exact purpose of assassinating Iranian leadership.
The president is bragging about removing these people.
I mean, come on, Judge.
Removing the people with whom he was, not directly, negotiating.
Apparently he didn't talk to his Secretary of State.
Here's what Marco Rubio said last night.
Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran.
We are not involved in strikes against Iran, and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.
Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense.
President Trump and the administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners.
Let me be clear, Iran should not target U.S. interests.
Look, Judge, if I came forward and tried to present this defense, and then the prosecutor put the president's statement up there, how's my defense looking?
Not very good.
That's right.
As I hear you, I hear you saying, That the goal here was not so much the destruction of Iranian nuclear capability as it was regime change.
I've always said that.
I said that to Miranda.
I've said that to everybody else.
If this crosses over into an actual conflict, this will be a regime change operation.
I've said that from day one, that it will begin with a decapitation strike.
I've said that all along.
That when this begins, it's a decapitation strike.
If the goal was to destroy Iran's buried nuclear infrastructure, you can only do that with nuclear weapons.
Maybe Israel gave it a shot with some non-nuclear weapons, but you can't take Firdos out in a non-nuclear strike.
And so now, you know, what the Israelis appear to be doing is...
Again, we have to set this up.
One of the reasons why And again, it's something I've been warning the Iranians about.
Do not declare yourself to be a threshold state.
There's no legal legitimacy to being a nuclear weapons threshold state when you are a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
If you say that we don't have nuclear weapons, we're not pursuing nuclear weapons, but in a matter of days we could have nuclear weapons if...
And Iran had been making statements about this, and the Israelis had intelligence that the Iranians were getting ready to open up a third enrichment facility underground that would be dedicated to upping Iran's enrichment, which the Iranians said we will be doing.
There's something we haven't mentioned, Judge, it's very important, and that's the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency in all of this.
I will tell you, as a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, that when you have foreign inspectors gain access to sensitive facilities, very important data that pertains to targeting is collected and sent back to the nations of all the gross.
Moreover, politically, the IAEA, together with the United States, Great Britain, and Europe, It helped legitimize the Israeli actions by issuing a Board of Governors report, which for the first time in 20 years said Iran is no longer complying with its nonproliferation obligations.
It's an absurd report that falls apart upon close examination, but they created the political legitimacy for Israel's actions.
So Israel carried out a strike.
That was designed to disrupt Iran in this transition period.
But this isn't about Iran's nuclear infrastructure in isolation.
This is a broader campaign designed to bring down the Islamic Republic because the Israelis recognize that Iran's ability to Enriched uranium can't be struck in a non-nuclear fashion.
It resides in the brains of its senior leadership, the senior scientists.
But ultimately, the only way to end Iran's nuclear potential is to end the Islamic Republic of Iran.
And so we are in an existential war of survival between Iran and Israel right now.
Did Israel sign?
I think the answer to this is no.
The Nonproliferation Treaty?
No, Israel's not a signatory.
Israel doesn't respect it.
I mean, the absurdity of the IAEA giving Israel an audience.
I mean, it happened when I was a weapons inspector.
You know, we were sitting there going after Iraq saying, you know, you're a signatory, you're not allowed to have a nuclear weapons program, all of which is true.
Meanwhile, we have Israel behind us going, going in harder, get them, inspect this, do this, that.
And it's like, you guys not only aren't signatories, you have a nuclear weapons program that exists in violation of law.
But nobody is willing to call Israel out on that.
You know, and that's one of the ultimate hypocrisies here is that Israel, a nuclear power which operates outside of the framework of international law, is, you know, participating in.
I mean, everything Israel just did here is illegal.
That's the other thing no one's talking about.
This is an illegal war of aggression.
This is Pearl Harbor.
This is not a lawful war.
Israel didn't declare war.
This is a surprise attack against the sovereign state without any legitimacy under international law whatsoever.
And yet people are saying, well...
You have Europe coming out.
We defend Israel's right to defend, you know, to preserve its existential right to exist.
Okay, you just said you approve of a surprise attack against a sovereign state without any foundation in international law to support it.
You've characterized beautifully the nature and extent of the damage and the killing.
The unlawful nature of it.
A United States senator from South Carolina thinks it's a game.
Senator Lindsey Graham, game on.
Pray for Israel.
What a despicable statement to make, no matter which side you're on in this.
This is not a game.
Well, it is to him.
It is to Tom Cotton.
It is to Marco Rubio.
It is to everybody in Washington, D.C. This is the great game.
I mean, it's the ultimate game for America because, again, what we've done is shape a situation where Israel and Iran are fighting and we're out of it, you know, not directly involved.
I believe it's inevitable, Judge, that we will get drawn into this conflict on the side of Israel as part of a strategic...
This is a regime change operation.
The president can't be trusted in anything he says.
He keeps talking about how he wants Iran to trade.
We want to have relations.
Meanwhile, he's working with the CIA.
I just want to remind people the CIA has this little thing called, you know, it used to be called the Iran Mission Center, but the CIA's job has always been regime change in Iran.
By the way, its job in Russia is regime change, too.
Keep that in mind when we talk about American diplomacy in Russia.
This has destroyed the credibility of the United States across the entire world.
We can never be trusted to be a broker for peace, a broker for conflict resolution.
We have a secret program to bring down regimes, and that's what's taking place right now with Iran.
This is a regime change operation using an Israeli proxy.
So the anti-war president who attacked the neocons when he was speaking in Saudi Arabia last month for wanting to use force to bring about regime change continues to fund the slaughter in Gaza, continues to fund the hopeless, hapless Ukrainians.
And now boasts about and unleashes this kind of an attack on Iran.
Some anti-war president we have.
No, this is the most pro-war president out there.
He's duplicitous.
He's a liar.
I mean, you know, I can understand people, you know, you always hedge your bets, you know.
But, you know, his whole concept, you know, peace through strength.
But the strength that he implies is lethal action.
That's always threatened out there.
If you're threatening lethal action, that means you've prepared for lethal action.
And I'm just here to tell you that if you do enough preparation for lethal action at some point in time, that becomes an inevitable outcome, meaning you're not giving peace a legitimate chance.
You've prepared so much for war so that war becomes the only option.
And that's this president.
I mean, hypothetically, if Iran had complied with everything we asked for, could we have avoided this?
No.
Why?
Israel.
Israel wants regime change in Iran.
That's it.
They view the Iranian regime as an existential threat, and the United States is a supporter of Israel's strategic objectives, and we share that objective, until which time the president issues a finding that says that we no longer are seeking regime change.
The CIA and other U.S. entities are working with Israel to achieve just that, and we're seeing it play out today.
In the Middle East, there are 90,000 American troops spread across a variety of locations.
Should we expect a false flag?
Israel attacks the American troops, claims it was Iran, and Trump unleashes them.
First of all, unleashing 90,000 troops.
I just want to remind people.
Desert Storm took 750,000 troops.
Even Iraqi Freedom took several hundred thousand troops.
90,000 is enough to be unleashed.
Most of those 90,000 are in a support role, logistics role, maintenance role.
They're not frontline combat troops, so you're not unleashing anything.
Second of all, there's no need for a false flag.
Israel just attacked Iran, and the United States is complicit in it.
Israel doesn't need to attack American.
They've created the conditions that will have Iran attack the American installations and draw the United States in.
Again, the foreign minister of Iran has come out and said, we blame the United States.
This attack couldn't have taken place without the United States.
The Iranians have already articulated just cause for launching a retaliation against these American facilities.
Now, whether or not they do that or not, this is the great Israeli-American gamble.
They tried to silence those voices that articulated in favor of this kind of retaliation, striking not just Israel but American facilities.
They kept alive.
Those voices in Iran who articulate against this action.
And what they've tried to do now is create the conditions in which there's now a debate taking place inside Iran about what the next step should be, and trying to confront Iran with a scenario where the people who advocate for conflict are saying, Yeah, but all those capabilities we thought we had no longer exist because they blew up this base, they blew up this base, they got these missiles, it's going to take us a week to reassemble.
And then the people advocating for non-confrontation will say, yes, but now the continued waves come in and eventually they're going to take out our oil infrastructure and that'll set us back, you know, five decades.
There's a debate taking place inside Iran right now.
That's what the Israeli-American action was supposed to do.
There's a huge psychological component to everything Israel does.
We saw that with how they behaved with Hezbollah.
We saw that how they behaved with Syria.
Many of us are looking for purely at the kinetics, where the bombs are hitting, etc.
But these bombs, when they hit, are designed to achieve a psychological impact inside Iran.
There's a reason why they killed the senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command leadership.
Those were the voices that most loudly and strongly advocated for a conflict with Israel.
And there's a reason why they left intact those voices around the Iranian president, because those are the voices that advocate for something different.
And the whole purpose was to create confusion inside Iran, to get Iranians to turn on themselves.
I don't know if they're going to be successful or not.
I have a funny feeling that the Iranians are far more resilient than the Israelis thought, We can't call the Israelis ill-informed.
They study their target.
Look how they infiltrated Hezbollah.
They got into the inner workings.
They were able to get the pagers in there.
They were able to assassinate leaders.
That's because the Israelis are pretty damn good at what they do.
I would imagine that Israel has infiltrated Iran significantly to have And that's something the Iranians have to look at, too.
How did this attack take place?
How was this targeting so effective?
Because much of this target is based upon real-time intelligence.
How did the Israelis collect this intelligence?
And if you can't answer that question, that means that you are vulnerable for the next round of decapitation.
The President of the United States has articulated clearly that the assassination of senior Iranian leadership has always been part of this game plan.
Always been part of this game plan.
As I said, we're in a very dangerous situation right now.
Scott Ritter, thank you, my dear friend.
It's early in the morning.
The sun isn't even up here yet.
We have been able to benefit from your analysis.
The audience is enormous, and of course it will grow by many times over the weekend.
Thank you very much, Scott.
All the best to you.
Thanks, Josh.
Sure.
Wow.
I'm deeply grateful for Scott's analysis at this time of day and for all of you that are watching and will be watching throughout the weekend.
Coming up at 8 o 'clock this morning, an hour and a half from now, on all of this, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
At 2 o 'clock this afternoon, on all of this, Professor John Mearsheimer.
At 4 o 'clock this afternoon on all of this, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern.
And at 4.30 this afternoon on all of this, we haven't heard from him this week, but he's here, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.
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