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June 18, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
34:29
COL. Douglas Macgregor : Trump Crazy to Attack Iran!
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, June 19, 2025.
My dear friend and great asset to the show, Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now.
Colonel McGregor, no matter what we're talking about in these topics, I'm not happy.
It's a pleasure to be able to have the benefit of your analysis.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule today.
How did Prime Minister Netanyahu dislodge President Trump, from the thinking of his own intelligence community, MI6, and even Mossad, and belatedly the IAEA, that Iran does not have and is not working on a nuclear weapon.
How did Netanyahu turn Trump around on that to the point where he publicly rebuked his director of national intelligence, saying, I don't care what she says, I'll believe what I want to believe?
First, I think we need to understand that whatever Tulsi Gabbard says is her opinion.
She's a senior advisor on intelligence to the president, but she's not the only one.
And we have to go back to the Central Intelligence Agency.
And as far as I've been able to discern, nothing, absolutely nothing has changed in the Central Intelligence Agency in terms of its findings that ultimately shaped national policy since Donald Trump took over.
That means that you've got to go back over the last five years.
Obviously, we don't have access to those findings directly, but those findings have not changed.
So, Tulsi Gabbard's opinion, while I certainly value it and I'm confident that she's telling the truth, is something that he can wave off and express complete disinterest in.
That's very easy.
And that's not the first time.
We've had presidents that dismissed intelligence findings left and right.
I mean, we've got to go all the way back to the summer of 1941 when FDR directed the Navy to maintain the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.
And the commander-in-chief of naval forces in the Pacific immediately wrote to the president and said, this is a serious mistake.
We're presenting a target array.
For the Japanese, even though we don't think the Japanese will attack Pearl Harbor.
At that point, everybody thought they'd attack the Philippines.
And President Roosevelt said, thank you very much.
Keep the fleet where it is.
So we've had presidents wave this kind of thing off before.
And I don't know that Mr. Netanyahu had to work very hard.
I think he's got, right now in the Senate, in the intelligence community, inside the White House.
Large numbers of people who are telling President Trump Iran is really a pushover.
It's not strong.
We can crush it.
And you need to go ahead with this.
This is in the interest of Israel and the United States.
Obviously, I don't think it has anything to do with the interests of the United States, but I think that's where we are.
But these arguments, which I agree, are being made ferociously by members of the Congress.
These are political arguments.
They're not based on intel.
Surely these members of Congress don't have intel that contradicts what CIA and What we do know is we have a long, long record of assessments that inevitably come down on the point that Iran doesn't have a weapon.
Now, that may not make any difference in any case to Mr. Netanyahu and, frankly, Mr. Trump at this point.
Their view may be, well, why should we wait around another six months, another six years for Iran to acquire such a weapon?
And so we might as well strike now and preempt this.
And we're talking about a preemptive war.
Remember, Israel preempted everything, preempted the negotiations and started the war.
We're simply joining it as a co-belligerent.
Effectively, we're already in it, but now we're a co-belligerent.
And there are all sorts of insane notions that this is somehow or another going to contribute to containing China, of all things.
And, of course, you've got people that are convinced that China and Russia are permanent enemies of the United States that have to be crushed, have to be contained.
All of this is bound up in the same sort of set of fantasies about Iran.
Chris, play the CNN montage, do we have that, of Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Colonel, this goes back 30 years, his claiming that Iran is within days and weeks, 30 years, of a nuclear weapon.
Watch this.
The deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely close.
Iran, by the way, is also outpacing Iraq in the development of ballistic missile systems that they hope will reach the eastern seaboard of the United States within 15 years.
By next spring, at most, by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage.
From there, it's only a few months, possibly a few weeks.
Before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.
The foremost sponsor of global terrorism could be weeks away from having enough enriched uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons.
That would place a militant Islamic terror regime weeks away from having the fissile material for an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs.
If not stopped.
Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time.
It could be a year.
It could be within a few months.
Less than a year.
None of that is true, is it?
No.
But we have to admit that he's had enormous success.
Yes.
In mind that he was able to drag us into Iraq on a false pretext.
And in front of Newt Gingrich and Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz made a statement straight up.
We just want to get the U.S. Army into Iraq.
That's what we want.
We don't care about anything else.
Our goal is to get the army into Iraq.
They got the army into Iraq.
And of course, the whole thing was a catastrophe.
We're going to see something far, far worse once we go to war with Iran, which effectively we're already in hostilities with Iran, but this will be a direct attack and it's going to have terrible consequences because it's not going to work out as planned.
Colonel, how badly did Israel damage Iran's defenses?
It appears that the euphoria from Israel and from the mainstream media, which was pervasive last Friday, has now dissipated considerably.
Well, the initial assault seemed to be effective, and we lose sight of certain realities.
Let's assume that you manage to kill the top five or seven or ten people.
They are simply going to be replaced.
And in many cases, they could end up being infinitely more capable and more courageous and innovative than the people they're replacing.
Stalin killed 34,000 to 35,000 officers in the Soviet army just before the Germans invaded.
And ultimately, it turned out to work to Soviet advantage because the general officers that then emerged...
This is a false notion.
Then this is bound up with the regime change myth that somehow or another people, millions of Iranians, are going to turn on their own government and beg Israel and the United States to come invade their country and govern them.
It's all sheer lunacy.
Did the Israelis substantially damage Iran's nuclear enrichment capability for civilian purposes, Iran's air defenses,
Well, it seems it's pretty clear that the integrated air defenses were rapidly repaired and placed back into operation within the first 24 hours.
And that certainly surprised me.
I did not think they would rebound as quickly as they did, but they did.
As far as the nuclear facilities themselves are concerned, there are at least three known.
There may be others, but the one that was damaged has since been repaired.
Is it still vulnerable?
I'm sure it is.
The other two, Pickaxe and Fodor, are not very vulnerable, and I'm sure there will be an attempt to hit them.
But I don't think it's going to work out.
These are very complex operations, Judge, involving not just a single weapon or two or three weapons, but involving air and naval power on a strategic level.
Anything can go wrong.
And then, of course, we still have the 40,000 U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and potentially some Marines on the ground in the Middle East.
What happens to them?
We can't protect them.
That's an established fact.
So as we go ahead with this, since we can't protect them, we have to assume that they'll be targets and we'll take severe losses.
We haven't even talked about the surface vessels that are in the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, or the Indian Ocean that can be targeted since they can be found.
And if it can be targeted, they are at risk of being destroyed.
Can the United States...
30,000-pound bombs?
Do we have these?
If we drop them, can they destroy the underground Iran nuclear enrichment facilities?
Well, contrary to popular belief, there are different opinions on that subject.
The 30,000-pound bombs may be effective, and they may not.
There are numbers of people who insist they won't be, particularly when it comes to pickaxe and Fodor, that the mountains that they have to penetrate and the concrete barriers that have been established are simply too great.
There are people arguing that you have to use a low-yield nuclear weapon to do the job with minimal radiation or residual radiation that could potentially work.
I don't know.
I'm not an Air Force armaments expert.
I have no idea.
But I simply warn that whatever our expectations are, we should probably scale them back.
How badly did Iran damage Israel's defenses and damage Israel itself with Iran's retaliation?
Do we know?
Because I know the Israelis are not making this apparent.
Well, you have seen the quote from Ben Gavir, because he was asked, why are you turning now to the Americans so soon?
This is after the first 72 hours.
And he said, because we didn't understand or appreciate the enormous striking power of the Iranian missile arsenal.
So I think the Israelis are in bad shape.
About a third of Tel Aviv has been damaged or destroyed.
And I'm sure that that will continue.
As far as their military installations are concerned, I'm told that they're flying a lot of aircraft out of the country.
Many are being flown to Cyprus in order to avoid being struck.
I think Israel is on the ropes, to be blunt.
It has only a few days left in terms of anti-missile missiles, in other words, air defense capability.
And some people have described to me, they're on the ground over there, the Iron Dome is a giant sieve.
The Iron Dome is a giant sieve.
How will, let's say President Trump does order these 30,000 pound bombs to be dropped and whatever other military coordination is necessary to effectuate them and all hell breaks loose.
How do you expect Russia, China, Pakistan?
First of all, you're talking about at least 100 aircraft that will be employed if you go after these nuclear sites because it's not just a function of a B-2 or B-1 bomber flying overhead and dropping munitions.
You have to suppress enemy air defenses or at least try to.
You try to knock out whatever you can in terms of radars and air defenses to clear the way or create a corridor, if you will, that will allow.
These aircraft to approach close enough to deliver their weapons.
So this is a major operation.
I think the Chinese, the Russians, everyone will wait to see how this first operation comes off.
And then I suspect that in addition to the entire Islamic world, which will line up with Iran against Israel and the United States, I think the Chinese and the Russians will then decide just exactly what they want to do and what will be helpful.
But keep in mind that the Chinese and the Russians are not interested in going to the next level, that is, going beyond a regional war and making this thing global.
They would prefer not to do that.
So whatever they do will be a function of how this first phase of the operation is carried out.
Do you give credence to the reports that Pakistan might use its nuclear weaponry to attack the Netanyahu regime?
I think that Pakistan would certainly turn over nuclear warheads to another Muslim country under this kind of threat.
For many, many years, the Pakistanis have made it clear to their friends in Ankara that they would provide the Turks with nuclear warheads that the Turks could then mate to missiles and use if necessary.
What no one expected was that a Sunni Muslim country like Pakistan, that has a certain amount of friction with Iran because it's a Shia state, would also do the same thing for Iran.
But I suspect they will.
In other words, I don't think Pakistan will launch something from Pakistan.
Whatever happens, it will come from another location, probably in Iran or somewhere else nearby.
And therefore, be used against us and Israel.
Now, when I say us, we're not really representing target arrays at this point for nuclear weapons.
And I don't think to suppress us or damage us, the Iranians need a nuclear weapon.
If there were a nuclear weapon involved, it would only come in response to something the Israelis did.
And if the Israelis use a nuclear weapon, they can bet 100% that one will be thrown back at them.
If Donald Trump, the President of the United States, decides to wage a serious and substantial attack on Iran, is the United States mainland, where you and I and people we know and love and work with and 330 million other Americans live, at risk?
Yes, we still have the...
It's a place called Mexico and the Caribbean basin.
And any number of things could find their way into the United States from that region.
We've got probably 30 to 31 million people in the United States about whom we know absolutely nothing that came in over the last four years.
And as Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard pointed out months ago.
We don't know anything about them, but we know that they include many terrorist and criminal organizations from the Middle East and Central America.
And we should expect that they will manifest themselves.
Now, how will they do it?
Where will they do it?
I don't know, but we've got numerous nuclear power stations, power grids, and as you know, we have people that are vulnerable in all sorts of places, malls and elsewhere.
So any number of terrible things could happen.
And it's interesting to me that people are trying to make fun of or mock the Iranians for their inability to keep out intelligence agents from operating inside their country.
Well, Iran is a little less than half the size of the United States.
We are enormous with borders and coastal waters that stretch for thousands of miles.
We haven't even controlled those borders or coastal waters very well for years.
Anyone who thinks that we are somehow or another invulnerable to this kind of activity is crazy.
I'm sure there are all sorts of cells operating inside the United States that could pose very serious risk to us.
And I think we ought to take it very seriously.
Hopefully, President Trump is being told about it.
How many millions of illegals that include terrorists or criminals?
Are we dealing with that of 31 million?
Is it 500,000, 100,000, 200,000?
And we have no more than 21,000 ICE officers?
Are we kidding ourselves?
We're in a lot of trouble, Judge.
Would Iran have an easy time of attacking the American troops that are in the Middle East?
Well, I don't know if I would call it an easy time, but could they be attacked and could we sustain thousands of casualties?
The answer is absolutely.
These bases stretch across Jordan, down through what we used to call the Shia Crescent or Mesopotamia, down into Qatar, Bahrain, and other locations, even in Saudi Arabia, where we have airfields and air bases, and the Iranians have made it very clear that if any of these states Offer their bases to American access that they're at risk.
We also don't know what would happen in Jordan.
That's a very tenuous place right now.
The population there is very explosive in its attitudes and the violence that could break out there could also affect us.
I don't know what the Shiite militias and others in the region would do to our remaining bases in Syria or Iraq, but I don't think it would be friendly.
Chris, can you play President Trump on Air Force One on Sunday night when he was asked about the testimony of Tulsi Gabbard?
Now, Tulsi Gabbard, Chris, he's so good at this, has taken Director Gabbard's testimony and put it into...
So you're going to see a reporter question him, his partial answer, Director Gabbard's testimony under oath, and then a zinger from the president.
You've always said that you don't believe Iran should be able to have a nuclear weapon.
But how close do you personally think that they were to getting one?
Because Tulsi Gabbard testified at March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn't building a nuclear weapon.
The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.
I don't care what she said.
I think they were very close to having them.
Ted, I think they were very close.
Should she resign?
Because of his public admonition of her statement, her statement wasn't just a personal opinion, it was a professional assessment based upon the work of thousands of intelligence officers.
Well, Judge, let's be frank.
Arrogance and self-delusion always triumph over reason.
That's what we're watching in Washington, D.C. Just as we heard yesterday, the utterly ridiculous statement by Senator Cruz.
That if we don't find a way to destroy Iran, we'll be fighting them in New York City or something.
This is reminiscent of LBJ making similarly ridiculous statements about the VC, the Viet Cong, and North Vietnam.
If we don't fight them there, they'll come here.
We heard at the time the four-star General Abizade make the same comments.
The tragedy is that President Trump has joined the Uniparty.
And he is going along with what the Senate and the CIA and others want.
Tulsi Gabbard has stated the truth as far as she knows it, and I happen to think that she's correct.
That takes a lot of guts.
But she, unfortunately, is one voice in what is otherwise a wilderness in Washington.
And if he presses ahead, as I think he will, and launches these attacks, then I think...
How much longer do you want to be part of this?
Because ultimately you have no influence, no impact, and this is a runaway train that you cannot conceivably stop.
Are you of the understanding, Colonel, that elements in the American intelligence community are trying to isolate or get rid of her?
Oh, I'm sure.
Absolutely.
One of the things that I think President Trump learned during his first term, Was it the federal bureaucracy and the people that dominate it and the people that control the hill, the Israel lobby and others and the military industrial complex that we talk about that is very much a part of this whole establishment pushing for war were against him.
He found that out.
He's decided this time around to join them, presumably because he discovered that he couldn't beat them.
I can't figure out any other reason why he would have done so.
And I think he has decided to believe those around him.
You know, there's this very dangerous but seductive argument.
Oh, Iran is weak.
Iran can't really do anything.
They're incompetent.
Don't you remember hearing something like that about Russia just a few years ago?
And everyone said the same thing.
Ukrainians were winning.
Ukraine will triumph.
The same people are making the same arguments right now about Iran.
And I think it's a very dangerous argument to make, and I think it's going to lead to disaster.
And I'm sure that Tulsi Gabbard has reached the same conclusion.
But I see absolutely no evidence that she can throw herself in front of this onrushing locomotive and stop it.
Colonel, a mutual friend of ours, Tucker Carlson, Who's courageous beyond compare, and not afraid of controversy, just interviewed the neocon Senator Ted Cruz, and by almost every view of this interview, demolished him.
We're going to play a little clip.
Some of it is about Ukraine, but all of it is about the current foreign policy.
And I see an unending string of foreign policy disasters that have impoverished and hurt our country.
An unending string?
An unending string.
They would include Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria.
And our inability to stop the Houthis, by the way, in Yemen, which exposes us as weak, and I grieve over that.
So these are failures.
You helped preside over some of them as a member of the Senate.
What failures, foreign policy failures, have I presided over?
Well, we were unable to beat Russia in the war that you supported against Russia.
You've been spending the last three years telling us that Vladimir Putin is evil and we're going to beat him with other people's children, and a million of those kids are now dead.
You've never apologized for that.
By the way, look, the number of falsehoods you lay out just in one statement are rather stunning.
You haven't supported the war against Russia?
Are rather stunning.
So, the war against Russia was caused, which I have explained in great detail, by Joe Biden's weakness.
But you supported the war.
If you want to talk, we can talk Russia and Ukraine.
I'm happy to talk about it.
Do you think that's been a success?
No, it's been an absolute disaster.
Okay, but you supported it.
Shouldn't you apologize?
No, you should apologize.
For what?
I'm not going to engage in the demanding of apologizing.
I'm like, that's my point.
All these failures and no one ever says I'm sorry.
Do facts matter or do you just throw out Okay.
I do.
I want to know why...
Somebody that gets to whisper into the president's ear whenever he wants, along with his buddies Richard Blumenthal, Tom Cotton, and of course, Lindsey Graham.
Well, as you and I have talked before, people on the Hill tend on the whole to be fugitives from accountability, and you just listen to one of the best.
He's never responsible for anything.
Despite the fact that he's been instrumental in many of these failures, if not all of them, but he's going to always stand back.
And until everything goes south, he's going to say everything is great.
And when it goes south, he's going to turn around and say, well, I never really supported that.
And I warned the president.
You wait and see, especially with what we're about to do now.
He and the rest of his peers.
This entire Washington establishment is corrupt.
No American buys it.
Americans are disgusted, but they don't know what to do about it.
You saw the Charlie Kirk poll where he asked about support for a war with Iran.
Something like 90 plus percent of the people responding.
And remember, he represents this sort of Christian evangelical right.
Ninety percent of people that responded said, no, we don't want anything to do with the war against Iran.
And it made absolutely no difference.
And it makes no difference what you and I say or anyone else in the United States at the moment.
We have no influence.
We are not represented.
That's very clear.
Ted Cruz is responding to the people that pay him, the people that subsidize him, the people that keep him in office.
He wants to stay in office.
And he's going to say what he wants.
He does until it falls apart.
And when it does, he's going to say, well, I always warned against this.
You and I are staring at this debt bomb.
We're waiting for the bond market to completely implode.
We're on the edge of the financial abyss more now than ever in our history.
We're going to fall into it.
It's inevitable.
The whole thing is going to crash.
And suddenly there will be no one in Washington, D.C. who's responsible.
Here's somebody in Washington, D.C., who refuses to say whether or not he will.
No, that's the different cut.
You'll appreciate this.
Senator Slotkin of Michigan interrogating the Secretary of Defense.
Have you given the order to be able to shoot at unarmed protesters in any way?
I'm just asking the question.
Don't laugh.
Like, the whole country.
And by the way, my colleagues across the...
What evidence would you have that an order like that has ever been given?
It is based on Donald Trump giving that order to your predecessor, to a Republican Secretary of Defense, who I give a lot of credit to because he didn't accept the order.
He had more guts and balls than you because he said, I'm not going to send in the uniformed military to do something that I know in my gut isn't right.
He was asked to shoot at their legs.
He wrote that in his book.
That's not here.
So your poo-pooing of this, it just shows you don't understand who we are as a country.
Who we are.
And all of my colleagues across the aisle, especially the ones that served, should want an apolitical military and not want citizens to be scared of their own military.
I love the military.
I served alongside my whole life.
So I'm worried about you tainting it.
Have you given the order?
Have you given the order that they can use lethal force against honor?
I want the answer to be no.
Please tell me it's no.
Have you given the order?
Senator, I'd be careful what you read in books and believing it, except for the Bible.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God is right that the Secretary of Defense would respond to that.
He refused to say, I have not given the order and continued with a smirk, snarky, childlike, absurd.
How can you even respond to that?
It's so childish.
Well, Judge, the right answer is as follows.
I have with me a copy of the rules of engagement that were issued to the Marines before they were employed in support of federal and local police.
and I'd be happy to read it, or you can simply place it into the record.
And it specifies...
You have to say, under the following circumstances, you, as an individual serving soldier, sailor, airman, marine, whatever it is, may respond with lethal force if the conditions meet the following criteria.
One, two, three, four.
This is a very serious matter.
We take it very seriously.
Yes, that's why he shouldn't be making a joke out of it, and he should relish the opportunity to answer as you've described.
Yeah, that should have been his answer.
Now, why he made the flippant comment about be careful what you read in books, I don't know.
Were we discussing any books in particular?
I don't think Slotkin was referencing a particular book.
Maybe she was, and I missed that.
I think she was referencing former Defense Secretary Mark Esper's book written after he left office that the president ordered him to order troops to fire at demonstrators' legs, unarmed demonstrators, and he rejected the order.
I think that's what she was referring to.
And the Secretary of State, Well, what would it be more appropriate is that, you know, as the Secretary of Defense right now, I cannot judge the veracity of that claim.
That is something that passed presumably between Secretary Esper and the President.
So I would take it up with them.
I have received no such guidance under any circumstances from the president today.
In other words, stick with the facts.
He has no idea what Esper said or President Trump said.
How do you judge that?
You can't.
Forget it.
I would simply say, Senator, I can't judge that.
I can simply say I have received no such order, but I do have...
We have attorneys who go through this as well as senior officers to ensure that our soldiers, sailors, airmen, or Marines know what they can and can't do and are in a position to protect themselves if they are subjected to violence that could cause their loss of life.
In other words, everybody sits down and puts this together.
This is pro forma.
That's what you do in the defense establishment.
And that's what he should have presented to her.
I don't know why he didn't have it with him.
Maybe he doesn't take his job that seriously.
Colonel, thank you very much.
These are unpleasant topics that we're discussing, but you handled them with grace and with an extraordinary amount of knowledge and, as usual, your personal and professional courage.
Thank you, Colonel.
We'll look forward to seeing you again soon.
All the best.
Thanks, Judge.
I've said this many times.
A great man whose personal friendship and professional collaboration are a gift to all of you who get to listen to him.
Once and sometimes twice a week on this program, and to me personally.
Coming up later today at 1 o 'clock this afternoon, what is Europe's involvement in all of this with Professor Glenn Deason?
And at 2 o 'clock this afternoon, he is furious, and we'll let him emote his fury.
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