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June 22, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
31:39
🔴 💣 [SPECIAL] TRUMP BOMBS IRAN! w/ Scott Ritter and Judge Napolitano
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Welcome to this special Sunday edition, Sunday, June 22, 2025, of Judging Freedom with Scott Ritter.
Before Scott and I begin our conversation as to what the President of the United States ordered and the military carried out last night and this morning in Iran, a brief statement from me.
What the President of the United States did was profoundly unconstitutional, absolutely unlawful, was an impeachable offense, and was a war crime.
Under our Constitution, only the Congress can declare war, not the President.
and Congress can only declare war on a country that poses an immediate and grave military threat to the United States of America.
President Trump has started a war with Iran, which poses no threat.
Let alone immediate or grave whatsoever to the national security of the United States of America.
Under an unconstitutional statute, but still the law, the War Powers Resolution, the president is required to give notice to Congress and give Congress an opportunity to respond before he attacks a foreign country.
He can carry out the response, but he has to tell Congress and give Congress an opportunity to respond.
He not only ignored the Constitution, he ignored that law.
As unconstitutional as it is, it hasn't been tested by the courts.
It is still the law.
The president ignored it.
Killing people and destroying property in another country without a just cause is a war crime.
It is the moral and legal equivalent of a high crime and misdemeanor.
It is an impeachable offense.
And it is time for the American public and the Congress to do something about it.
Now to the military aspects of all of this.
Scott, what did the United States military do?
Well, what they did is carry out an illegal war of aggression.
It's a war crime.
It's not just a war crime.
Judge Jackson, from the Nuremberg trial period, lead prosecutor of the Nazi war criminals, You know, asserted that a war of aggression is the ultimate war crime because from this war of aggression, all other crimes emanate.
This is what we did.
I don't know why Americans are proud of this.
This is an act of perfidy, a surprise attack, an undeclared act of aggression that had no...
Again, to justify something like this, which is the equivalent of what we would say a preemptive act of self-defense.
So there needs to be an imminent threat, an imminent threat that can only be dealt with through this act of aggression.
Iran was in the process of negotiations that would resolve all of the It's
come out that this strike plan Which was done in cooperation with Israel, was something that had been planned more than a year ago and actually been practiced by the United States and Israel.
So this was a pre-planned strike against three designated sites that had no military value.
So this is purely an act of theater, and any military commander that put American lives at risk to carry out an act of political theater should be.
There was no justification for this.
But moreover, the attacks didn't even accomplish what they claimed to have accomplished.
We had one B-2 bomber drop two GBU-57s on the Natanz facility.
What is that?
What is the GBU-57?
Is that one of these 32,000-pound monsters?
Correct.
The massive ordnance penetrator weapon that only the B-2 can carry, and it's upon the shoulders of this weapon that the United States has based its hopes of interdicting Iran's nuclear program.
But Natanz had been struck at least twice and probably three times by the Israelis prior to this attack.
And whatever was in Natanz, that, you know, centrifuges, etc., of value had long since been evacuated.
People should understand that Natanz is the principal home of centrifuge cascades of the oldest type, the IR-1 centrifuge, which is a very inefficient centrifuge that Iran had long since replaced with these more modern centrifuges that are in Fordo.
So to strike Natanz doesn't put back the Iranian program at all, and anything of value in that program had been evacuated.
So we put a B-2 bomber over a target, They literally put Two additional holes in the ground of a piece of terrain that had no military, scientific, or meaningful value.
It was purely a political act.
The same with Isfahan.
We fired 30 cruise missiles into the Isfahan nuclear complex.
It appears that even the U.S. government is admitting that these missiles didn't accomplish the level of destruction that they were hoping to, that the Isfahan facility was deeper underground and more protected.
So, in normal circumstances, and this dates back to my time, As a battle damage assessment officer during the first Gulf War, this would be immediate re-attack, which means that because we initiated this, if there was legitimate military purpose to this attack, we would have to re-attack to achieve those objectives.
It appears, though, that Donald Trump says no.
We're done.
We're willing to be done with this, which means, again, this wasn't about achieving anything meaningfully, militarily meaningful on the ground.
This was an act of pure politics.
And then we get to Ferdot, the crown jewel of the three targets, a facility that's 90 meters or 90 feet underground, 100 feet underground.
But that's street-level measuring.
What they're not counting are the ridges above the facility that make it even three or four times.
Deeper than this.
We struck with six B-2 bombers, each of which carried two of these massive ordnance penetrators, and the best that we could accomplish is that we did damage to one entrance and one exit of a facility that has five exits.
We didn't damage the hall, we didn't penetrate, but even more.
Critical is that we know the facility was evacuated.
There is satellite imagery that shows on June 18th and 19th, the Iranians had brought up trucks to remove the high-value centrifuges that were stored at Fordow.
And these centrifuges have been moved to other facilities around Iran that we don't know about, together with...
We didn't destroy that.
That's all moved.
So these attacks accomplished nothing in terms of retarding or limiting Iran's nuclear enrichment program.
These attacks were purely an act of political theater for a president who's desperate to be seen as being a decisive leader, but all he showed was American impotence.
The Secretary of State referred to the planning of the operation as brilliant.
Now, the plan must have begun in the Biden administration.
Could something like this have been planned since Donald Trump became president and Pete Hegseth became Secretary of Defense?
Well, I mean, in theory, it could.
But the fact is, this attack has been rehearsed by the United States and Israel during the Biden administration.
Indeed, in the summer of 2023, and I believe again in 2024, there were joint exercises carried out where the United States flew B-2 bombers from Whitman Air Force Base into the theoretical, of operations to carry out rehearsals with the Israelis.
It should be pointed out that, according to the Iranian timeline, this was an attack that was not just coordinated with the Israelis, but the Israelis participated in this, meaning that the Israelis had resources and assets that were linked to this.
Drones and fighter aircraft were operated over parts of Iran in supporting operations.
So this wasn't a purely American attack.
This was done in concert with the Israelis, part of a plan that had been conceived during the Biden administration and rehearsed at least twice during the Biden administration.
Was there anything brilliant about this?
Well, I don't want to...
I mean, to have a B-2 bomber fly a mission of this length requires tremendous skill.
The refueling operations are technically difficult.
They accomplish these.
The flight parameters to get into Iran without being detected to drop these bombs all points to extreme professionalism.
You know, that doesn't make this attack brilliant.
Anytime you use American military power, there has to be a legitimate reason for the application of force.
And here, there is no legitimate reason.
This cannot be called brilliance.
This is the exact opposite.
This is a disaster.
This is a manifestation of all that's wrong with America today, where the United States military allowed it to be used for an act of political violence, political terrorism, a war crime.
This is a war crime.
There's no doubting this.
There's no defending this.
This is an act of aggression without any legitimacy, not only in terms of lacking domestic approval from the Congress, but also under international law.
And people scoff at international law, but I do want to remind Judge, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but the United Nations Charter, an international treaty, was ratified by the United States Senate and therefore, under our own Constitution, becomes the law of the land.
And who wrote the United Nations Charter?
We did.
We did.
And we signed it.
Israel signed it.
Iran signed it.
It prohibits this kind of an attack absolutely against a fellow signatory of the charter without going to the UN first.
Trump went to no one.
Trump sat in a windowless room and listened to a half dozen people tell him what they thought he wanted to hear.
And that's how he made the decision.
One hundred percent.
And this is, you know, again, this is a political act.
You asked me to speak about the military aspects of this, but other than the application of force, there is no military value to this.
In fact, the president has put at risk tens of thousands of Americans for this political act.
Where are the Americans who are at risk, Scott, and who are they?
Well, there's tens of thousands of American service members who are deployed throughout the region in Saudi Arabia, you know, in Qatar, in the United Arab Emirates, in Kuwait, in Bahrain.
These are Americans who, you know, have taken an oath to serve their country, have been deployed abroad ostensibly to do that service, and now have their lives put at risk.
There's Americans in Iraq, Americans in Syria.
That also fallen, Americans in Turkey.
Basically, anybody in the region, life is now at risk through a retaliation potential from Iran, a real potential.
I mean, this isn't theoretical.
The Iranians have already demonstrated when they attacked Al-Assad Air Base after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani that they have the real potential of hitting bases decisively in a manner that can result in So here the president has put American lives at risk so that he can stand before the American people and speak absurdly, pontificate about things that didn't happen.
This was not a decisive action.
He did not destroy Ferdow.
This wasn't a brilliant strike.
This was a national embarrassment.
What do you expect the international reaction would be?
I'll give you a menu and you can go wherever you want.
Russia, China, India, China.
Well, first of all, we have to realize that the United States is a rogue nation right now, that we are operating outside the framework of international law.
I want to remind people that back in February, February 4th of 2022, Vladimir Putin flew to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping on the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
And the two of them, And this is a major commitment by them, and much of the rest of the world seeks to adhere to the United Nations Charter.
This framework of international law.
So all of the nations that you mentioned, I believe, will be working to Ensure that America's gross act of irresponsibility and illegality doesn't destroy this framework of international law.
And I think you'll be seeing the Russians and the Chinese moving to isolate the United States at the Security Council, at the United Nations, Pakistan doing the same thing.
This doesn't mean that they can't provide assistance to Iran, and they are going to provide assistance to Iran.
But I believe that all of these nations will be working to prevent Iran An escalation, a dangerous escalation of this conflict.
I think the goal right now is to isolate the United States and keep the United States from reengaging militarily while allowing Iran to continue its lawful retaliation against Israel.
Remember, Israel initiated this by carrying out an unlawful, illegal surprise attack with no justification.
Israel hasn't even tried to cut, you know, to decadent.
They haven't done that because they can't do that.
Because any imminent threat was, it is nullified by the fact that the Iranians were actively in negotiations dealing with the very issue at hand.
Iran, however, has gone to the United Nations, has said that they will, they will defend themselves.
And Iran's, you know, It is literally, the more Israel bombs Iran, the more legitimate Iran's retaliation becomes.
So I think what we're going to see is the international community working to contain this problem.
Already you see the United States reaching out to China, asking for Chinese intervention to keep the Iranians from shutting down the Strait of Hormuz.
Whether or not China acts on that, I don't know.
The point is, you see the Iranian foreign minister flying to Russia, to Moscow, to meet with Vladimir Putin.
I think the Iranians will hold off on any precipitous act until they have touched base with all of their supporters.
And I do believe that Iran will remain consistent to international law and not seek to act in a manner which, while maybe justifiable from an emotional standpoint, would not be allowed under international.
For instance, for Iran to strike Saudi Arabia today is not something that would be permitted because the American forces deployed in Saudi Arabia did not participate in this attack.
And Saudi Arabia has condemned this.
So I don't, for the people to think that Iran's going to come out and lash out irresponsibly.
I don't see that happening.
What I believe Iran will do is continue to operate within the framework of international law, working to isolate the United States and keep the keep the focus on where it belongs, which is the criminal actions of Israel.
What is the extent of damage that Iran has caused in Israel, which the Netanyahu regime is keeping from the West and from all media?
The fact is we don't know exactly because of...
What do you think, though, just from the nature of your understanding of the destructive power of the projectiles that have been launched and of the weakening power of their so-called Iron Dome?
Well, we also have to emphasize the accuracy of these missiles, meaning that when you launch a missile with destructive power, there's a difference between landing in a civilian population area and hitting a target of military or economic value.
And the Iranians are using weapons that have a high degree of accuracy.
They're targeting military targets.
This isn't me speaking.
I mean, I know people are out there going, well, Scott, you're just a tool of this, that, and the other thing.
This statement actually comes from the former head of an Israeli intelligence unit, Unit 8200, who has said that, you know, we, the Israelis, are trying to, you know, paint the Iranians as animals, as beasts.
But he said the fact is they're a very capable modern state who is behaving properly in the targeting of Israel, that their targets are exclusively military in nature or related to legitimate national security targetable sites.
This is a senior Israeli official saying this, and that's the reality.
Iran is doing horrific damage to the Israelis.
These strikes are very accurate.
You know, inflicting a tremendous amount of damage on Israel.
And Israel is a small nation unable to absorb this damage.
And so if this conflict continues, you're going to see Israel face the reality that its ability to sustain functionality as a viable nation-state is being eroded by an Iranian retaliatory capacity that doesn't seem to have a bottom.
Moreover, you speak of the Iron Dome.
You know, I hear people say, well, Israel will become defenseless in several days when they run out of interceptor missiles.
Judge, Israel is defenseless now.
They have all the interceptor missiles they need right now on a daily basis, and they're backed up by the United States.
They haven't run out of missiles yet.
Why are they defenseless if they have not run out of missiles?
Explain, please.
Because the Iron Dome doesn't work.
It can't defend against a modern missile threat.
I mean, and I say this not only to point out the fact that Iron Dome But, you know, those Americans who listen to the president when he briefs on the Golden Dome, you know, an American ballistic missile defense shield, I'm here to tell you right now, many of the technologies that would be incorporated in that are incorporated by the United States into Israel's ballistic missile defense shield, and they aren't stopping this.
And the Iranian missiles, while they're very good, don't compete with Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles in terms of technology lethality.
This missile defense is a sham.
It's a joke.
It's a scam.
And it's played out daily by the Iranians firing missiles specifically designed to defeat the missile shield that Israel and the United States have erected.
Wow.
I have to stop for just a moment and point out that nearly 49,000 people are watching us live.
Putting that in perspective, that's more people than could fit inside of Yankee Stadium here.
Thank you very much.
We're going to continue, but thank you very much for the size of this audience.
Thank you for watching us.
Please subscribe.
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How wrongheaded, how boneheaded from a military perspective was it to do all of this?
And what do you think it cost?
They sent some very heavy planes flying westward outside of California as a decoy.
They had all this military equipment bombing Iran.
According to you and your sources, all they did was make some holes in the desert.
What did it cost?
I mean, something like this, I can't give you the exact figure, Judge, because I don't have it at my fingertips and I'm not smart enough to retain that in my brain housing group on a permanent basis.
But, you know, they burn gas.
There's, you know, every flight hour of a B-2 bomber has a price tag attached to it.
This was a very lengthy flight.
You know, so, you know, we're talking about something, you know, we know that they fired 30 cruise missiles.
The price tag of a cruise missile is different, remember, because you have to think about just about the cost of the missile that we fired, but the replacement cost.
And this is like buying gold.
You know, you could buy gold a year ago and pay, you know, $2,000 something for an ounce.
But if you buy it today, you're paying $3,400.
It costs more.
Right.
So we're throwing around golden coins and we have to rebuy them to replenish the stocks.
This is a But again, it accomplished nothing.
It actually did worse than accomplished nothing.
It's pushed America in a bind, as I mentioned, Judge.
Militarily speaking, failure to achieve the desired destruction at a given site.
Requires a re-strike.
Here's the problem.
When the president who has announced that FURDO has destroyed mass, I can't remember the exact words he used.
He used the word totally obliterated.
Now, I may be a simple Marine and obliterated has one too many syllables for me to normally process.
But the fact is, to me, it means that you've sort of taken it out.
It doesn't exist anymore.
And Ferdo is the exact opposite of that.
Not obliterated.
What happens when this reality becomes clear?
What happens when the Iranians take TV crews in there and show the world that the president's words are empty, that Pete Kedsev has failed to deliver on his promise, that Marco Rubio, his brilliant plan, is collapsed?
What does this narcissist, this egomaniac do in that?
Does he re-strike?
to say we're going to bomb again.
And knowing that the weapon, the best weapon he had, six B-2 bombers are...
I mean, this is literally one of, we're in a very dangerous situation.
And now what happens when the reality that this claims he made about destroying the Iranian nuclear program, he hasn't destroyed anything.
It's been evacuated.
It is in hiding.
And we don't know where it is and we don't know how to find it.
What does he do now?
Does he say, I'm going to bomb you into oblivion until you declare the totality of your program and subject it to international inspections?
And what weapons does he use?
We don't have an infinite number of these weapons.
At what point in time does this become a nuclear problem for the United States?
We have crossed the Rubicon.
This is a very dangerous path that we are undertaking, and we don't have good leaders.
We don't have good leaders making sound decisions, and the proof of that is the decision they make to support this act of insanity.
Last question.
What do you think Iran will do in the next week or so?
Iran so far has behaved responsibly.
They've acted within the four corners of international law, and they haven't done anything precipitously.
Iran has a campaign plan that has been in the works for decades that they're implementing right now to break the back of Israel.
So logically speaking, you would expect Iran to stay with this plan, not to allow themselves to be deviated, much like we talk about Russia and Ukraine, how the Ukrainians carry out acts that are designed to get Russia to overreact.
I believe there's a temptation now for the Iranians to overreact.
And I can't say that they're not going to do that.
But the fact that their foreign minister is flying to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin is indicative of the reality that they are looking to craft an international coalition to isolate the United States and that their best vehicle for this is international law.
I see Iran not striking out against American bases.
Now, of course, we're going to end this program and we'll see that the Iranians have hit the American bases and everybody will say that Scott Ritter is an idiot.
This is the danger of doing a prognosis live on TV with incomplete information.
But my gut feeling is that Iran knows that they're playing a winning hand against Israel and that ultimately they will want to continue to play that hand and they will work with their allies to take care of the American problem, to get America to be able to do that.
I believe Iran understands the consequences of their actions, that if they do something, that the United States is capable of hitting them very hard.
So they want to prevent that.
But Iran also understands that Israel's nuclear program is a long-term threat.
One of the things that came out of this action is that Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president, former Russian prime minister, current deputy of the National Security Council in Russia, has talked about, for the first time publicly, Israel's nuclear program and the incompatibility of that program with international norms and standards.
By attacking Iran's nuclear sites the way the United States did, there should be a massive backlash in terms of the damage the United States has done to the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
I believe the International Atomic Energy Agency will have no choice but to issue statements condemning the American action.
And what we could see, especially if Israel's back is broken, Is that one of the results of this tragic set of events is that when the dust settles, Israel will be compelled to turn its program over to international inspections because Israel will have been identified as being incompatible with the very international law that Russia,
China, and others have said is the foundation of how they want to go forward in the Did you detect in former Russian President Medvedev's tone, and do you conclude from that and the arrival of the Iranian foreign minister in Moscow, a feeling that Moscow is going to provide some kind of military aid to Iran?
The Iranians have been very careful here.
If you remember, Vladimir Putin has spoken about this just a few days ago, where he spoke about the security framework agreement that had been signed between the two nations.
He said there's no military treaty obligations here, and that was because of Iran.
Right.
The reason why they did that, let me just make it clear.
Had Iran signed a military agreement with the Russians, this war would be over.
Because as Vladimir Putin said yesterday, Israel, he said, a significant percentage of the population speak Russian.
He said Israel, in many extents, is an extension of Russia.
So imagine now that you're the Russian president, you have a military agreement with Iran, Israel has attacked Iran, and now Iran is retaliating, as it's allowed to do, but doing significant harm to a nation that Russia identifies as an extension of Russia.
There would be immediate Russian diplomatic intervention, and the Iranians would never be able to complete their mission.
So this is why the Iranians didn't get involved in an entangling alliance, because some people say, well, that would strengthen Iran's hands.
From the Iranian perspective, it actually weakens their hand.
They are free now.
They have freedom of action to continue this operation without any treaty-linked obligation to respect Russian diplomacy and Russian diplomatic interventions, etc.
A security alliance with Russia would have been very limiting to Iran.
Right now, Iran is actually a stronger nation because they don't have such an alliance.
Wow.
Scott, I want you to know that there are 62,000 people watching us right now.
This is far and away the largest live audience that Judging Freedom has ever had.
I realize it's Sunday at lunchtime here in the East Coast of the United States.
But to all of you watching now, thank you.
You've just seen a terrific military geopolitical analysis of the mess that the United States has commenced in Iran.
Write and call your member of Congress.
Tell Congress to reassert itself.
Under the Constitution, only Congress can declare war.
Only Congress can initiate and authorize this kind of an attack.
The president can't do it on its own.
Whether you're represented by a liberal Democrat, a conservative Republican, a progressive, a libertarian, whatever they may be, remind them of Congress's role under the Constitution.
Scotty, thank you very much.
We'll look forward to seeing you back here tomorrow afternoon.
Deeply appreciate it.
I hope you can go back and enjoy Sunday afternoon with your family.
Thank you, Scott.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for having me.
Of course.
And again, my dear friends, thank you so much for watching.
Please like and please subscribe and like.
Like and subscribe.
I'm not sure in what order you do that.
Coming up tomorrow, Monday, on all of this, at 8 in the morning, Alistair Crook.
At 10 in the morning, Ray McGovern.
At 11.30 in the morning, Larry Johnson.
And in the afternoon, watch for the times, Scott Ritter and Pepe Escobar.
Pepe.
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