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June 23, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:41
Larry Johnson : Netanyahu Calls the Shots.
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Monday, June 23rd, 2025.
Larry Johnson will be here in just a minute, and in just a moment, on who called the shots on Saturday night, Donald Trump or Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Larry, what is your Larry Johnson?
Welcome here, my friend.
What is your take on this kerfuffle between Trump and Telsey Gabbard?
I mean, she testified under oath that it was the consensus of the intelligence community.
Not her personal opinion.
The consensus of the intelligence community, which, as you know, is many, many different agencies, that Iran does not have and is not working on the preparation for a nuclear weapon.
Trump comes along and says, I don't believe her.
The intimation is he has his own sources.
What are those sources?
Is it Netanyahu?
Is it this company, Palantir, that is feeding Netanyahu and Trump what they think he wants to hear and being paid hundreds of millions by the feds?
She's been steamrolled by Mossad, and Trump has been bamboozled by Mossad.
This is an Israeli intelligence operation that, my judgment, includes something, you know, Palantir as well, that they're an active participant in this charade.
The thing people need to understand about the judgment of the U.S. intelligence community, as you correctly noted, it wasn't just Tulsi Gabbard giving her own opinion.
This reflected, as we discussed on Friday with Ray, five different agencies that are what I call original collectors.
These are, while they say there are 18 intelligence agencies, only about five actually collect raw intelligence and then process it and present it to the rest of the intelligence community.
CIA, DIA, State INR, Intelligence and Research, NSA, and the National Geographic Geospatial Intelligence Agency.
And when they all come together, I've been involved with those processes where you've got to get an interagency agreement on a judgment.
And believe me, it's not always easy.
They're not always singing from the same sheet of music.
What we have here is an agreement within the intelligence community that dates back almost 20 years, in which they've been looking for evidence that actually Iran is building a nuclear weapon.
And so enter Israel.
They claim, oh, we've got these great sources.
And, you know, Trump and his team go, oh, yeah, look at what Israel just did.
And, you know, they almost decapitated the Iranian military and scientific leadership.
So their sources must be better.
And the mistake, you know, the fallacy with that is just because you can recruit some minorities from the Azeri community, from the Baluchi community, from the Kurdish community to work with you as Israel doesn't necessarily mean that Israel actually has sources that have penetrated into the Iranian nuclear program.
But what we have is other pieces of evidence that Iran, in fact, has not been working on a nuke, because if they had, they would have been very upfront about it in order to, we got a nuke, don't touch us or we'll use it.
But that hasn't happened.
So this was a case of the United States getting bum rushed, willingly so.
And, you know, while I said on Friday with a hope that Tulsi should stick around, maybe to provide a voice of sanity, it's clear she's now entirely compromised.
She's sold out.
She is a disgrace, in my view.
She could have stood up to these people and risk getting fired, but at least you got your integrity attacked.
She no longer has.
Yes, Chris found some tweets that she sent out while she was still in Congress, which were absolutely fabulous in terms of arguing against the United States becoming subservient To Israel.
I can't imagine she could say something like that today and expect to keep her job.
In fact, I do believe she has purported to walk back what she said under oath before Congress in March, even though, as you point out, it's evidence.
It's fact.
It's not an opinion.
She was, as she's supposed to do under the law, gathering evidence and presenting it to the president and to the Congress.
Yeah, the unfortunate thing is the analysts who were involved with making that judgment are senior analysts.
They probably got 10 to 15 years of a career in the agency, and it's unlikely that any of them are independently wealthy.
So therefore, you're not going to see anybody resign and come out and say, look, I had to resign in protest, because what's being done is the American public are being lied to now.
And the lies, the president is ignoring the intelligence.
And these are not the personal opinions of political activists.
This is, again, we've got a track record, as Ray has frequently noted.
It goes back over 20 years with this.
And Iran, up to this point, has not needed a nuke.
Now, this may very well have the opposite effect of reinforcing the views of hardliners who long have insisted that Iran should build one, but the Ayatollah Khamenei has resisted it and said that it is against the tenets of Islam.
Was the U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear sites on Saturday night and Sunday morning of any military significance?
No, zero.
It looks like Iran had a heads up, whether that was provided by the United States, and that's not without precedent.
I saw that happen twice back in 2017, 2018, when Trump launched bombing missile strikes in Syria, allegedly to take out Syrian chemical weapons capabilities.
In both of those instances, the United States got on the phone in advance with the Russians and said, okay, here's what we're going to do.
Here's where we're going to strike.
Here's what we're going to use.
They gave them time to get out of the way, to remove items that could have been at risk.
And so it's possible that the United States did that again this time, which is why Iran started removing items from some of those sites like Fordo two to three days before the strike actually happened.
Or alternatively, the Chinese and Russians provided Iran with intelligence that, hey, they're coming, so you better batten down the hatches and be prepared.
Regardless, Trump's claim, Carolyn Lovett, she's much better looking than Baghdad Bob, but she's acting just like Baghdad Bob.
We obliterated everything.
No, they didn't.
And you've got overhead photography, which shows they didn't obliterate everything at all.
So this has not eliminated Iran's nuclear enrichment program.
But frankly, that's all a red herring.
That's all a distraction.
That's not what this is all about.
This is a Western attempt with Israel to try to change the regime in Iran so that Iran will no longer cooperate with Russia and China and Iran will become a lackey of the United States.
And Iran successfully moved out of harm's way all of the nuclear material and nuclear enriching equipment.
But if you hear Secretary Hegseth, President Trump's planning was brilliant, if you hear the president, he used the phrase that you just quoted from his press secretary, Carolyn Levitt, totally obliterated.
Neither of these statements are anywhere near accurate.
No, no.
We need to get Pete Hegseth a new tube of chapstick because he's keeping his lips busily implanted on the president's backside, and he needs to sort of lube them up a little bit so he doesn't dry out.
Didn't you and Ritter both tell me that this so-called attack took months of planning, was actually originally planned in the Biden administration, was rehearsed in the Biden administration, was rehearsed again in the Trump administration.
So whatever Hag Seth is saying was brilliant was actually planned by his predecessors.
Well, yeah, that wouldn't be, I mean, it wouldn't be, I didn't say that, but I think Scott did.
But yeah, it's the United States has plans in, you know, they're in the file cabinets and you pull them out and you exercise them from time to time.
You know, and I've been involved with exercises that dealt with some of the, you know, trying to take out threats inside or what we defined as threats inside Iran, you know, more than 20 years ago.
So the fact that they had this plan and finally decided, okay, this is how we're going to execute it.
Great.
You know, the problem that Trump's created now for himself is they've really raised the expectations.
By God, we've shut down Iran.
Well, they haven't shut down Iran, number one.
It's costly to keep all of this naval and air assets forward deployed into that region.
And in fact, I think, or if I was advising Iran, I'd tell them, hold your fire.
I wouldn't strike back at the United States at all, especially when they've got all these assets forward deployed, because then the United States would be positioned to strike back immediately.
Force them to withdraw.
They have to withdraw it.
And then all of a sudden they have to ramp back up to move.
That does take a lot of time and it is costly.
Right.
McGovern says that Iran's retaliation against the United States will be taken out on Israel and is even as we speak.
Yeah, I think Iran's best option right now, because this isn't about punching somebody just to make yourself feel good or Hitting, you know, blowing something up.
This should be a strategic campaign by Iran, which it appears to have been up to this point.
They're shutting down Ben-Gurion Airport.
That's the only major international airport in Israel.
So it prevents people from coming and going.
They've shut down operations at Haifa port, and they can continue to attack that.
I think there's another port just south of that.
I forget the name of it.
But, you know, you close the ports down.
All of a sudden, nothing's coming in to Israel as well.
You take out the military and intelligence headquarters.
You attack the Domona, the nuclear reactor site.
You shut down the power grids.
And then you make sure that what Iran's doing in this process is not inflicting many civilian casualties because Israel wants to use the civilian casualties as a justification for continuing to kill civilians in Iran.
Iran is actually in a position that it can sustain this ballistic missile campaign targeting these strategic nodes in Israel.
They can literally shut Israel down and force them into having to surrender.
I know people think, oh, I'm crazy.
No, I think it's entirely possible.
Not just because you're my friend and we've collaborated together for so many years, but because what you're saying is true.
Ha-Aretz is reporting, nobody goes to school and nobody goes to work in Israel.
The government won't even permit people on the streets.
So how do you buy bread?
How do you bake bread?
How do you get a hot water heater fixed?
How do you get to the doctor?
None of these things can happen in Israel because of this war started by Netanyahu.
Well, and then the air defense system, their missiles, one of the major components is this Aero-2 and Aero-3 missile.
Now, initially, I had assumed that those were made in the United States and shipped to Israel.
Oh, no.
The components are made, a lot of the components are manufactured in the United States, but they are shipped to Israel where Israel assembles them.
Well, if you think about every single ballistic missile fired by Iran, you have sometimes as few as two and as many as 10 of those arrow missiles fired up in the air at the Iranian ballistic missile.
Each one of those arrow missiles costs between 2.5 and $3 million.
So right away, if you fire just two, you're $6 million.
If you fire 10, you're $30 million.
And the missiles that the Iranians are firing reportedly cost $500,000.
So economically, it doesn't work.
And how many does Israel manufacture in a year?
Between 25 and 50. So all of a sudden you go, whoa, wait a second.
We're only making 50 of these a year.
How do we get military supplies to Israel if they don't have a major airport?
Well, they'll fly them into one of the military airports like Nevatim, but Iran's attacking those as well.
So it's not an impossible logistics problem, but it is.
But again, the logistics problem is neither the United States nor Israel have large stockpiles, quantities of like the Arrow 2, Arrow 3 missile, among others.
Same for the Patriot missile.
So the air defense system, Iran can, over the course of the next week, if they sustain the missile campaign, which I believe they're capable of doing, can literally exhaust and deplete Israel's air defense system.
And so Israel, they're going to be sitting there.
The people are going to be continuing to live in bunkers and air raid shelters for the foreseeable future.
I'm going to ask you in a minute about Netanyahu's power to call the shots.
But before I do, I'm going to play a clip from a young colleague of ours, Kyle Ann Salone, who summarized this rather powerfully and brilliantly.
Chris Cut number 10. Trump has given up his role as commander-in-chief.
He has given that over to Benjamin Netanyahu, who is effectively guiding the American military, telling them where to bomb, when to bomb.
This war in no way benefits the United States of America.
This is a war of choice, an offensive, aggressive war of choice launched by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prevent Trump from making a nuclear deal with Iran.
And Donald Trump is allowing Netanyahu to pick targets in Iran, just like he did in Yemen, by the way, when we are blowing up apartment buildings and hitting all other kinds of civilian targets, killing hundreds of civilians in Yemen with absolutely no benefit, costing us billions of dollars.
We were again relying on Israeli intelligence.
And again, Trump is allowing Netanyahu to guide the U.S. war machine.
We should be horrified by this.
We are supposed to be a sovereign country.
And yet it seems like not only Capitol Hill, but now the White House is effectively occupied by Israel.
Called the shots, Donald Trump or baby Netanyahu.
Well, no, it's Trump.
But Netanyahu is influencing U.S. policy through the intelligence network.
You know, the intelligence channels have been flooded with all this Israeli disinformation, I call it.
And you've got John Ratcliffe and Mike Carrilla, the commander of CENTCOM.
They've both eaten it up.
And so they've taken the attitude that Israel's got the ground truth and is based upon those Israeli lies.
We are then launching these operations, which, as Scott pointed out to you in previous conversations, have been planned for quite some time.
But again, while the cover for this is that, oh, we're trying to stop Iranian ability to enrich uranium, again, that's not the goal.
The goal is to completely destabilize Iran, put in power somebody who's going to be subservient to the United States in order So that we can weaken Russia and China.
They're the ultimate targets in this.
Iran is just merely one more piece on the chessboard.
Tammy Bruce is the spokesperson for the State Department.
I know her.
I worked with her at Fox for a number of years.
She was not known for saying off-the-wall things, but she is now.
She's in Europe at a NATO conference and was having sort of an interview about her life and her job and does she like it.
You're not going to believe what she said.
Watch this, Chris number nine.
The pride of being able to be here and do work that facilitates making things better for people and in the greatest country on earth.
Next to Israel.
In the greatest country on earth.
Next to Israel.
It is, and it's an honor to be able to make a difference and to be able to speak in this regard with an administration that I love so much.
Greatest country on earth next to Israel.
It's hard to believe that a person that works for the federal government could say something like that.
Yeah, I have been to Israel a couple of times.
And I've been to Moscow.
Hey, I think you were in Moscow.
So there's no comparison.
No comparison.
Candidly, Israel's a dump compared to Moscow or to Shanghai.
So, you know, this, again, this blind Zionism prevents people from seeing reality.
And it's a shame that she's gone down that road.
But again, the United States has hooked itself to a policy that is isolating the United States.
You know, I think one of the things, like right now, there's been a lot of speculation that Iran will shut down the Strait of Hormuz.
I don't think they will.
And for this reason, 80% of the oil that comes out of the Persian Gulf goes to Asia.
Right now, Iran's standing and diplomatic support from the Asian countries is astonishing.
And so I don't see them taking steps that would prevent oil from getting into China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam in order to try to inflict damage on Western economies.
I think they're going to be much more selective.
They may try to embargo ships that are headed to Europe.
They may do that, but they're not going to take steps to mine.
I don't think they're going to mine the entrance.
I don't think because they want to maintain that international support that they're getting, and it's significant.
So I think Iran can play a real smart game here.
Talk to me about international support, Larry.
Do you think any countries will provide arms to Iran, like Pakistan?
Well, I actually think Russia has been willing to provide it.
You know, what we saw last, Putin made a remarkable statement last week.
He said, look, we offered to sign a defense pact with Iran, the same loan that we signed with North Korea.
And at the time, it was the Iranians that didn't want to do it.
But now you had Foreign Minister Rachi meeting.
He just met with Putin about three, four hours ago.
And I would suspect that Iran now is willing to accept all the assistance Russia has been more than willing to provide.
And I think at the top of that list will be some air defense systems, because Iran's air defense system is as pitiful as Israel's right now.
And they're not able to stop a lot of these missiles that have been fired from outside.
With Russian assistance, they can significantly upgrade their system.
Once they shut that down, then Israel is going to be facing some real difficulties.
How dangerous for geopolitical stability and world peace was Trump's move on Saturday night?
Oh, I think it was alarming.
What it shows is the message it sends is that here is Iran, a country which is a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty.
It allows International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors at all of its nuclear facilities.
They're the one that's attacked, and they're attacked by a country that's supporting Israel, who refuses to sign the non-proliferation treaty and who refuses to allow any outside inspectors of its nuclear sites.
So the message that's now being sent to the world is that these international agreements are of no value.
They are of no substance.
If anything, if you sign on and to allow IAEA inspections, it's going to be used by the CIA, MI6, and Mossad to collect intelligence on you so that at some point down the road, they can use that intelligence to attack you.
And that's apparently what happened here with this fellow, Grossi, who was supplying Mossad with everything he learned.
He's the head of the IAEA.
However, even he, a little late in the day, but even he acknowledged Iran has no nuclear weapons and isn't working on one.
Yeah, I think he realizes he's now made his agency irrelevant and countries like Russia and China may even reconsider their participation in it anymore or will push to reconfigure it so that all these Western toadies that infect it right now are moved out.
Larry, thank you very much, my dear friend.
Much appreciated.
And we'll look forward to seeing you at the end of the week with Ray McGovern.
I'll be there.
Thanks, Judge.
Thank you, Larry.
Have a great week.
All the best.
And still to come today at 4 o'clock, Scott Ritter.
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