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July 1, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:06
Aaron Maté : MI6 and Atomic Weapons Inspections
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025.
Aaron Mate joins us now.
Aaron, thank you very much.
Always a pleasure.
I want to ask you at some length about an explosive piece that you and your colleagues have posted on Gray Zone about MI6 and nuclear weapons inspection.
But before we get there, I don't want to lose sight of Ukraine.
What is your understanding of what's happening in Ukraine?
There have been two recent developments of significance.
One is this phone call between President Macron of France and President Putin.
And the other has been some sort of an announcement.
Larry Johnson says it's serious, of a United States slowdown in the delivery of arms.
I'll let you take it from there.
Ukraine is learning that its concerns are secondary because it's a U.S. proxy.
And when you're a proxy of someone, you're always going to be subordinate to their whims.
And that's what's happening right now with Trump's decision, Trump administration's decision to withhold critical weapon systems to Ukraine, especially Patriot air defense.
And that's something that's been at the top of Ukraine's wish list for understandable reasons.
It's been pulverized by Russian aerial assaults.
And so it's been wanting Patriots.
Last week, when he was at NATO, after he met, as he met Zelensky, Trump talked about possibly giving Ukraine these patriots.
But now the announcement comes from the Pentagon that Ukraine's not getting them because the U.S. wants to focus on its own stockpiles, which it says are depleted.
Personally, I doubt the official excuse that Washington is giving that it needs to hold on to these systems for other purposes to the Middle East.
If the U.S. wanted to give these weapon systems to Ukraine, it could find ways to make up for the shortfall, for example, by buying back patriots from other countries that it's given them to.
I think this is a signal that Trump is following through on what he campaigned on, which is winding down this proxy war.
This wasn't his war, he says, even though his own policies went in his first term contributed to it.
But it wasn't his decision to reject Russia's peace offer back in December 2021, invite Russia's invasion, and then sabotage the peace agreement that Ukraine and Russia reached in the spring of 2022.
That was Joe Biden's decision.
And I think by winding down these weapon systems, this is a signal from Trump that he is indeed walking away.
Larry Johnson says they've also stopped 155 millimeter artillery shells, which are the meat and potatoes, if you'll pardon that phrase, of the Ukrainian military.
I would think they would be almost toothless, again, pardon the analogy, without them.
From what I know, it's possible Ukraine can buy that from other sources.
From what I've been told, and I could be wrong, Larry Johnson obviously knows a lot more about military matters than I do, but the Patriots are not replaceable.
The U.S. makes the Patriots.
It supplies them to everybody.
Europe cannot make up for that shortfall.
And so if the Patriots are not going through to Ukraine, then I think Ukraine is in very big trouble.
As to the phone call between Trump and Macron, sorry, between Putin and Macron, yeah.
There was initially this line that, you know, Russia severed from NATO.
We're never going to talk to them ever again.
Macron played into this, but Macron is always playing all sides.
And before Russia invaded back in 2022, I think the top European leader that he spoke to was Macron.
They had a decent relationship, Putin and Macron, to the point where there's video footage that Macron's office put out of one of these pre-invasion phone calls between Putin and Macron.
And one of the key lines that Macron says to Putin is very interesting.
He said to him, don't fall for provocations.
Don't respond to provocations.
By which he meant, I assume, Ukrainian shelling of the Donbass, which at that time was increasing.
So Macron was acknowledging that Ukraine was actually increasing its attacks on the Donbass, which for Russia was a major issue because that's where millions of ethnic Russians live and were calling for help from Russia from.
So Macron and Putin reestablishing their ties is not surprising.
And Macron is someone who in the past has recognized Russian concerns.
He's also talked before he also spoke somewhat sympathetically about Russian concerns about NATO expansion, which he later abandoned.
But Macron, I think, speaking of Putin is a reflection of the fact that he understands where this war is going and that's going to a Russian victory.
Did the Ukrainians recently use French missiles that either landed in Russia or killed some of these Russian speakers that live in the disputed areas?
I believe they did, though.
Could that have been the impetus for the phone call?
Don't attack us back.
We didn't know what they were going to do with them.
I can just imagine Macron.
If those were indeed French missiles or if Russia thinks those are French missiles, then I indeed think that could have been the impetus for the call.
Yeah.
Along with the fact that Macron is an opportunist, he recognizes where things are going.
All right.
Switching gears.
Well, actually, before we switch gears, how badly is Ukraine's back to the wall as we speak?
It's pretty bad.
Russia has now fully expelled Ukrainian forces from the Russian territory that Ukraine conquered last year from Kursk.
Russia is advancing on Sumy.
Russia is advancing in the Donbas.
And Ukraine is having a very, very hard time to fill its ranks.
And meanwhile, Zelensky is facing increasing challenge from within.
One of his top political opponents, the former president of Ukraine, Porschenko, has recently said that Zelensky is acting like a dictator and is being increasingly authoritarian.
So Zelensky is facing challenges from Russia.
He's Facing now new challenges from the U.S., which for the second time has cut off vital support to Ukraine under Trump's second term.
And he's also facing challenges from domestic opponents who are tired of his authoritarianism.
Switching to the other hotspot, what is your view as to why Trump dropped 30,000-pound bombs on Ukrainian mountains two Saturdays ago?
On Iranian mountains.
Sorry.
I'm sorry.
Forgive me.
Different proxy war.
Yeah.
Well, listen, there was the reason that we got from accounts and establishment news sources that Trump was watching Fox News.
He was annoyed that Israel was getting too much of the credit in their attack on Iran, which preceded his.
I actually think that's quite plausible.
Trump also told the Wall Street Journal that he did this to reassert what the journal called U.S. dominance.
And Trump made some comment along the lines of, you know, under Biden, we were a cold country.
You know, we were a laughingstock.
Now we're hot again.
So he really sees warmongering as being some sort of image bolstering exercise like PR.
It's funny for a guy who campaigned against endless war, who talked about how idiotic our leaders were for getting into all these foreign wars.
Now he goes ahead and says that getting into a war is good for our self-image.
So Trump's all over the place.
That's the, I think, psychological dynamic.
And then you have just politically, this is what the Israel Labi wanted.
This is what his top donors wanted.
And Iran's been in the crosshairs of U.S. neocons, warmongers for a very, very long time.
There's bitterness over the fact that Iran expelled a U.S.-backed dictator in 1979 with the revolution and the hostage crisis.
There's bitterness over the fact that Iran's been on the other side of so many conflicts.
For example, in the 1980s, when the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein in his attack on Iran.
And there are people in government with long memories and who can't shake that mentality of once there's an adversary that's been designated in that adversary camp, they just, we must do everything we can to get rid of them.
And so I think that helped propel Trump to bomb a few weeks ago.
This business about how close Iran was to developing a nuclear weapon, are you of the view that Trump was influenced by Mossad, by Israeli intelligence, whether it came out of the mouth of Netsanyahu or the mouth of John Radcliffe, was really a Mossad asset?
I don't know.
Is it fair to call the director of central intelligence a Mossad asset?
But you can weigh in on that, of course.
Where do you think he's getting this from?
Well, it's clear that he got this from Israel.
Max Blumenthal and Anya Parrampil at the Gray Zone, they reported recently based on conversations with a Trump administration official that, yeah, the key player here was Ratcliffe, who was heavily influenced by what Israel was feeding him.
You know, I spoke to someone inside the government who confirmed to me that there was no intelligence consensus behind the Israeli claims that Iran was weeks away from a weapon or even working on one, which they weren't.
So this came from Israel.
And that's what Trump was influenced by, along with Israel's allies in Congress, people like Lindsey Graham, who was heavily in Trump's ear and encouraging him to do Israel's bidding and bomb Iran.
There was also an article in the Washington Post recently, which said that Israel had decided by March to bomb Iran.
Now, on top of the fact that this speaks to the incontrovertible reality that this was not based on any new threat from Iran, there's also the fact that March is interesting because March is the same month that the U.S. intelligence community reaffirmed that Iran is not building nuclear weapons.
So the same month that the U.S. intelligence community affirms that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program, Israel decides to bomb.
And why did they decide to bomb?
Well, according to the Washington Post, speaking to Israeli officials, the reason was that Iran would have rebuilt its air defenses by the end of this year if Israel waited any longer.
So Israel saw what these Israeli officials described as a unique opportunity.
So essentially, Israel perceived that Iran was vulnerable.
This has nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
This was a unique opportunity to go after an adversary that they perceived to be weak because its air defenses had been pulverized in a previous Israeli attack last year.
That's what this was about, nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
Here is one of the weirdest interviews that we have seen on this very subject, the proximity in time for the Iranians to develop a deliverable nuclear weapon.
Now, it's Senator John Kennedy who's got that put on.
I say put on because he has many advanced degrees, but he likes to do the country bumpkin image that's put on twang.
But I want you to listen to two things.
One is he lists the names of the briefers in the secret briefing the Senate had.
You'll notice one name not there.
I think probably should be there.
And then you got to listen to the last question and the last answer.
The last answer, which is just three words, in my view, is startling.
Chris, cut number seven.
Before Israel and America did what we did, Iran was within days of having a nuclear weapon.
Now?
Within days.
Within days.
Now within this briefing?
Within days.
Sir, just to kind of circle back and put a finer point on this, the days that they were to getting a bomb, that seems to be different from what Tulsi Gabbard had testified to in March.
Was there a new assessment?
Was that the Israeli assessment?
Was that a new American assessment?
Was that information new to you in this briefing?
It was new to me.
This was a good briefing.
It was one of the best I've ever attended.
I mean, Rubio, Hedseth, Ratcliffe, General Kane, they didn't bring out a script and read carefully from it.
They just looked us in the eye and talked to us.
The assessment that said that Iran was within days of having a bomb, is that Israeli or American assessment?
I don't know.
Is that Israeli or American?
I Don't know.
Did you ask?
Well, I hadn't seen that clip.
I confirmed with someone on the inside with access to the intelligence that there is no U.S. intelligence assessment, which requires a consensus process that endorses the Israeli view that Iran was within days of developing a nuclear weapon.
There's none.
So whatever he was told in that briefing, that is intelligence from Israel.
And there's an easy conflation here.
Just because the U.S. has intelligence about something doesn't mean that they agree with it.
So Tulsi Gabbard played this game.
After Trump came out and said and disregarded Tulsi Gabbard's previous statement that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, Tulsi Gabbard came out and said, went and basically threw her own intelligence community under the bus and said, the U.S. has intelligence that Iran has the capability to develop a nuclear weapon within weeks or months if they choose to.
Now, just because they have the intelligence doesn't mean they agree with it.
So all basically she was saying is that, yes, the U.S. obtained intelligence, but which we all know came from Israel, that Iran, if it wants to, could build a nuclear weapon within weeks and months.
Now, Senator Kennedy is going with days, and I don't know where that comes from.
That might just be his own embellishment of something false that he already was told in the briefing, because I've never even heard this days claim before.
That's a new idea.
Max Blumenthal has told us that he believes from his sources that Mossad agents, operatives, officials, or whatever they want to call themselves, were actually in the Oval Office briefing the president.
That makes perfect sense to me.
That makes absolutely perfect sense to me.
And there's a history of this.
I know some of your previous guests, including Ray McGovern, have talked about how under the Bush administration, how there used to be Israeli operatives basically walking to the Pentagon and given free reign.
So that wouldn't surprise me at all if that dynamic is being repeated.
Colonel Kwaikowski has told us she was, I don't know if they were punishing her or what, but they gave her the assignment of escorting Israeli civilian people, she assumes Mossad, into the Pentagon and they were told, bypass all security.
Just use your rank, use your rank as lieutenant colonel to bypass all security and get them to where they're going.
That would be consistent with the other stuff that we have heard.
To this piece now, but MI6, how corrupt is the IAEA?
Well, so the Gray Zone has published an article.
It's by Kit Klarenberg, who's been doing a lot of reporting based on leaked documents that he's received on how, essentially, a UK intelligence operative who works for MI6, he worked with the IAEA.
And he didn't specify exactly in what role he did that work, but he has previously taken credit for basically economic warfare against Iran and for putting up the heat on Iran.
So you put two and two together, someone who's working with the IAEA as a UK intelligence operative while simultaneously taking credit for this global campaign of hostility toward Iran, including economic sanctions.
And you can see, or at least it's quite plausible to believe, that this operative was involved in something corrupt here and was helping to manipulate the IAEA towards foreign policy objectives rather than its own mandate, which is simply to verify Iran's compliance with its nuclear obligations under the NPT.
And there's a long history of this.
This same operative, whose name is Nicholas Langman, as identified by the gray zone, he also claimed that he worked with the OPCW.
The OPCW is the world's top chemical weapons watchdog.
We know for a fact, it's not even a matter of speculation, the OPCW was compromised to advance the U.S.-led regime change war in Syria.
For example, a notorious investigation in Douma of April 2018, where Syria was accused of a chemical weapons attack, the OPCW centered that investigation and reached a conclusion in line with the U.S.-led claim that the Syrian government committed a chemical weapons attack.
And they silenced the conclusions of their investigation, which did not find evidence for a Syrian government chemical weapons attack.
And they ignored the complaints of whistleblowers who called out the corruption.
So the OPCW has been compromised.
This MI6 operative claims to have worked with the OPCW.
He also claims to have worked with the IAEA.
So you can reach your own conclusions there.
It's certainly increasingly plausible that the IAEA has been compromised in a similar way, which is also what Iran has alleged.
Iran has faulted the IAEA for helping to lay the groundwork for the Israeli-U.S.
bombing campaign.
It's accused the head of the IAEA, Grossi, of essentially colluding with Israel and possibly giving Israel the names of its scientists who have been assassinated.
And based on the record of the OPCW alone, and now based on this revelation from the gray zone, that there was an MI6 operative working with the IAEA, it's highly plausible that the IAEA has been the victim of similar corruption.
And I know you'll be interviewing Max Blumenthal soon, and he can explain this much better than I. Well, I suppose we shouldn't be startled by this.
The Iranians have said to the IAEA, get the hell out.
I mean, Grossi has pretty much admitted, has he not, that Iran did not have developable nuclear weapons, even though he said it a little too late.
And the evidence of his collusion with Mossad is irrefutable.
He did admit that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, but as you said, he did it after the fact, after dropping after Israel bombed and after putting out a report that helped lay the groundwork for the bombing, because the report is very controversial and it recycled some claims that I think are dubious at least, that merit a lot more scrutiny.
And after that happened, after there was some backlash, then he started saying, yeah, we don't have evidence of nuclear weapons program.
But by that point, it was too late.
The bombing had begun.
As for his collusion with Mossad, you know, there are these leaked documents that allege that.
I haven't verified them for myself, so I have to be careful.
But look, just given the history of the U.S. compromising the OPCW, given the fact, by the way, that Grossi, and I think I've mentioned this to you before, but it bears repeating, Grossi also used to work for the OPCW before the IAEA.
And when did he come in?
He came in after the U.S. engineered the ouster of the OPCW's first director, general, Jose Bustani.
And why did the U.S. oust Bustani?
Because Bustani was standing in the way of the Iraq war.
He was trying to facilitate Iraq's entry into the Chemical Weapons Convention, which would have opened Iran, sorry, opened Iraq up to inspections.
And those inspections would have undermined the Bush administration's drive to invade Iraq.
So John Bolton went to Joseph Bustani, went to his office.
He threatened him.
He threatened the OPCW's budget and even threatened Bustani's kids.
He said, we know where your kids live.
Bustani wouldn't budge.
He stood his ground.
So Bolton got rid of him through other means by basically threatening the budget.
And Bustani, just after he was re-elected for a second term, he was forced out.
And after Bustani was forced out, he was replaced by a successor.
And working for that successor was none other than Rafael Grossi, the current head of the IAEA.
Wow.
John Bolton threatened to harm somebody's kids.
I mean, that's a felony.
This happened in the United States.
This happened in The Hague, the headquarters of the OPCW.
And so that was over 20 years ago now.
But what happens after the U.S. successfully ousts the head of an organization?
That's a sign who's really running the show.
And I think that's been the norm now at the OPCW ever since, as the OPCW whistleblower scandal, when it comes to Syria, illustrates.
And by the way, media coverage of the OpenCW whistleblowers, pretty much non-existent.
You still cannot get an established media outlet to acknowledge even the existence of OPCW whistleblowers who challenge the cover-up of their investigation in Syria for obvious reasons.
You know, their findings, their facts interfere with the narrative that was required to achieve regime change in Syria.
And now I think we're seeing that repeated when it comes to the IAEA and the regime change campaign in Iran.
What has become or will become of the U.S. negotiations with Iran?
I don't have high hopes.
Trump has been all over the place.
He talks sometimes about getting back to the table.
But if you're Iran at this point, now right after Trump used these diplomas, these diplomatic talks to provide a smokescreen for bombing.
I mean, are you going to get back into talks with the U.S.?
It's going to be very, very difficult.
And Trump keeps going back and forth.
He talks about lifting sanctions on Iran in one moment.
Then he says, and there's no way I'll do that.
And I'm not giving Iran anything.
This is someone who has joined Israel's pathological commitment to regime change, to aggression, to hegemony.
Aaron, under those terms, you can't negotiate.
He just lifted sanctions on ISIS, the people that are running the government of Syria.
He just lifted sanctions on Syria, and that's because Syria is now run by people who are under our control.
The goal was achieved, regime change.
And even though the new government is led by literally, as you said, a former deputy leader of ISIS who pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi, his boss, and also was a former leader of al-Qaeda in Syria, which grew out of ISIS in Iraq.
Even though that's Syria's new leadership, doesn't matter.
Trump says he's a nice guy, and the sanctions on his country can be lifted because now they're in our pocket.
The head of Syria, al-Jalani, recently said that Israel and Syria have common enemies, by which he meant Iran and Hezbollah.
So now that Syria is in our camp, even though it's led by a former al-Qaeda leader, the sanctions can be lifted.
By the way, the sanctions should be lifted.
We have no right to inflict economic warfare on the people of Syria, who are the main victims of these sanctions, but they never should have been imposed in the first place.
And the fact that they're only lifted when regime change is achieved, it just shows how cynical these sanctions are and how they're never for their professed goal, which is helping the people of Syria.
That's all a fiction.
It's strictly to impose suffering on people until all our goals are achieved, which is having governments under our control.
Aaron Mate, thank you, my dear friend.
Thanks for letting me take you across the board here, even though I confused to run with Ukraine.
Much appreciate your analysis and your time.
All the best, my friend.
Thank you, Judge T as well.
Thank you.
Coming up later today at 3 o'clock, Phil Giraldi.
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