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July 2, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
29:01
Prof. John Mearsheimer : Unpacking BiBi's next-steps. Why the DC visit w/ Trump?
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Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, January 3rd.
Excuse me, July 3rd.
Thursday, July 3rd, 2025.
Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now.
Professor Mearsheimer, as always, welcome here.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule and thank you for interrupting your time off to join us.
Before we get to Israel and Iran and Prime Minister Netanyahu's trip to the U.S. next week and what you expect he'll ask for and what you expect he'll get.
The answer is probably everything and everything, but we'll get to that in a minute.
I do want to spend a few minutes on Ukraine.
How do you read, Professor Mearsheimer, President Trump's holdup on artillery shells and missiles to Ukraine?
Is this symbolic or substantive?
My sense is it's substantive.
And the fact is that given that we are providing both the Israelis and the Ukrainians with huge amounts of weaponry and that we tend to privilege quality over quantity, which means we don't have endless numbers of different kinds of equipment, it's not surprising that the Pentagon believes that we're running down our own stocks to a dangerous level.
I've argued that this is happening vis-a-vis East Asia and containing China for a long time.
So I'm not surprised we're at this point.
And I think that that's what's driving the train here.
Not a political or ideological or moral determination that it's time to wind down American involvement in the war in Ukraine.
Well, in terms of a moral determination, this is clearly an administration that's incapable of making moral decisions.
I mean, that's just out the window.
Again, you always want to remember that we're supporting the genocide in Gaza.
So morality has nothing to do with this.
And Trump would sell the Ukrainians down the river if he thought that was in his interest.
So it has nothing to do with morality.
I think there's no question that Trump is interested in sort of cutting off the Ukrainians, that that can bring this war to an end.
And this is one small step in that direction.
But as you know, he's not been willing to take a giant step.
And the real test is coming.
The real test is what he will do once all of that material that's in the Biden pipeline runs out.
Then he'll have to decide whether he's going to go to Congress and get permission to continue funding the Ukrainians or supplying them with weaponry, or whether he's going to cut them off cold turkey.
I mean, that decision is coming.
That's the big one.
I think you're right.
And he has been attacked by some of his closest friends and strongest allies amongst Republicans in the House.
I haven't heard anything from Senator Graham, not that we care what he says, but he's sometimes bellwether to how other senators think about the decision to pull back.
Do you think that the EU or the remaining NATO countries are in any position to make up for the American withdrawal, drawback, dial back, whatever you want to call it?
No, not at all.
I mean, they're having as much trouble as we are spinning up our industrial base so that we can produce the weapons that the Ukrainians and the Israelis need.
The fact is, the United States has not been very successful at spinning up its industrial base.
And the Europeans have been less successful.
So they just don't have the weaponry to give.
The other thing you want to remember is that a lot of these European economies, this is especially true of the British, French, and even the German economy, they're all in trouble and spending huge amounts of money to continue funding this war in Ukraine forever and ever, because this has become a forever war for the Europeans, I don't think is politically feasible.
So they may be able, they meaning the Europeans, may be able to substitute for the United States if Trump cuts off the spicket, but not for long, in my opinion.
I guess we really have no idea, unless you have some sources, Professor Mearsheimer, of what President Trump and President Putin spoke about today.
I have no idea what they talked about today.
I think President Putin is playing a very smart game here.
He's showing that he's reasonable, that he's willing to talk to Trump, he's willing to talk to Macron, and he's interested in peace and so forth and so on, while at the same time continuing to wage the war as vigorously as possible against Ukraine.
And I think from Trump's point of view, he's basically flailing around.
It's just vintage Trump.
You want to remember that Trump has not solved one foreign policy problem that was on his plate when he moved into the White House.
He couldn't even beat the Houthis after he promised us he was going to beat them.
He wasn't able to defeat the Iranians, right?
He can't shut down the war in Gaza in any meaningful way.
Hasn't been able to shut down the war in Ukraine.
So he's talking to Putin in the hopes that maybe they can work out some sort of deal.
But that's not going to happen because Trump is not willing to make the concessions that are necessary to bring this war to an end.
Have we ever resolved the Issue about totally obliterated.
I think it's been clearly established by people who operate with both feet planted on the ground that we did not totally obliterate Iran's nuclear capability.
And Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, has made it clear that it's just a matter of months before Iran is back to enriching uranium.
And by the way, the Pentagon has said that it could be as soon as a year from now that they're enriching uranium again.
So the idea that this whole system has been obliterated, the problem has been solved, and we can go about our business on other fronts is not a serious argument.
This problem is still sitting out there.
I'm going to play a clip for you, which contains in it the most fantastic statement about where Ukraine was prior to the president's bombing.
This is Senator John Kennedy.
Don't let his country bumpkin way of speaking fool you.
He's a very well-educated man, but the claims in this are absurd.
I invite your attention to two parts of it.
One, he talks about a conference with intelligence people in which he and other senators were briefed.
He lists the briefer.
Listen for a name that is conspicuously missing.
And then there's a very short question and a three-word answer at the end.
The last three words you'll hear in this clip.
And I invite your attention to that.
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.
That's challenged in 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, Hed Seth, Latcliffe, General Kaine, 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 an Israeli or an American assessment?
I don't know.
Did you ask, Senator?
Apparently not.
Have you ever heard this nonsense before?
Within days?
Have you ever heard of a briefing?
No notes, no chart, nothing written, just talking.
Have you ever heard of a briefing where the chief United States briefer under federal law called the Director of National Intelligence, in this case Tulsi Gabbard, wasn't there?
Well, we know it's not surprising that Tulsi Gabbard wasn't there because they don't trust her and they don't want her around to have to speak out about where exactly the Iranian nuclear program is because she would definitely have to say that they are not a few days away from having a bomb.
It's a ludicrous claim.
It's just, you know, it's hard to understand where we are as a country when you have important figures from the executive branch who are going before Congress and making these ludicrous claims.
Everybody knows that it will take at least a year for the Iranians to build a bomb, right?
The idea that they're days away is just simply crazy, right?
And then with regard to the end of the clip and the senator's comment that he didn't know whether it was Israeli or American intelligence, in a way, I don't blame him because there's no difference.
It's not like the United States is saying one thing and Israel is saying another.
Certainly when you're dealing with people at the top, it's quite clear that Mossad, the leadership of Mossad and the leadership of the CIA sing from the same page.
So obviously the senator who has bought in to what is the conventional wisdom on all these subjects and believes all these people, he just repeated what they had to say.
And he had no interest in trying to figure out whether it was something the Americans believed or the Israelis believed.
Again, it just doesn't matter.
Is the director of central intelligence a Mossad asset?
Oh, he is.
He's not a Mossad asset in the sense that he's a secret Mossad asset.
He's a Mossad asset in the sense that he does Israel's betting.
The Israelis basically own him.
It's very clear.
Max Blumenthal has laid this all out for you on the show.
Yes, Max calls him the Mossad stenographer.
He takes down everything that they tell him.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And it just, again, highlights that at the higher levels, there's really no meaningful difference between Israeli views and American views on all these things.
By the way, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the reasons that Trump attacked on June 22nd was because he bought into this whole argument that the Iranians were a few days away from having a bomb, and it was imperative to destroy this capability before they got the bomb.
Maybe that's he would have gotten that argument from the Mossad agents, according to Max Blumenthal, who visited him in the Oval Office.
That may be true, but even so, he didn't have to talk to the Mossad agents.
All he had to do was talk to John Ratcliffe, who, as you said, is effectively a Mossad agent.
And it's not only Ratcliffe, it's people like Rubio who have bought into this.
You want to remember that Marco Rubio wants to be president someday.
And he knows that if you want to be president someday, what you have to do is you have to kowtow to Israel.
Well, but Marco Rubio was born of parents who were not American citizens.
And under Trump's interpretation of the 14th Amendment, he's not an American citizen.
I'm being a little snarky, even though the statement I've made, the statements I've made about this are true.
How badly was the Israeli defense industry in Israel damaged by the retaliation from the Iranian missiles?
Do we know?
No, we don't have any details.
There's no question that a number of sites were hit.
Air bases were hit, research institutions were hit.
They ran out of defensive or they were running out of defensive missiles, as we know.
So damage was done.
And of course, damage was done to all sorts of buildings, both military buildings and civilian buildings inside of Tel Aviv.
And then in Haifa, they hit the port.
They did enormous damage to one of the two oil refineries that the Israelis have.
So they did, the Iranians did an enormous amount of damage inside of Israel.
But there's no evidence that they eliminated any meaningful slice of Israel's defensive capabilities.
Haaretz, which you and I read, reports that contrary to Israeli censors, it leaked out that 33,000 applications have been made for building reconstruction from and after the Iranian attack.
Now, that wouldn't be a total, I'll use Trump's phrase, obliteration of buildings, but it would be a material and substantial damage to the point where they're looking to the government, the government, for funds with which to reconstruct.
Why would the Israelis drop a 500-pound bomb on an internet cafe in Gaza?
Because they are in the process of committing a genocide.
And when a country is committing a genocide, that's exactly what you would expect.
This is not surprising.
I mean, you read the news every day, you know what they're doing.
I mean, just think about the slaughter that's taking place at these various feeding sites that they've created, right?
They're starving the Palestinians and forcing them to go to these collection points where they get food.
And then when they get there, they murder them.
And given that that's been happening day after day and somewhere between 50 and 100 Palestinians are being killed every day, I find it hardly surprising that they would drop a bomb on a cafe.
It's all part of the genocide.
Are you surprised that Israeli settlers in the West Bank are engaged in violence against the IDF?
Israeli settlers fighting violently with guns against the Israeli military?
No, not at all, because I think the Israeli military likes to put some limits on what the settlers can do.
Their ultimate goals are the same, the settlers and the IDF.
But the IDF has certain rules that they believe apply to the settlers.
But the settlers don't believe any rules apply to them, and they can do whatever they want.
And a lot of them are crazy enough that they're willing to attack the IDF.
So you have this ongoing problem in the West Bank where the settlers and the IDF are actually clashing.
And the Israeli Defense Ministry is taking measures to try to put this problem to bed.
Why is Benjamin Netanyahu coming to Washington next week?
We already give him everything he wants.
Well, I would imagine that he wants to strategize with Trump.
Trump thought that this whole operation was a one and done.
He thought that he would go in there or we would go in there.
We would obliterate Iran's nuclear capability and that would be the end of the story.
But what Trump doesn't understand is he just bought into a forever war.
This war is going to go on and on and on.
I can lay out the details as to how it's going to happen if you want.
But the idea that this is one and done is not serious.
So what Netanyahu wants to do is he wants to brief Trump on how this is likely to play out.
And he wants to begin to work on getting him to make sure that the United States is in the fight with Israel.
How do you think the war will progress?
Israel will break the ceasefire, as it always does whenever it enters into a ceasefire.
Well, again, you want to understand what Israel's goals are here.
Israel's goal is to wreck Iran.
It's to turn Iran into another Syria, and at the same time, to eliminate Iran's ability to enrich uranium.
We focus a lot of attention on the fact that Iran can enrich uranium and that the Israelis and the Americans want to prevent that.
Okay, but that's the first part of the story.
The second part of the story is that the Israelis are bent on destroying Ukraine.
They just don't want regime change.
But you said Ukraine, you meant Iran.
Yes, I'm sorry.
Okay.
They want to wreck Iran, and it's going to take them a while to do that.
It took them a while to wreck Syria.
Of course, they did it with our help and with Turkey's help.
And their belief is that they can wreck Iran, but they can only do it with our help.
You want to remember that one thing that's really happened here is that the Israelis have become extremely dependent on the United States to carry out these various military operations.
The Israelis used to make a lot of the fact that they had created the ability to operate independently against their principal adversaries.
They didn't need another country to fight their wars for them.
Yes, they would buy weaponry from countries in Europe or from the United States.
They would take aid from those countries.
But when it was time to fight, the Israelis would do the fighting themselves.
That's no longer the case.
And it's in large part because the United States and Israel are joined at the hip.
And because we're joined at the hip, they understand, right, that anytime they go to war against a country like Iran or when they execute a genocide in Gaza, they need the United States.
They can't do it alone.
And therefore, it makes eminently good sense for Netanyahu to come to Washington to talk sweetly to Donald Trump, to assuage his ego and tell him how much Israel needs him, how much Israel appreciates him, and also just to give him a sense of what's coming.
Because you want to understand, Judge, what's happened here is that they've not obliterated forever Iran's nuclear capability.
And Iran is committed to once again enriching uranium, right?
That means that we won't know what exactly they're doing because the IAEA, which has been our eyes and ears up to now, is no longer going to be able to monitor what the Iranians are doing.
So the Israelis are going to tell all sorts of stories how the Iranians are secretly enriching uranium for purposes of building a bomb.
And we won't have Rafael Grossi or anyone like that there to say that they're not doing that.
And the Israelis won't have Rafael Grossi to share secrets, to get secrets from.
Yes, I fully understand that.
But I'm also just telling you that you want to understand that from Israel's point of view, this is the ideal situation because the Israelis can portray the Iranians as moving rapidly down the road to get nuclear weapons.
And there will be no IAEA to inspect and say that's not the case.
And once that rhetoric is on the table and it begins to spread in the United States, as it did just before the bombing on June 22nd, what will happen is that we will feel compelled to come to the aid of our close ally, Israel.
And of course, if we bomb again, that's not going to solve the problem.
And all this is a way of saying we're in another forever war.
What has the United States of America as a country gained from its alliance with Israel?
Nothing, as I've said to you before.
Israel is a giant albatross around their neck, both strategically and morally.
I mean, as a result of what's going on in Gaza, we're complicit in a genocide.
And from a strategic point of view, we're now in another forever war, this one involving Iran.
Furthermore, it's more likely than ever that Iran is going to get nuclear weapons.
And if that happens, it's going to do enormous damage to the NPT.
Furthermore, supporting Israel the way we support it has done great damage to the international legal system that we set up.
Just look at what we're doing with the ICC, the ICJ, and so forth and so on.
So this is just terrible news for us.
And as I like to emphasize, I know you're not happy to hear this.
If you're interested in containing China, this is disastrous.
You're running down all sorts of military stockpiles in this war in the Middle East.
And of course, in the Ukraine war as well, you're weakening yourself in East Asia, making it more difficult to contain China.
So this is not good for us.
What will China and Russia do, if anything, if the United States invades, whether by air, sea, or land, Iran?
I don't think we're going to invade by land.
I don't think that that's in the cards.
I think that the Iranians, the Russians, and the Chinese all understand that it's extremely likely, I'm choosing my words carefully here, that both the Israelis and the Americans will pay a return visit to Iran.
And I think the Russians and the Chinese understand that they have a vested interest in helping Iran buttress its defenses and improve its inventory of ballistic missiles.
I don't think the Russians and the Chinese want Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, but I do think that they would like to see Iran possess a highly potent ballistic missile force and also have air defenses that could shoot down Israeli aircraft and Israeli missiles as they attack Iran.
Wow.
I don't know that Trump's going to have an easy time selling to the American people, and maybe he doesn't care since he can't run for election again, the concept of a major incursion.
I'll use that word since it's not going to be a land invasion into Iran.
I mean, what did he gain by the $100 million he spent bombing?
He gained nothing with the half billion he spent bombing the Houdis.
What did he gain with the $100 million he spent bombing the Iranian mountainsides on June 22nd.
Well, I think with regard to the American people, as long as Americans don't die, there's almost no limit to what he can do.
I mean, there's just no real resistance in this country.
The Democratic Party puts up hardly any resistance.
There's hardly any resistance inside the Republican Party.
And voices like ours are few in number.
I mean, there are a lot of people who listen to us, but it doesn't have that much effect up at the top.
So Trump is pretty much free to do whatever he wants for the foreseeable future.
And he is acting that way.
I mean, he shows no sense of limits, no sense that he could get himself into trouble.
And what we're saying here is that, you know, the potential for trouble is real, but he doesn't buy that argument.
I wonder if he understands the perception that Nets and Yahoo has him wrapped around his finger.
Well, I think that he understands.
This is me putting myself in his head.
I think he understands that danger, but he believes that he can tell a story publicly that makes it clear that he's really in charge and that he has pulled Netanyahu's chestnuts out of the fire.
And you want to remember, Netanyahu is a very crafty man.
This is a first-order politician.
And he fully understands what he's dealing with when it comes to Donald Trump.
So what he'll do is he'll come to Washington and he'll kiss up to Trump.
He'll tell Trump that he's wonderful and he really needs Trump.
And Trump will then be able to say that he is helping Israel.
He is saving Israel.
Israel should be thankful for him.
And Netanyahu will just nod in agreement.
So in a very important way, that allows Trump to convince himself that Netanyahu's not in the driver's seat, that he, Donald Trump, is in the driver's seat.
Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much.
It feels like it's a Friday afternoon, but it's Thursday because we all have the three-day holiday weekend coming up, so-called Independence Day.
We are independent of London, but are we independent of Washington?
Not at all.
Nevertheless, without getting political, thank you very much for your time.
Have a great holiday weekend.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
I look forward to it too.
And happy 4th of July to you as well, Judge.
Thank you.
Thank you, Professor.
Coming up at 4 o'clock today for this afternoon, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Scott Ritter filling in for Ray McGovern, who is lecturing in Germany, trying to gin up the peace movement there.
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