All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 9, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
23:45
COL. Lawrence Wilkerson : US War on Iran Is Imminent!
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom.
Today is Thursday, October 9th, 2025.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now.
Colonel Larry, always a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
The pleasure to be able to pick your brain.
I want to talk to you primarily about the imminence of the Israeli and United States attack on Iran.
But before we do, what is your take, Colonel, on the Donald Trump, Steve Whitkoff, Jared Kushner, Tony Blair, Gaza agreement?
First take is it's a ceasefire agreement, not a peace agreement.
They've been very clouded over that, but that's what it is.
Second comment is that Bibi Netanyahu has never, never, never met a ceasefire agreement he's kept.
Third comment is he told Smokich and Ben Gavir, and there's a subheadline in Heret's today on this, that everything was copacetic, they could rest assured everything was going to continue, and they agreed to stay in the government.
Translate that to I am not going to honor much of this, and I'm going to continue really on my basic path.
And you don't need to worry because you know we're going to war with Iran.
That's the kicker.
And when we go with Iran, war with Iran, everything else is obviated.
And what will the man who's uh campaigning for uh the Nobel Priest Peace Prize do about that, since he's a personal guarantor on the so-called ceasefire hostage uh exchange path towards statehood?
I don't know how Netanyahu's going to craft this.
I would suspect that he's going to do something that would look like Iran started it.
But in any event, he's going to war with Iran.
And that's going to obviate everything Trump is looking for, especially now, he could make this different, but I don't think he will.
Steve Bannon seems to think he might make it different.
I don't think so.
Because he will go in.
He'll have to go in because Israel will be collapsing.
How imminent, Colonel, in your view is the Israeli-U.S.
attack on Iran.
Now you're familiar with the accumulation of American hardware out there.
I think it's as I've said before, I think it's between now and Thanksgiving.
And it may be even quicker, given that Netanyahu has to move pretty fast because he doesn't want this deal, so to speak, to come to any more fruition than is necessary.
What do you mean by that?
Well, I mean, he's got to keep his coalition together, and he's got to keep the people who are the most strident in that coalition with him all along.
So he can't postpone the war that long and let other dynamics begin to develop, like, for example, positive develops that might accrue to the ceasefire.
Um, I don't know how he'll do that, but go to war with Iran, and that means probably sooner rather than later.
So Donald Trump flies to Cairo, ostentatiously signs some kind of an agreement.
Netanyahu violates the agreement but persuades Trump to join him in an invasion of uh Iran, and everybody forgets about the agreement while the Iran-Israeli war is going on.
Absolutely.
Uh, that's been his plan all along.
I think he's he's he's suffered a few setbacks here and there, but I think uh basically that's been his plan all along, his ultimate.
Not necessarily that he was going to war with Iran, but it was his ultimate get out of jail free card, and he's now been forced to use it.
On the agreement itself, our longtime mutual friend uh Scott Ritter Is of the view that it uh significantly favors Hamas, that they stay there, they can participate uh in the new government and the IDF leaves.
It all depends.
I don't necessarily disagree with that.
Hamas seems to have gotten its objectives, but that means that a second state is going to be formed, and that ain't gonna happen.
Not on Netanyahu's watch, and probably not on other any other Israeli prime minister might replace him's watch or American president.
So what they're looking at is all of this being down the tube, so to speak, when the war with Iran starts, and everyone's attention, Judge, will shift majorly to that, and they will forget what's happened in Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Syria, Lebanon, and everywhere else, because this is going to be region-wide.
What happens in Gaza and to Gaza when the uh Iranian missiles pierce the Israeli defenses?
The Iranians have shown that they are very good at directing their missiles, even in such a constrained territory as is Israel, to the right targets, and they will do that.
And that will make the attacks even more devastating because the missiles will be concentrated on key targets.
Wow.
Um there are uh reports that on October 7th, and knowing him, he probably chose this day intentionally, Prime Minister Netanyahu called President Putin and tried to get him to cancel the not-yet complied with deals for missiles and other defensive weaponry that Russia is selling to Iran.
I mean, how do you think Putin would have reacted to such a brazen request?
This is off the wall.
That's Phoebe.
That's BB.
He's losing it incrementally.
I wish he were losing it a lot faster.
I think one of the things that's truly blown him away is what's happened with the Charlie Kirk assassination and that group, uh, talking points, or what is it, turning point USA.
Um, and he's losing it all across America with regard to those under 40 and particularly those under 30.
So he's not the same old BB right now.
I think he's on path to war with Iran, but he's definitely not the same shrewd, lying sack of proverbial horse crop that he's been all along.
Um he's he's you look at him in pictures now, he's harassed.
Well, I'll tell you this.
It's a funny you should say that my initial reaction, I told Chris at Leonard, I told uh from watching BB at the UN, I watched him from here, even though I'm just two blocks from the UN.
Um he didn't seem his confident self.
He seemed irritated, tired, and exhausted.
Now, he was humiliated because there was nobody in that audience except for Americans and Israelis and technicians and security guards.
There was literally nobody else there, but he was not his usual oratorical persuasive self.
I agree.
I agree.
I watched that tape.
The cheering squad of the Israelis was the only positive thing he had in the audience.
Right.
Right.
Um I uh was interviewed uh on the great game, that's the Russian television program by our mutual friend Dmitry Symes.
First question he asked me was Donald Trump made up his mind on whether or not to sell tomahawks to Ukraine.
This is obviously a very, very serious issue with them.
I said, well, the president said he has made up his mind, but he hasn't said how.
A, Colonel Larry, how serious an issue is this?
B, how dangerous would it be if we do put tomahawks in their hands?
I've been with tomahawks since 1984 when it was introduced into the Pacific Theater.
We called it Pacific Command at that time for our use in implementing Plan 5001, otherwise Defense of Japan, war with the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front.
And we didn't want it.
It's been upgraded a number of times since then.
it's a fabulous weapon system, but it's very old and it's easy to shoot down.
It's slow.
And the only way we would take it at that time, and Reagan and Vese, his then chairman uh denied us the opportunity.
We said essentially, Admiral Crowell said, back to the to the Washington complex, we need Tomahawk D, which was the nuclear version, because that's the only way we're going to get the Western Front, where you know, hypothetically the Russians have attacked the Soviet Union is attacked in Europe.
The only way we're going to get their attention and divert forces from that front to the Pacific front is nuclear weapons.
So we want Tomahawk D nuclear.
We didn't get it, and probably a good decision by the president.
But all to say, the only version that's scary, and you don't know what's coming at you, Judge, right?
Is the nuclear version.
So a cadre of Russian technicians, maybe at the lieutenant level, are staring at some radar screens, they call a colonel over and say there's some tomahawks coming.
We don't know what they're armed with, Colonel.
What do we do?
Right.
Now they can probably shoot it down, but even with that, you're not absolutely guaranteed that you're not gonna, you know, have the nuclear weapon go off when you shoot it down wherever you shoot it down.
If you shoot down a missile containing a nuclear weapon, does it explode?
Is it the same as if it's been detonated?
It depends on the type of the last time I had any real insight into this.
We had a couple of systems that we were worried about that with regard to, but they were ballistic systems, so uh you know you have to answer system by system, and you never know what's going to happen when you shoot down a missile with a nuclear warhead.
Most of the time it would probably be inert and lie there inert, but you don't know that.
Here's um President Putin the other day on Tomahawks, uh, quest number six.
It's dangerous.
As for the Tomahawks, it's a powerful arm.
Perhaps not the most modernized, but it's powerful, poses serious threat.
This will not change in any way the balance of powers on the battlefield, the fundamental issues of the armed forces of Ukraine.
No matter how many UAVs they get.
And no matter how many lines they create with those UAVs, without the personnel, there will be no one to lead those battles.
They have to change the tactics.
Will this pose damage to our relations?
Where we see light at the end of the tunnel, of course.
Of course.
Using Tomahawks without direct involvement of the U.S. officers is impossible.
Which means a brand new stage of escalation, even between in the relations between Russia and the U.S. So, Colonel, the last two sentences to to my uh in my opinion are profound, and I need you to break them down.
First, I understand what is he correct that using a Tomahawk without the direct involvement of U.S. officials is impossible, whether because of top secrets or or whatever.
That's the whole purpose of that statement, I think.
He knows that Tomahawk with an HE warhead is a mere pinprick weapon.
It's designed to go after enemy bunkers, enemy short, confined spaces, and so forth.
We shot 52 into Syria, remember?
Hardly did any damage.
Um he knows about the nuclear version, but more than that, he was saying there I know Tomahawk will require United States personnel on the ground in Ukraine or somewhere nearby in order to direct it.
That means you have entered the war.
That means NATO has entered the war.
That is a new dimension.
And I will take that into full consideration in my response.
That's what he's saying.
That's what he means when he says U.S. involvement in utilizing the equipment.
There I'm summarizing.
Now I'm translating literally, which means a brand new stage of escalation in the relations between Russia and the United States.
Absolutely.
That's it.
That's his point.
And he's been making that point all along, and he's been saying it religiously with clarity, not just about Tomahawk, but other weapon systems that he knows require NATO and in some cases Washington's support on the ground.
Does the man campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize understand that?
He's not going to hear from General Kellogg.
He's not going to hear it from Heg Seth.
He's not going to hear it from uh Sebastian Gorka.
They're going to encourage him to go ahead and give them the weapons.
Quick accurate accurate answer.
Trump does not understand that.
He doesn't understand that this war with Iran is going to take his Nobel Priest Prize up in smoke.
What will the what is the U.S. doing to uh prepare for war in Iran?
What kind of hardware from public sources, obviously?
I know you have a top secret security clearance from public sources.
What kind of hardware is being sent to the Middle East?
Well, they're refueling aircraft, there are augmentations to L-D, there are augmentations to other airfields in the area.
What do augmentations mean other than the aircraft?
It means additional munitions in the bunkers and such.
And I think the most foreboding thing, if you will, is the picture that we're laying down for the region in terms of the indigenous forces.
People don't realize this.
We have more troops in Southwest Asia.
They're not necessarily combat troops, but they are the key support troops who would be involved in this than we do most anywhere else on the earth, including Europe.
So we have a massive complex of forces on the ground in Southwest Asia now.
And all of those people are alerted and ready to go.
And the most efficient and proficient and largest troop reception area is on the alert, on the alert.
Colonel might uh Netanyahu and his regime attack American troops in the Middle East and make it look like it came from Iran.
A false flag to uh exacerbate uh uh the American public and the man in the White House.
Nothing would surprise me.
And I I think the Iranian government and the military in particular, both the national military and the IRGC are probably pondering over what they do if the United States comes in.
Do they attack targets in general in the region, to include Saudi and others with whom they've got a reasonable rapprochement going on right now?
So you would think they wouldn't want to do that, or do they just exclusively attack U.S. targets on those countries' soil with an assurance to the country accompanying the attacks that says we're not attacking any of your oil facilities or anything else?
We're just attacking the great Satan.
You know their duplicitous as hell, they'll cheat you too.
You know that.
We're attacking.
What happens if uh Erdogan uh closes the Strait of Hormuz?
I don't think Israel is Israel starved of oil?
I don't think Erdogan has the capacity to close the Strait of Hormuz and keep it close.
He doesn't, not unless he's gonna land paratroopers down there or something on both sides of the strait and sit there with javelins or something and and close the strait that way or mine it or whatever, like the Iranians tried to do.
The Iranians tried several years ago when we conducted Operation Praying Manis and Operation uh Ernest Will, they tried to close the strait and they did temporarily and they mined it.
They even got one of our destroyers and uh had to limp back to the United States.
But you can't close that strait on a permanent basis unless you have considerable ability to do that, and Erdogan doesn't have that ability, not in place anyway.
Will the United States uh introduce boots on the ground in Iran.
They're already there, Judge.
I mean, Colin Powell lamented the fact that we had 10 men there.
We now have over 50,000 men and women there.
Um, they're already there, they're just mostly not combat troops, but they are the kind of troops that facilitate combat.
You know, when you're talking about air power and you're talking about sea power, you really don't need the grunts that would have to invade and march through Iran.
How does Trump sell this to the American people?
You and I know, and any non-uh Zionist fanatic observer knows.
Iran poses zero threat to the American national security.
Oh no, Bibi says uh 8,000 miles or better, and a nuclear warhead is going to come to the United States, you know.
Bibi's always truthful.
You're right.
There's no threat from Iran.
Want to play a clip?
I'm getting back to the uh Tony Blair, uh Donald Trump, um Steve Whitcoff, Jared Kushner agreement.
I want to play a clip from the president's phone interview uh with Sean Hannity uh last night because what he said is very intriguing to me, in which he says the U.S. military was involved in the peace deal.
I'm gonna ask you if you can figure out.
I know you're not a shrink what he's talking about, Chris Scott number 18.
We had some tremendous help, as you know, with everybody from uh Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner and Marco and we had everybody, JD, the whole the whole group was just amazing, and the military was, as you know, very instrumental in getting this done.
We have a great military with great leadership.
Uh the whole world came together, to be honest.
Uh so many countries that you wouldn't have even thought of it.
They they came together.
The world has come together around this deal.
What does he mean that the military was involved in the deal?
Did he threaten an invasion of Gaza?
I I doubt it.
Uh I I'm imagining that he's making most of that up out of whole claw.
Um, and I strongly suspect that he's trying to recover some of the ground that even he knows he lost at Quantico.
And so he's giving everyone credit, everyone, and especially the military.
And could be talking about specifically Azon, because we've had U.S. military people with the IDF leadership 24-7 ever since October the 7th.
Uh, and intelligence people too.
Uh CIA and Masad are locked at the hip.
So he could be talking about that too.
But I think he's really trying to recover some ground.
Okay.
Uh, this is off the wall in the sense that I never heard somebody in a position of government say this, but in another sense, this is not what you and I ordinarily talk about, but I have to articulate it because it's so crazy.
At a uh cabinet meeting earlier today, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who I must admit it's a personal friend of mine, although I don't give him advice.
At one point I did, but he doesn't take my advice anymore.
Said that children who have been circumcised double their chances of autism.
Listen, I'm not a doctor, but isn't this off the wall?
I I have read a couple of documents on that.
I'm not an expert, so I can't attest to their validity, but uh I have read some things on that.
And I I would say too, you know, I deployed I deployed your uh op-ed everywhere, uh everywhere I could.
I even deployed it this morning on on point with Magna Chakrabarty in Boston.
Thank you.
And Doug McGregor was on with me.
And um it's amazing how much ignorance is out there, Judge.
They don't know what you're talking about in half the half the audiences I've spoken to.
Who is James Battiston?
What is this business of security belongs to the people in the states?
Wow.
Wow.
We're so ignorant, Judge, we couldn't find our ass in a windstorm.
I'm sorry to say, and and yet I'm gonna be in Russia next week, and everybody that I talk to who's underage 35 will be fluent in English.
I don't doubt it a bit.
How many Americans do you know under the age 35 that are fluent in Russian?
Not many.
Yeah.
Well, or any language for that matter.
Including English.
Colonel, it's always a pleasure.
Uh, we discussed dark and terrible things, but Thomas Moore joked with his executioner.
That's how much he believed in a sense of humor.
He said, I'm an old man.
Help me.
He's about to get his head cut off.
Help me up the scaffold.
But I won't need any help on the way down.
I I saw one by Oscar Wilde the other night.
It was so apt.
It was something like this.
If you're right, you'll be found out sooner or later.
Thank you, Colonel.
God love you.
We'll talk to you soon.
Thank you.
All the best.
▲
Export Selection