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Feb. 4, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
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Pepe Escobar : The Global Fallout From Striking Iran
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What If Freedom's Greatest Danger Is Now? 00:03:44
Undeclared wars are commonplace.
Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.
Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government.
To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected.
What if sometimes to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government?
What if Jefferson was right?
What if that government is best which governs least?
What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong?
What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave?
What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?
Hi, everyone.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Thursday, February 5th, 2026.
The great Pepe Escobar joins us.
Now, Pepe, before we start our conversation, someone posted something earlier today.
I don't know if it's you or an imposter.
Watch this.
Hi, Judge.
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to Chunchin.
Southwest Asia, China, PowerPoint.
We'll be talking about Chungqin live on Judging Freedom right away.
I gather that is not a handsomer, younger version of you.
It is you.
It's not AI, Judge.
This was me 40 minutes ago, and we had to cross town to be here at the hotel in time for our podcast.
Wow.
Where are you?
What's going on?
What time of day was it?
Because it looked like a wild gathering of people.
Yes, it is.
Okay, it's very hard to give you the short version.
I am in Chongqing, the powerhouse of China in the Southwest, one of the capitals of the Chinese miracle or miracles and of China in the future.
I've been here since the weekend.
It's been an absolute roller coaster in many levels, meetings, going to places where things are happening.
Today, for instance, I was at the ground zero of the new Silk Roads, where all the trains that go across China and then across Central Asia and all the way to Europe with virtually everything that is consumed in the West, these trains depart from here.
So this is where we were this afternoon.
We were shooting already images for our next documentary about Xinjiang and China.
But here, Chongqing is, it's impossible to explain Chongqing in one minute.
But do you know, Judge, that they define their own city sometimes, not as the 3D, 4D or 5D city.
They define it as the 9D city.
Because it's in so many dimensions and the topology informs you because it's a city built on multi-levels because it's basically mountains and hills converging to two rivers.
So this is how they have been building Chongqing for decades.
Nuclear Rumors and Diplomatic Shifts 00:15:43
In fact, for the past centuries.
And during very, very important in the history of modern Chongqing, Chongqing was bombed by the Japanese from 1938 to 1943.
So it is one of the capitals of Chinese resistance to foreign aggression, which is something that all of you in the US understand what it means.
Yes, well, in the West, we have, of course, domestic aggression.
We'll get to that in a minute.
But today, I assume it's still February 5 where you are.
It might be February 1st.
Yes, it's 11 p.m. now.
Yes, it's 11 p.m. now.
Yeah.
Today, February 5, 2026, is the first day since 1962 when the world wakes up and learns that there is no longer any institutional arms control.
And all of that is because of the misguided determinations of one man.
President Putin offered very clearly, openly, and with plenty of notice to extend New Start by a year.
The Americans either didn't answer, we don't know, or at the last minute said no.
What do Moscow and Beijing think of this new dangerous world?
Judge, from what we have by the Minister of Foreign Relations and what Sergei Ryabkov, number two, has been saying until yesterday, I am deep, I have to confess, I am deep into China, so I only skimmed the surface of this particular very important date, February 5th.
But the last I checked this morning here in China, there was this feeling of very circumspect observations by Ryabkov, basically saying, yes, that's it, implying that the Americans did not listen to their specific communication about are we going to do anything about the SAR treaty or not.
So there was no way.
So there was radio silence from Washington, unfortunately.
Yeah, Chris, do we have the full screen from former President Medvedev?
Here it is.
This is Dmitry Medvedev, the vice chair of the Russian Security Council and the former president of Russia.
That's it.
For the first time since 1972, really goes back to 62.
Russia, the former USSR, and the U.S. have no treaty limiting strategic nuclear forces.
SALT 1, SALT II, Start 1, Start 2, Sort, and New Start, all in the past.
And then this very ominous picture, I assume you can see it on your screen of a zombie in a nuclear holocaust saying winter is coming.
Do we know if the Americans had the courtesy to say thanks but no thanks or if they just didn't answer?
Exactly.
As far as we can tell for the moment, based on what the Ministry of Foreign Relations is releasing, once again, in a very circumspect way, they did not answer.
It was radio silence.
So Ryabkov, let's say, is the institutional voice of the Russian foreign ministry.
Medvedev, he has a lot of leeway.
After all, he is the de facto number two of the Russian system.
And I would say that it's a little too, too heavy.
Winter is coming.
It should be winter may come.
And it depends on only one actor, the government of the United States of America, not the Russians, and much less the Chinese.
And there's something else, Judge.
Correct me, please, if I'm wrong.
Did Marco Rubio in the last 24 hours say that there's got to be some sort of negotiation, but it has to involve China?
I don't know if Rubio said that.
You know, Pepe, we don't even know if Rubio is the de facto Secretary of State since all these hot issues are being negotiated by Trump's two real estate buddies, one of whom happens to be his son-in-law.
But let me play you what President Putin said and how President Trump responded initially.
Chris, the montage.
After February 5th, 2026, Russia is prepared to continue adhering to the central quantitative limits of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty for one year.
Going forward, based on an analysis of the situation, we will make a decision if we continue adhering to these voluntary self-limitations.
We believe this measure will only be viable if the United States acts in a similar manner.
The president is aware of this offer extended by President Putin, and I'll let him comment on it later.
I think it sounds pretty good, but he wants to make some comments about himself, and I will let him do that.
Rather than Putin offers the puppy for nuclear arms for one more year for them hopefully in Ukraine, sounds like you do that.
Sounds like a good idea to me.
Wow, at least he says sounds like a good idea.
We have the feeling that he was hearing that for the first time, right?
Yes, yes.
It did sound like he really didn't know what he was talking about.
I don't know.
Sometimes the QA with him is rehearsed.
So who knows?
Who knows what he was really trying to convey?
Let's move over to Abu Dhabi.
Do we know exactly what is being negotiated there?
For example, some of our colleagues on this program have indicated their belief that there's two tracks of negotiation.
One to bring about an end of the special military operation and the other to bring about the normalization of relations between Russia and the United States.
Is that your understanding?
No, it's not because the normalization depends on some sort of deal on Ukraine.
As long as Ukraine continues to be this kabuki where we have European shihawas already announcing there are going to be European troops on the ground as soon as there is some sort of ceasefire, which is everything about this is a surrealist Dadaist.
It's completely total absurdity.
And of course, they haven't even started to discuss the modalities of a probable possible ceasefire.
So this is the first stage.
The second stage is the wider stage of the reset of U.S.-Russia relations, which, considering what's happening for the past two or three months now, and this is something that Ryabkov himself said last month, it's more or less back to zero.
Wow.
Back to zero.
Do the Ukrainians recognize that they're at the end of their ropes, or have they sent an arch nationalist, a banderist, I think I'm pronouncing it correctly, to pound the table in the face of the Russian negotiators, which of course will accomplish nothing.
Yes.
Yes, in Latin America, he would be called a banderista, judge, with a Latin American accent, who reminds us of the Sandinistas.
Well, the problem is What is defined officially in Moscow as a criminal organization?
And this definition now is on the record, uttered by Putin himself.
How can you possibly negotiate with a criminal organization, which in Russian terms is accused of terrorism on several levels?
So, regime change in Kiev is a necessary precondition for any definitive arrangement.
Let's put it this way.
I wouldn't say solution, but maybe a partial arrangement on Ukraine.
And we're not there yet, certainly.
Will the I don't mean this to sound like a naive question, but we get so much nonsense from the West, from the media here in the West.
Will the Russians renege on their principal demands of territorial secession and Ukrainian neutrality?
It's almost inconceivable to me that they would.
Absolutely inconceivable, Judge, because don't forget, in legal constitutional terms, these four regions are already, according to the Russian constitution, part of the Russian Federation.
Number one.
Number two, one of the original reasons to launch the SMO.
Wow, now it just dawned on me four years ago, in a few days, exactly, was the denazification of Ukraine and implying long term, which is something that was fine-tuned after the first few months, the denazification of everything that is backing these successive neo-fascist,
neo-Nazi arrangements between oligarchs in Ukraine.
They can never, when I mean they are putting Medvedev, the Security Council, the Minister of Foreign Relations, etc., they can never sell this to Russian public opinion.
We are making a compromise with the Americans about that.
Absolutely impossible.
And I'm sure that Mr. Bismarck Witkov understands that.
We hope he does.
We are not sure if Donald Trump himself understands that.
Wow.
Let's segue over to Iran.
What can the Russians do, if anything?
What can the Kremlin do, if anything, either to dial back Trump's rhetoric or to dial back all the military equipment that is amassing in the sea side of Iran?
Well, the Russian position, especially in the past few, let's say two weeks or so, has changed a little bit.
They are trying to a certain extent to act as trusted mediators on both sides, trusted by the Trump administration and trusted by Tehran.
They are trusted by Tehran, no question.
The question of trust to the Trump administration is extremely complex because obviously Russian negotiators know exactly the bipartisan and uber bipartisan and post-bipartisan feeling in terms of Iran for over four decades.
It has not changed.
And they know that the ultimate target of the American system since 1979 is regime change, and that's never going to happen.
What the Russians are now trying to work on is the discrepancy between what the Trump administration might consider satisfactory in terms of, let's say, an approximate deal, and what Israel is imposing on the Trump administration in their negotiations with Iran.
This means the missile, the ballistic missile program of Iran will be untouched, according to Tehran.
Just to give an example, Judge, during the JCPOA negotiations in Vienna, 11 years ago, I was there.
I was there most of the time for almost a month.
When we had briefings with Iranian delegations, they were telling us, look, the Americans are bringing back the missile thing over and over again.
And we are here to discuss the nuclear issue.
Almost 11 years later, we are in the same situation.
And obviously, Iran has already, the message went probably via Oman, indirectly to American negotiators.
Look, our ballistic missile system is untouchable.
And the other thing is the excess of resistance.
So Iran will never give up helping Yemen, helping militias in Iraq, helping Hezbollah.
So the only thing that could be possibly negotiated, and this is where we are at the moment, and that's where the Russians come in, is, let's say, a tweaking of their nuclear enrichment program.
If we get to this point, Judge, maybe the Trump administration can, okay, we got it.
We got our deal.
And this can be sold internally in the US.
But only that part of the deal would not be sufficient to placate the Zionist axis, of course.
Do you put any credibility in these rumors that one of the offers on the table in Abu Dhabi, or I'm not even sure where they're meeting?
Where are they meeting?
They're not going to meet in Abu Dhabi.
Exactly.
Well, this is Thursday night in Asia, Judge.
So we're still far away from the next meeting.
But the last that I was able to check is that it's not going to be in Istanbul because it was vetoed by the Iranians.
And the Iranians transferred the meeting to Muscat in Oman.
But please correct me if I'm wrong.
not sure it's already i i don't think you're wrong i i think you're I think you're correct.
But what I was going to ask is, do you put any credibility in the rumors that the Chinese have offered to take from Iran the nuclear enriched uranium to give Trump an off-ramp?
Does that make any sense?
No, it does not make any sense.
And we have not, well, I am in Chongqing.
And Chongqin and Beijing are very, very close.
Chongqing is, in fact, managed by Beijing directly.
It's one of those special capital cities in China.
And absolutely, nobody well informed here in China is talking about that.
Same thing that, you know, parts of the enrichment program in Iran will go to China or will go to Russia or a mix of both.
No.
What was very, very interesting, and this is crucial because there were absolutely no leaks about it, Judge.
The famous phone call between Putin and Xi Jinping, I think it was two days ago.
Yeah, I think it was two days ago.
Unlikely Nuclear Threats 00:04:39
They discussed everything and they discussed Iran in detail.
No leaks whatsoever.
Wow.
I'm going to play a clip for you just to show you how misguided the Trump administration is.
There's two parts to this clip.
The first is an interview yesterday by my friend and former colleague, the very beautiful and lovely Megan Kelly interviewing the vice president of the United States, JD Vance.
He makes a statement about Saudi Arabia, which I think is absurd.
Obviously, I'll let you comment on it.
But a follow-up to this clip we're going to play is an interview from 2015 with a then-living, now deceased Central Intelligence Agency officer who refutes what JD Vance said.
This will all make sense when you watch this.
Chris, number 17.
What happens when the same people who are shooting up a mall or driving airplanes into buildings have a nuclear weapon?
That is unacceptable.
And it's not just them, because if the Iranians get a nuclear weapon, you know who gets a nuclear weapon like the next day?
The Saudi Arabians.
People, Mr. Claridge, have talked about Saudi Arabia.
They certainly have more money than anybody in the Middle East.
Are you concerned about the possibility they may get a nuclear bomb?
Saudis already have the bomb, but people fail to remember.
Hold on a second, Mr. Clare.
Let me just emphasize that point because that's an important point.
You say Saudi Arabia already has a nuclear bomb?
Or several.
People forget that it was the Saudis who financed the Pakistani bomb.
They put billions of dollars into that effort to create that nuclear capability.
And in return, of course, they got something.
Now, people can argue whether it was dibs on four nuclear devices or seven.
That's the argument.
But no one really in the know argues that they do have access to nuclear weapons.
Does that latter part of that clip, not the vice president, but the now deceased former CIA official, make sense to you?
Claridge is absolutely correct, Judge.
This is something that many of us have known for years.
And in fact, my best personal informer about that is a former ultra-high-level deep state operative, now retired.
Not one of our mutual friends, another one.
Right.
And he told me that if I'm, and I could not publish that on Asia Times at the time, I had a big fight with the editors of Asia Times.
They said, you have no evidence.
Of course, I have no evidence.
My evidence is a CIA guy, ultra well-connected, and they know.
Right.
So either the vice president is ill-informed.
He is illuminated.
The CIA doesn't tell him, or he's a dupe, just a PR guy.
Well, he is a PR guy now, first of all.
A PR guy paid by Palantir.
Okay, but that's another story.
And obviously, badly informed.
And what Clara just said in that interview is fantastic because this is something that you can discuss with the ISI people in Islamabad and something that you can discuss with, I would not say directly with Prince Turkifaisao, for instance, because he will never answer this question.
We were in a conference together years ago, and my Saudi friends told me, don't ask him about this because he'll never answer.
But you can talk about this with some Saudi Intel people who have excellent connections across the West.
So it's not a secret.
It was never a secret for the past 10 years or so.
Yes, we don't know if there are four or seven, but they do have it.
And they don't want this to leak apart from the Intel spectrum.
Wow.
Pepe, this has been a most fulfilling, rewarding, and dynamic interview, starting with that guy that looked just like you out in the streets a few hours ago.
Great and Fearless Human Beings 00:01:04
Thank you for posting.
I hope you don't mind.
We posted it on JudgeNap.
I stated expressly for you guys.
I know you did.
And it's adorable and we're deeply grateful.
My friends, safe travels, as always, wherever you are on the planet, we look forward to having you back next week.
My pleasure, Judge.
Today was a very special day.
Being on the ground zero of the new Silk Roads is something epic.
It's already changing a little bit.
We look forward to clips from your documentary and we'll play them as soon as you can send them to us.
Thank you, my dear friend.
We were discussing the editing.
It's a very complicated editing, but in progress.
Got it.
Got it.
All the best.
Thank you.
All the best.
Thank you so much.
A great and fearless human being.
Some more great and fearless human beings coming your way at one o'clock this afternoon.
Max Blumenthal at two o'clock this afternoon.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at three o'clock this afternoon.
Professor John Mearsheimer.
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