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Feb. 9, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
34:39
COL. Douglas Macgregor : A U.S. - Iran War Could Spiral Out of Control
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Time Text
Mainland's List of Targets 00:15:16
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 Tuesday, February 10th, 2026.
Colonel Douglas McGregor will be here in a moment on a United States versus Iran.
War could soon spin out of control and some breaking news on China.
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Colonel McGregor, welcome here.
Before we get to your view on what could spiral out of control in a United States versus Iran war, two announcements involving China that you brought to my attention are raising alarms or should be in the West.
One is that Taiwan announced that it will not be moving 40% of its microchip production to the United States as agreed to.
That, of course, negates a promised $250 billion investment.
And two, mainland China is now supporting pro-reunification forces in Taiwan.
Let's start with the pro-unification forces in Taiwan.
What does that mean?
Well, they're talking primarily about the KMT.
This is a Kuomintong party of Shang Kai-shek.
Remember, Marshal Shang Kai-shek was the gentleman who brought the nationalist forces from the mainland to Taiwan so that they would escape destruction by the communist forces that had won the civil war.
They have become the strongest advocacy group on the island for reunification with the mainland.
So the Kuomintong is very powerful, KMT, because it dominates the parliament.
Right now, parliament, the majority in parliament on Taiwan is pro-reunification with China.
Very few Americans are aware of that.
They think there is some sort of mad rush to declare independence.
There isn't.
And in fact, they have blocked efforts by the president, who is pro-independence, to take measures in support of independence.
So that's the first thing.
And the second thing is that now I think they can expect direct funding from the mainland.
because the last thing the Chinese mainland wants is a war.
They don't want to have to fight for Taiwan.
They would like peaceful unification under terms that are probably similar to the deal agreed with Hong Kong.
And that's something the pro-unification KMT will accept without hesitation.
So I think we have to understand that right now, I think China holds the key cards.
And they also understand something else, Judge.
If we think that the Chinese are going to attack Taiwan, the first thing that we will do is destroy the micro-circuitry manufacturing facility on Taiwan that everybody wants.
So we're not going to allow the Chinese to own it.
It's very simple as that.
Are you talking about military action between the United States, but the United States would attack its own ally?
I mean, what is the relationship between the United States and Taiwan?
Taiwan's part of China.
That's the public policy of the United States, and that's what China claims.
Exactly.
And we signed on for that in the Shanghai Communique.
Right.
The time that President Nixon went to China and reopened relations with the Chinese.
And we've stuck with that.
So the last thing we want or historically have wanted is a conflict with China.
There is no reason why we should stand in the way of China's reunification with Taiwan.
Taiwan has been a part of China for most of its history.
It was only a part of Japan during a short period in the 19th century and the 20th century.
So we should support that.
I think, though, what's very important is that the facility on Taiwan is called TSMC.
It was founded by Morris Chang, who actually worked at Texas Instruments.
He left Texas Instruments and went back to Taiwan and founded TSMC, which has turned into this brilliant manufacturing facility for the finest, most complex, and most effective microcircuitry in the world.
He was never very eager to move production to the United States when he can instead expand partnerships with China and Japan.
That doesn't mean he doesn't want to sell the microcircuitry they produce.
But the other problem is that we want to put the factory in the middle of the Arizona desert.
It doesn't make a lot of sense because a lot of water is consumed in the process of building semiconductors.
The other problem is it's not near a supply of high human capital.
It actually takes a person who is skilled technically and really intelligent enough to build the microcircuitry.
And his argument is that's not present in the Arizona desert.
There are a lot more things going on here, but the point is we've always made it clear privately that if we thought the Chinese would take over Taiwan militarily, that the TSMC facility, the manufacturing location for the semiconductors, would be the first target on our list.
On our list.
Yes.
Meaning the United States, after losing its wish that Taiwan stays independent of the mainland, would destroy the most profitable aspect of Taiwan.
Well, we don't think we'll do it unless the Chinese end up in a conflict with Taiwan.
In other words, if they're going to try and seize it by force, then we would destroy the manufacturing base there.
But would we resist by force?
Because I think this would be crazy, but you tell me you're the military person.
Would we attempt to resist by force the Chinese acquisition of Taiwan by force?
Oh, yes.
I think there are lots of people that favor that in Washington, D.C.
I spoke to senators on the phone.
That was one of the key questions I was asked.
They seem to think that moving hundreds of ships to a position 6,000 miles away from the United States to defend Taiwan is something we can easily do.
We can't.
Those ships are simply part of a large target array for limitless numbers of Chinese missiles.
So I would say absolutely not.
That's the last fight that you ever want to have.
You can lose it, but I don't think you can win it.
All right.
One last subject matter before we get to Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit tomorrow.
Is the Kremlin preparing a significant spring offensive in the east and the south of Ukraine?
Yes, I think you can make that argument.
They have been doing a lot of things for some time now to prepare in the south.
And I would say the north-northeast of Ukraine to complete the seizure of the places that they said from the very beginning that they would take.
And one of those, of course, is Odessa.
You have to cross the Dnieper River and attack south to seize Odessa.
Odessa is historically a Russian city where everybody speaks Russian.
The other is Kharkov, called by the Ukrainians Kharkiv.
That, too, is historically Russian.
Now, beyond that, we don't know, but I think the Russians would have enough troops.
If they decided to move due west toward Kiev, they could do it, and they could probably move into Kiev and seize it.
The Ukrainians are on the ropes.
They don't have much to defend it.
But I don't think the Russians want that because they really would prefer that Ukraine end up much like Austria.
And that would be historic Ukraine.
And if you look at the map, the map of so-called Novorusiya, which is new Russia as founded by Catherine the Great in the 1700s when she was empress of Russia, that's really what they're interested in.
They're not interested in ruling over Ukrainians under any circumstances.
People don't seem to get that.
What can President Trump expect to hear when his boss visits him tomorrow in the White House?
You know, that's an interesting question.
I think Mr. Netanyahu and he will discuss how they plan to move forward.
I think it'll be an exercise in determining burden sharing.
How much of the fight will we carry to Iran versus how much they will carry?
Because remember, the Israelis have an agenda that is unfulfilled in Gaza.
So a war with Iran could provide them with the opportunity to go back into Gaza and kill or drive out the people that remained in Gaza.
I think that's high on their list.
They'll probably want to attack targets in Lebanon and potentially in Syria.
So I think part of it will be what I just described, what they're also prepared to do against Iran, but really making it clear what we will do and how we will coordinate all of this.
They're probably going to discuss what happens if this goes on for 10 days, two weeks.
Then what?
What are the off-ramps?
What are we prepared to accept beyond the demands that we're making?
Remember, you know, we haven't been completely honest about our demands because this campaign is frankly designed to destroy Iran.
We mention regime change as a distant third or fourth because we know we can't simply eliminate the regime from the air with missiles and airstrikes.
But we do want to destroy the state.
We want to cause its disintegration.
So if you understand you're trying to cause a disintegration, then your target list reflects that.
You want certain effects.
That means water, food, harbors, energy, all of those things.
And I think all of those are on the agenda.
But again, you know, what if it doesn't work?
We can talk about that.
So tomorrow, Prime Minister Netanyahu will recite the Mossad line.
The Mossad stenographer, also known as the director of the CIA, will be there and will nod his approval.
The Mossad skeptic, also known as the Director of National Intelligence, Telsid Gabbard, will not be there.
And all these arguments that Trump will hear from Hegseth and Rubio and Sebastian Corca and the others will be, it's time to bomb, it's time to kill, let's do it and get it over with.
Trump will say, I want a quick in and out like we did in Venezuela.
Well, they tell him there is no such thing as a quick in and out to Tehran.
What are they going to do?
Kidnap an 85-year-old man from his bedroom at two in the morning?
Not necessarily.
Remember, Bill Clinton asked that question, how long will this last?
About the Kosovo air campaign.
And he was told initially a few days, a week, maybe two weeks at the most.
Well, the Kosovo air campaign took 78 days.
And it was not ultimately the air campaign that compelled the Serbs to abandon Kosovo.
It was the Russians who had been visited by Strobe Talbot in Moscow, promised certain things.
And on the basis of that, the Russians said, we can't support you through the winter.
And the reason the Serbs stood firm against us in Kosovo was that they had been reassured by the Russians that the Russians could supply them with the food and fuel that they would need to get through the winter, assuming that they would be bombed into the Stone Age, which of course is what we tried to do.
It didn't work, but Strobe Talbot won the day, so the Serbs pulled out.
My point is, air and missile power is an uncertain product.
You don't know how much it will achieve.
And since we haven't stipulated very carefully what we want other than the three demands that Mr. Netanyahu came up with that, frankly, the Iranians can't accept, I don't know how long this could last.
And I don't think anybody does.
And if President Trump is being told otherwise, he's not getting the truth.
What is the likely regional picture if the United States engages in a sustained more than two or three weeks bombing of Tehran with the Israelis in an effort to decapitate the Iranian regime?
Iranian Response Uncertainty 00:15:32
I mean, you can only imagine what the Iranian response will be against Israel and against American troops in the area.
Well, to just briefly mention again the Kosovo air campaign, it was pretty clear as we moved into April and May that the campaign would not be sustained throughout the summer because the Italians, the Greeks, even the Turks, others were raising objections.
So were the Spaniards, because this would have an impact on not just the tourist season, but on the quality of life and prosperity in the Mediterranean.
So there was a growing urgency to end the war.
Now, I think it's probably just as bad in the Middle East.
I'm sure the Saudis, the Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan will all be up in arms if this thing lasts for more than a couple of weeks because it hurts them, hurts their businesses, hurts their income.
But most important, the Turks, and I think I've mentioned this before, their view of this thing is that they may have differences with Iran, but they do not support a campaign designed to destroy Iran.
They don't.
And a majority of the Turkish population would much rather turn on Israel and kill everybody.
That's the sensing you get in Istanbul.
So I think, you know, this is a high-stakes operation.
We are trying to ensure Israeli hegemony over the region for decades by eliminating what is ostensibly the principal obstacle.
But the truth is, while it may seem like the principal obstacle, it's not the only one.
And I would argue that Turkey is quite capable militarily of posing an even greater threat to Israel than Iran ever has.
Will the Turks militarily attack Israel to take some of the pressure off of Iran as it's being attacked by the U.S. and Israel?
Only if the Russians and the Chinese are with them.
They will do everything they can to help and assist the Iranians short of going to war with the Israelis or us.
Remember, it always comes back to the same issue, Judge.
Most of the states in the region, I'm talking about Turkey and Iran principally, maybe some of the others, are convinced that they could outlast the Israelis.
They cannot outlast us alone.
So they have to be supported externally if they're going to oppose Israel and the United States.
This is the great danger now that we're courting, because even though the Russians and the Chinese are no different from the Turks, they're not interested in going to war with us, but they have a vested interest in the survival of the Iranian state and nation.
I don't think they're going to sit there quietly and watch us pulverize it.
I think at some point they will inform us that they're not going to tolerate it anymore and threaten action.
Now, historically, and I think General Keene said this, as I think Lindsey Graham has, and said, well, you know, these things have been said in the past.
Nobody's done anything.
Well, first, I would tell you that the Russians in particular are very, very tired of us, more tired than we appreciate.
I think they regard the negotiations they have with us as a trip into the Bermuda Triangle.
You go in, you sail around, you end up coming out, but you come out someplace else other than you went in and you don't come out with anything.
So their view is that they have invested in us in the hope that we were serious.
I think they've begun to doubt the seriousness of our intentions.
In fact, they see a lot of evidence for hostility and malevolence.
So the Russians, I think, are more likely than the Chinese to come to the aid of the Iranians right off the bat.
In other words, when it becomes clear that Iran is going to be destroyed, then the Chinese, on the other hand, they're growing tired of us.
They're liquidating their bond holdings, which has implications for the stability of our economy and our financial system.
They're pushing for gold-backed currency and effectively de-dollarization.
The Chinese, though, are very dependent on the oil.
And if it looks like that's going to be denied them, I wouldn't put it past them to commit their submarines and some vessels in support of Iran.
And if there's one thing for which no navy in the world today, no service navy is adequately prepared, it's to survive submarines.
The submarine rules the wave.
So this is a nightmare that just has no end, Judge, which is why I don't think we should start it to begin with.
What becomes of the price of gas in America if the Straits of Hormuz are closed?
There's no roof or ceiling.
I mean, it could go well over $100.
I mean, we just don't know, Judge.
It's not just that.
We forget, for instance, when it comes to these critical minerals or what we call rare earths, there's a great supply of rare earths out there.
We can always get rare earths.
What we cannot do is refine them.
90% of the rare earths that are so critical to us in national defense are refined in China.
Stop and think about that.
There is a Chinese refinery in Inner Mongolia, in northern China, in the middle of nowhere, that refines rare earths.
And there's a bureaucrat located nearby, a Chinese bureaucrat, who determines whose rare earths will be refined and whose won't be refined.
So it's not hard to imagine the Chinese just said, fine, you take your rare earths someplace else.
Now, yeah, there's another one in Kazakhstan.
There may be some others that I'm not aware of, but the point is we should have our own refinery.
That's where you should spend some money if you're president of the United States and the Secretary of War.
Build a refinery.
We haven't done it.
So that's the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Why did, and if this didn't happen, correct the premise of my question.
Why did President or the Prime Minister Netanyahu ask President Trump to call off a planned Iranian attack about a month ago in the middle of January?
Is it because there weren't enough American ships in the region?
I think it was very clear that we were betting very heavily on the success of the Mossad to inspire revolutionary fervor against the regime.
We've listened to lots of ridiculous statements about thousands of people killed in the streets and tens of thousands in jail and so forth.
I think the final number from European and Middle Eastern sources was about 3,100 and something killed.
And these people were not killed right up front.
Initially, these were very legitimate demonstrations because we all know the economy is terrible and the Iranian regime had refused to take money that might have helped it.
I think they're going to get that now from the Chinese and others to stabilize their currency.
But the point is they refused to take it.
And as a result, you've got these very legitimate protests.
Then the Mossad with 40,000 starlight terminals from our friend Elon Musk and others went into the country.
Then Russian and Chinese intelligence became involved.
They found all the terminals and they found all the people responsible for encouraging the revolution or uprising and they put it down.
And now the argument is, well, Iran is weaker than it's ever been.
That's not true.
I mean, it's just a lie.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, one of the things that's really disturbing is this tendency over and over and over again to misrepresent Russia and China and other states, even Iran, as hopelessly incapable, weak, incompetent, underprepared, under-equipped, and so forth.
I think we're going to get an education this time around, but we should have gotten that in Ukraine, I would think, based on Russian performance there.
But that's not what you hear from inside the beltway.
They continue to sort of repeat General Keene's words and others who come on and say, oh, they're weak.
We can buffalo them.
We can brutalize them.
We can exploit them.
There's nothing they can do.
That's not true.
Is the United States militarily prepared and in position to engage in a sustained attack on Tehran?
Well, I know that the Navy has limitations that are well known.
First of all, I'm told 10 days to two weeks of missiles, and then you begin to run into problems.
And that's because we have no surge capacity.
It's not just a function of building missiles.
These are complex items.
Building them is very challenging.
You need skilled technicians on the assembly lines.
You need people that know what they're doing, that are prepared and educated and trained for it.
We only have a small number of those.
It's like building submarines.
It's the same problem for us.
There are only so many people that can weld steel to the standard required for a Virginia-class submarine.
So we have a submarine bottleneck when it comes to production.
President Trump has tried to pump money into it, and I'm sure that will have an effect over time.
But right now, it's not going to make any difference.
And we don't have a surge capacity.
We can't turn around as we did during World War II and say in 1944, we have to surge production of X, tanks, Jeeps, whatever it is.
That simply doesn't exist.
So the Navy has got a problem there.
The second part with the Navy is very simply that most of these ships have to go back into port to reprovision.
Now, some of them will be supplied at sea, but not with the missiles, not with the expensive armaments.
Those things require time in port, which takes you out of the theater and out of the action.
How soon will that happen?
I don't know.
I mean, I would think after a few days or a week, you're going to have to start rotating vessels out so they can reload.
And these are all, most of them are vertical launchers.
It's a complex maneuver.
You have to be trained in how to do it.
So it's going to take time.
Now, on the Air Force side, and the Air Force is the main brunt, they can surge with great intensity for four or five days.
And then they start running out of steam.
You simply don't have enough pilots and aircraft.
People get tired.
But for four or five days, I think you might see the mother of all air campaigns from the U.S. Air Force, principally bombing from very high altitude with tens of thousands of pounds of explosive delivered with precision.
I don't know that the Iranians have the capacity with their air defenses to shoot any of them down.
They reportedly now have an addition to Russian air defenses up through the S-300 and some modified versions of it, which are pretty good.
They now have this HQ-9, I guess it's the HQ-9B, something like that.
It's a new air defense system from China.
It can reach out about 240 kilometers.
It can acquire at 50-60.
And they say that it will detect stealth aircraft.
Now, stealth does not make you invisible, but stealth does delay detection.
Now, will this work against this radar and air defense system?
We don't know because as far as we can tell, it's never been in action.
So there's no track record in combat.
But I think the Iranians are going to come into this with all that they can muster.
And that's what we need to keep in mind.
They're not going to be as timid as they were the last time and restrained as they were the last time with regard to striking back either.
What will Netanyahu say to Trump tomorrow if Trump says, well, we're close on a nuclear deal with the Iranians.
That's the last thing Netanyahu wants, right?
No, in fact, I would even go one step further and say that while the Israelis are concerned about the nuclear dimension, they are actually at least as concerned about Iran's ballistic missile arsenal.
The ballistic missiles that Iran has built up are brilliant.
They work.
We saw that demonstrated.
They have large numbers of hypersonic missiles, but they've got lots of theater ballistic missiles.
These things prove to be extremely deadly and very, very damaging.
So I think the Israelis really want some sort of restriction on them.
They're not going to get it.
Something the other day that I thought was very insightful, Judge, that your audience may enjoy hearing.
A German analyst looking at the situation says, what we've really learned is that there are two categories of nation states in the world today.
One are sovereign states, and the other are states with limited sovereignty.
He said the states that are sovereign are the states with nuclear weapons because nothing can impinge on them.
They'll use a nuclear weapon against you.
So they are sovereign.
The rest of the states that do not have nuclear weapons, their sovereignty is by definition limited.
So, you know, I think you brought this up and others have said it.
I think the only thing we will accomplish with this air and missile campaign is to essentially accelerate proliferation.
We're going to see everyone everywhere who can do it acquire nuclear weapons if they don't want to be attacked by anybody, least of all us.
So Iran, which has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, is not permitted to have a weapon.
And Israel, which has not signed the treaty, does have a weapon.
How do you reconcile that?
Well, you can't if you're an Iranian.
But the Israelis have insisted on this condition on the grounds that they're special.
They're the victims of the Second World War.
They're the survivors of the Holocaust.
Anything they do is justified.
Whatever anybody else does isn't.
That's the world they live in.
And that's the world, unfortunately, that our president and our government, all richly rewarded financially for their support by the Israeli lobby, is committed to.
Wow.
Well, Professor Mirandi reminds us that tomorrow is like the 4th of July in Iran.
It celebrates the ousting of the Pahavi regime, the Shah, in 1979, leaving millions of people in the streets.
I don't know if the attacks will occur tomorrow, if this will deter things, if the Americans even know that this is coming.
Well, you know, I suppose you could start it in the absence of Mr. Netanyahu on the ground in Israel, but I think that's unlikely.
Set Aside the Promises 00:03:27
So I think until he's wrapped up his visit here, we probably won't see an attack.
But I wouldn't rule it out.
We've been down this road before, Judge, because we assumed that while negotiations were underway, there would be no attack, and we were wrong.
But I would try to finish up with these thoughts, and this is really for President Trump.
We have two presidents that have confronted somewhat similar situations.
One was Eisenhower.
When he finally went to Korea, he looked at the damages that we'd sustained because when he ran for office, he did not promise to end the Korean War.
He simply said, I will go to Korea.
And so he went.
And he was briefed.
And the plan was for an army of 825,000 men that could then march all the way into Manchuria and down to Beijing.
In other words, regime change.
And he knew what that would entail.
And he knew that meant that we would have to draft at least a couple of million men into the military in order to make this work.
And he told his aide after he listened to the briefing that these people have lost their minds.
The Americans will never go along with us.
They don't want to march into China.
And he supposedly said at some point, we may want to deal with China.
I mean, imagine that.
What a remarkable idea.
So that was scrapped.
And the war ended after a period of, what, about 18 months, and we negotiated.
We've lived with that ever since.
Not perfect, but it was better than losing tens of thousands of soldiers, airmen, Marines, and so forth.
Now, another one was JFK, and that was during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
All of his commanders, his senior military leaders and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they wanted to invade Cuba.
They wanted to have it bombed into the Stone Age.
Now, it may be that General Shoup did not.
I've heard conflicting reports.
Shoup supposedly showed a map of Taiwan superimposed, not Taiwan, but a map of Okinawa, or it could have been Iwo Jima, on top of Cuba and said, you know, this is the size of Iwo Jima.
This is how many lives it cost.
Now look at the size of Cuba.
That seems to have resonated with President Kennedy.
But President Kennedy was worried about larger implications.
If we do this, the Soviets have the opportunity to strike us in other areas.
Well, the rest is history, but President Kennedy refused to enlarge the war, which we were in at that point.
It was a Cold War that some people wanted to make hot.
He declined.
I think President Trump ought to keep those points in mind when he looks at the final decision on the air campaign.
Set aside the promises, set aside the attempted or anticipated bombing success.
Look at the immediate consequences and the long-term consequences.
And maybe he'll come to a conclusion similar to what Eisenhower and Kennedy did.
You're more optimistic than I am, but I hope you're right.
Thank you.
Thank you, Colonel.
Thank you for your analysis of all of these issues.
We may see you soon if the attack begins.
I hope you'll be able to join us.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you, Judge.
Sure.
Afternoon Speakers 00:00:20
Coming up tomorrow, Wednesday, a full day for you.
At eight in the morning, Gilbert Doctorow at 10 in the morning, Matthew Ho at one in the afternoon, Professor Glenn Deason at two in the afternoon, Scott Ritter.
At three in the afternoon, the great Phil Giraldi.
At 3.45 in the afternoon, I don't know where he is, but he'll be with us.
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