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Iran Nuclear Deal Risks
00:14:44
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| 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? | |
| Bye, everyone. | |
| Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. | |
| Today is Wednesday, February 18, 2026. | |
| Professor Glenn Deason joins us now. | |
| Professor Deesen, thank you very much for accommodating my time schedule, as you always do. | |
| I want to ask you about the European reception of American Secretary of State Marco Rubio. | |
| But before we get there, what is your take on the U.S.-Iran negotiations? | |
| As it appears from the statements of the party, they're getting closer and closer on the nuclear enrichment issues. | |
| No comment on all the other issues to which Prime Minister Netanyahu keeps adding demands. | |
| Well, if they want to get a deal, and it's quite possible that Trump boxed himself in here by sending all these weapons and putting demands which Iran can't actually meet. | |
| But if he wants to get out of this, the best thing it seems they can do is to revive something along the lines of the JCPOA. | |
| Because if it's just a nuclear deal in which Iran shows that it's not developing nuclear weapons, it's willing to have transparency, then Iran has accepted this in the past and is likely willing to find some different version of it today. | |
| What's usually the deal breaker is that, well, Israel, which means then also the United States, would like to add all these other things. | |
| They would like for Iran to also disarm, that is, get rid of its ballistic missiles, at least reduce the stockpile. | |
| They would like to reduce the drones. | |
| They would like for Iran to decouple from its regional partnerships or alliances. | |
| So in other words, it should leave itself very much exposed and hope, you know, that Israel and the U.S. doesn't destroy it in the future. | |
| So it can't really give up its deterrent. | |
| This is, again, the key problem of threatening someone to give up their deterrent. | |
| It only convinces them that they need it. | |
| But again, if Trump's able to narrow it back only to a nuclear issue, then I think that could be something face-saving and he could go. | |
| But as you suggested, the Israelis will not accept this because at the end of the day, this is not about nuclear weapons. | |
| This is about defeating Iran. | |
| Well, we all know what the Israelis want, which is to divide Iran up into weak, meaningless, tepid countries, more or less what the Israelis have done in Lebanon and Syria. | |
| But before we get there, here is the Israeli, excuse me, forgive me, the Iranian foreign minister yesterday sounding rather optimistic. | |
| I'm going to play another clip from him, but here he is yesterday, cut number, I think this is yesterday. | |
| No, this is two days ago on Tuesday. | |
| It is yesterday, sorry, cut number 17. | |
| Today, we held the second round of negotiations with the American delegation indirectly at the Omani Embassy in Geneva. | |
| The consultations have started at the beginning of the day. | |
| Mr. Grossi came to Geneva, and we had good technical discussions with him. | |
| He also met with the American delegation, and I can say that in this round, compared to the previous round, extremely serious and in-depth discussions were held and the overall atmosphere was notably more constructive than before. | |
| A wide variety of different ideas were proposed by the group, and each of these ideas was then very seriously and thoroughly discussed. | |
| And ultimately, we were finally able to reach a solid agreement on a comprehensive set of guiding principles. | |
| We reached a general agreement starting from this very moment. | |
| We will continue to proceed based on those fundamental principles. | |
| We will enter the text of a possible agreement. | |
| This does not mean that we can reach an agreement quickly, but at least the process has begun. | |
| A solid agreement on a comprehensive set of guiding principles, probably just with respect to enrichment for military purposes. | |
| I can't imagine this agreement covers enrichment for everything. | |
| We know it doesn't cover those other things that you mentioned, which Netanyahu wants, destruction of the equipment used for enrichment, pardon me, as well as a reduction in offensive weaponry and a cessation of aid to allies. | |
| No country would even seriously consider the last two. | |
| That's like surrendering your sovereignty to somebody that wants to destroy you. | |
| No, of course. | |
| But it's also very problematic to suggest Iran shouldn't have even a civilian nuclear program. | |
| Again, the reason why Iran can't have nuclear weapons is because it has signed a non-proliferation treaty. | |
| But by promising not to develop nuclear weapons, every country has the right to pursue civilian nuclear power, and that's what it does. | |
| So there's no chance that Iran's going to allow its economy to be subordinated in this way. | |
| And its main concern, of course, is that any peace deal simply aims to strip Iran of some military capabilities, the ability to defend itself, to weaken its economy a little bit further. | |
| Again, any peace would just be a stepping stone towards a defeat. | |
| This is the main concern. | |
| This is why they feel that their back is against the wall and war might be better then. | |
| But overall, what they're discussing is the framework. | |
| What can we discuss? | |
| It's very basic and foundational. | |
| So it's not a good time to have the U.S. Navy parked outside the coastline of Iran because this is very costly. | |
| It has to be sent back every now and then. | |
| So there's a time pressure also on the United States. | |
| And of course, the Iranians insist that any deal will have to be based on mutual security concerns, not just Iran being threatened into making unilateral concessions. | |
| So it's, you know, I'm not going to be too pessimistic, but I heard this language before that they were close to a deal almost there back in June, right before Iran was attacked. | |
| Yeah, I mean, have you ever heard of negotiations like this outside of wartime, where one side is negotiating with a gun to its head? | |
| I mean, Trump's using his mafia tactics, except he's using the Department of Defense, not a bunch of mobster killers to threaten the people whose will he wants to bend. | |
| No, exactly. | |
| But it's also worth noting what's at stake here. | |
| You said before that they would like to divide up Iran, make it weak and obedient like other countries in the region. | |
| Well, this is essentially what they're going for. | |
| If you want a regime change in Iran, that's what you'll get. | |
| There's no replacement government which can unify the country. | |
| You can bring back some monarchs who hasn't been in the country for 46 or 47 years, but they don't have any public support. | |
| You have different militant groups, you have some democracy movements. | |
| But overall, if you have regime change, the likely consequence will be the division of the country, massive civil war, hundreds of thousands dead. | |
| So this is what they're looking for. | |
| This is the destruction of Iran. | |
| So I think, no, they have everything to lose here. | |
| So this idea that they can just do another Venezuela, I think, probably Trump and his administration is running a bit high of hubris after the alleged success there. | |
| But the thing is, you can't replicate this in Iran. | |
| No one's going to, you know, what was achieved in Venezuela was just flying in, kidnapping the president, flying out and claiming now Trump is the president of Venezuela. | |
| But you can't pull that off in Iran. | |
| So it isn't clear exactly what they can with this kind of thing. | |
| Here's the foreign minister of Iran in a decidedly more combative tone right after they finished their negotiations in Geneva. | |
| Chris number 20. | |
| While the United States and certain European countries turned a blind eye to the threats posed by the Israeli regime to international peace and security, including its nuclear weapons capabilities, they continue to portray Iran's peaceful nuclear program as a threat to international peace and security. | |
| The Israeli regime has been committing the most atrocities crimes for the past eight decades with full impunity, unfortunately. | |
| In less than two years, it has attacked seven countries in the region, while more than 70,000 people have been massacred in Gaza as part of its colonial genocide. | |
| There is no crime it has not committed and no red line it has not crossed. | |
| Mr. President, the United States and some European states persist in the imposition of unlawful sanctions, military threats, the engagement in force posturing and the issuance of explicit references to the possible use of force by the United States, including significant military deployments in the region. | |
| Such actions constitute a continuing violation of the prohibition of the threat or use of force as enshrined in Article 2, paragraph 4 of the Charter of the United Nations and must be brought to an immediate and unconditional end. | |
| Well, I mean, who knows how this is going to end up? | |
| I was going to ask you this at the end, but you're going to be speaking at the Security Council of the United Nations in two days. | |
| What are you going to tell them? | |
| Well, my talk is mostly then about media manipulation in terms of how it escalates wars. | |
| And this, of course, can also be applied to the Iranian case. | |
| And if I can just add to what was just said, what it says is not unreasonable. | |
| When we talk about international law and peace, international law, we usually speak of mutual constraints. | |
| Both sides give up some foreign policy flexibility in return for reciprocity. | |
| But over the past 30 plus years, we have something else. | |
| We had a unipolar order or hegemonic order and countries don't constrain themselves. | |
| So we kind of got used to this idea that, okay, we want a deal from the Iranians. | |
| Well, we just threaten them and maybe bomb them a little bit until we get what we want. | |
| But they're saying that this time is over. | |
| They want to essentially restore the idea of international law that agreements, they constrain both sides. | |
| In other words, the idea that Iran isn't allowed to have a civilian nuclear program, even though it signed a non-proliferation treaty, while Israel can have nuclear weapons, we condemn Iran for having an authoritarian government, while Israel can carry out genocide with the full support of the West. | |
| All of this is considered to be unacceptable under international law. | |
| So what they're saying isn't, you know, it's quite reasonable. | |
| But again, you have to meet as sovereign equals and not between, you know, a master and a slave. | |
| Right, right. | |
| Of course, you just raised the elephant in the room, as we say here in the U.S. | |
| The subject matter that everybody knows is there, but nobody wants to mention, and that's the Israeli possession of nuclear weapons and conscious decision not to sign the nuclear proliferation treaty. | |
| Nobody's going to be talking about that. | |
| If you raise that before the Security Council, God bless you, my hat will be off to you even more than it already is due to your intellectual honesty, Professor Deesen. | |
| Let me ask you this. | |
| What happens if Trump agrees to an agreement between the Iranians and the United States over nuclear weapons and Netanyahu does not agree? | |
| Well, that would be very unusual because the U.S. and Israel usually walk in lockstep. | |
| So it's very hard to see this being accepted because a key problem is also for Israel if peace breaks out. | |
| Because once you have a deal, the assumption is that relations should be normalized. | |
| That means the anti-Iranian alliance will begin to calm down. | |
| The objective is if you want to destroy the adversaries, you want to intensify the pressure. | |
| So I think the Israelis would prefer no deal rather than only a nuclear deal. | |
| But overall, the most, you know, I think the Iranians will be willing to make some real concessions if their security concerns were also addressed and not simply being threatened into doing what the U.S. and Israel wants. | |
| And actually, that was one of the points I was going to make at the Security Council as well is usually countries, when you want to promote international peace, it's not just one enhancing its security at the expense of the other. | |
| It's reducing mutual security threats. | |
| But to do this, the first step is always, always to recognize the security concerns of the opponents. | |
| And we used to do this during the Cold War. | |
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NATO's Dilemma
00:04:53
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| But what has been quite extraordinary over the past 30 plus years is we stopped doing it. | |
| Never do I hear politicians or journalists speak of legitimate Iranian security concerns, legitimate Chinese or Russian security concerns. | |
| It's just either everything happens in a vacuum or if you try to recognize it, then you're trying to legitimize them and you might be a bit of a traitor. | |
| So this is extremely problematic. | |
| If you can't have any honest space to discuss the security concerns of opponents, then every solution to every conflict has to be war. | |
| And that's essentially a good description of the past 30 years. | |
| What do you suppose Secretary of State Rubio was trying to accomplish when he addressed the Munich gathering a few days ago? | |
| I think he was trying to win over the Europeans to the new policies of the United States and essentially accept the position of, I guess, an imperial subsidiary. | |
| Now, I have to say this was the most imperialist speech I've heard ever from a high-ranking American official in my lifetime. | |
| Essentially, his argument was there used to be a time when the Europeans were great. | |
| For 500 years, we had empires expanding across the globe and dominating the world. | |
| Then after World War II, decolonization began. | |
| And he portrayed the almost decolonization as a communist plot, which robbed Europe of its greatness. | |
| There's a lot of problems to this. | |
| First of all, the United States was one of the main powers, along with the Soviets, to dismantle the European empires. | |
| And second of all, the greatness of Europe. | |
| There's a lot to be proud about, the European civilized faith, but the empire being the only thing that made Europe great. | |
| I mean, it's, yeah, I don't really agree with that. | |
| And so, no, I think he wanted to sell this argument that Europe is in decline, the West is in decline. | |
| We're going to reverse it, but by doing so, we're going to throw away all pretenses of promoting liberal democratic values. | |
| We're just going to do hard power accumulation, and we're not going to make any for it. | |
| Right. | |
| I don't know that the speech was designed to win anybody over. | |
| I mean, you're talking about Christianity as a unifying factor to a group that is either secularist at best or atheist at worst. | |
| This is not exactly the College of Cardinals that he was addressing there. | |
| No, well, seculars just suggest the division between state and church. | |
| In many places in Europe now, you get the feeling Christianity is being chased out of society. | |
| So, no, they gave Marco Rubio a standing ovation, but they weren't happy. | |
| I guess they were just happy that he's not a JD Vance because JD Vance hit the Europeans with a bit too much brutal honesty, I think. | |
| It was met with a lot of anger, but there was a lot of good points to what he said. | |
| But overall, the message was that Europe is weak, it's in decline, but all hope is not over. | |
| If you just support the U.S. restoring empire, then we will restore the greatness of the West. | |
| But again, it's all about power. | |
| He never mentioned the values which the Europeans like to clothe themselves in when they go for hegemony. | |
| Right. | |
| The US-Russian-Ukrainian trilateral negotiations earlier today in Geneva ended after just two hours. | |
| Does that tell you anything? | |
| Yeah, I don't think it's going to go anywhere, to be honest. | |
| I hope that I'm proven incorrectly. | |
| But, you know, there's just so few meeting points. | |
| Before I came on here, I just read the articles how the Europeans consider it to be unacceptable. | |
| For example, that Russia demands that NATO takes NATO expansion off the table. | |
| They want a written guarantee that NATO won't expand to Ukraine, because they never got that at the end of the Soviet era with Gorbachev. | |
| So they essentially want the 2008 pledge to be withdrawn. | |
| This is something that, you know, this is the basic of what Russia demands in order to have peace, to restore Ukraine's neutrality. | |
| And even this is not acceptable to the Europeans. | |
| But I think between the Americans, the Ukrainians and the Russians, the main problem is a key problem is also Donbass. | |
| That is, Ukraine do not want to walk away from the territory, especially the territory which they still hold. | |
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Ukraine's Unyielding Territory
00:00:41
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| And in all fairness, this is quite reasonable. | |
| I understand why they don't. | |
| But it's also something that's written in stone for the Russians because they essentially won't trust any guarantees they get from NATO anyway. | |
| So they will want to have this strategic territory under their own control so this never happens again. | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| Well, we'll see. | |
| I know you're coming to New York. | |
| Safe Travels. | |
| And thank you very much for joining us, Professor Dees, and all the best to you. | |
| Thank you, Judge. | |
| Sure. | |
| Coming up later today at one o'clock this afternoon, Aaron Mate. | |
| At two o'clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. | |
| At three o'clock, the great Phil Giraldi. | |