Feb. 26, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:26
Chief Dennis Fritz : The Threat Iran Poses to U.S. Troops | The Point of No Return!
Chief Dennis Fritz dismisses Iran as a U.S. threat, citing ignored 2003 intelligence and Mossad’s decades-old false claims about nuclear progress, while warning Israel’s push risks escalating into war like Iraq (4,500 dead over WMDs) or Syria’s unverified chemical weapons narrative. He highlights stalled diplomacy, Iran’s deterrent missiles (proven in June 2025), and the domino effect of regional proliferation if Iran goes nuclear, calling the current path the "point of no return" and urging public skepticism toward interventionist rhetoric. [Automatically generated summary]
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 26th, 2026.
Chief Dennis Fritz joins us now.
Chief, for pleasure, my dear man, thank you very much for joining us.
Chief, has the president made the case that Iran poses a material threat to the national security of the United States?
Not at all, Judge.
Not even close.
You know, I will tell you that back in 2002, 2003, before the war with Iraq, George W. Bush did go to the American people, in fact, the world to try to make the case, even though they were lying about a war and the threat that Iraq posed to us, he did attempt.
And this particular case is just being run down our throats.
There is no case to be made about attacking Iran.
Let me just be quite frank with you.
Iran is no threat to us whatsoever.
You've heard me say in the past, you know, I can give you assumptions, opinions, and facts, but I'm giving you a fact right now.
Iran is no threat to us, and this is actually on behalf, as some said, let it be no doubt in your mind, on behalf of Israel.
Here is the President and the State of the Union, Chief.
This is the only statement that he made, which caused the entire Congress, including the Democrats, to stand and applaud.
Tells you who's bought and sold them.
Chris Cutton number 13.
They've already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they're working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.
After Midnight Hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, in particular, nuclear weapons.
Yet they continue starting it all over.
We wiped it out and they want to start all over again and are at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions.
We are in negotiations with them.
They want to make a deal, but we haven't heard those secret words.
We will never have a nuclear weapon.
My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy.
But one thing is certain.
I will never allow the world's number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon.
Can't let that happen.
This is exactly what Mossad has fed him out of the mouth of Bibi Netanyahu.
Well, Judge, you know, I always ask audiences, and I'm going to ask your audience to do your own critical thinking.
I can sit up here and talk, talk, talk, and others can talk, talk, talk.
But if the American people and the world is not listening to us, well, this may be done all in vain.
I want you to think about how long have we been hearing BB and others say Iran is a week, a two, a month away from a nuclear weapon.
If that was the case, I can tell you right now, they would have had that weapon decades ago.
He's been saying it since the 1990s.
Since the 1990s.
American people, the world, wake up.
That weapon would have been created by now.
Now, I will tell you, though, Judge, it would probably be prudent for the Iranians to do make a weapon, a nuclear weapon, because I think it will truly be a deterrence.
We would not be in the place we're in right now.
And, Judge, let me just mention something else.
When we talk about diplomacy that's going on right now, I must tell you that's dead on arrival.
Diplomacy is not going to work.
Iran is not going to give up their ballistic missiles.
That is their lifeline.
That is why they don't need a nuclear weapon.
Because as we saw in June of 2025, those ballistic missiles are very accurate and they're very powerful.
And that is what scares the United States and Israel.
And that is why they want them to get rid of that ballistic missile program.
And they're not going to do it.
That's their lifeline.
Colonel here, excuse me, Chief.
I'm sorry, Chief.
Don't punch me like that.
No, just joking.
I got it.
Got it.
I got to tell Wilkerson about this slip of my tongue.
Here's Prime Minister Netanyahu.
You might not even recognize him with all of his hair.
This is how far back his claims of danger to the United States by Iran having a nuclear weapon go.
Chris?
The deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely close.
And Iran, by the way, is also outpacing Iraq in the development of ballistic missile systems that they hope will reach the eastern seaboard of the United States within 15 years.
By next spring, at most, by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage.
From there, it's only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.
The foremost sponsor of global terrorism could be weeks away from having enough enriched uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons.
That would place a militant Islamic terrorist weeks away from having the fissile material for an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs.
Well, Judge, there it is.
There is the fact right there.
You don't have to listen to me.
It came straight from the mouth of Bibi Netanyahu.
And let me just add one other thing, too, when we talk about these lies and the march to war.
In Iraq, it was WMDs, no WMDs found.
In Syria, it was chemical weapons.
You know, Assad is gone now.
And I've not heard any talk about, hey, we pulled all those chemical weapons out of there, even though Israel said they bombed those chemical weapons.
Well, I didn't see any reactions from those chemical weapons.
And now we're talking about and lying about Iran having a nuclear weapon a week from now, two weeks from now.
And as you just showed there, a fact.
BB has been saying this for decades to get us into war with Iran.
Here's the President of the United States aboard Air Force One chief.
Interspersed in this Q ⁇ A with a reporter from CNN is the statement under oath of the Director of National Intelligence saying that the intelligence community assesses that Iran ceased working on a nuclear weapon in 2003.
Now, you already know what Trump says, but watch what he says.
You've always said that you don't believe Iran should be able to have a nuclear weapon.
But how close do you personally think that they were to getting one?
Because Tulsi Gabriel, Tulsi Gabriel testified in March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn't building a nuclear weapon.
The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.
I don't care what she said.
I think they were very close to having.
I don't care what she said.
I think they're very close to having because that's what Bibi told me.
Well, there it is, again, the truth coming straight out of the mouth of President Trump.
He doesn't care what our intelligence community says.
He goes by what Bibi says.
Let me share something else with you, Judge, when we talk about this march to war and how it compares.
Women And Journalists In Iran00:14:45
It all lines up as I went down that list there of Iraq, Syria, and now Iran being saved for last.
You know, during the George W. Bush administration, which my good friend Larry Wilkerson participated in, you know, the neocons then at that time had the first team.
You know, you had Paul Wolfwich, you had Richard Pearl, you had Doug Fife, you had Elliot Abrams, and of course, John Bolton that marched us to war with Iraq.
Now, how do we get to where we are now?
We don't have that first team in place, but now we have a bunch of bought and paid for politicians in Rubio, Heg Seth, and others who are bought and paid for and doing the job that that first team did to get us into Iraq.
Now, why do I bring this up?
The one big disappointment to me has been Tulsi Galbert.
You know, before she was against all these ill-advised wars forever.
And now I know she's been somewhat shut out, but at the same time, this is a time as a former military member who saw 4,500 of our military men and women die on a war based on a lie, which I called in the book deadly betrayal.
But once again, which breaks my heart to show me that I failed in trying to alert the public that if we go into Iran, it will be another deadly betrayal.
And Tulsi Galbert knows this, and she is my biggest disappointment of all the cabinet members.
How do the troops feel?
How do enlisted men and women feel about this illegal and immoral rush to war against a non-enemy of the United States?
Judge, that is a good question, and it's dear to my heart.
The Iraq war and enlisted troops, primarily, but I care about all troops, whether it be enlisted or officers, is what got me on this crusade of non-intervention and not going to war based on false pretenses.
You know, when I was on active duty, when we first got ready to go into Iraq, I had many enlisted troops coming to me.
Chief, why are we doing this?
Chief, why are we going to war?
Chief, as far as we know, Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11.
So why are we going to attack them?
You know, I called my old boss at the time, General Dick Myers.
He was over at the Pentagon.
No, I sent him an email and I stated what the troops were telling me.
And my former boss disappointed me at the time because he told him, well, Chief, as you know, you know, we follow the orders of our commander in chief and we salute.
That broke my heart.
That led me to putting in my retirement papers because I could not justify myself sending young troops off the war, which at the time I didn't know the reason why and did not have an answer for them because during that time, I had credibility with the troops of telling them the truth.
And I had no answer for them.
And so think about during that time when the troops were coming to me.
That was just based on family members coming to them and sharing, hey, why are we going to war?
And they had no idea why they were going to war.
But now, Judge, you know, we have social media.
Thanks for social media.
The troops are seeing that, hey, listen, what are the people saying?
What are my family and friends saying?
Why are we going to war?
They can make that critical decision.
And what's bothering me is that now they're feeling, you know, why are we doing this?
But you hear all this talk about, you know, following, you know, legal orders.
But the troops, judge, the enlisted troops, and I still talk to some of them and their families as I go through the different military installations.
They tell me they don't understand policy.
You know, they tell them it's above their pay grade.
Their hope is that they can trust in their senior leadership, their commanders, the general officers in particular.
And what breaks my heart, I don't blame the troops because they don't understand the deep-rooted policy.
But the generals do.
And that's what destroys my heart is these four-star generals, these combatant commanders.
They know what truth is.
They know that this should not be a war that we're going to start against Iran and possibly lose number of lives.
And so this is what gets me in this crusade.
Imagine this.
What made me write that so-called book, Daily Betrayal, the truth about why we invaded Iraq, is because we lost 4,500 men and women.
Imagine this.
I do think that the Iranians, after talking to a number of people, I didn't fill this early on, but after talking to some folks that really know, one of those carriers could possibly be hit.
Those carriers carry at least 5,000 to 6,000 men and women.
During the duration of the entire Iraq war, we lost 4,500.
Think about possibly losing that many men and women at one big hit.
That could happen.
So that is definitely on the minds of the troops.
And more importantly, what bothers me is on the minds of their family members too.
They go through what I will call a form of PTSD too because they have to worry about their loved ones.
Are they sitting ducks?
You got to think about, you know, it's in the news now.
This is through open press, that we have aircraft, fighter aircraft based now, if I can probably remember the first time, actually in Israel.
So that makes them a target.
We have aircraft in Jordan.
Now, when you say that makes them a target, yes, it does.
And oh, by the way, primarily, my job was to worry about the enlisted men and women, but I worried about all our service members, including pilots and all and the officers.
But you have aircraft maintainers that have to be with those aircraft to maintain them.
You have refuelers, men and women that have to be there on the ground to refuel those aircraft.
Their lives are in danger because let it be no doubt in your mind that Iran this time will attack to kill.
You know, during the 12-day war, they were very calculated.
They wanted to send a signal to us and Israel that indeed that those ballistic missiles that they're afraid of are accurate and they're very powerful.
We did not stop that war out of kindness or humanity.
We stopped it because, to be quite frank with you, the Israelis was alarmed at the accuracy of those missiles.
And they didn't really tell the truth of the damage that they really did.
Course, they will not do that because you don't want your so-called enemy to know their capabilities and what they did and what damage that they did.
And so, I will tell you, the enlisted men and women, they're worried, they're concerned, they're hoping and praying, as in the Iraq war, that their military leaders are being truthful with them, that it's truly about the defense of our nation.
And so, it puts them in an unusual situation.
You know, we are brainwashed.
And I tell folks this, they don't understand this.
We're in the military, we are brainwashed starting from day one in basic military training and in the service academies, that you follow the orders of your superiors, you follow the orders of your commanders.
And oh, by the way, lastly, you follow the orders of your commander-in-chief.
And it puts them in a dilemma when they're trying to figure out: is this truly a war about our national defense?
And through social media and family and friends and all the sources of information they have, most of them realize, hey, this is a war we should not be fighting.
But their dilemma is, what do I do?
Great.
Oh, but chief, the Ayatollah wants to kill you, according to a certain senator from Louisiana.
Oh, watch this silliness.
Now, everybody has a right to believe what they want.
I'll tell you what the Ayatollah believes.
He's Muslim.
But his strain of Islam says that if you do not agree with his interpretation of God, then you deserve to die.
But the Ayatollah not only thinks that I'm going to hell because I don't agree with his religion, he wants to kill me.
He wants to kill Americans and Israelis and anybody who does not believe in his jihad and drink our blood out of a boot.
And he's acted on that.
I don't need to tell you, Mr. President.
I don't need to tell you.
And he has acted on that.
And that's not acceptable.
If the Ayatollah gets a nuclear weapon, he will use it.
He could use it against America.
He could use it against Israel.
I don't know who he'll use it against, and I hope I'm wrong, but he will use it.
And you know what else will happen?
As soon as he gets a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia is going to get a nuclear weapon.
And the UAE is going to get a nuclear weapon.
And Japan's going to get a nuclear weapon.
And South Korea.
And I could go on and on and on.
The Ayatollah also has conventional ballistic missiles and is building more as we speak.
Now, those missiles can't reach America yet, but they're working on one.
We're trying to stop the Ayatollah from being the world's policeman.
So that's where we find ourselves trying to stop this war.
Like, since just like 2003 all over again.
Wow, Judge, as that was going, I was writing down some notes.
And you might as well throw in Lindsey Graham.
They want to kill us.
Throw in Ted Cruz.
As you mentioned, about the 2003 or really the 2002 when we were marching to war and in 2003 when we carried it out.
Just think about former military members, general officers who just really just breaks my heart going over on the hill and saying that Saddam could attack us.
We could see mushroom crowds here in Washington, D.C. Remember one general officer, retired general officer saying that is all rhetoric.
But let me just tell you something, as I said before, I can give you assumptions, opinions, and facts.
Let me give you some facts, Judge, for your audience and do your own critical thinking about this.
Oh, oh, by the way, throw in, they don't like our way of life.
Well, wait a minute, who's over in their part of the world trying to change their way of life?
Oh, by the way, let me just say this, Judge.
Oh, by the way, who overthrew their democratic elected government in 1953 with the Brits because of all, if you will?
Who assassinated Soleimani in Iraq?
Oh, by the way, who broke the JCOP, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran nuclear deal?
And lastly, who attacked Iran in the summer of 2025?
Oh, we should be upset.
Oh, the Aitolla can't be trusted.
Well, I just gave you a list of things that why we should not be trusted.
Remember this: we attacked them.
They're not over here trying to change our way of life.
We're over there trying to change their way of life.
This is my country.
I love my country, but I should have the right, which I'm doing right now, to express my deepest concern and upsetness with my country because we're causing all these problems, and particularly in the Middle East, on behalf of Israel.
We will not be in these wars if it wasn't for Israel.
And let me just say that again: that is a fact, and for your honors to use their own critical thinking.
What have we done to Iran?
Overthrew their government, tried to take their oil, assassinated one of their major top generals, got out of the JCOP, and attacked them.
Chief, you're a great man.
You're full of passion and understanding, and you're fearless.
In the Webster's Underbridge dictionary, next to the phrase intellectual honesty, should be a photograph of Chief Dennis Fritz.
There's your book, Deadly Betrayal.
For any of you watching us now who wants to know how the Bush administration, you see Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney on the cover, betrayed the American public and the 5,200 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines that were killed needlessly.
Hey, Judge, would you maybe allow me just to say something when you put that book up there?
For those who have gotten it, those who may get it in the future, if you go to page 58 and 59, none of this is a surprise to me.
I specifically said, and I wrote this book in 2003, it was published in 2004, that the final phase of this major plan for us to support Israel in taking over the Middle East was to go in Iran lastly.
Why?
Because we were afraid of those ballistic missiles.
If you go to page 58 and 59, I talk about the first phase of that, and listen to this now, was to destabilize Iran by promoting an uprising internally by the young folks, by women and journalists, and then by outsiders, exiles.
And if you think about who's been in the news lately, Riza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah of Iran, saying he'll go in and be the big hero and change the country around.
But guess what?
Bought and paid for and supported by Mossad and the United States of America.
That didn't work.
I first, if you look in the book, I first thought it happened in 2009 when it was an uprising, but that was internally.
That was based on a couple of the presidential candidates saying there was fraud in the elections.
And the neocons thought there was their chance, but Obama didn't bite.
But now, what I talk about in my book, what you're seeing now with the uprising that was going on in Israel, which I predicted, page 58, 59, that is being done and was done by us and Mossad with the help of the Brits.
And it was to cause uprising in Iran.
Now, because that didn't happen, I feel pretty confident, Judge, that we're at the point of no return where we're going to war because of the fact, as I stated earlier, these negotiators are dead on arrival because of the fact that they're not going to give up their ballistic missiles.
And oh, by the way, they're also not going to give up supporting those factions that they have throughout the Middle East to support their cause.
Because right now, Iran is the only country that is standing up to Israel and the United States.
And that's why we want to take the Ayatollah out.
Putting Value Ahead00:00:30
Chief, you're a great man in the true definition of greatness, putting value ahead of self.
And you are the personification of fidelity and first principles.
Thank you, Chief.
You got to come on with us more frequently.
Thank you for joining us, my dear friend.
Safe travel to you.
Thank you, Judge.
Take care.
You're welcome.
He is truly a great man, and he is fearless, as you can tell.
Tomorrow, Friday, the end of the day, the end of the week, four o'clock in the afternoon, the Intelligence Community Roundtable.