Feb. 26, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:04
Phil Giraldi : Is the US a Credible Negotiator?
Phil Giraldi argues the U.S. lacks credibility in negotiations with Iran, exposing a 2024 Ukrainian strike deep into Russia (800 miles) using British missiles and American intel—likely NATO-backed. He dismisses Trump’s claims of Iranian nuclear threats as "nonsense," citing a 2003 JCPOA inspection finding no weapons program and Iran’s religious fatwa against nukes. Giraldi ties Trump’s rhetoric to Israeli narratives, like Netanyahu’s influence and Christian Zionist justifications for regime change, revealing U.S. policy prioritizes Israel’s expansion over genuine security. The U.S.’s 250-year-old values are betrayed by unchecked maximalism, masking Iran’s actual strength while stalling for war. [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 Wednesday, February 25th, 2026.
My dear friend Phil Giraldi joins us now.
Phil, always a pleasure.
I do want to explore your views about the role of intelligence in American negotiations and whether the Iranians, in your view, even consider the U.S. a credible negotiator.
But before we get there, how significant is it in your view that the Ukrainians used a British missile and American intelligence to strike a Russian nuclear missions facility, nuclear ammunition facility 800 miles into Russia?
Well, I consider it essentially, if you look at the various elements that go together to make this scenario that we're talking about, there is a lot of stuff that if I were a Russian policymaker, I would be very, very concerned about.
If it were just a missile supplied by the British, as the U.S. has been supplying the Ukrainians with weapons, then, all right, that would be one issue and a relatively minor one.
But the fact that they had the sophisticated, I wouldn't even call it intelligence, it's a question of how to use the weapons, which requires a certain level of training and a certain level of an instructional level for it to be effective.
And clearly, this was provided by somebody, or indeed by perhaps a group of people from NATO who saw this as something to do.
So it's possible it could have come from several sources or one source among that group.
So that would be more incriminating.
It's act of war very definitely, and it's something that the Russians could see as just that, and they might be wanting to reciprocate.
And that's what we're kind of waiting up to see.
I think it's potentially very significant.
And is it more likely than not that CIA and MI6 were involved in either setting the coordinates on the equipment or identifying the target or whatever.
Let me back up.
What kind of intel would CIA and MI6 provide in anticipation of something like this?
You know, one thing that kind of interests me is how whenever we have these discussions, we go straight to CIA.
But the fact is, you know, I worked for CIA for over 20 years.
And at that time, if there were an operation like this using a weapon, it would have been done by military intelligence.
And military intelligence was very much into all this kind of stuff.
So I'm not really sure it's a CIA operation or an MI6 operation.
Okay, I appreciate that.
Would it be American military intelligence, British military intelligence, if they have such a group, since this was British equipment?
The reason I ask is Larry Johnson is saying, don't be surprised if you see an explosion in a London suburb.
That's where these missiles are made.
Yeah, yeah.
No, if I were the Russians, I, of course, would be looking at the provenance of the weapon itself.
And then I would be thinking, well, how was this kind of set up?
And what was the intelligence for doing the targeting?
And so on and so forth.
And of course, this takes us at a level beyond what the Ukrainians would have been capable of doing.
So sure, it's the British or the Americans are the obvious suspects, but I'm just saying it's everyone starts shouting CIA.
It's just not, it may not be CIA.
CIA is not necessarily into that kind of thing.
Got it.
Got it.
I'm transitioning to Iran.
How can anyone claim with a straight face that Iran poses even a centilla of threat to the national security of the United States, Phil?
Well, you have to be sort of insane, like the president, to come out with these lines.
He came out with more than I gather last night in terms of Iran developing a nuclear weapon or weapons.
And also the line about the ballistic missiles.
Only now we're getting a straight Israeli line on what threat this is, because these missiles are being graded up where they're going to be able to strike the United States.
So this is what Mr. Trump felt he had to feed to the audience to create the impression that there is a threat coming from Iran against the United States.
And this, of course, is complete nonsense.
And it's something that's coming straight from Israel.
It's the sort of stuff Israel has been coming out with for 30 years.
Wow.
Because the United States is the best government that Israel and its acolytes here can buy.
That's right.
Here's the chief person bought by Israel and the American acolytes last night with a country watching, Chris 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.
Well, a couple of things.
One, the world's number one governmental sponsor of terror already does have a nuclear weapon.
That would be the Netanyahu regime in Tel Aviv, too.
Did you see the look on General Kane's face?
He didn't look like he wanted to hear that.
Well, in fact, the whole row of them, none of them, were exactly exuberant about what they were hearing because they knew it was a lie.
All this stuff is one big package lie that comes from Israel and comes from the Israel lobby in the United States pumping from this side.
And it basically is a lie.
Iran does not have a nuclear program.
They have, in fact, done exactly said the words that Trump was just asking for.
They've said we will not develop a nuclear.
They have a fatwa, which is a religious condemnation on going that route.
And they have not renounced that.
They have not changed it.
There's never been any evidence that they've developed or sought to develop a nuclear weapon.
And this whole stuff about the ballistic missile striking us in the United States, this is something that is essentially made up too.
Because what Israel wants is the ballistic missiles to be basically eliminated because they certainly can reach Israel.
And they would only reach Israel if Israel were attacking first.
So that's what's going on here.
Here's former Iranian President Ahmadinejad about Israel and the United States and the United States war plans as he perceives them.
Chris cut number 12.
Should Israel be wiped off the face of the map?
Is that your desire?
If a group comes and occupies the United States of America, destroyed homes while women and children are in those homes, incarcerate the youth of America, impose five different wars on many neighbors, and always threaten others.
What would you do?
What would you say?
Would you help it?
Would you help that entity?
Or would you help the people of the United States?
So, when we say to be wiped, we say for occupation to be wiped off from this world, for war seeking to be wiped off and eradicated, the killing of women and children to be eradicated.
And we propose the way.
We propose the past.
The past is to recognize the right of the Palestinians to self-governance.
Allow the people of Palestine to make decisions regarding their own future.
What do you think?
I think that was a very good statement.
And he's saying that basically we're blaming the Iranians for behavior which is being initiated by the Israelis with full support of people like Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
And that's where the war criminals are.
These are the people that have created these crises and generated these crises, both in Ukraine, let's not leave that out, and also in Gaza.
These people basically, for whatever constituencies they believe that they're serving by this.
It certainly is not the public in either the United Kingdom or the United States or any of the other countries that have gotten involved with this horrific campaign to destroy, basically to basically go bring about regime change in Iran and also in Russia.
I think you have probably seen this, so forgive me for replaying it, but it's quite relevant today.
This is Tulsi Gabbard saying under oath that they haven't been developing, and the Iranians haven't been developing a nuclear weapon since 2003.
And Trump's saying, I don't care what she says.
He just dismisses it because he doesn't want to believe it.
Number six, Chris.
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 it.
I don't care what she says.
I think they're very close to having a nuclear weapon.
Well, weren't there inspections under the JCPOA which he ripped up?
That's exactly the problem here.
We have someone like Trump, whoever was talking in his ear at that time.
I assume it was Netanyahu or somebody that was sent by Netanyahu to tell them that this was going on with these horrible Iranians.
They're developing a nuclear weapon.
And in spite of the fact that the U.S. government and the United Nations inspectors and everyone else that's relevant to this have declared that Iran does not and has not had any program that could even lead to a development of a nuclear weapon since 2003,
you know, this is totally ignored by Donald Trump, who seems to have his own, oh, he has, of course, his own morality, which tells him what to do about attacking other people and killing them.
But that seems to be as far as it goes.
Goes in one ear, out the other, and then something comes out of his mouth.
Here's Trita Parsi, an Iranian analyst who's also in the United States, the head of the Quincy Institute, basically arguing that Trump is being lied to.
And we know, because you just named them, who's telling him the lies.
Chris Cutton, number five.
Trump has been sold a narrative by the Israelis that portrays Iran far, far weaker than it actually is.
And as a result, he's adopting maximalist capitalization positions that are simply unrealistic based on how the power reality actually looks.
The Iranians are undoubtedly weaker than they were two years ago, but not as weak as the Israelis have been telling Trump they are.
And as a result, he is confused, frustrated that they haven't capitulated yet.
But the capitulation simply is not in the card because they are not as weak as Trump believes.
Unless this gets corrected, even if the Iranians put forward a very far-leaning proposal that is extremely attractive to the U.S., Trump may still say no because he's under the false belief that he can get something even better.
So our military people disagree with him that Iran is weaker than it was two years ago, but they agree with everything else he said.
What do you think?
Trump's Middle East Delusions00:07:43
Yeah, well, I know Trita quite well.
And as far as I'm concerned, he is the greatest interpreter of what's going on in Iran right now.
And I would think it would be the greatest thing on earth if somebody, maybe Tulsi Gabbard, would sit down and talk to him.
He knows what he's talking about and what he's saying.
And this is the tragedy.
We have these two idiot real estate brokers who are negotiators in both the Middle East and in Russia-Ukraine.
And no wonder the results are all bad.
They're Zionists.
They basically are looking at it from a real estate point of view, which is to develop a very nice property there in Gaza and presumably plans for elsewhere.
And this is the most insane.
If you had written a book like this back when George Orwell wrote 1984 and put it in this context of what's going on here, the editors would not have believed it and said, no, we're not going to publish this.
Wow.
Here's one of Netanyahu, who's cheerleaders.
I know this is going to ruin your lunch, but I'd love for you to comment on it.
I don't even have to tell you who this is.
You'll know instantaneously.
Chris, cut number four.
It's not a matter of a deal, a negotiation or diplomacy or playing this thing out.
The Islamist Nazis have told us what they're going to do.
And they believe this is directed by God.
Do you think signing a deal is going to stop anything?
Do you think they're going to honor the deal?
The issue isn't whether we negotiate.
The question is, why do we negotiate?
The question is, why do we think some deal is going to keep these people under control?
It's not.
The problem isn't negotiations.
The problem isn't they won't agree to this or that or we can get the best deal in world history.
The problem is them.
The West needs to understand what we're dealing with for 47 years.
I don't know what it's going to take, but we need to comprehend what we're dealing with.
That regime needs to be eliminated.
I guess that resonates in Trump's ears, that and the $100 million from Mrs. Adelson.
Yeah, and the fact that Levin has said that Trump was the first Jewish president.
So I guess he's got him pegged.
Well, the fact is that everything he said in that little presentation could have applied to Israel in reverse, and it would have been more correct.
It's the Israelis.
I mean, hasn't he seen the recent interview with the United States, the United States ambassador in Israel, or rather the American who is really the Israeli ambassador to Israel, where he said basically that it would be a great thing if Israel were to take over the whole Middle East.
This is in their heads, and it's in Levin's head, and it's in the heads of the Israeli politicians who are not shy about saying it.
Their latest moves are to legalize, whatever that's supposed to mean, the taking over of the entire West Bank.
What are they going to do?
Kill all the Palestinians there?
I presume they consider that perfectly acceptable, because after all, that's in the Old Testament, isn't it?
Well, speaking of the Old Testament, here's Ambassador Reverend Huckabee being decimated by Tucker Carlson with one question, cut number two.
Christian Zionism, I want to go back because that's where we started.
I'm not going to let you off on this because you have quitted three times that God gave this land to this people.
And so it is entirely fair for me with respect to ask, what land are you talking about?
Because I just read Genesis 15, as I have many times.
And that land, I think it says, from the Nile to the Euphrates, which is, once again, basically the entire Middle East.
So God gave that land to his people, the Jews, or he didn't.
You're saying he did.
What does that mean?
Does Israel have the right to that land?
Because you're appealing to Genesis.
You're saying that's the original deed.
It would be fine if they took it all.
Now, that, of course, caused quite a turmoil in the Middle East, yet it has not been retracted, renounced, or explained by Ambassador Huckabee, the U.S. Embassy, the State Department, or the president.
Yeah.
If the president were a real president instead of a dummy sitting there, he, when this took place, would have immediately fired Mr. Huckabee because we send ambassadors to represent the United States and we send them to protect American interests, not Israeli interests.
And he has completely failed in that responsibility.
And he's obviously there because Trump wanted him there.
And Trump, as you say, has not said a word about this.
I found that incredible.
It's outrageous.
It's even criminal if you really think about it, that the United States is totally, totally collaborative in a genocide and everything else that's going with it.
And this is a disgrace to our country.
It's a disgrace to everything we stand for on the 250th anniversary of our republic.
Let's get off the pot and let's get rid of some of these people.
Thank you.
Do you think the U.S.-Iranian negotiations are serious or just a dance until Trump can get the naval ships in place?
Well, given the fact that Trump from his speech last night doesn't even know what the issues are in terms of these ballistic missiles he's claiming and the nuclear weapons he's claiming, which don't exist, I would say that basically this is a fraud.
They had, of course, as you know and have reported, a recent visit from Netanyahu, who obviously gave them their marching orders.
He didn't want them to go like just then, then now, that was last week, to attack Iran quite yet.
But, you know, that's clearly still the agenda, and it's going to happen.
The Iranians have basically been willing to go back to the JCPOA formula where they have inspections, where they cannot develop a nuclear weapon, even if they had wanted to, because of the inspectors and the other arrangements in it.
And they're quite willing to go back to that.
But of course, as we know, and as Ray McGovern has mentioned, that is not the issue.
The issue is regime change to destroy Iran as a country that could stop Israel from taking over the entire Middle East.
Iran's Willingness Explained00:00:38
Phil Giraldi, thank you very much, my dear man.
As always, passionate and right on the mark.
And thanks for accommodating my schedule today.
All the best to you, Phil.
And well, and Rupert wanted to be here too.
So he's behind you, and a lot of people have noticed that Rupert makes an appearance, but he's a little sleepy.
And Salenti sends you his best, as he always does.
I'm on with him Wednesday morning, so he always asks about you on Wednesdays.
Okay, thank you both very much.
Yes, thank you.
All the best.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Coming up later today, if you're watching us live in 35 minutes, at two o'clock, Aaron Mate.