Feb. 28, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:29
Prof. Mohammad Marandi : The Bombs Are Falling: LIVE From Iran !
Professor Mohammad Marandi reports explosions near Tehran schools—85 killed in Minob City, 15 at a gym—likely a U.S.-led strike amid Trump-era threats and Western propaganda, including Albanian-based Persian outlets. Iran’s defensive response targets U.S. bases and Israel using tens of thousands of missiles and drones, many stored since post-Iraq "axis of evil" labeling. Marandi exposes Western hypocrisy in Gaza/Lebanon while dismissing claims of Ayatollah’s death as unconfirmed, calling the attack a failure. Despite Iranian casualties, he insists Tehran’s military capabilities will force U.S. retreat, framing the conflict as a clash between aggression and self-defense. [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 Saturday, February 28th, 2026.
We look a little different because we're using a different means to communicate with my dear, longtime, wonderful friend, Mohamed Mirandi, who comes to us from Tehran.
Professor Mirandi, welcome here.
And before we start, how are you?
And how is your family?
Hi, Judge.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
It's always a pleasure.
I am okay and I am in the process of isolating myself from my family.
All right.
You're in Tehran as we speak.
That's right.
Can you paint for us the picture in Tehran?
What time of day is it?
What's going on?
What was the day like the past 12 hours there?
Well, it is.
And in the morning as schools opened, we saw there were sounds of explosions.
A family member of mine called me and said that there was a huge explosion right beside her.
And initially, I thought that since there was only one or two explosions, I thought maybe it was a terror attack, although everyone was expecting Trump to attack because negotiating, the United States under Trump was conspiring with Netanyahu to carry out a war against Iran.
So people were thinking that since the foreign minister of Oman is in the United States and he was speaking about progress made at the negotiating table, many of us were concluding that the forces that are in power in Washington and elsewhere will not allow peace to prevail and that they will carry out an attack.
The foreign minister of Oman was actually in the White House speaking with Vice President Advance, who obviously was part of this deception, as deceptive was his conversation with the foreign minister as the announcement by Secretary of State Rubio that he would be flying to Israel on Monday.
All of this, of course, was a subterfuge.
To a rational observer, it would be a head scratcher as to why this would happen in the middle of negotiations where even the neutrals in the negotiations said great progress has been made.
But to those familiar with the way this administration conducts so-called diplomacy, it's no surprise at all.
Well, one more personal question before we go farther: Is your family okay?
Yes, everyone in my family is okay right now.
They're all in Tehran, but everyone is okay.
Thank you.
So, what's going on in the streets?
Are people traveling?
Is everything closed?
Is the bombing continuous?
Is there a lull?
What is downtown Tehran like at this hour?
Well, the government and the armed forces would like to see people who don't need to be in the city to leave because we already saw the United States bomb an elementary school in Minob City, where they killed 85 elementary school girls and their teachers.
And that massacre happened this morning.
So, all schools have been shut, universities have been shut.
They may work online, but that hasn't been announced yet.
So, a lot of people are leaving big cities, especially cities like Tehran.
But if you drive around, there are still lots of people.
Shops are open, people are moving around, but lots of people are busy leaving the city.
One of the American websites is reporting that the Ayatollah has been killed.
Can you elaborate on whether that has happened or whether it's Western propaganda?
Well, the Iranian foreign minister said that he is safe.
And other than that, I have not heard anything except for the fact that he is going to be giving a the leader to be giving a statement later on.
So, so far, I don't see any reason to believe why this would be the case.
In general, the Blitzkrieg attack this morning was a failure.
Very few people in government, in the armed forces that have leadership positions have been murdered, unlike what happened during the previous attack on Iran eight, nine months ago.
So, we'll have to wait and see.
But I think the foreign minister spoke with confidence.
I've spoken to other people.
They all say that he's safe.
How have the Iranian people reacted to President Trump's call for them to join in an overthrow of the government?
Or are they not even aware of the fact that the President of the United States went on national television here in America, albeit at three in the morning, to make that proclamation?
Judge, in Iran, there are you can get all sorts of information from the United States.
There are hundreds of television channels funded by Western governments that demonstrate Iran.
In Persian, hundreds.
And there are hundreds of websites funded by large numbers of people, again, funded by the United States Telegram channels.
In Albania, there's just one camp which has 3,000 to 4,000 people there working as trolls day and night.
So the Iranians are bombarded by Western media narratives, Western propaganda day and night.
And to be very blunt, they outgun the Iranians by far.
The information that comes from inside Iran is, you have less TV channels in Persian beaming from Iran than you have beaming into Iran from the West.
So the Iranians do know exactly what the West is saying, what the United States is saying, what Trump is saying.
When the attack took place, I don't think most people knew because the people were, Tehran is a very big city.
I certainly didn't hear the explosions when my family member called me.
So a lot of people gradually figured out what was happening.
But by now, everyone knows what Trump has said.
And Iranian media, contrary to the image that they create in the United States, Iranian media, media here in Tehran, they publish what Trump says and what Netanyahu says, what the Secretary of State says, what Rubio says and what others say by the hour.
What is the reaction of the Iranian people to the call by the President of the United States to participate in an overthrow of their government?
I mean, stated differently, isn't the vast, overwhelming majority of the Iranian people united at a moment like this behind their government?
Absolutely.
There's no doubt that Iranians are united against this act, this war and this act of aggression by Trump and Netanyahu.
And Western media narratives are basically for a Western audience to prepare the grounds for war, whether it's the New York Times or Fox News, whether it's The Guardian or Breitbart, it really doesn't make a difference.
When it comes to Iran, Iran is demonized.
During the State of the Union address, the only thing which united the Democrats and the Republicans was the demonization of Iran.
And that, of course, is because, as many would put it, the EFSI class encompasses all major parties in the Western world.
And so Iran is always going to be demonized.
And ordinary people in the United States, I'm sure many, if not most, believe this propaganda.
But Iranians are united.
And as you see right now, the Iranian armed forces are fighting back and nothing is happening in Tehran.
The only thing that is happening is that there are lots of spontaneous protests against the United States on the streets of different cities, including Tehran, including on the main campus of my own university.
So that is where things stand.
That's how things always were.
On February the 11th, on the anniversary of the revolution, millions of people came to the streets in Tehran to support the constitution to celebrate the revolution.
But of course, the West ignores this because it does not suit their purposes.
What is your understanding of the readiness of Iran defenses, air defenses against American and Israeli missiles, bombs, and drones?
I think that Iran's military capabilities are very much misunderstood in the West.
Iran's capabilities to attack the Israeli regime are a sideshow.
Those are long-range missiles that are used.
In the case of the Persian Gulf region, the Indian Ocean, and West Asia and the other side of the Persian Gulf, the Iranians have tens of thousands of medium-range missiles and short-range missiles and hundreds of thousands of drones that they can use.
And they have countless underground bases that they've been creating ever since the United States invaded Iraq and ever since Iran was called an axis of evil.
So for many years, Iran has been preparing for a potential attack by the United States.
So Iran's real capabilities are directed at the United States.
And I think that while Iran has been working on its defenses over the last eight, nine months, but this is going to be a war of offense.
In other words, the two sides are going to be striking each other.
And as you've seen, Iran has been striking at targets across the Persian Gulf and Israel and the Israeli regime.
But the United States and the Israeli regime continue to strike.
As I said in the morning, just this morning, they also struck a gym and murdering 15 people inside, including some kids, apparently.
My heart goes out to children, to any innocent person caught in something like this.
But to bomb a school, a girls' school, and kill 51 young girls, of course, is reprehensible.
What do you think the Americans and the Israelis are aiming at?
Are they trying to sow chaos, confusion, and hatred?
Or are they trying to attack military and leadership targets?
Well, first of all, Judge, the number that has been killed up till now is 85 in the school.
So they're mostly kids and some of their teachers.
But so it's much larger than the previous numbers.
And I'm not sure if this is the final number yet.
But there are different interpretations.
Some believe that Trump is under pressure, that they may have something on him.
And that's why he feels the need to strike.
The belief is also that Netanyahu needs a war in order to continue his to remain in power as the prime minister.
The whole two years and the last few months, since October 7th, he's been seeking crisis after crisis to remain in power, to stay out of jail.
But I also think personally that it is because of Western miscalculation.
It is because in the West, they believe their own propaganda that Iran is imploding, that Iran is about to collapse, that it's a house of cards, that it is an unpopular regime, as they love to call it.
And actually, I did a program on Al-Mayadin television, which was broadcast yesterday, which shows how from the 1980s, in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other media outlets, Iran, they constantly would say Iran is on the verge of collapse.
Iran, the revolution is falling apart.
There's a second revolution coming.
This is like the 1980s and then the 1990s.
Iran's Resilience Misunderstood00:09:45
So this narrative, this never-ending narrative of imminent Iranian collapse or the imminent collapse of Iran has been going on literally since the beginning of the revolution.
And these people believe it because they want to believe it.
Or the people that they fund to put out the propaganda, all those Persian language media channels and all the TV channels that constantly say it, I think many of those analysts come to believe their own propaganda.
Even though during the 12-day war, it was proven that this is nonsense.
Even though people come to the streets and came to the streets on the anniversary of the celebration.
But that narrative is so powerful in the West that it cannot be broken.
But I think that they will once again, in this war, see that they will fail against Iran.
This will end very badly for the United States.
It will end badly for the world and it will end badly for the Israeli regime.
Obviously, many Iranians are going to die.
I myself, many tell me, don't do interviews because I may be a target, but me and others, millions of others, we're going to remain steadfast until the United States is forced to back down and accept defeat.
You're a great man, Professor Mirandi, not because you and I are friends and colleagues, but because you have attributes of greatness and of selflessness.
How determined is the Iranian government to strike at the leadership of the Israeli government, which is the instigator of all of this?
Well, from what I've been hearing, there have been regular strikes by Iran on targets inside Palestine, inside within the realm of the Israeli regime.
And what we've been told by Iranian generals is that right now the Iranians are basically using old missiles and they're not using new technology.
So Iran has lots of older missiles that were produced 15 years ago, 20 years ago or so, and drones.
And they're basically using those to empty air defenses.
And gradually, when those air defenses are depleted, then the newer generations are going to be used increasingly and with much greater devastation.
But from what we're hearing, there are significant strikes taking place across the Persian Gulf because U.S. bases exist in all the Arab family dictatorships in the Persian Gulf region, and those bases have been used against Iran.
So the Iranians are striking at those bases and at U.S. assets in the Persian Gulf region.
But of course, Iran is also regularly striking the Israeli regime.
But as I said, right now, Iran is not showing, as they would call it, those who gamble, I guess, they're not showing their hand.
They're using old technology.
And I think in the days to come, there's going to be surprises coming from Tehran.
What do you make of the?
We alluded to this earlier, Mohammed, the American duplicity.
I saw an interview.
In this venue, we can't run these clips, but my audience has seen this clip already this morning U.S. time.
We ran a clip of the Iranian foreign minister literally scratching his head, like, I really don't even get it.
Even the intermediaries in the negotiations were saying how much progress had been made.
Another session was scheduled in Vienna so that we could be near the nuclear inspection people and they could participate in the negotiations.
And yet, the American government, the Trump administration, the senior part of the Trump administration, they probably kept director of national intelligence, Telsey Gabbard, out of it.
She's the last intellectually honest person there.
But the administration seems to have planned this for this time all along.
What kind of a government kills the other government with whom it's negotiating during the negotiations, besides the Israelis and the Americans?
No one but the United States and the Israeli regime does that.
And Judge, the fact that we have a ceasefire in Lebanon, but the Israeli regime murders Lebanese citizens every day, and Western media looks away.
Western governments that are the guarantors of the ceasefire, they all look away, is just another example.
Or every day in Gaza, they're murdering multiple Palestinians and violating the ceasefire, not by the day, by the hour.
But the West looks away.
Western media looks away.
Western governments look away.
So it's not a surprise.
As I said, I was expecting this attack to take place.
And I thought that the fact that there was progress was actually making it more dangerous because these people wanted to make sure that there's no peace between Iran and the United States.
The Zionist lobby or the Efcin class or whatever you'd like to call it, their interests, they are Israeli firsters and American lasters.
If it wasn't for the Israeli regime, Iran and the United States would have resolved their problems decades ago.
Iran has excellent relations with Brazil, with Russia, with South Africa, with China.
It has excellent relations with countries across the globe.
But the United States, because of this class of people, can only show hostility and antagonism.
The only country that tries to murder the leaders of the countries that they're negotiating with is the only country that starves people through sieges, like through a siege, like in Cuba or as it did in Syria.
So this is how the empire works.
But Western media, Western think tanks seem to think that they are exceptional, that they have exceptional rights and that they are morally superior to the rest of us.
So they can do these things.
The Iraqi war, from that, from their perspective, was not a crime against humanity.
It was a policy failure.
And this, in my opinion, is evidence that, in fact, they are the ones who are immoral and the more most immoral of all the regimes that we have across the world.
The destruction that they've caused, the misery that they've been causing, the genocide in Gaza, it's clear for everyone across the world.
And this is destroying, this has already destroyed the image of the United States across the world.
And I don't think that this empire is going to last much longer because it is bankrupt, it is despised.
And militarily, I'm very confident that the Iranians will be able to succeed and force the United States to back off.
Last subject matter, Mohammed, I realize it's late at night and you're probably in danger.
And I can't underscore enough how personally as well as professionally indebted I am to you.
There was a report early this morning American time, so within an hour or so of the president's announcement at three in the morning that British jets had participated in the initial strike.
Do you know if that report is accurate?
Has the British government, the British military, assisted the Israelis and the Americans in bombing Tehran?
I don't know if that really happened.
The UK has been helping the Israeli regime carry out genocide in Gaza.
They have constantly over the last two years and three, four months, they've been flying intelligence planes to gather intelligence from Gaza to help the Israelis bomb Gaza.
I wouldn't be surprised at all.
Of course, the British Armed Forces is very weak, and their contribution would only be a token contribution.
But they were also the ones who went alongside the United States as, you know, Blair was the U.S. poodle in Iraq.
And just now that I spoke of Iraq, I also want to point out another similarity.
The U.S. vice president came and said that there are signs that Iran's about to want to make a nuclear weapon.
Eight months ago, they said that they obliterated Iran's nuclear program.
Witoff said Iran is a week away from a nuclear weapon.
How is that possible if Iran's nuclear program was completely destroyed?
Or Trump went and said Iran is building missiles to hit the United States.
There is no difference between the current regime and the Butch regime.
Iran's Nuclear Contradictions00:00:29
They're one in the same.
Wow.
Professor Mohamed Mirandi, thank you, my dear friend.
Thank you for your intellectual honesty and your personal courage.
Needless to say, as your friend, I wish you and your family and all of your friends and colleagues well.
And I hope that we can come back to you in the days and weeks to come.