March 2, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
22:44
Ray McGovern : What Happens Next? - Iran Situation Explained
Ray McGovern warns Khamenei’s assassination—dubbed a reckless "Samson option" gambit by Netanyahu—unified Iran, triggered Hormuz closures, and spiked oil to $100/barrel while depleting U.S./Israeli missile stocks. The Revolutionary Guards’ veteran successor, Ali Ziani, now secures Russian S-300s, deepening Moscow’s leverage over Ukraine. McGovern slams U.S. hawks—Graham, Hegseth, and Trump’s circle—as "fat heads" for ignoring Gabbard’s 2025 testimony denying Iran’s nuclear program, calling the crisis a preventable disaster fueled by media silence on 150 murdered schoolgirls and unchecked Israeli nuclear brinkmanship. [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 Monday, March 2nd, 2026.
My dear friend Ray McGovern joins us now.
Ray, no matter what we talk about, it's a pleasure to be able to chat with you.
Before we get to granular issues like the consequences of murdering little girls and not even mentioning it in the press and the effect of this war on Russia and China, can you give me your big picture understanding of what has happened in the past 48 hours?
Judge, I can't improve very much on what Alster and Larry have just said, but I can raise this flag.
If, as seems likely, Netanyahu is going to be in extremis, no one has mentioned the fact that he does have nuclear weapons.
Would he use them in extremis?
I wouldn't bet against it.
I've been lousy in betting lately, but I wouldn't bet against that one.
So this is in the top of my mind here.
And with the Shia united as never before, remember, Khamenei was number two in the whole Shia galaxy of leaders.
Let me just add that this is not the first time in history, you know, greater love than this no man hath than to lay down his life for his friends, okay?
I mean, he's 86.
Oh my goodness, he's got two months on me.
Okay, I got my birthday coming up.
Well, what did he do?
We heard what Ulster said.
He left himself to be vulnerable.
And what does that mean?
Well, he saw, in my view, that he was much more useful to his Shia brethren dead rather than alive.
And so he worked at his office.
Now, the only thing I would not have done that he did was allow his little four-year-old granddaughter and his son and his daughter-in-law to kind of play with him that day.
But that's what he did.
At 8.30 in the morning, we killed him.
Okay.
Now, that seemed to be a bad thing.
That was a good thing as far as CNN and everybody else was concerned.
It's suicidal because, as I say, the Shia and some of the Sunni are up in arms.
Our embassy in the green zone and Baghdad is being attacked.
In other words, all this was predictable.
And, you know, I have to say that 10 days ago, I sent you that little informal note listing all the reasons why an attack of this kind was not very likely because of all these terrible things that would happen.
Well, you know, maybe I was half right because all those terrible things are happening.
And whether Yahoo would resort to the Samson option or not is the big question in my view.
Why would the United States not even mention this incalculable horror of murdering 150 little girls?
I have to say that their cruelty is almost beyond imagination.
I mean, even if Trump didn't deign to apologize, at least it could have been recorded.
And our mainstream media, of course, is the main culprit here.
I haven't seen much coverage at all about that, although there has been some coverage.
Well, you know, it was a school, but maybe they missed the real target, which was a military target in the neighborhood.
No compunction, no contrition.
Hegseth, you know, it gets up.
You know, it reminded me of Julius Caesar from Shakespeare, you know.
Jan Cassius, Jan Pete Hegseth, hath a mean and hungry look.
Get men about me who are fat.
Well, Trump didn't do exactly that, but he got my father, whom you know, the worst thing he would say about somebody is a fat head.
Okay, well, he doesn't have fat men around him.
He says, fat heads around him, that's for sure.
These guys are out of their gourd.
They don't know what they've done.
And what they've done is cause all those terrible consequences that persuaded me that they would never do this.
How dangerous was it to kill the Ayatollah?
I mean, the Israelis have this passion for assassinations, and they think that by assassinating the top, everything below him will collapse.
Did not this assassination unite the Shia and the entire region?
Of course it did.
And, you know, when you get Hickseth and Nets and Yahoo and that stripe of person cornered, they'll say, well, we did it because we can, and we want to show them a lesson.
And maybe there'll be an uprising.
Maybe, who knows?
It might be an uprising.
Give me a break.
That's not strategic planning.
My God, that's dumbheight.
That's really dumb.
So he's got a lot of fat heads around.
Not very many men who are fat, people who work out.
And this is something that I don't want to go beyond this room, Judge.
But those weights that Hekseth had, they were made out of foam.
Okay, so when you saw him go there, they're made out of foam.
I got that from a very reliable source.
Hegseth says the goal is reducing missiles and making sure there's no nukes.
And I think the president, who's speaking in about an hour, is going to contradict that and say the goal is take back your country.
I'm using Trump's phrase.
I mean, maybe Lindsey Graham should go over there and stand in the streets and expect the crowds to adore him.
They'd probably trample him to death instead.
He's been nominated to be our next ambassador to Tehran.
And I hope he's confirmed unanimously by the Senate.
Really welcome, old Lindsay.
Talk to me about the relationship between, I know you've done some extensive research on this, between Iran and Russia, Ray.
Yeah, well, you know, not many people remember that on the 1st of February, Lari Zhani, the national security advisor to the top people in Tehran, went to Moscow.
Okay.
Oh, big deal.
Well, did he meet with Mitvetiev and other counterparts like Shoiku?
No, no.
Well, yeah, he met with them, but he met with Puchin for hours.
Okay.
And then there are credible reports that he told off to the Chinese embassy and stayed there talking to the Chinese for hours.
Now, what does that mean?
Wow.
Well, Larry Ziani is no newcomer.
He's a very experienced, not only diplomat and statesman, but he's been part of the Revolutionary Guards and everything else.
As a matter of fact, and this is the kicker, he was named in reliable reporting as the substitute who would come in and run things if Khamenei was assassinated.
Whoa, that's just two weeks old.
So what's he doing now?
He's running things.
He's appearing in the press and he's saying, look, we got this whole thing under control.
The Supreme Leader has been killed.
We're all mourning that.
But look, I have lots of approval from him.
And I've talked to our closest friends, not only the Russians up there in Moscow on February 1st, but also the Chinese the next day.
So bear in mind that Russia considers Iran as strategically important as Ukraine.
Okay.
Now, can you say that again, please?
Well, Russia considers Iran as strategically important to it as Ukraine.
Now, not everyone agrees with that.
I just talked with an eminent Russian historian.
He said, well, maybe a little bit less than Ukraine, right?
Don't exaggerate.
Well, I'll exaggerate.
It could be, Iran could be a force for, well, look what happened in World War II, for God's sake.
Studebaker turned their factories over to Duset, two and a half ton trucks, we call them Deuce and a halves, and 300,000 of those damn things went into Russia through Iran.
More recently, they have all kinds of terrorists coming through there and making a real mess in southern Russia.
It's the soft underbelly of Russia, and it may be just a tad less strategic than Ukraine, but it's right up there.
And so the Russians are going to not let all hell break loose in Iran.
And they've got a reliable interlocutor there, Arizhan Larizhani, who is pretty much in charge now and knows what he can expect from the Russians.
Now, I'm not saying the Russian Navy is going to come down.
They don't need to come down there.
I'm saying the Russians are supporting them and the Chinese are providing even more military support, as Alistair has just mentioned earlier this morning.
Alistair made the point that most of the Russian and Chinese aid is unseen.
You know, you're a veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Do you agree with that?
I do.
Yeah.
Well, you know, Alistair is no slouch.
She has his sources, and I trust them.
The other thing is, of course, the Russians have given them very sophisticated, what we used to call SAM, surface-to-air missiles, S-300s, 400s, maybe a 500.
And bear in mind that most likely there would be Russian technicians operating those things because they take a hell of a long time, maybe a year, to train a foreigner like an Iranian on these systems.
So the Russians are engaged in a defensive kind of way.
They see the war going their way, the Chinese as well.
The wild card, of course, as I said before, is the notion that Netanyahu in extremists may do the Samsung option.
And that would be the end of all of us, or at least most of us.
And I don't know how Trump can prevent him from doing that unless he kind of persuades him that that'll be the end of Tel Aviv as well.
It may be the end of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem anyhow, given Iran's capability to fire as many missiles as it wants through those iron dome and Patriot defenses.
But, you know, we'll have to see how this plays out.
I think Trump, I was going to say, I think Trump is smart enough to call time out like it did last time, but I've been thinking that Trump would be smarter than he turns out to be.
Let me just add that, you know, in the Bronx, where Witkoff was born, just across the Tribura Bridge where Trump was born, we used to call people like that shysters.
Okay.
Now, when you look at what Witkoff and his pal, the son-in-law, did in Geneva on the 26th, and when you look at the interlocutor, the Omani foreign minister, coming back on the 27th and then briefing our vice president and going on with, what's her name, the CBS reporter, and telling her, look,
we're this close, we're this close to an agreement.
Things are going quite well.
What else did he say?
He said, substantial progress.
We are very, very close to a nuclear deal.
Now, I don't know how to read that.
I mean, he was there.
He was the mediator for all this.
And he spelled out in detail how flexible the Iranians had shown them to be with respect to enrichment.
Okay.
Not zero enrichment, but pretty much that, okay?
Giving, well, all kinds of stuff on enrichment.
So that same day, Trump decides to attack.
So Hekseth and Rubio had the last chance to speak into Trump's ear and said, no, this would be a real surprise.
This worked last time famously.
We'll do it again.
Catastrophic Consequences00:07:28
I couldn't bring myself to believe that they would do it again, given the consequences which we are now seeing.
Hegseth, just about an hour ago, Ray declined to rule out boots on the ground.
I don't know what the president's going to say about this when he talks in the next 45 minutes or so, but wouldn't that be catastrophic?
Wouldn't that be a further step toward a regional or a world war?
That would be a bloody nose.
That would be similar to leaving the Marines in that barracks in Beirut, where they were very vulnerable to being killed, 241 of them way back in 83.
In other words, these people would be sitting ducks.
I was just about to say, I can't believe anybody could be that stupid.
But Hekseth may have a strong body, but he's got a fat head.
And, you know, there are no other fat bodies around to give Julius Caesar good advice on these things.
So God knows what will happen.
I'm through with predicting.
And by the way, I've told Larry that that check for the $2 is in the mail.
Tell me about Intel.
So what is defense intel?
What is CIA doing in the region now?
Well, I don't know what the operatives are doing.
They're doing the bidding of Mossad, from whom they take direction.
But the real question is, what is Tulsi Gabbard doing?
Good question.
I mean, you know, if she fell in with this crowd, she should resign.
I mean, she should, I did a little tweet two days ago and I said, look, Tulsi Gabbard said one year ago, March 2025, the Iranians are not working on a nuclear weapon.
There is no evidence that they have reversed the Supreme Leader decision in 2003 not to build a nuclear weapon.
Now, Tulsi, where are you?
Where are you?
You should speak up here, or you should realize that you're just another female being used by those guys in the White House.
Here's President Trump, Senator Cruz, and Director of National Intelligence Gabbard in the montage that Chris put together.
Chris number 18.
The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost and we may have casualties.
It is a noble mission.
We pray for every service member as they selflessly risk their lives to ensure that Americans and our children will never be threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran.
I have no indication that they were anywhere close to getting nuclear weapons.
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.
We ask God to protect all of our heroes in harm's way, and we trust that with his help, the men and women of the armed forces will prevail.
You make a great point.
I don't know where she is today.
That famous statement of hers, which was given under oath, which we just ran, you know, for the umpteenth time, is the one to which the president said, I don't care what she says.
You were right about that, Judge.
You had a better memory than I on that.
And when he was asked about, well, Tulsi said they don't have a nuclear weapon, he said, I don't believe what the well, the proof in the pudding will be in the eating, as Alster corrected me.
That's the whole thing, okay?
The eating comes this month, the annual threat assessment.
Right, right.
She has to appear again before that same committee under oath.
Right.
So, what's she going to do?
She's going to say, oh, well, actually, we think that right before he died, Khomeini reversed his opinion.
And there are going to give me a break.
Either she quits with a measure of honor left in her, or she falls in with the big boys and says, Well, you know, okay, I'm going to let myself be used just like so many other females that have been used by this crowd of males.
How vulnerable is Netanyahu himself?
It's interesting that he fled to Brazil, not Brazil, forgive me, Berlin over the weekend.
Well, Berlin is a great place, of course.
Well, he'll be vulnerable if he goes back because it's hard to disguise the movements of a prime minister.
So maybe he'll stay in Berlin for a while, drink some good beer, and kind of try to relax, and then tell the president of the United States, look, you know, we may have to use this nuclear option here.
We have them.
The Iranians don't.
And, you know, this is the time.
This is our window.
So, you know, unless you continue to support us a thousand percent, this is what we're going to do.
And what would Trump be able to say about that?
He'd go and talk to Rubio and he'd talk to Hank Sesters.
Oh, my God, what will happen?
And they'll say, oh, come on, they'll never do that.
We'll just tell them not to do that.
And Bibi always does what we tell them.
Give me a break.
Well, apparently Netanyahu's still alive.
He just gaggled with reporters.
There were rumors that he had been killed this morning, but we'll see.
We'll see where that goes.
The Iranians seem to me to be more methodical and less assassination impassioned.
Yeah, the Iranians have the high cards here.
As we all predicted, U.S. forces are running out of missiles.
So are the Israelis, defensive missiles and offensive missiles.
I just cannot, well, I can believe, because a bunch of fatheads in the White House, that they thought that they could prevail in all this.
And so I was wrong in thinking there was a measure of reality to them.
The Strait of Hormuz has been closed.
My God, price of gasoline has gone up to $85 a barrel, $85 a barrel already.
What's it going to be when the stock exchange opens this morning?
I think it'll be around $100, my guess.
So, you know, all these things are really crazy.
And Trump will be also in extremists.
And my God, I don't even want to speculate as to what he might do or what he might authorize Netanyahu to do to, you know, to prevent the whole thing falling apart.
Live Monitoring At 11 AM00:00:30
Well, he's speaking live in about 25 minutes.
We, of course, will be monitoring it.
Ray, thank you very much, my dear friend.
Who knows what will happen this week, but look forward to seeing you and Larry at the end of the week.
Ray, thank you.
Most welcome, Judge.
All the best.
Coming up later today, well, we'll be monitoring the president at 11 this morning by coming up here later today at one o'clock, Colonel Bill Astory.