March 3, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
28:15
Larry Johnson : The Dangerous Fallout of Khamenei’s murder
Larry Johnson warns the Khamenei assassination has backfired, crippling U.S. Middle East influence as Iran shuts the Strait of Hormuz, attacks American/British ships, and destroys Al-Udeid base—all while Trump’s claims of Iranian weakness crumble. With Iran’s nuclear fatwa gone and Patriot missiles depleting by this weekend, Johnson predicts WWIII risks, Russia escalating in Ukraine, and Trump’s impeachment for unconstitutional warmongering after 150 Iranian children died. The attack, allegedly orchestrated during Netanyahu’s Mar-a-Lago visit, exposed Israel’s failed assassination strategy and U.S. complicity, leaving Trump’s China trip in jeopardy as global credibility collapses. [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.
Larry Johnson will be here with us in just a moment on the dangerous fallout from the murder of the Ayatollah.
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Larry Johnson, welcome here, my dear friends.
Yes, we haven't seen each other in a while.
Yeah, it's been a long time, man.
What great.
Thank you.
Thank you for all of your generous time on Saturday.
The audience was enormous and this is well appreciated.
The Fallout from the Attack00:15:11
And I guess this is going to go on for a while.
Before we get to The likely fallout, some of which we've seen already from the murder of the Ayatollah.
Can you give us the big picture as you see it now, 48 hours after all this started?
The United States and Israeli invasion of Iran.
The ability of the U.S. to maintain a presence in the Middle East looks like it's been virtually destroyed.
The United States has started a war that it cannot finish, despite all of Donald Trump's claims about, oh, we're doing great, we're the most powerful, you know, Iran's begging for relief.
You know, none he's just, he is so delusional that this is frightening because this is spinning out of control, where it is going to affect the global economy.
In fact, just earlier this morning, the U.S. hit an oil pipeline in Iran.
Expect now Iran will take out the oil pipelines in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates.
So the world oil supply is going to be in trouble.
Actually, the ones probably popping champagne corks right now are sitting in the Kremlin and in Moscow, because with the price of oil going way up, Russia is going to be sitting in a sweet, sweet position.
Was a miscalculation that historians will look back at it and just shake their heads and say, what the hell were they thinking?
Think of this.
The one guy in Iran that blocked for 36 years Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon, the one man who stood in the way, who said, we will not build a nuclear weapon.
That's the guy the United States killed.
So we're sitting there saying that, oh, yeah, we're doing this so Iran doesn't threaten the world with a nuke.
The Ayatollah Khameni, 36 years ago, issued a fatwa, said, no, that is evil.
We're not going to go down that path.
And the United States killed him, or the Israelis did, or both.
Is this because of the Israeli fixation on assassinations?
Yeah.
Yeah.
They think they can kill their way out of it.
You know, well, we're going to go kill the terrorists.
That'll stop the terrorism.
Well, number one, the amount of, quote, terrorism that Israel is subjected to is a gross exaggeration.
But go back and look at their response to the Munich Olympics in 1972.
They killed a few of those people, but it didn't change.
It's not going to change the desire of the Palestinian people to want to have and live on their own land and not to be forced out by a bunch of outsiders.
So this is, you know, I think this is changing fundamentally the geopolitical landscape.
And it's hastening the ascendancy of Russia and China.
Aleister Crook reports, and he bases this on, I guess, information that has come to him as well as public sources in Israel, that the decision to attack was made when Prime Minister Netanyahu visited Mar-a-Lago on New Year's Eve.
If that's right, and it seems like it is, let me know, then all the negotiations between the United States and Iran were, again, a subterfuge, a fraud, and an attempt to lull them into a false sense of security.
No, that's correct.
In fact, I have heard from a source that I trust that the initial attack that was supposed to take place was January 13th as part of that color revolution.
But because Iran, with the assistance of Russia and China, had effectively turned off the internet, the Starlink, and put a stop to the protests, they recalibrated.
There was another, you know, when we heard rumors that there was going to be a strike, there actually was, you know, the decision was on the table, but they finally relented.
What's really interesting is there are reports now from the group of eight, you know, the eight top Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate, that they were briefed by Marco Rubio yesterday.
And Rubio told him, look, we found out that Israel was going to go ahead and do the attack with or without us.
So we joined in.
That's how we got started on World War III.
Wow.
If what Rubio said is true, the government should be removed.
And if Rubio said what Rubio said was not true, then he's lied in a very, very sensitive environment to his former colleagues.
Do you put stock in these reports that I don't know if it was Rubio personally, but somebody in the State Department reached out to their counterpart in the Italian foreign ministry, asking them to relay to the Iranian foreign ministry the wish of the White House for a ceasefire, the response to which was go to hell.
Yeah, within 24 hours of the U.S. and Israel starting this war, the U.S. reached out.
There's multiple reports.
It's not just one source.
They're trying to get the Italians to approach Iran, and they did.
And the Iranians said, no, and hell no.
No, we're not talking to the Americans anymore.
Ali Larejani, who is a close advisor to the Ayatollah Khamani, made it clear.
We have nothing to talk about.
Iran right now is actually holding the cars, despite the way the West is portraying it.
That Iran's on the ropes and they're taking a beating.
We're bombing and destroying a lot of infrastructure, but we've also killed children, murdering children.
But that's what Israel does best, shoots and kills the end defenseless.
But as a result of this activity, Iran now, they've closed the Strait of Hormuz.
They've fired upon at least four ships, one American, and the other three are British, I think, or at least carrying oil in the direction of Europe.
The oil market is starting to respond.
The price of oil, I think, is now up to $82 a barrel.
So Iran's in a position to shut that down.
They have hit and destroyed basically every American base that includes Al-Udid and Qatar, Prince Sultan in Saudi Arabia.
The most important one, the ones that incurred the most damage, is in Bahrain, where the Fifth Fleet of the U.S. Navy was based.
And that base was important because, you know, as we've talked before, the destroyers carry what are called vertical launch system tubes.
And to reload those, you have to go to port to reload the weapon systems.
Well, they ain't going to Bahrain now.
Also, there was a port that was being developed in Oman, and that's going to be taken out.
It's been attacked already.
So the ability of the United States to deploy and maintain forces there, they're being, I think Alistair Kirk used the term, driven out.
Absolutely.
And that's one of, I think, an unexpected consequence.
You've seen also the attack on U.S. military installations in Iraq.
So look at the difference between what's happening now with what happened on June 13th in 2025.
That was a surprise attack that was completely unexpected by Iran.
They lost a significant number of senior leadership, and it took them 10 to 12 hours to respond.
This time, yeah, they got hit.
I don't know if they anticipated it that it would be at that precise time.
And they all, again, senior people, Khamenei was dead.
Three, the head of the IRGC was killed.
But within an hour, they were up and firing their missiles.
So, they didn't have to wait and try to organize a chain of command.
It was already intact.
And what we're seeing is Israel and the United States are rapidly depleting their arsenal of Patriot missiles, number one.
And I think by the end, by Friday or Saturday this week, the U.S. and Israeli air defense systems will essentially be exhausted.
And that's why you saw Trump through the State Department try to say, let's talk to the, let's restart negotiations.
They have now destroyed any credibility of dealing with the United States.
And this spills over to Russia.
The commentary out of both by Vladimir Putin and by the Russian foreign ministry have been intensely angry and just outraged at what the United States has done.
So, you know, next time Stevie Witkoff calls up and says, Hey, Vladimir, let me come by and chat.
The Russians are going to tell him, you know, that he can go meet with himself.
They're not going to talk to him.
So this is, I think, in some aspects, this is also going to accelerate Russia's pressing of the war in Ukraine.
The spillover effects on this are enormous.
Right.
I want to play a clip for you.
It's just about a half an hour old.
It's really absurd.
Well, I'll let you comment on it.
It's the Secretary of Defense who calls himself the Secretary of War, claiming regime change has occurred already, even though that's not really our goal.
Number 19: Iran was building powerful missiles and drones to create a conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions.
Let me say that again: a conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions.
Our bases, our people, our allies, all in their crosshairs.
Iran had a conventional gun to our head as they tried to lie their way to a nuclear bomb.
It almost worked under Obama and his terrible deal, but not under this president.
Turns out the regime who chanted death to America and death to Israel was gifted death from America and death from Israel.
This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change, and the world is better off for it.
What the hell is he talking about?
The regime sure did change.
It's terrible to go through life being that stupid, being that much of a liar.
Yeah, it's going to change.
As I pointed out earlier, the one man that had blocked, that was the spiritual and actually political force keeping Iran from going ahead with a nuke was Khameneib.
We killed him.
Now that he's out, I cannot dismiss the possibility that his replacement will come in and say, look, for the benefit of protecting the Iranian people, for to protect like these little girls, this 150 little girls, six, you know, between the ages of six and 12, that were murdered by the United States.
We got blood on our hands.
That's why they call death to America, because we were responsible for a minimum of 300,000 dead Iranians over the course of the last 46 years.
That's why they call death to America, because we are bringers of death.
We're not bringers of life.
So as a result of this, Iran could likely get a leader.
They'll say, we're going to build it now.
It's right.
And they could do it.
They could do it in short order.
And when it happens, again, Israel doing all of this ostensibly to protect itself has signed its death warrant.
Donald Trump has done, he's done the sin of George H.W. Bush only magnitude larger.
Because, you know, those of us old enough to recall, George H.W. Bush made this bold promise in his presidential campaign when he replaced Ronald Reagan, was no new taxes.
Read my lips.
Well, Donald Trump campaigned in 2024, where he said that his foreign policy would bring stability to the world.
And in rally after rally, he promised to turn the page forever on those foolish, stupid days of never-ending wars.
He criticized the Obama administration and the Biden administration and even the George W. Bush administration for prolonged conflicts that drained U.S. resources.
And he kept saying, I'm not going to start a war.
I'm going to stop wars.
How did that age?
He is now, I predict, he will be impeached.
He will be convicted and he'll be removed from office.
He will not complete his term.
And other members of his administration, including this dummy Hegseph, will also be impeached.
They have taken the United States to war without the Congress approving it.
And that's why our Constitution stipulates only Congress can declare war, not the president.
So his lawless behavior is going to come back to really bite him in the rear end.
Not to run your breakfast, but here's the president's favorite cheerleader, cut number 13, Chris.
We said it on rally stage after rally stage, speech after speech.
Trump, Vance, basically the entire administration campaigned on it and promised to put America first and make America great again.
Did the promise, did the president's strikes on Iran go against everything that he promised the American people, Senator?
Quite the opposite.
He promised to keep us safe, to stand up to people who would hurt America.
She's a former congressman for a reason.
Shia vs. Sunni: The Complex Reality00:09:41
America First is not isolationism.
America First is not head in the sand.
America First is not to get entangled.
We're not going to have any boots on the ground in Iran, but America First is to kill people who wish us ill.
Kill people who wish us ill.
If Trump had campaigned on that, Kamala Harris would be sitting in the White House right now.
Yeah, look, Lindsey Graham's a liar.
Donald Trump's a liar.
They've maintained that Iran is this major sponsor of terrorism.
It is not.
The top terrorist groups, the ones that are responsible for 9-11, at least the ones that carried it out, whether they did it at the CIA's behest or not, that's a whole nother issue.
But the ones that have been responsible for the killings of people, not just in the United States, but around the world, are the Sunnis that are paid and hired by the Saudis, the Qataris, the Emiratis, not Iran.
The top, and this is State Department or statistics actually collected by the CIA, but it's also the French think tanks, a French think tank by the name of Fond dilab.
They've done a study going back to 1979.
Over 80% of the international terrorist attacks have been carried out by these radical Islamic groups.
Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, Boko Haram, Hayat Tahrir al-Shem, you know, the new president of Syria, not Iran.
And yet, the ones who have been killing Iranians are us through proxies.
When we encouraged Saddam Hussein to invade Iraq back in 1980 and then provided him with the chemical precursors that we use to make chemical weapons, that led to the death of 300,000 Iranians at a minimum.
And now we sit back and wonder, gee, why do they hate us?
Well, we've already seen how much we hate Muslims for causing the deaths of over less than 4,000 Americans.
So, you know, America is, we live upon a foundation of lies.
And the American people are being lied to about the, quote, threat that Iran posed?
We're the ones that have been carrying out assassination programs inside Iran.
Iran hasn't been carrying out assassination programs here in the United States.
So it's an upside-down world.
You spoke of the bitter irony and even absurdity of killing the one human being who single-handedly prevented Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
But talk to us about Shia versus Sunni.
Isn't it true that the murder of the Ayatollah will unite an Arab rage against the United States and Israel?
In some quarters.
Now, let's call it the moderate Muslims, whether they're Sunni or Shia, they're not necessarily in conflict.
It is the extremists, the hardliners, particularly on the Sunni side, described as Takfiris.
They're the ones that believe that the Shia represent an apostasy from the truth of Islam.
And therefore, they've been battling them and trying to kill them.
We've made a lot of assertions about what Iran was doing in Syria.
And that's because the irony here is like 10 years after 9-11, the United States was providing financial support to the very terrorist organizations, or at least that ascribe to those beliefs that had attacked us on 9-11, particularly with al-Nusra and Hayat Tahrir al-Shem, that is represented by Al-Shadda, the current head of the government in Syria.
And Iran was in Syria fighting against that.
In fact, Iran would have been or should have been our closest ally in this battle against this kind of religious extremism, because the Shia have not carried out the kinds of terrorist attacks that we've seen out of these Sunni groups, the Sunni extremist groups that were represented by people like bin Laden and then his successors and ISIS.
So again, but that's how we tell the story.
We got the average American convinced that Iran is this massive terrorist threat.
And that's why we got to do this.
And then, you know, here's Hakesa saying they're building this missile shield so they could build their nuclear weapon.
No, they built the ballistic missiles so that they could have a defense against us, which we're now finding out is actually pretty damn effective.
How much longer can all those American ships stay there, Larry?
Two weeks.
I mean, they're going to, if the con, let's deal with the carrier that's south of Iran in the Arabian Sea, the Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group.
If they are being attacked, which the reports are the missiles and drones have been fired, those destroyers, they're going to run out of, they're going to run out of missiles and need to reload.
And so when they need to reload, they're going to have to sail probably to Diego Garcia to get rearmed.
And when they go, the carrier's got to go with them.
So the carrier is not, it's not going to be able to stay on station much longer than I'd say two weeks.
But I believe that by the end of next week, the United States and Israel will be pleading, pleading to put an end to this because Iran, you know, we're going to destroy property and personnel in Iran.
Iran's not going to stop.
They're going to keep lobbing missiles.
They've got these missiles in underground cities.
We claim, there's a claim that we sent some B-2 bombers the other night that dropped and crushed the openings of some of these underground cities.
You know, I don't believe a thing anymore that the Trump administration says.
They've lied repeatedly.
But now I wonder if even Trump's trip to China, scheduled for the end of March, will come off.
I could see the Chinese saying, sorry, we don't want to meet with you.
Trump has damaged American status in the world with this.
And we haven't even begun to see the repercussions.
They're going to be economic, they're going to be political, and they're going to be military.
And so Israel in particular is going to suffer significant damage.
And they're boasting and popping champagne corks on Saturday and Sunday.
They'll be singing a different tune next week.
Chris tells me, of course, I was unaware of this, that many online are calling this the Epstein War, Operation Epstein Fury to distract from the coming Epstein revelations.
Gee, maybe the FBI will find those four interviews of that woman who says she was assaulted by the future president.
Yeah, they chose the name Epic Fury and clever people around the world said, EF, huh?
Epstein Fury.
And so it's this, you know, tried to shift the conversation.
But boy, this is Donald Trump has destroyed the credibility of the United States.
Who is going to believe anything that we say going forward?
And this is especially with the Russians now.
You know, I've been arguing for a while that Putin has been foolish to entertain any further conversations with Witkoff and with any representative that Trump sends forward.
But I think this now will drive the message home that dealing with the United States, the only thing the U.S. is going to understand going forward is war, not diplomacy.
Did you collect on that bet from McGovern yet?
No, no.
Ray sent a very, very nice note saying, hey, you know, I was wrong, you were right.
And look, as I told Ray, I sure as hell wish you were right.
Because, you know, if Ray was right, there are about 150 young ladies between the ages of six and 12 that'd be alive today and be going to school.
Right.
Instead, their parents are mourning them and burying them.
And other Iranians are dying as well.
And we've had at least four American servicemen killed, several wounded.
Those numbers are going to increase.
And as the bodies start flowing into Dover, Delaware, the support for Donald Trump is going to evaporate and he will be alone.
And when he's impeached and convicted, he'll deserve everything he gets.
End of the Week00:00:33
Larry, thank you very much, my dear friend.
I was going to play some more clips for you, but you ended on such an eloquent note, and our time is running short.
We may need you again this week, but we'll certainly see you at the end of the week with the intelligence community roundtable.
All the best, Larry.
All right.
I'll be there, my friend.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Coming up later today, if you're watching us live in 30 minutes at 10 o'clock, Ray McGovern at one o'clock, Colonel Bill Astori at two o'clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs at three o'clock, John John Kiriako,