March 3, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
25:37
*SPECIAL* - Prof. Mohammad Marandi : Latest Developments LIVE From Tehran
Professor Mohammad Marandi reports from Tehran on March 4th, 2026, detailing US and Israeli bombings that killed 160 girls in a school and targeted responders via double-tap strikes. Despite Ayatollah Khamenei's reported death, public resolve strengthened as tens of thousands chanted against Israel and Trump while under fire, contrasting Khamenei's sacrifice with Netanyahu's flight to Berlin. With air defenses protecting missile bases and no new leader declared due to war risks, Marandi argues Western media ignores these atrocities, suggesting the conflict is shifting younger generations' worldviews against US and Israeli regimes. [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, March 4th, 2026.
My dear friend and colleague, Professor Mohamed Morandi, joins us now from Tehran, Iran.
Professor Mirandi, no matter what the circumstances, it's always a pleasure to be able to chat with you.
How are you and how is your family?
I'm fine, Judge, and my family is fine too.
It's been a difficult few days for everyone in Tehran.
And today there were some very, very heavy bombings in different neighborhoods, but we are good.
What are the Americans and the Israelis bombing?
What do they seem to be aiming at?
Because we're getting reports here in the U.S., obviously, of the school that killed 160 little girls, of police stations and hospitals being bombed.
So let me rephrase my question.
Does there appear to be a concern for non-combatants, non-military targets, or are the Israelis and the Americans bombing without distinction?
No, they are bombing many places without distinction.
In fact, they are carrying out numerous double-tap attacks.
In Fair Du See Square, an acquaintance of mine, a friend, a friend of mine, he witnessed such an attack.
They struck a building, brought it down.
And then when people went to help, first responders, they struck the same place again.
And a reporter who I think works for Dropside News, he told me that in a square that he went and visited, the witnesses there had experienced the same thing.
And of course, Iranians from different cities and different parts of Tehran are also speaking about these types of strikes.
They're bombing hospitals, private hospitals, public hospitals.
They've been bombing police stations, local police stations.
But in Tehran, like in New York, I assume, police stations are attached to ordinary buildings.
So they bring down people's apartment blocks.
And I went to Iranian radio and television.
I rarely do Iranian TV, but they asked me to go and since it's war, excuse me, since it's wartime.
I went and I went to the studio that I had gone to a couple of years before.
When I got there, I saw it was badly damaged.
They had bombed the studio the night before.
And so they told me I have to go to another place.
I went there, did the interview, and an hour after I left the IRIB complex, the Iranian national radio and television, they bombed the complex.
So, and of course, no one in the West really in mainstream media, they care about Iranian journalists, or do they care about the hospitals or about the girls.
But the bombings in Tehran are very much indiscriminate.
The murder of the Ayatollah, which the Americans and the Israelis refer to by its gruesome phrase of decapitation, and which the Americans and the Israelis obviously hoped would lead foolishly to some sort of uprising against the government.
Has it had the opposite effect from what the Americans and the Israelis intended?
Judge, Ayatollah Khamenei has always been a popular figure among Iran among Iranians.
And the Western propaganda, Western narratives about Iran, the very fact that every time they carry out an attack against Iran or they try to undermine the country, it doesn't work, is evidence of that popularity and that legitimacy.
And ever since he was martyred, he, and I should add this as a footnote, he refused to leave his home and his office because he said that many Iranians, they have nowhere to go.
And since they have nowhere to go, I'm not moving.
So there was no intelligence coup.
He was at home.
He was in his office, which is right beside his home.
And he made the willful decision to stay put because he said many ordinary people in Tehran and other places, they cannot, they don't have a second place to go to, so I'm not going.
In contrast, was Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who fled to Berlin and who was laughing and joking on international television when he learned of the murder of the Ayatollah.
I mean, are these people crazy?
Do they really not perceive the effects of their words, their thoughts, and their behavior?
They're evil.
They're utterly evil.
When you go and you see when you're sitting with people and then with women and children, and then the bombs explode nearby, and you see the children crying and women crying.
And it's, you know, this is what, of course, they've been doing to Gaza for well over two years.
And this is what they're doing to Lebanon as we speak as well.
So for them, slaughter and murder is something to be proud of.
The U.S. Secretary of War speaks of slaughter and murder with pride.
But the fact is that ever since the martyrdom of Ayatollah Khamenei, people across the country have been coming to the streets in Tehran, in different neighborhoods.
Every night people gather in different neighborhoods.
And each of these are like tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people.
And I put this in some of these clips where people gather and then they're being bombed, but they don't move.
As they're being bombed, they are chanting slogans against the Israeli regime, against Trump, to commemorate the Ayatollah Khamenei to support the armed forces.
Iranians Defying Bombings00:15:42
And it's quite stunning.
And I put this, so you see in the footage, people, men and women, refusing to budge as surface-to-air defense systems are working.
It's quite stunning.
It's also stunning that the Americans and the Israelis have failed to grasp the Iranian mentality, the Iranian culture, the Iranian devotion to all things Iranian.
Are you still with us, Muhammad?
So, Chris, I see that Mohammed's image is frozen and I don't hear him.
I don't know if the audience is able to hear him.
No, okay.
All right.
Well, we've had some sort of an interruption in our communications with Professor Morandi.
Chris will do his best to try and reconnect.
I'll summarize what he and I have discussed so far, which is the determination of the Iranian people to support their government and to support their culture and support their society, and the ignorance of the Israelis and the Americans who believe that the bombing will weaken the Iranian will and will cause, inexplicably,
the Iranian people to overthrow their government.
This attitude appears to be one that is nearly universally rejected by the Iranians.
If you don't know who Professor Mohammad Morandi is, he was born in Richmond, Virginia, USA.
He's as American as I am, and he, of course, was educated in Great Britain and is now a professor of literature at the University of Tehran.
He and I have become good friends through mutual acquaintances, many of whom are known to you, the audience.
He and I have been together.
I've conferred in private, and of course, I'm happy to interview him in public.
It appears that Professor Morandi is not responding to us.
I hope and pray that this is not the result of a U.S. or an Israeli attack, but I think we'll probably terminate the interview at this point.
And I'll keep talking a little bit because Chris thinks he might be able to get Professor Mirandi back.
So you have him.
There he is.
Mohamed, you're back with us.
Sorry about that, Judge.
This is just how it is for the time.
Oh, no, understood.
Listen, it gave me a scare, and it gave the viewers a scare.
We thought it was the Americans and the Israelis and At the internet, we were talking about the woeful ignorance that the Americans and Israelis have of the Iranian culture and the Iranian people's embrace of their government.
For President Trump to say, stay at home, I'll tell you when to come out, and when you come out, I expect you to take over the government, is such a profoundly ignorant statement.
It's got to do more harm to their cause than good.
Mohammed, can you hear me?
Yes.
The fact is that the United States.
Yes, I can hear you, Judge.
Okay.
I can hear you, Judge.
Let me judge.
Okay, yes, we can hear you now.
Go ahead, please.
I want your comments on the American and Israeli ignorance of Iranian determination.
Judge, Iran has a civilization that goes back thousands of years, as you know.
And Iran's religious ideology, Shia Islam in particular, is strongly influenced by a sense of justice, supporting the oppressed, defying the oppressor.
The grandson of the prophet, his martyrdom in Kerbalah, is something that is a part of Iranian culture and society in a way in which I think it's very difficult to comprehend unless someone visits it or reads about it and understands it.
Iranians, the reason why Iran supports Palestine with such immense feelings is because of this sense of supporting the oppressed.
It is because they believe the Palestinian people are oppressed that they stand by them.
And the same is true for the Cubans or the Venezuelans.
They see them as oppressed by the empire.
It doesn't matter what their religion is or whether it's a communist state or not.
And Iranian resilience against the United States aggression and Israeli aggression is very much linked to this reality, to this worldview.
So it's both a civilization, but it's also a religious ideology that is very much focused on defying the oppression, the oppressor, and supporting the oppressed.
And one thing about Ayatollah Khamenei, Judge, is that he was a person who lived a very simple life.
His children, all of them, live a very simple life.
Now that he's passed away, I can say that I knew him.
I wasn't close to him, but I've met him on numerous occasions.
I met family members of his regularly, and none of them even have businesses.
Not that he's against business, but he prevented anyone from his immediate family from getting involved in business just to make sure that the family, the entire family, is super clean.
He was a volunteer in the war.
Before the revolution, he was in jail, he was imprisoned numerous times and tortured.
When the war started, he had no military experience, but he left for the warfront and fought.
At the end of the war, when he was president, when the United States entered the war on behalf on the side of Saddam, and they started, they shot down the airliner and they started attacking U.S. naval and Iranian naval installations and Iranian naval ships.
The war fronts were very unstable.
And he went to the warfront as the president.
I saw him there.
And it was very dangerous for him because he was a key, he would be a key target.
But he went from front to front to strengthen the morale.
He was never a person afraid of death.
And his is always as a religious scholar, the Christian martyrs in Iran.
And I've posted a lot of these.
He would, on Christmas, he would go to the family, the houses of Iranian Christian martyrs.
On Christmas, for the Armenians, it's in January.
For other Christians, it's on the 25th of December, as in the United States.
So he has visited numerous families of the martyrs.
The narrative on Iran in the United States judge is completely fabricated.
And it has demonized this country for 47 years.
And the reason for this is Iran's opposition to the Israeli regime and Iran's insistence on being independent.
But if there was no Israel judge, I would assure you that Iran and the United States today would have embassies and we would have normal trade and business.
But it's the Israeli regime that insists on hatred and animosity.
Has a successor, Ayatollah, been chosen, Mohammed?
Nothing has been declared yet.
Right now, In accordance with the constitution, a three-man team runs the country, the president, the head of the judiciary, and a representative from the Guardian Council.
And once the Council of Experts, which is an elected body, elects the new leader, the three-man team steps aside.
This hasn't been announced yet.
The reason is because of the war situation.
So they are afraid that the Americans or the Israelis would target the elected members of the council.
So they're having to have their meetings in secret.
But because of that, there's been a delay.
But I think in the near future, the new leader will be declared.
What is your understanding of Iranian air defenses and Iranian military intentions with respect to the offensive use of their missiles?
Well, Iran's air defenses are working.
They're a lot better this time round with regards to drones.
And they've been successful in, and also Iranian intelligence agencies have been much more successful in protecting the country against groups or organizations that are working with Mossad or the CIA.
So we haven't had the sort of things that we had during the 12-day war, where they would sabotage or things like that.
We haven't had this time around.
So drone defenses are doing pretty well.
But air defenses, obviously, against such a powerful force, they are not going to be able to do nearly as much as we would like them.
But the Iranian missiles and drones are in underground bases.
And the United States and the Israeli regime cannot destroy them.
And most of the bases have not yet been used.
They're still closed.
They're waiting for future days and weeks to begin using them.
So most of the bases that are firing missiles and drones have already been used before, and they're known bases.
Most of the bases are still unknown.
But the reason I believe the reason why the United States and the Israelis are insisting on bombing cities and targeting civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure is because they're frustrated by not being able to destroy the underground missile cities and drone cities.
And Iran, as we've been seeing, is firing missiles and drones.
And increasingly, Iran is able to fire less missiles and less drones because the air defenses in occupied Palestine, as well as the air defenses in the Persian Gulf region, are beginning to collapse.
They're running out of surface-to-air missiles.
So, Iran fires a cheap, and all of the drones and missiles, almost all of the drones and missiles that the Iranians are now using are the older missiles and drones.
So, some of these missiles are 20 years old.
They fire them, some of them get through, some of them are shot down by very expensive surface-to-air systems.
But gradually, these are being depleted.
So, Iran can now fire less missiles and almost all of them get through.
And the same is true with drones.
What is the general feeling amongst the public for the likely outcome of this war?
They're determined to defeat the enemy, Judge.
The United States and Trump are now seen as the enemy.
They're slaughtering people, they're slaughtering families, they destroy apartment blocks, people are thrown 30 meters away from their homes, kids, men, women, people on the streets lying, dying, kids under the rubble.
At the school, when they bombed the school, Judge, on the first day, killing 165 girls, we didn't see anything in the Western media and the Persian language media in the West because they have this huge media apparatus in Persian, which is hostile towards Iran.
There was no concern.
There was no, they didn't care about these kids.
It wasn't just the U.S. government or this racist Zionist regime, but it was the entire media apparatus, whether liberal or conservative, no difference.
They're all they seem to take pleasure in bombing cities and slaughtering people, and they're completely indifferent.
And one of the things, Judge, that happened that I think is very significant, that this is anecdotal, but it is there three.
I have three personal experiences and a number of experiences from others.
Three students that I know who took part in the riots, not that they were the people with the armed, with the weapons, but they were hanging out with these people.
They were on the streets with them, and probably they caused some damage to public property, but I don't ask.
You're talking about back in January.
You're talking about back in January.
Exactly.
Three different students have contacted me over the last few days asking how they can help, What they can do to defend the country, to contribute to the defense of the Iranian people.
And a couple of them were in tears.
So, what the United States and the Israeli regime have done is they have exposed the nature of these regimes to a younger generation that had not seen the war, that had not seen the chemical weapons that I survived, that the German regime gave to Saddam Hussein.
They did not see the crimes that the United States had committed alongside Saddam Hussein against us.
And they could not feel, they could not comprehend what sanctions meant and how these sanctions were imposed from abroad to strangle us.
Exposing The Regimes00:01:48
But now they see it vividly: how the empire so cruelly slaughters men, women, and children.
And then you watch CNN and Fox News, or you read The Guardian or Breitbart, they're more or less the same.
These students, who are very, all of them fluent in English, see them as sinister.
And so their worldviews are evolving.
What Trump has done, the Iranian leadership, Iranian thinkers and intellectuals could never have done in 100 years to change the opinions of these young people.
Wow.
That's a profound observation and one that again bespeaks the ignorance of the West about the Iranian soul.
Mohammed, thank you very much.
God be with you and your family, my dear friend.
Thank you so much for these courageous times you spend with us.
We hope we can talk with you again soon.
All the best.
Thank you, Judge.
It's a great honor.
Thank you.
God love you.
I hope we're together again soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Wow.
What an extraordinary man.
And in my view, I think you probably agree, an extraordinary interview.
Coming up later today at 12 noon on all of this, Colonel Douglas McGregor, at one o'clock on all of this, Pepe Escobar, at three o'clock on all of this, the great Phil Giraldi.