March 9, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
31:02
Alastair Crooke : If Trump Loses Iran, China and BRICS Triumph
Judge Andrew Napolitano hosts Alastair Crooke to analyze Iran's decisive logistical advantage over Israel and the US, driven by overwhelming missile stocks and Shi'i moral resilience following the Ayatollah's assassination. Crooke argues that CIA and MI6 failures stem from cultural blinkers ignoring irrational resistance, while Grand Ayatollah Sistani's fatwa mandates regional defense against American facilities in Iraq and Pakistan. The conflict forces Gulf states and India to choose sides within BRICS, threatening Western energy exports via Hormuz and potentially breaking the European economy through critical gas shortages, suggesting a triumph for China and Iran if Trump declares victory prematurely. [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 9th, 2026.
Alistair Crook joins us now.
Apologies for our late start.
We had some internet glitches, which we have, of course, happily resolved.
Alistair, a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
Is Iran causing a serious depletion of interceptor missiles on the part of the Israelis and the Americans?
Absolutely.
Yes, is the answer to that.
And you remember, there has always been an old adage that the amateurs focus on tactics and the professionals focus on logistics.
And the logistics are going to determine the outcome of this conflict in many ways.
And there are different forms of logistics.
One is, of course, intercepts and missiles themselves, shortages.
And on that, the balance lies, essentially, the advantage lies with Iran, overwhelming.
They have many missiles and they have big stocks of missiles.
So the logistics is against the United States on that.
The second logistics is, of course, the question of energy and energy supply to Europe and to the United States and its consequence for markets and for the economies.
And I suppose the third element is how this is affecting geopolitics and how it is changing, if you like, the whole geopolitics, not only of the Middle East, but also of countries like India that made an extremely bad judgment in its timing for its visit to Iran and is now paying the consequence with the US saying, well,
you can have a limited ability to import Russian oil and Russia telling India, listen, you didn't support Iran in this.
You'll now have to pay a premium for your Russian imports.
So those are the sort of key things.
So these are more important many ways.
I've been under bombardments in various times like this, and there's something extraordinary, sort of chaotic about being under attack or a bombardment like that.
Is that you could have an area here which is absolute mayhem and destruction, and 200 meters the other way, it's all normal.
Nothing is changing.
People are in the restaurants or whatever and buying their food.
And you have this extraordinary juxtaposition.
So it makes it very hard to sort of give, it's not really possible to say an overview that is saying, you know, the level of destruction in this country is this, or the level of destruction in that is different because it is such a mosaic of bits of destruction, a mosaic of areas of normality that are taking place.
But in the end, the overriding element of this is about the ability to keep, if you like, what the Iranians would call steadfast.
That would mean keeping you all intact, not fractioning, keeping everybody on message, saying the right thing.
And also the question of support from the people.
That is the other logistics, which we don't talk so much about, but is essential.
Trust of the people and trust in the state is the other sort of element.
So I would say those are the sort of logistics that exist.
And I think that probably answers your question, because, I mean, quite clearly, What we have seen in this period, particularly in this last period, is that when these newer version missiles are striking into Israel, it is Israel that is putting up fewer and fewer intercept missiles, that is failing to down them.
And this is a cause of great concern in Israel.
And also because the same thing is now happening from Hezbollah.
And the Yemenis have said that they are going to start too.
So these things are going to eat up the munitions.
And that means that it is going to be very difficult.
The only way now, if you like, if you don't have either sufficient air defenses or if you like standoff bombs, is you have to get closer.
And this means for America that if you are running out of your sophisticated cruise missiles, you have to go into Iranian airspace.
And there you risk getting shot down.
So glide bombs, which is the only alternative, are far less effective.
How do you account for the resilience of the Iranian people?
And maybe you can weave into that answer what kind of a mistake it was for the Americans and the Israelis to assassinate the Ayatollah?
Well, I mean, first of all, that Iran, and people have said this, but it's very important, is a civilization.
And it differs from, if you like, Sunni Islam, in that Sunni Islam gave up, if you like, reasoning in terms of law and other things altogether in about the 13th hundred under the influence of Ibn Taymiyyah, it was called Ishtiha, by which you could change laws and such and details.
And Ibn Taymiyyah also ended philosophy and thinking.
It was said that this led to innovation, which was heresy and was not going to be allowed.
In Shi'i Islam, it continues.
So there was a great flowering of philosophy, of different types of thinking, but also a cultural one, music, poetry, all of this flar in Iran and gave and created a real civilization difference.
And the two, Sunni Islam is much more literal.
It's, if you like, characterized by externalities.
You want to have a mark on your forehead where it shows you pray every day and the way in which you stir your tea or all you make your observations.
Whereas in Shini Islam, the emphasis is on personal transformation.
A famous Iranian philosopher, Ghazali, said, you may know the Quran by heart, you may know the hadith, that is the saints, and the sharia, the law, and you know all of that and you've read that and you can quote it by heart, you'll still know Muslim.
You are only a Muslim when you have allowed this to transform you and to change you.
And that means the Iranians are very different, if you like, in this way.
And their history is one of having made huge sacrifices.
It started with sacrifices.
It started with the Battle of Kerbala, where the grandson of the Prophet took on the major forces of the Caliph with a tiny army, knowing, I mean, this was something like, I think he had, I don't know the exact number, but he had about 85 men under arms fighting an army of several thousand.
And yet that was a victory for him.
It was a victory because it preserved the principle and the moral righteousness of his cause, even though the truest would say it was a clear disaster and failure.
So Iranians are able to look at what's happening and if you like the setbacks that they're facing.
They look at those and actually see this as a moral victory.
Even if the West says, ah, yes, but you know, more of your mobile missile launches have been destroyed in the last day or two.
It's not seen in that way.
It is about a moral victory, a victory of a civilization, of a people, and of their whole culture.
And it is also a victory that is a religious victory, too.
What effect has the assassination of the Ayatollah had on all this?
Oh, incredible effect.
And you only see one tiny part of it.
I won't dwell on what's happening in Tehran because it's well known.
But every night now, this is Ramadan and the practice anyway throughout the Muslim world is after fasting and then eating and taking the breaking the fast, people go out and the streets are just packed with people and they are all shouting and supporting the state.
and will be supporting the election of the new supreme leader, Ushtawa.
So there will be enormous support.
There is enormous.
There's no question about it.
People will dig out and say, oh, well, there was an opposition in London with sort of Pavlavists sort of coming out and supporting a Pahlafi.
But everyone has seen how, actually, he's not very clever.
And they've seen very, very clearly what sort of person he is anyway.
And they do not care for this.
So this has had the effect in Tehran.
But across the region is more important.
And because we've had a succession of ayatollahs, these are people, and I explained about how Iran, how Shiism was different from Sunnism, is that the leaders in Shi'i Islam,
the Majayyi, as called, the sources of emulation, which you can follow, choose your source of emulation, and you take from them guidance on all things, including marriage, including personal problems, if you take the guidance from one person.
A number of those in Shi Islam have come out and issued fatwa for global jihad, several of them.
And it's now become the case that the whole cleric, the twas the clerics of Shi'islam across the whole world, a region, have now come out, with the last one being the very famous Grand Ayatollah in Iraq, Sistani, who has come out and said, it is an obligation for the defense of Iran.
Obligation, a mandatory religious obligation on all Shi'i to support Iran.
And so the consequence is we've seen attacks on the American embassy in Baghdad, and we have seen them in attacks on the consulate in Pakistan.
But in Iraq, it's an uproar.
I mean, it's very strong.
The censor and the Iraqi PMO, PMU, they're called popular mobilization units.
Some of them allied to Iran, not all of them, but all of them are mostly Shi'i.
I mean, are attacking, if you like, Abil and the American radars and air defenses in the region.
And that's having a huge effect altogether with the Iranian destruction of major radars, is that you can see the practical effectiveness that in Israel, in Tel Aviv, where you used to get warning of incoming missiles, they are reduced to one to two minutes because the ability to detect and to counter missiles has been so degraded.
And this is partly the effect of the sort of Shi'i fervor that has enveloped most of the region.
Intelligence Leaks Expose Gulf Gas Risks00:15:11
In the past three weeks, there have been two major intelligence leaks to the Washington Post translation came from the CIA.
The first was the one that publicly aggravated the president, that General Kane, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned the president this won't be easy and your goals are probably impossible.
The second leak was late last week, and the Washington Post authors said it came from two people familiar with an intelligence assessment, which said effectively the same thing.
The president's goals are not achievable.
Question, do you think CIA and MI6 have been candid and honest with the president, but he has chosen to believe Netanyahu and Mossad instead?
You know, I could answer that and say yes, very easily.
That would be the correct answer.
You know, they haven't been honest and correct, but it's a deeper problem than that.
And I recall reading after the 7th of October event, an interview with the head of military intelligence.
And the military intelligence, he said, you know, the failure to predict what has happened in the 7th of October was cultural.
We knew, we had signs that something was happening.
We knew that was there.
But culturally, we couldn't accept it.
We couldn't face it.
When these signs came on, people said, you know, forget it.
Don't pay any attention.
I mean, the Palestinians, I mean, don't they know the strength of Israel, the strength of the idea is therefore, of course, it's ridiculous for them even to think of this, pay no attention.
And he said, that's what happened.
And worse, he said, after the event, after the 7th of October, some of his officers could not actually come to accept that it had happened.
because it didn't make sense to them.
They couldn't accept the ideas that the Palestinians had done something irrational, which was to resist this great power and rise up against it.
Not possible.
I mean, it doesn't make sense.
So they ignored it.
And he said this very candidly.
And I think this is true.
That's what I'm saying.
This is true of the CIA and the MI6.
I mean, you know, they have this cultural blockers on their eyes, blinkered, and they can't see anything other than the great power of the United States and its military and all of that.
And they cannot see that there can be a very different perspective once you take the blinkers off and you're prepared to look more deeply at what's happening and understand it clearly.
And I think that's really some of the basic problem to it, is cultural.
And the military intelligence commander, he was head of the military intelligence and he said, you know, the only answer is we have to get rid of all our people who've been in this intelligence thing.
And we have to start a day and we have to do a complete cultural education so that actually they can serve as proper intelligence officers.
And he could have said the same for MI6 or for CIA.
They have the blinkers on and they want to please and they want to get on in their career and they don't want to say things that are unacceptable to others.
Whereas the old system of intelligence was always, they were the people that brought unwelcome news to the prime minister or president.
They had the unpleasant task of coming and saying, I'm very sorry, sir, this is not working.
You've made a big mistake.
What is the likely effect of the war on BRCS?
Oh, that's, well, we'll have to divide it up.
I mean, I think this is going to have a huge impact on BRICS.
And we've already seen it coming from Russia because the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Gulf states, were asking Russia to intervene to try and arrange for the conflict to come to an end.
And Lavrov said to them, but look, when did we hear you criticize the governments, the states that started the war?
You're criticizing Iran.
And why are you criticizing Iran when you do not say a word?
And we didn't hear you condemn the killing of those girls at that school.
Why do you not condemn it?
I think this came as a huge shock to Gulf states who thought they were sort of comfortable mediators in the middle of sort of playing one side against the other.
Of course they weren't.
They played one side only.
And Russia pulled them out.
But for India, it's even more the case because India, as you know, Modi went to Israel just before the war and sided and said, you know, how Hinduva was so close to Zionism and we have a sort of common interest and we would like to work together.
And now suddenly India, which is, I think, something like 70% dependent on energy imports, finds that they cannot get the energy they need.
America may give them a small exemption, but the turning point, I think the most clear thing, was when Russia effectively lectured the Indians and said, you know, you've turned against one of your BRICS colleagues.
Iran is also a BRICS member.
You haven't supported them.
You didn't support them.
Okay, we may send you energy, but you're going to have to pay a premium over the Brent price for the energy you get.
Not the discount that you used to have.
It's going to be a premium for your disloyalty.
I think this had come as a huge shock.
And so there's a very much a sort of consolidation of the key BRICS leaders, a geopolitical constructor, Russia, China, and Iran, and some of the others that have been together with.
But the Gulf states, it's come as a great shock that they got this lecture from Russia and said, well, you know, you brought this on yourself.
You chose to be one-sided and you chose to attack a neighboring state of yours to endorse the attack, and now you're pleading for help.
Well, you know, look to your own position.
So I think the BRICS are going to necessarily be transformed.
And I think transformed probably in a good way, in the sense that this was the wake-up call that you can't have a BRICS that is just a forum that people chat and talk.
The BRICS has to be also proactive.
And that in proactive, you cannot simply have a foot in one camp and try and have a foot in the other camp and say, oh, well, you know, national interests require that we stay in the dollar sphere, but we have our own national interests.
I think that is going to come to an end.
You have to decide where you stand now in the future with America and Israel, America, I mean the Trump administration and Israel, or you decide what is truly a national interest.
So I think it's going to have a big change across the region.
And one of the things that I think is going to change is that you've noticed that Iran has been particularly targeting ports, particularly also in Bahrain, where the Fifth Fleet is hosted.
And they've attacked them, even in Oman, which played a mediating role for Iran with the United States, a port that is being built there.
And this is what I believe is what is happening, that Iran is deciding not to just drive the United States and the West out of its military bases in the Gulf area, but to gain, drive them out of their ability to control the seaways, the choke points, the naval choke points of Homo's, of Babalmanda, and of Indonesia for the Chinese,
to say, no, you are not going to control the corridors of energy, of gas, of oil, so that you can squeeze China, you can squeeze Russia who needs to export as opposed to China importing, and you can squeeze or take Iran's oil off the table or take it for yourself.
No, we are going to, if you like, Slip the geopolitical balance and Iran will take dominance of the seaways, the sea areas of the Persian Gulf and of Babal Mandar with the Yemenis and of Hormoz.
Hormoz is not blocked.
It is more correctly said gated.
In other words, Chinese vessels are passing.
Chinese own and flag vessels are passing and can pass through Hormoz, and there are exceptions being made, but they will not apply to those who participated in the conflict against Iran.
The Guardian newspaper just reported that Great Britain has only two days of gasoline, as you call it, petrol stored, while Iran, of course, is still threatening to disrupt supply chains.
Could that be?
Could the British be in such dire straits?
I think actually it's not gasoline, it's actually gas, gas itself.
I mean, liquefied, you know, ordinary gas.
Yes, the reserves, that is correct.
They're down to about two days.
And Europe is down to its critical levels on its reserves there.
It's not two days, but it is very, very low in their strategic reserves.
And yes, this is what I'm saying.
Logistics are key.
How long can this war go on?
Especially when you see the prices going up every hour on the oil prices going up, the gas prices in Europe going up 30, 40 percent.
You know, this is going to break the Western economy.
I mean, to put it bluntly, it will break it and therefore break the markets.
And this is the one thing that Trump pays attention to beyond anything else.
Markets, markets, markets.
And so these are the logistics.
This is, you know, everyone's saying, well, oh, maybe Iran has lost quite a few mobile launches.
First of all, they haven't lost that, you know, because most of them were dummies.
And the Iranians are very good at putting out dummies and cardboard launchers and things for the Americans to hit.
And of course, if you are involved in the war and you hit a carport thing, often it gets written up as a realtor on the target because you want your statistics.
Oh, no, we've knocked out 600 mobile launchers.
I mean, it's not true.
It's just part of the narrative.
And so it's not like that.
But the gas, the petrol price going up, even today when I was coming back to the house, you know, petrol prices have gone up quite substantially here in Italy.
They will go up more.
Gas prices are going to go up much, much further, but they may actually begin to run out of gas in parts of Europe.
It's very serious indeed.
This is the limitation.
So Trump likely will say, okay, let's stop it.
Let's stop.
I'm going to declare the war is over and won by the United States.
The only problem is for him is that Iran is only just getting going.
It says that.
It's very clear.
They say, uh-uh, you know, it is we get a vote on when to end this war, too.
It's not just you and Netanyahu.
We get a vote and we're only just getting going.
It's not that we are, if you like, running out of missiles.
In fact, we are about to start deploying the more sophisticated missiles.
And they are very sophisticated.
Khorom Shah IV, with its multiple warheads, ACU warheads with 20 kilo explosive devices over an area of 15 to 20 kilometers is devastating.
It's like being under an artillery attack.
And that's going on, ferocious attacks every day.
They are not firing so many because they don't have to, because all the signs are that Israel has actually almost run out of these intercept missiles.
Ferocious Attacks and Morning Thanks00:00:37
Alastair, thank you very much, my dear friend.
Needless to say, the picture being painted here in the West is quite different and not reflecting reality, but you've opened up everybody's eyes as you always do first thing Monday morning.
Well, the best of you, my friend.
We'll look forward to seeing you again next week.
Thank you very much, Judge.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Have a great day.
Coming up later today, if you're watching us live in 20 minutes at nine o'clock this morning, Larry Johnson at 10 o'clock this morning, Ray McGovern at three o'clock this afternoon, Scott Ritter at four o'clock this afternoon,