March 24, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
24:23
AMB Chas Freeman : Will Trump Back Down?
Ambassador Chas Freeman critiques a preemptive U.S.-Israel war against Iran, alleging illegitimate aggression fueled by failed Israeli plots like the June assassination campaign and Scott Bessant's December Starlink infiltration causing 7,000 deaths. He exposes fake negotiations involving Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff as market manipulation tactics, noting Brent crude rebounded over $100 after a drop. Freeman argues Iran's Yuan-based oil transactions undermine the Petrodollar system while their phased strategy aims to expel U.S. bases and cripple Israel. Ultimately, he warns this conflict is counterproductive, likely galvanizing Iran toward nuclear weapons and ICBMs while exposing the U.S. dollar as a debt-propped fiat currency. [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 Tuesday, March 24th, 2026.
My dear friend, Ambassador Chaz Freeman, joins us now, Ambassador, always a pleasure.
Thank you, as always, for accommodating my schedule.
Ambassador, what became of that Israeli plan to foment mass chaos and revolution amongst the Iranians and induce them to overthrow their own government?
Well, it fell afoul of the same logic that caused the Soviet people, much as they may have feared and loathed Stalin and the system he had created, to rise up, not to rise up against that regime when the Germans invaded, but to rally behind the regime.
Iranians may fear and loathe their government, their regime, or many of them may, but they love their country more than they hate the regime.
And so this is all nonsense.
The initial move, which was carefully prepared in the June war with a lot of agents from Israel in Iran engaged in the assassination of scientists and Iranian political leaders, resulted in the roll-up of most of those agents.
The effort in December by Scott Bessant to crush the Iranian currency and provoke protests had been well prepared with communications gear from Elon Musk.
Starlink receiver sets infiltrated, about 50,000 of them infiltrated into Iran and distributed among various agents of influence whose job was to turn the peaceful protests violent, which they succeeded in doing, with the result that probably about 7,000, I think that number now is beginning to emerge from the rubble.
7,000 people, officials and more particularly civilians, died in the violence.
But basically, we're dealing with a war which is all about power with no purpose, all about violence, with no vision, all about the means with no ends.
And this is just part of it.
Here's President Trump yesterday on the tarmac at Palm Beach International Airport before he was flying, I presume, back to Washington, insisting that his two real estate agents, Messrs. Kushner and Witkoff, are engaged in high-level negotiations with a senior Iranian official.
The Israelis either intentionally or as part of this ruse, I think, identified him as the speaker of the Iranian parliament.
We'll hear from him in a minute.
Nevertheless, the president insisted that these negotiations are going on.
He doesn't want to reveal who it is.
Watch the president's tone and look at his face.
Chris, number 14, please.
A top person, don't forget, we've wiped out the leadership phase one, phase two, and largely phase three.
But we're dealing with the man who I believe is the most respected and the leader.
You know, it's a little tough.
We've wiped out everybody.
No, not the supreme leader.
We don't know.
Well, nobody's ever, nobody heard of the second supreme leader, the sun.
Mr. President, I don't need to force this.
I don't want him to be killed.
Okay, I don't want him to be killed.
If he doesn't want him to be killed, then why have we put a bounty on his head?
If this is indeed the speaker of the Iranian parliament, why is he on an Israeli list of people to be assassinated?
Why do we suppose that he would be interested in talking with us?
He is part of the hardline faction that has been empowered by our bungled war with Iran.
Why?
There is a rumor going around that we are now offering a meeting with JD Vance in Pakistan with this gentleman.
And why on earth, given the bounty on his head and the Israeli threat to murder him, would he go to Pakistan, even if he were in some respect disloyal to the regime, which he is not.
And finally, why should anyone believe that Steve Witkoff, who apparently has been texting the Iranian foreign minister, probing for an opening to end the war, why should anyone want to talk to him?
He's thoroughly discredited himself by participating in two negotiations for the sole purpose of deceiving the Iranians, lowering their guard, so that there could be a surprise attack.
You know, there's the old saying, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
Right.
Three times, and the game is over.
Nobody's going to play.
So I think this is frankly this just before the president announced a purported halt in bombing of Iranian power plants and energy facilities, which the Iranians said would result in immediate heavy retribution for Israel and the Gulf Arabs and the total closure of the Strait of Hormuz, as opposed to its operation as a sort of toll road,
which is how it's operating now.
Immediately before that, 15 minutes before the announcement, about $2 trillion moved in the oil futures market.
Somebody made a lot of money betting on a sharp fall in prices, followed by a bounce back.
The bounce back has now happened, suggesting that the gullibility of the market, which has been extraordinary up to this point, manipulated by rhetoric rather than facts, has been exhausted.
The market now is skeptical.
Brent is back over $100 a barrel after having fallen significantly as a result of the president's, I think, entirely fake announcement.
Here's a statement issued by the Irani parliament, Speaker Chris, number 15.
Iranian people demand complete and remorseful punishment of the aggressors.
All Iranian officials stand firmly behind their supreme leader and people until this goal is achieved.
Now, this part is underlined.
No negotiations have been held with the U.S. and fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the U.S. and Israel are trapped.
That is the speaker of the Iranian parliament, whom the Netanyahu regime has hinted as the person Trump claims his real estate agent negotiators are speaking with.
Has he offered a shred of credible evidence to support the claim that they're actually speaking?
No.
No, there is no evidence of that.
There are leaks, rumors, second-hand, third-hand information, which all look like plants designed to buttress fake news.
So Mr. Alibab, the Iranian speaker of the House, of the parliament, of the Majlis, is to be believed, I think.
Why would Iran negotiate now?
Iran has followed a very carefully phased battle plan.
It has now essentially exhausted Israel's intercept capability against its missiles.
It showed that it could hit Dimona, the nuclear research station in Israel in retaliation for an attack on the Tanz, the Iranian enrichment center.
It could get through the Israeli three-layer defense.
It chose not to strike the research facility, but to fire near it, just to make the point that it could do that.
Iran has escalation control.
They can decide what further leverage to put on.
They are letting ships through the Strait of Hormuz on a pay-as-you-go basis.
That is, they have done deals or have agreements with countries like China, India, Japan, Turkey.
We know that the Italians and French have been negotiating with them for the same purpose.
So the Strait of Hormuz is like the New Jersey turnpike.
You get a ticket from the Iranians, hand it in with cash as you leave, and you're let through.
And if you don't have the ticket and you don't have the cash, you don't get out of the Gulf or into it.
So I think the notion that there's mining in the Strait of Hormuz, there's no evidence of that.
Why would Iran mine a toll road that it controls?
And how are you going to take the toll booth out?
That is something that the Marines evidently are trying to think about.
But I don't think that is very feasible given the geography.
What has been the international geopolitical reaction to the war amongst your former colleagues in the diplomatic corps?
Horror, really, because this is amateur hour on steroids.
not only amateur hour, but self-enrichment by envoys with no qualifications, either in terms of their knowledge of the issues or their skills as composers of differences with others.
Diplomacy is all about convincing another party to do things your way.
That is to convince that party that it's in its own interest to do things your way.
The only tool that we seem to bring to bear through, as you put it, the two real estate agents or brokers or tycoons involved in this is blackmail.
You know, if you don't do this or that, we're going to blow up this or that threats.
That is not a basis for any kind of resolution of the issue.
And I go back to the point that Iran has a clear strategy.
Their objectives are clear.
They want to rid the Persian Gulf of American bases.
They're trying to convince the Gulf Arabs that those bases are more trouble than they're worth, that they invite attack.
They don't defend those countries.
They want to reduce Israel to the point where there's no credible prospect of a renewal of Israeli attacks on Iran.
And let's remember that this has been a low-intensity conflict going on for decades, with Benjamin Netanyahu saying that he's dreamt for 40 years of finding a president he could persuade to do Israel's dirty work.
And he's finally found that.
So he started off happy.
He's looking a little grimmer now.
I think he reacted to the Trump announcement about negotiations with a queasy feeling that maybe Israel was about to be sold out.
As it turned out, it was, I think, just a market manipulation ploy, nothing real.
What happens to the Israelis if the United States does stop the bombing for whatever reason?
Well, they can't carry on without American support.
The key would be the American logistical support of the Israeli Air Force and Navy in particular.
I want to point out, however, that at the same time as Iran is being heavily bombed and great damage being done to it physically, Israeli forces are preparing to annex southern Lebanon, about one-third of it.
There's talk in the Knesset about legislation on that.
The usual fanatics are insisting that not only should Lebanon south of the Latani River be cleared of its population and become a free-fire zone like Gaza, but there should be an annexation followed by Israeli settlement of that part of Lebanon.
In the middle of this also, Israel has just again attacked Syria, which is basically defenseless, supposedly in order to protect the Druze population, which hasn't asked for Israeli protection.
Israel is trying to split Syria into little ethnic enclaves.
It would like to do the same to Iran, but that is not working.
So the problem for the Israelis is, if the United States walked away from this war, which I think pretty clearly President Trump is trying to do, They are left with an Iran that has not been humbled, but that is determined to carry on an existential threat to Israel, just as Israel has been determined to do the same to Iran.
Sanctions Relief Backfires00:07:42
So we have a situation this war, prior to this war and the one in June, Israel was an actual threat to Iran, assassinating people, bombing occasionally.
And Iran was a potential threat to Israel.
Iran is now a real threat to Israel.
Way to go, guys.
Wow.
What can 50,000, man?
I can't get my hands around the number.
We have Scott Ritter on later today to give us the granular observation of this, but what can 50,000 American troops expect to receive?
Depends where they go.
I think there are feasible targets.
There are some small islands up of Musa, the Lesser Toms in the Strait of Hormuz, which are disputed between Iran and the United Arab Emirates.
I think the Marines could take them.
And that would provide some solace to the UAE, which has suffered terribly in this war, which it didn't want.
Nobody in the Gulf wanted it other than the United States and Israel.
So that would be feasible.
I think Haag Island, which is much talked about, is way up the Gulf.
Anybody trying to take it would have to run the gauntlet of fire from Iran on the whole passage through the Gulf.
The only feasible way to get there otherwise would be through Saudi Arabia, which wants no part of this.
I think Harg Island also is not a desirable target if your purpose, as our president's purpose, is to lower oil prices.
What would knocking out Iranian oil production do to the world's oil supply?
At the moment, Iranian ships are getting through.
Of course, they run the toll booth.
They let their own ships through.
So I'm not sure that makes sense.
And there are other possibilities.
The port of Chavahar, which ironically is part of a U.S. proposed transport corridor from India to Murmansk or St. Petersburg in the Russian Federation, intended to counter the Chinese East-West Silk Road with a north-south corridor.
I suppose they could attack that port, or they could try the north shore of the Strait of Hormuz, which would risk any reenactment of the Gallipoli disaster by Winston Churchill in the First World War.
But I think Scott is far more expert on these matters than I, and I look forward to hearing his analysis.
Do you place any significance in the fact that the tolls, as you've called them, for the transport, the movement of these oil tankers, the actual tolls themselves, are paid in Yuan?
Yes, that is very significant because it is a direct retort to our Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besant, who said, well, you know, the fact that we've given Iran relief from sanctions, which we have, Iran has scored exactly one of the things it wanted, which is sanction relief.
Its oil now is not under U.S. sanction effectively.
And Mr. Besson said, well, this doesn't matter because, of course, that oil has to be paid in dollars and we control the use of dollars.
But what if it's paid, what if it's paid in yuan?
And that means, you know, the basic prop for the dollar.
Let's remember that President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard.
It is basically nothing but a fiat currency, meaning, trust me, I'll pay you somehow if you have this little green paper portrait of a dead president on your hands.
And it is now in grave jeopardy because it's basically propped up by the exchange of oil for investments in treasuries.
That is to say, Saudi Arabia and others did a deal during the board administration with Secretary of Treasury Simon and Henry Kissinger that the huge increase in oil prices that had resulted from the oil embargo after the Yom Kippur or Ramadan war of that of 1973 would be solved by reinvesting.
The.
windfall profits in the United States.
That's continued ever since.
Without that, the U.S. dollar is a piece of paper backed by a fiscal policy that doesn't work, astronomic debt, a sort of Ponzi scheme going on in borrowing by the U.S. Treasury and the Fed stepping in and basically lending money to itself.
This all comes crashing down sooner or later.
And what we're doing now probably makes it sooner rather than later.
Do you think Trump will back down?
I don't know.
I think he's cornered.
He cornered himself.
This is a very foolish war indeed, with no clear purposes.
As I said, it's power without purpose.
No real attainable objectives.
It hasn't achieved any objectives.
It's been directly counterproductive.
It's galvanized the Iranian nuclear program.
We can be very sure that Iran now will build a nuclear weapon, which the late Supreme Leader had been adamantly opposed to.
His son, his successor, is not opposed.
He's in favor.
In addition, we have the prospect of Iran now building an international continent, intercontinental ballistic missile, ICBM, capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to the United States.
That too was something that the late leader opposed.
The purported attack on Diego Garcia, two IRBMs, intermediate range ballistic missiles were fired at Diego Garcia but failed to reach it, is a matter of some dispute.
Iran says it didn't do it.
And many believe that this was an Israeli false flag operation intended to keep the British in support of the war.
And if so, it's been counterproductive because the British are backing away from this war.
We are pretty much alone in this thing with Israel.
Ambassador Freeman, thank you very much.
Great.
Great analysis.
I truly appreciated the analysis on the loss of the Petro dollar.
Profound.
And another example of what the Americans didn't anticipate and should have.
Well, if you have incompetent government, you get incompetent results.
Yes.
Yes.
And regrettably, deadly results.
Thank you, Ambassador.
All the best of you, my friend.
Incompetent Government Deadly Results00:01:03
We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
Keep well, Judge.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
A busy day for you coming up.
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