April 14, 2026 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano
22:48
AMB. Chas Freeman : Israel’s Strategy Collapsing
Ambassador Chas Freeman critiques the collapse of U.S.-Iran diplomacy, arguing Vice President JD Vance's Islamabad mission was performative due to Israeli influence from Daniel Witkoff and Jared Kushner. He asserts Israel's maximalist strategy demands regional hegemony rather than peace, rendering ceasefires counterproductive while Iran's nuclear program and missile capabilities strengthen. Freeman condemns the "blockade of the blockade" as unsustainable economic terrorism that risks $10/gallon fuel prices without Saudi support. Ultimately, he warns President Trump's deteriorating mental state and the cabinet's sycophancy prevent invoking the 25th Amendment, threatening national stability. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Undeclared Wars and Aggression00:11:51
Undeclared wars are commonplace.
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?
I would simply say.
All right.
Well, the Pope interjected himself there.
Good morning.
Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
Today is Tuesday, April 14th, 2026.
Ambassador Chaz Freeman joins us now.
Just a little internet hiccup there.
Of course, the Holy Father is always welcome here.
Ambassador Freeman, it's a pleasure, my dear friend.
Thank you for accommodating my schedule as always.
Were the meetings in Islamabad this past weekend?
Serious negotiations, or were they something else?
No, they were performative.
We had a make believe ceasefire, which had a chance to become real.
There wasn't any real effort to do that.
I think the two sides approached us very differently.
The Iranians sent a very large delegation of experienced diplomats and technical experts and were prepared to negotiate details.
The Americans Delegation was very political without much expertise or experience and proceeded essentially to repeat long standing American demands on the presupposition that we had somehow won the war, which we haven't.
So the Iranians, in the end, were unwilling to accommodate the very extreme demands that we made.
We have We have not succeeded in any of our alleged objectives in this war.
Iran is not on a path away from building nuclear weapons.
We've galvanized its nuclear program, and it is very likely to build a nuclear weapon now.
We have not destroyed its missiles.
They remain plentiful and available to reignite the kinetic action.
We have not engaged, not achieved regime change.
We have a regime in Iran now that is far harder line than before.
And we have lost control of the world's juggler vein, the Strait of Cormuz.
We cannot regain it by force.
We must regain it by diplomacy.
And we put forward no proposition that Iran found yesable.
So we're now in an impasse.
And our president, out of frustration and a desperate desire to walk away from this war, has decided to blockade the blockade, thus doubling down on the damage.
to the global and the American economies.
No, this was not a serious exercise and we await one.
Talk to me, Ambassador, because you're well experienced here, about the process.
21 straight hours of negotiating, no negotiators who were experienced, two Zionist Israeli agent monitors in the form of Mr. Witkoff and Messrs. Witkoff and Kushner calling back the president 11 times in the 21 hours.
And then taking direction from the head of a foreign state who ardently wants the negotiations to fail, Prime Minister Netanyahu.
I mean, this has none, correct me if I'm wrong, you're the experienced diplomat.
This has none of the earmarks of a serious negotiation.
Well, I think you're absolutely right.
The most disgraceful element of this is the statement of Benjamin Netanyahu, correct, I believe, that.
That the vice president was, quote, reporting to him as though he was the supervisor of this.
Have we lost the internet?
No, we're here.
Okay, I'm seeing a blank screen.
So I think if you consider the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which was negotiated under the Obama administration, that was the product of about 18 months of very careful relationship building, discussion of issues.
And so forth.
And we seem to imagine that somehow you can replace that with a marathon single session.
That is frankly absurd.
So this was essentially designed to help us pretend that we'd achieved a victory and walk away from the thing.
Here's Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday saying exactly what you said.
He reported to me.
In detail.
Cut number three.
I spoke yesterday with Vice President JD Vance.
He called me from his plane on the way back from Washington.
He reported to me in detail, as the people of this administration do every day, on the development of the negotiations.
In this case, the explosion in the negotiations.
The explosion came from the American side, which was not willing to tolerate the blatant violation of the agreement to enter negotiations by Iran.
Essentially, The agreement was that there would be a ceasefire and Iran would immediately open the crossings.
They didn't do that.
The Americans were not willing to accept it.
He also conveyed to me that the central issue on the table from the perspective of President Trump and the United States is the removal of all enriched material and ensuring that there is no more enrichment in the coming years, and this could be for decades.
Catch this until you mentioned reporting, but not only does he say, Report it to me in detail, he adds, As the people of this administration do every day.
Well, that's exactly correct.
You mentioned the presence of Witkoff and Kushner.
The Iranians actually had specifically requested that they not accompany the vice president.
They did.
I think their main purpose, in addition to ensuring that Israeli interests were fully represented in the negotiations, was essentially to surveil the vice president and make sure that he didn't go off script.
But here we have a very important point.
The Iranian delegation, headed by the speaker of the Iranian parliament and the Iranian foreign minister, obviously faced quite an argument in getting permission to go to Islamabad.
But they had full authority to negotiate.
They weren't calling back to Tehran every minute to check in and make sure that they were doing what some other power in the capital requested.
They were fully capable of making decisions.
Obviously, Vice President Vance was not.
Eleven calls to the president, exchange of calls with the supervisor, Benjamin Netanyahu, demonstrate that.
He did not have the authority to make decisions.
So you're quite right.
This was not a serious negotiation.
From the American point of view, it was an opportunity to present an ultimatum.
The last thing I'll say is that I think Pakistan deserves a good deal of credit for being able to contrive a face to face meeting.
That was significant in terms of the United States showing a bit of respect to Iran, which we had not shown for many decades.
But it wasn't enough to put this meeting onto any track towards success.
You know, it's interesting because what you say is profound.
The vice president himself complained.
That the Iranian delegation did not have the authority to cut a deal.
He probably was trying to cover for himself.
He had a terrible week.
He campaigned for three days in English in Hungary for Viktor Orban, who lost.
I don't know who would go to such a campaign event, but anyway, it's almost as if he was set up to fail.
This was James David Vance's bad week.
There's no question about that.
I think, I suspect, you know, in terms of the rivalry.
To succeed Donald Trump between Marco Rubio and JD Vance, that Marco Rubio was ecstatic when JD Vance was essentially put in the position of being the scapegoat for the failure of the Iranians to sign on to Donald Trump's delusion that we won the war.
And his diplomatic debut, which this was, ended with no result.
Rubio is probably in a pretty good mood.
I imagine JD Vance is not.
Here's the vice president yesterday admitting that the United States has engaged in what he calls economic terrorism, the so called blockade of the blockade.
Well, if they can do it, then we can do it.
You might think I'm making this up, but here he is, cut number seven.
What they have done is engage in this act of economic terrorism against the entire world.
They basically threatened any ship that's moving through the Straits of Hormuz.
Well, as the President of the United States showed, two can play at that game.
And if the Iranians are going to try to engage in economic terrorism, we're going to abide by a simple principle that no Iranian ships are getting out either.
His boss, this is ridiculous.
His boss this morning said, if a ship defies the Navy, we'll sink it.
He's going to sink a ship with a million gallons of oil in it?
Very likely.
No, I think this is turning out to be a game of chicken in the.
In the Strait of Hormuz.
And meanwhile, back at home, many people are saying that the only strait that should be involved is a straitjacket on our president.
Well, he's getting hammered this morning over the depiction of himself as Jesus Christ and picking a fight with the Pope, who did nothing more than make moral judgments, which, as he rightly said, is the job of the Holy Father.
Netanyahu's Maximalist Demands00:02:51
Isn't Netanyahu's strategy to divide Iran just as he and the CIA and MI6 did?
To Syria, and therefore his goal really is to undermine any negotiation or any ceasefire.
What he wants is full blown war again.
Well, Israel has from the beginning put forward maximalist demands.
Its objective with regard to Iran is essentially to eliminate Iran as a factor in West Asian geopolitics, to remove it as an obstacle to the greater Israel project.
which has two key elements.
One is territorial expansion, eventually conquering or gaining control of all of the territory from the Euphrates River in Iraq to the Nile in Egypt, taking the territory of virtually all of Israel's neighbors and placing it under its own control.
And second, dominating the region as a hegemon, ensuring that no one has the capacity to oppose Israel in any respect.
And the characteristic method the Israelis have for pursuing these objectives is all the use of force, never diplomacy.
You know, in 78 years, Israel has not once put forward a peace proposal, a proposal for peaceful coexistence with its neighbors.
And that's not an accident because it doesn't want peaceful coexistence.
It wants control.
And in that context, The last thing on earth that Israel wants, having finally, after as Prime Minister Netanyahu boasted, after 40 years, finally finding a president that would do its will militarily to help it accomplish objectives it cannot accomplish on its own.
The last thing on earth Israel wants is a ceasefire.
They want this to go forward.
They are just as determined.
To treat this issue as existential as the Iranians are.
And neither side shows any sign of being willing to give up.
Does Trump control Netanyahu or does Netanyahu control Trump?
I've asked you this before, and it seems to be leaning towards Netanyahu controls Trump, even though this war is immeasurably unpopular here.
This war is at the instance of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Unsustainable Gulf Blockade00:07:23
It was agreed December 29th at Mar-a-Lago.
Of an Israeli prime minister, accompanied at least by video by the head of Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence agency, sitting in the Situation Room in the White House.
I don't know of any foreign leader who's ever been in this position.
Not only that, apparently sitting at the head of the table with the president respectfully listening to instructions from these two men, Benjamin Netanyahu and Barnier.
The question is rhetorical, really.
It's very obvious who calls the shots.
It's not Donald Trump.
What will come of the blockade of the blockade?
I mean, how crazy is this in light of Trump's demands that the strait be open?
Now, of course, the Iranians purporting to close it off to all but those willing to pay a toll, and the Americans closing it off to those who do pay the toll.
I don't think it's sustainable.
First of all, it's enormously expensive in terms of naval deployments.
We know that our Navy has been stretched very thin operationally.
The op tempo is unsustainable.
Second, Iran earlier demonstrated in this war that it has the capacity to strike ships within about 600 miles, 1,000 kilometers of its bases and weaponry.
And therefore, they've had to stay at that distance away.
So, if we get into a shooting war, we're going to lose some ships.
And I don't think the American people have the stomach for that in a war that they roundly disapprove of.
I don't think we can afford to tie up our Navy in the Arabian Sea or the Gulf of Oman indefinitely when we have obligations and interests elsewhere.
So, this is a diversion.
Second, It's not sustainable politically.
There's not a single country I'm aware of that supports this blockade.
We know that within the Gulf, the Persian Gulf, the Saudis are demanding a negotiation rather than a counter blockade.
They are very concerned by the Iranian statements that they have the support of Ansar Allah, the Houthis in Yemen, to close the Kabul Mandab, the Red Sea entrance, and police the Red Sea as they did.
Earlier, despite our opposition, we failed to effectively dislodge them from that blockade.
Were that to happen, the 7 million barrels a day of oil that Saudi Arabia is managing to export through its ports in the Red Sea, now that it can no longer use the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, would be gone.
And that would basically bankrupt the kingdom.
But beyond that, every country in the world is now being hurt by us.
There is a diplomatic and unwelcome, a very awkward and humiliating way out of this, which is to have a discussion with Iran and gain permission from Iran for your ships to transit the strait.
We offer no such a way out.
So every country in the world now is likely to unite against us on this issue of the blockade.
Whatever moral high ground we may have retained, not much, I think.
In this war, it will be gone.
And finally, we're talking about the impact on the American economy as supply chains shrivel up, as the price of fuel at the pump goes up.
Some people are predicting $10 a gallon.
This is not politically sustainable domestically.
You know, this brings us back to the Pope.
Does the United States have any moral high ground remaining in foreign affairs?
I would say no, actually.
I say that with great distress.
We are the serial violators of multiple international laws.
We are indifferent, apparently, to the interests of our allies as well as others.
We have started a war which is causing enormous economic. pain in both Europe and Pacific Asia, and not to mention India, South Asia generally.
And, you know, we don't seem to be willing, and the blockade, the counter-blockade or the blockade of the blockade shows this, we don't seem to be able to remember to consult with our friends, our partners, our allies, or anybody before we make decisions.
We don't even consult domestically with the US Congress.
All of this is one man making decisions which are essentially incomprehensible.
Well, Ambassador, thank you very much for your analysis, notwithstanding how dark these days are.
Let me ask you this is the president of sound mind?
I don't think so.
I honestly don't think so.
I think we've seen over the last several months, during this term in office, increasing signs of.
Not just the persistent malignant narcissism that he is famous for, but mental deterioration, physical deterioration, and pretty clear signs of dementia, an inability to focus, an inability to make sound judgments.
And unfortunately, we are stuck with the poorly crafted 25th Amendment.
Which would require the cabinet to back the vice president in declaring the president unfit for office and sidelining him.
And that can't be done because the cabinet consists entirely of incompetent sycophants who are part of a cult, who will not break with the president, regardless of how absurd his decisions and how erratic his behavior is.
I'm sorry to say that I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist, but many people in those professions who have normally would not make a judgment about someone they haven't personally examined or whom they have not given therapy,
Desperation and Clear Thinking00:00:37
they are breaking that rule out of a sense of desperation that we're in the grips of someone who has basically lost his capacity to think clearly.
Wow.
Thank you, Ambassador.
All the best, my dear friend.
Have a great week.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for what you do.
Thank you, of course.
Coming up later today at 9 15 this morning, Professor John Mearsheimer.
At 10 o'clock, Aaron Mate.
At 2 o'clock, Matt Ho.
At 3 o'clock, Colonel Karen Kwatkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.