Judge Andrew Napolitano analyzes Israel's secret incursion into Iraq as a strategic move against Iran, critiquing the Trump administration's dismissal of international law like the Geneva Conventions. He details how Iran bypassed U.S. blockades via the Caspian Sea and Tashkent railroad, while China's economic dominance and rare earth mineral control leave America strategically vulnerable. With Saudi Arabia and Qatar refusing airspace under Project Freedom following a February 28 attack, Napolitano argues the U.S. lacks viable military options to dismantle Iran's nuclear program without suicidal ground invasions, suggesting Trump faces an impossible geopolitical stalemate. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Undeclared Wars and Preemptive Aggression00:03:59
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?
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, May 11, 2026.
Larry Johnson will be with us in just a moment.
Are you ready for this?
Israel invades Iraq.
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All right, welcome here, my dear friend.
Did Israel invade Iraq and build a secret military base on Iraqi land without the knowledge or consent of the Iraqi government?
Well, yes, I wouldn't call it so much an invasion, but they did carry out this, you know, I'd say it's another innovative and incredible kind of operation to be able to go in and establish a forward operating base in a country and be able to do it without being discovered, at least while you're setting it up.
Now, it looks like they finally were discovered, and the Iraqi army was going out to check it out, and then the Iraqi army came under attack.
From Israeli aircraft.
But still, it's a pretty audacious move.
I can understand why they do it from just a general perspective.
If your target in this case is Iran, you want to be able to be as close as possible.
If nothing else, for conducting possible combat search and rescue.
If you've got a pilot down and you want to recover that pilot, then you want to be as close to that as possible.
Why not do it lawfully?
Why not?
Enter into an agreement with Iraq?
Why just stealthily go on this property and commandeer the land?
Oh, because they knew that basically it's a Shia government in Iraq and there's no way they'd put up with that.
Geopolitical Shifts and Military Audacity00:14:49
Not at all.
So now they could have done something farther up north with the Kurds in Kurdish territory.
They could have gotten away with it.
I actually haven't seen the precise location of where this base was, but.
You know, if it was not in Kurdish territory, then clearly they were taking some additional risk.
You say where the base was, is it no longer there?
I don't think it's there now.
You know, this kind of exposure would be something that Iraq would immediately go out and take out.
When I kiddingly said to you in an email over the weekend, Are there no rules anymore?
You responded by saying, Where have you been, Judge?
Didn't you get the memo?
I guess there are no rules.
I guess when Trump says he doesn't need international law, and when Heg Seth says stupid rules of engagement, this is what follows.
Well, you know, it was out of World War II, out of the horror of, you know, the mass carnage, particularly that suffered by the Soviet people and the Chinese people.
I think most, you know, if you ask the average American today, they wouldn't realize that 70% of the fatalities in World War II occurred in the Soviet Union and in China.
I mean, that's a staggering, staggering number.
We're up over 45, 50 million total just between the Soviet and Chinese side.
I mean, you can't even wrap your mind around it.
So it's out of that that they come together and create the Geneva Convention, the rules of war, things we're supposed to do and not do, what's considered acceptable and not acceptable.
The creation then of the United Nations, you know, the getting rid of the League of Nations, recognizing that you needed something more robust that would actually have some potential teeth to it.
You know, you could have a UN force that could go out and try to impose peace.
And then the International Monetary Fund, the World Development Bank, and other, an entire architecture, if you will, of security enhancing.
Organizations designed to promote a respect for international law.
Now, clearly, over the years, the United States found it convenient to ignore it.
But in theory, we sort of adhered to it until now.
Donald Trump is openly, not just Trump, others in his administration have basically said, we wipe our rear ends with anything that deals with international law.
It's no longer valid.
And so I think we're going to go through another period of horror.
Before we come back and say, you know what, we need to have some internationally agreed upon rules that we're going to follow so that we don't do this to ourselves again, even though we just did it to ourselves again in World War II.
We need a mechanism to enforce the rules.
And all of these things that you've mentioned the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, the International Monetary Fund, all written by the United States, all accepted by US authorities in the case of the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions ratified.
By the U.S. Senate.
I just had an interesting conversation with Alistair Crook, who is of the view that the Americans and the Israelis think they can win this war by outspending the Iranians.
How misguided is that?
Oh, boy.
The assumptions in this are so wrong.
I agreed with everything that Alistair said.
I listened to it.
The Trump administration, and that's not just Donald Trump.
You hear it from Marco Rubio.
You hear it from Scott Besant.
You hear it from Pete Hegseth.
You hear it from the, you know, the, they're not administrative administration figures, but they are sort of the, the water carriers, the, the Keith Kellogg's of the world, the Jack Keens.
And they, they all say, oh my, yeah, we've got, we've got Iran now.
It's, it's caught.
It, it can't, the blockade, it's going to starve it.
It's not going to, doesn't have enough oil.
The economy's in collapse.
The soldiers aren't getting, And paid.
We got them now.
And I'm like, you know, it's not like these people are mentally handicapped, okay?
I could understand a mentally handicapped person not being able to fully grasp a situation or actually read a map and look at the map and say, huh, there's this thing up north called the Caspian Sea, and there are barges and ships on that that bring goods back and forth between Russia and Iran.
That's number one.
And then you got Tashkent, there's a railroad that runs through it from China, and railroads carry 40 foot containers.
They carry everything that an ocean vessel can carry.
And then you've got Pakistan with seven land routes.
So the notion that Iran is somehow under this U.S. weight of a blockade, cut off and suffering sorry, not true.
And then it's compounded because these same geniuses make the similar assumption with respect to China.
Oh, now we got China now.
We're choking off that oil flow out of the Gulf.
There's no way they can survive.
I just put up an article last night based upon.
YouTube video from a fellow that used to live here in the Sarasota area where I am.
And Kevin Wamsley is his name.
And he went through in chapter and verse and in detail that nope, if anything, China's doing okay out of this.
Not at all a problem for them.
And yet the West's entire presumption is our strategy is working.
We're weakening Iran.
We're weakening Russia.
We're weakening China.
And it's all backfiring.
Does Trump have any cards to play when he meets Xi Jinping on Friday?
I don't know.
Maybe he could offer Xi Jinping a deal on a Trump stable coin.
Maybe he could offer that.
But beyond that, no.
I mean, the United States comes into these talks at a clear disadvantage for no other reason than that China has the rare earth minerals that are essential, critical components, or let's call them ingredients for.
The weapon systems that the United States has now depleted, the weapon systems that the United States needs to reproduce and try to increase and create an inventory, which we do not have Tomahawk missiles, JASMs on the defensive side, the PAC 3 missile interceptor for the Patriot missile system, the THAAD interceptor.
Those four in particular require three to four different types of rare earth minerals.
All of which China controls.
Well, we can't build those, even though there are announcements out.
Oh, the United States has sold a billion dollars to the Europeans and a billion dollars to the Saudis.
Yeah, we're selling something we don't have.
We're selling you, hey, you want to own a portion of the Brooklyn Bridge?
Just sign right up here.
So here's Trump going to go in with Xi.
And how does the argument go?
Hey, Uh, Mr. President, listen.
Um, we really need to get those rare earth minerals because we see we got to build these weapon systems that we intend to use against you in a couple of years.
So, could you help us out?
There you go.
What is what is Trump's intention?
What is his goal aside from uh photographs of him shaking hands with President Xi?
What is his goal for going there?
He they they think they can get the Chinese on board to pressure the Iranians and that uh.
To have China be more of a neutral player.
But again, Trump and his team, they just imposed sanctions on a Chinese company for providing satellite photos to Iran.
So, yeah, the Chinese are going to take that very well.
That, you know, here you are, you're coming in to sanction us, and they're trying to blockade the oil, but so far have been unable to.
The U.S. has refused, so far as declined to attack any Chinese vessel.
But the other important thing is what has come out.
In the words of the Chinese Foreign Ministry and President Putin.
And we talked a little bit about this Friday on the roundtable.
The phrase security architecture.
Right.
Both China and Russia have, in the context of meeting with the foreign minister of Iran, Narakshin, they use that phrase.
And that means something very specific.
If you will, the existing security architecture in The Gulf was one in which the United States would provide military bases or put its military personnel forward on the promise hey, we got your back.
Nobody will dare attack you now since we're here and we got all of our military forward.
At the same time, these countries are expected hey, you know, we got to kick back a little something, something to Uncle Sam here.
Buy our treasury bills in the billions.
And while you're at it, buy our weapon systems.
We got some great stuff that's really expensive and doesn't work.
So that was the security architecture.
Then, come the 28th February surprise attack by the United States and Israel on Iran, they didn't expect or anticipate that Iran would retaliate with such ferociousness, which it did.
And Iran immediately began dismantling that security architecture.
It's devastated most of the military bases that the U.S. had, rendering them basically they can't be occupied anymore.
They're not of any use.
The former headquarters of the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, you know, the U.S. Navy's not going back there.
It's now too dangerous.
So they took that out.
And then here are these countries that had counted upon the United States protecting them.
And instead, they become targets by virtue of allowing the United States to operate and carry out military strikes from their territory.
Then comes Project Freedom.
You know, a week ago, can you believe it was a week ago that he announced this?
And a project freedom had a lifespan of 36 hours because the Saudis said, No, you're not using our air bases.
No, this stops.
Trump got on the phone with Mohammed bin Salman, Hey, please, hey, buddy, uh, please, please let us uh use your territory.
And bin Salman said, No, no, not happening.
So Trump has said, Hey, well, we've it was the Pakistanis who asked us to pause this, and so sure, we're gonna.
We're going to help out the Pakistanis.
You know, it's all theater.
And so it's clear, you know, some of the strikes that took place on Iranian ships and Iranian positions in Bandar Abbas and on Keshem Island, the Iran did not retaliate as they would, as I expected them to do.
And I really believe that one of the main reasons for that is because the Chinese with the Russians are working behind the scenes.
They're working to put in this new security architecture where the United States will no longer be involved and the ability of the United States to operate in the Persian Gulf will be constrained.
I think the two key targets are the Saudis and Qataris.
And then, as I mentioned on Friday as well, I have a friend who's friends with a very senior official in the Pakistani intelligence service, and that general.
Told my friend that, yeah, this is actually what's up that Saudi Arabia and Qatar, they're going to move away from the United States.
They recognize it's too costly, it's too dangerous, and that they can actually find benefit in coming under this new umbrella that the Russians and Chinese are proposing.
You and Colonel McGregor and Professor Sachs have all argued that power and wealth.
In the world is moving away from the West and toward the East.
Is Donald Trump wittingly or unwittingly accelerating that move, Larry?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And let me give you a couple of statistics that I just stumbled upon yesterday.
Apart from what I've said previously, that in 2000, of the top 10 banks in the world, China may have had one, but Japan had five.
And the number one bank was Deutsche Bank.
And BNP Paris was number two.
Jump ahead to 2025.
Now, the top four positions are Chinese banks.
And they rank number one, two, three, and four.
You've got two U.S. banks Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase is five and six.
Then you've got HSBC, which is based in London, Paris, BNP.
But the point is, the Chinese now.
are dominant in the banking world and it's growing.
Nuclear Threats and Banking Dominance00:11:57
The other thing though is when you look at the comparative, we keep hearing about how much trouble the Chinese economy is and how much debt it has yet.
The, the, the, the, if you just look at the national, the federal government or the government debt, the, the Chinese are at about 70% debt to GDP ratio.
The United States, 125%.
When you factor in all debt by federal government, state and local governments, and the same in China, the number comes up to about 90% for the Chinese and 140% for the United States.
So, just on those numbers alone, China is actually in better fiscal shape than the United States is.
And that's one of the reasons that you're seeing this the Chinese make such a move because it's not just within China.
They've developed these supply chain networks around the world, which is right now helping them mitigate the pain that's coming from the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz.
And one other factor here is that Trump proceeds on the assumption that somehow China needs the U.S. market, that, you know, if without the U.S. market, boy, China's going to be suffering.
And this is what Trump doesn't seem to understand China doesn't need a damn thing from the United States.
But the United States needs significant things, such as rare earth minerals, magnets, as well as the massive market that China offers that the United States needs.
We saw that what happened with soybeans.
When Trump and his tariff were finally, the Chinese said, okay, screw you and your farmers.
We're not buying any more of your soybeans.
And they went to Brazil.
Brazil, more than happy to supply it.
And actually, right now, Brazil turns out is a major producer of oil as well.
As a result of Chinese assistance and investment.
So again, Trump thinks he's going, Trump is going in a very, very weak position.
He has no cards to play.
And I think he's going to discover that much to his chagrin.
Let's go back to Iran before we finish.
Is more war, by which I mean serious air attacks from Israel and the U.S., inevitable, Larry?
I believe so, yes.
They've, they've, It's going to require them to accept, or let me put this I think Trump alone might be willing to do it if he didn't have the pressure from Israel.
But we noticed that yesterday when the Iranians resubmitted their basic demands, and those basic demands can be boiled down to four essential things.
They said, look, unfreeze our assets, number one, lift all of the sanctions, recognize that we're now in control of the Strait of Hormuz and are going to continue to.
To control it.
And we're going to talk later about the nuclear enrichment.
And Trump had a phone call.
I don't know how long it lasted with Bibi, but after that phone call, he comes out and goes, Yeah, this Iranian proposal is unacceptable.
Well, that tells me that was the substance of the discussion with Bibi Netanyahu, that they're agreed that they've got to stay united to put pressure on Iran, except the pressure is not going to work.
Now, Iran, one of the reasons, I mean, I fully expected and Had been indicated to me that the U.S. forces were prepared to strike last Thursday, the 7th of April or 7th of May.
But because of then this upcoming summit, once that got solidified that that was going to take place, the U.S. understood that if they carried out or initiated any new attacks on Iran, that the Chinese would say, no meeting, you know, not worth your time, don't come.
So from that standpoint, The U.S. has held off, but we still have all these troops and assets forward, and they are essentially cocked and loaded.
So it's just a, it'll wait to see what comes out of this meeting in Beijing, and then whether Trump decides to give a green light or recognizes he's got to find an exit route because there is no path, military path forward for the United States to defeat Iran.
Do you think that they'll try not a ground invasion, but a ground invasion?
Snatch and grab like they tried and failed a month ago to steal the enriched uranium.
I mean, Prime Minister Netanyahu mentioned that in 60 Minutes last night.
Not specifically, but he said that still has to go.
Yeah, if they do, it'll be suicidal.
Because, you know, as I mentioned to you before, I worked on an exercise regarding this scenario, this very scenario, 20 years ago.
And The lesson learned.
And at that time, the assumptions in the scenario were that the Iranians didn't know we were coming.
So, and that we thought we had pretty good intel about where the enriched uranium was.
But that's not the case now.
The Iranians know full well.
We keep talking about it openly, for God's sake.
It's really, if you're going to do it, shut up.
Don't advertise it.
But instead, you know, we're advertising that.
And the Iranians are not.
Fools, and I'm sure they've taken additional steps to fortify security around whatever location it is.
I know there's a widespread belief that it's in, you know, in and around Isfahan or was it called Pickaxe Mountain, something like that.
But I'm not sure we actually know where it is because to do that would require pretty good human sourcing, and I don't think we have that.
But you can't rule out that they'll try to do something like that.
I've heard This is crazy proposals out of like Kellogg and Keen.
Kellogg's latest was, oh, we capture Karg Island and establish a government.
You know, yeah, yeah.
Meanwhile, that government's going to be meeting amid drone swarms being attacked and having a barrage of short range and intermediate range ballistic missiles rain down.
I mean, it's just this is insane.
There is, you know, holding that territory accomplishes what?
Nothing.
Here's Prime Minister Netanyahu on 60 Minutes with my friend and former colleague, Major Garrett, last night.
Chris, number four.
Is the war with Iran over?
And if it isn't, who will decide when it is?
I think it accomplished a great deal, but it's not over because there's still nuclear material, enriched uranium that has to be taken out of Iran.
There's still enrichment sites that have to be dismantled.
There are still proxies that Iran supports.
There are ballistic missiles that they still want to produce.
Now, we've degraded a lot of it, but all of that is still there, and there's work to be done.
How do you envision the highly enriched uranium will be removed from Iran?
You go in and you take it out.
With what?
Special forces from Israel, special forces from the United States?
Well, I'm not going to talk about military means, but what President Trump has said to me, I want to go in there.
And I think it can be done physically.
That's not the problem.
If you have an agreement and you go in and you take it out, why not?
That's the best way.
What if there isn't an agreement?
Can it be taken out by force?
Well, you're going to ask me these questions.
I'm going to dodge them because I'm not going to talk about our military possibilities, plans, or anything of the kind.
And I'm just trying to get at how long is it going to take to achieve that aim?
I'm not going to give a timetable to it, but I'm going to say that's a terrifically important mission.
Sorry, he looks terrible.
Yeah, yeah, he's got prostate cancer.
So he may not survive to the election.
Look.
Sounds like they might be planning something.
Who knows?
Trump, you know, as Alistair said earlier, Trump needs a trophy.
It doesn't even have to be a realistic one, but he needs a trophy.
Yeah, the problem is that, again, trying to insert.
A special operations force into Iran with, you know, first of all, you got the distance involved in the travel.
The helicopters that would be used for this don't have unlimited range.
Secondly, if you're talking about the handling of actual nuclear material, really requires some special procedures.
And then, apart from the potential exposure to the radioactivity, is also the weight.
It is heavy.
So it's a little over about 1,200 pounds that is supposedly enriched.
But all of this assumes that the Iranians are foolish enough that they've all.
Put it in one location and haven't provided any kind of security for that facility.
I want to emphasize that, you know, when we ran the exercise going after a facility that they didn't know we were coming, it still turned out ugly.
Now, when you've got it openly being discussed like this, the Iranians say, okay, let's, you know, they can take a variety of measures to put in defenses that I don't care.
You know, the special forces guys, they have extraordinary.
Skills and ability, but they're not impervious to bullets.
They don't outrun bullets.
No matter how many push ups or pull ups you can do, that doesn't guarantee you that you can survive contact.
And this would be a terrible, terrible waste of that capability.
But the reality is for the United States, it does not have a viable ground option at all.
Period.
None.
Which leaves you with what's the maritime option?
None.
Because we can't get our ships in close enough to be able to sustain fire because we don't have enough fire to take out the targets.
Let's recall that those destroyers that are there come with 90 missiles.
And let's say they were all offensive missiles.
Those 90, once they're fired, that ship has to sail back to port somewhere, probably Diego Garcia, to get reloaded.
So the maritime one isn't an option, which leaves you with air power.
And as we've talked before, air power can accomplish certain things.
But you ultimately reach a limit.
The only way you actually take control and can direct the government or reduce the threat of a government, you got to put troops in on the ground.
And we're not going to do that.
Larry, thank you very much, my dear friend.
A great conversation.
Deeply appreciated.
And unless something happens this week.
Now you got to stop saying that.
Air Power Limits and Ground Troops00:00:31
I'm ruining your sleep.
I'll see you Friday afternoon with Ray.
Thank you, Larry.
Yes, sir.
Sure.
All the best.
And the aforementioned Ray, Ray McGovern, will be here at 10 o'clock.
At 2 o'clock this afternoon, Scott Ritter.
At 3 o'clock this afternoon, with a, excuse me, at 3 30 this afternoon, Eastern Time, with a fascinating conversation about the economic effects of the Trump Netanyahu War, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.