Judging Freedom - Aaron Maté: Neocons Eyeing Iran [NEW DAY/TIME]

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Aaron Maté: Neocons Eyeing Iran [NEW DAY/TIME]See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, September 26, 2024. Aaron Maté joins us now. My dear friend, Aaron, thank you very much for your time. I want to discuss with you the American neocons and their fixation on Iran, both on wanting to attack Iran and wanting to influence the domestic politics of Iran. But before we get there, let's talk a little bit about Israel. Does it appear to you that the IDF is going to engage in a land war invasion of Lebanon? Or do you think Prime Minister Netanyahu just wants people to think that that's what's coming? Very hard to speculate with Netanyahu and his

off-the-charts extremist government. But for what it's worth, I do not think he will launch a ground war, simply because Israel doesn't like fighting. It doesn't like fighting in direct combat. It prefers to commit these massacres from afar, which it can do. It has the capacity, overwhelming firepower, as we've seen in Gaza, and now we're seeing in Lebanon, to bombard civilian areas, leave them in ruins, kill hundreds of people in Lebanon, displace tens of thousands, make their life miserable. It's elucidated in what's called the Dahya Doctrine, which is an Israeli doctrine, which says we are going to use disproportionate

force against civilian neighborhoods to teach the people who resist us a lesson that was developed in Lebanon. That's what it's named after. And that's what they're pursuing right now as we speak, not only in Gaza, obviously, but in Lebanon as well. So for what it's worth, and again, this is just speculation, I do not think Netanyahu wants a ground war because Hezbollah, unlike the people of Gaza, has military capabilities. It can fight back. It can do damage. It showed Israel that when Israel invaded in 1982, and it was Hezbollah capturing some Israeli soldiers in a bid

to get Hezbollah members freed. Israel invaded and suffered some serious setbacks when it engaged in ground combat with Hezbollah. So I do not think Netanyahu wants to repeat that mistake. What does he gain? What does the IDF gain militarily by the slaughter of innocent civilians? For example, the exploding pagers. What did they gain by that? There's a line from Ariel Sharon, former Israeli prime minister, general, very important to Israel's history from 1967, when Israel conquered all this Arab territory, including the West Bank and Gaza, where he said that our main weapon is their fear of us. And that is essentially Israel's doctrine. It wants to instill fear throughout the region

because Israel is founded on ethnic cleansing. It's founded on stealing Palestinian land, displacing them around the world, around the region, and building up Israeli settlements and colonies on their land and instilling fear in the hearts of anybody who wishes to resist that. That's been Israel's foundational doctrine since its founding. So that's what Israel's trying to do now, just instill fear. A few months into Israel's genocide campaign in Gaza, the New York Times citing U.S. officials admitted that Israel wasn't defending itself.

It was seeking to restore, quote, its aura of power. So instilling fear in the hearts of the indigenous Arab people of the region and defending Israel's aura of power. That's what all this is about. And that's why it's terrorizing civilians from Gaza to Lebanon to Syria to the West Bank and everywhere else where it's needed to send the message that you have to fear us and fear our supremacy. Scott Ritter is of the view that the machinations necessary to have produced these exploding pagers took years to accomplish in terms of the licenses they had to get, the manufacturing, the interruption of the supply chain. If Scott is right, isn't it almost inconceivable that MI6 and CIA did not know about this? That's hard for me to say. I would not be surprised if Israel

kept this secret. I don't think its counterparts are read into everything that Israel does, but, uh, you know, there's the kind of question that we might never know. And we might know the answer to after all of us are gone, if something is declassified, but I really can't speculate judge.

Okay. Uh, this will make your blood boil. If you haven't seen it, uh, this is make your blood boil if you haven't seen it. This is Deborah Lipstadt, who's a State Department official. She's the special envoy to combat anti-Semitism. She's speaking before a group funded by Miriam Adelson. Here she is, cut number six.

After October 7th, there was a feeling around the world that Israel is weaker. You want a beeper? I can give you a few. That's really deplorable. I don't know who the questioner is he sounded like he had an israeli accent but it's deplorable she's an official of the american state department she is the only american official as far as i know who has commented on this one way or another and what she said was despicable she should change her job title from special envoy to combat anti-Semitism to special envoy to weaponize anti-Semitism.

That's what she actually does is exploit the legacy of the Nazi Holocaust to manufacture public support for the current Holocaust that Israel is carrying out in Gaza. That's her actual job function. And we see the kind of moral depravity that she brings to the job in celebrating a terror attack that hit innocent people, thousands of them across Lebanon. This idea that these pagers hit senior Hezbollah figures in real life, the people using these devices were people like paramedics and other ordinary people who were just living ordinary lives. And that's who was maimed and killed in this operation. Wow.

The American neocons, championed by Senator Graham, refer to Iran as the great Satan and have encouraged, well, President Biden to attack Iran. Donald Trump the other day in one of his thoughtless comments, made comments about attacking Iran and destroying their oil fields, etc. Here is Senator Graham, and then my questions will jump off of this. Cut number 23. This is a dream scenario for Iran. They're trying to suck Bibi and Israel into a fight. October the 7th was

designed to stop normalization. Trump did the Abraham Accords. Biden's been working to get Saudi Arabia to recognize Israel. That's a nightmare for Iran. So October the 7th was designed to stop that. It was so horrific. Now you see a front opening in the north. So here's what I would tell my friends in Israel. Do not give up on normalization with Saudi Arabia. I know you got to deal with Hezbollah. There was an imminent attack. But two things, one of two things have to change in the Mideast. We need to make game changing peace, which is reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Israel, or game changing military strategy. Go into Lebanon to establish a buffer

zone won't work unless you hit Iran. To my friends in Israel, you're fighting the proxies, fight the source, the great Satan, Iran. It's the same character that advised President Biden to send a team of killers to assassinate Russian President Putin. Does he actually represent, as far as you can tell, a serious body of thought in the government that the American government should merely wantonly attack Iran, even though it poses zero danger to American national security? Well, based on the fact that a lot of these policies have been implemented over the years, invading countless nations, supporting proxy wars from Syria to Ukraine, I do think he represents a significant body of opinion. It's not universal. There are people who recognize

the folly and the dangers of having war with Iran. But the problem here is when you're a hegemon, you are reflexively committed to destroying anyone who can resist your hegemony. And that includes Iran, which is a very, very big country, very old civilization. And it is a deterrent to U.S.-Israeli hegemony in the region. And that's why Lindsey Graham is obsessed with destroying it. It's interesting. My colleagues at the Gray Zone, Max Blumenthal and Anya Parmpil, just went to a meeting that was held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly with the new president of Iran. And they wrote a report about it. It's up at thegrayzone.com. It's very interesting to hear what he says. He talks about wanting to negotiate with the US to renew something like the Iran

nuclear deal. He talks about how Iran does not want to have a war. But all these public statements are ignored because people like Lindsey Graham are just hellbent on destroying anybody that stands in the way of U.S.-Israeli hegemony, in the same way that Graham's obsessed with weakening and destroying Russia, because Russia is also a deterrent to U.S. hegemony. So as long as people like Lindsey Graham are in charge and their policy imperatives are running the show, we're going to continue putting everybody on this planet in danger. He talks there about how we need to have a deal with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia recently said that it will not normalize with Israel until Israel accepts

a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in East Jerusalem. I'm not sure if that's even possible anymore, given all the horrors Israel has committed. How can anybody accept now Israel's existence? But Saudi Arabia, that is their public position. Funnily enough, historically, that also is the position of Iran. Back in 2017, Iran endorsed a resolution from the Organization for Islamic Cooperation endorsing the Arab League peace offer,

which was initiated by Saudi Arabia many years ago. And what does that offer? It says to Israel, all of us will normalize with you, will recognize you if you withdraw from the occupied territories, allow for the Palestinians to create a state in the West Bank and Gaza with a capital in East Jerusalem, and have a just resolution to the refugee issue, addressing the fact that Israel has expelled hundreds of thousands of people since 1948 and stolen their homes. That's the offer on the table from the entire Arab League endorsed by, at one point, by Iran. Israel and the U.S. have stood alone in the

world in saying we will never allow that because we insist on Israel's right to steal as much Palestinian land as we want. So the fanatics we can see from this are not in Tehran or in Gaza. The fanatics are inside Washington and Tel Aviv who refuse to accept this massive Palestinian compromise. Because what is that Palestinian state that's being envisioned there? It's just 22% of the land that Israel has stolen from them. That's what Palestinians and their allies have been willing to accept. But Israel, backed by people like Lindsey Graham, are so fundamentalist, so extreme that they won't even

accept that major Palestinian compromise. Here's President Biden three days ago at the UN on the two-state solution. Tell me what he said is credible. Cut number 16. As we look ahead, we must also address the rise of violence against innocent Palestinians on the West Bank and set the conditions for a better future, including a two-state solution where the world, where Israel enjoys security and peace and full recognition

and normalized relations with all its neighbors, where Palestinians live in security, dignity, and self-determination in a state of their own. Has anybody done more to undermine security, dignity, self-determination, and peace for the Palestinians than Joe Biden? There are very few candidates for that distinction. This is just lip service. Every president does it. George W. Bush talked about his vision somewhere in the future for a Palestinian state.

It's a vision far away. It was never right in front of him because he would never actually do anything for a Palestinian state. Barack Obama also claimed we need to have a Palestinian state. At the end of his term, his aides leaked this claim to the New Yorker magazine that he couldn't believe,

looking at a map, that Israeli settlement expansion had massively increased under his watch. As if all this is some surprise to him. Now Joe Biden's doing the same game, paying lip service to a future prospect that in real life, in right now, he's undermining. He's the one arming Israel as it carries out mass murder. He's the one enabling Israel to terrorize people in the West Bank, to expand its settlements, to let Israel harass the people of the West Bank, to shut down Al Jazeera in Ramallah as it just did.

I mean, this is like an accomplice to a school shooter, handing the school shooter ammunition as it kills kids, and saying we need to stop school shootings. It's the exact same thing. It's all lip service to continue providing cover for Israeli aggression and colonization. You mentioned Max and Anya meeting with the new president of Iran, who was a cardiologist and a man of peace. Are the American neocons actively involved fomenting opposition to him in Iran? There certainly are covert activities going on by the U.S. around the world. And you can guarantee that when the U.S. has marked a country for regime change, that the U.S. is involved in fomenting opposition. You can just

spin the globe, find a place on the map. And for example, WikiLeaks, if you go to their archives, you'll see ample evidence of the U.S. fomenting destabilization and coups. So Iran certainly is no exception. It's a virtual guarantee. And there's a lot of resources and effort put into destabilization for the ultimate goal of regime change. Not just neocons like Senator Graham, but CIA with American assets. Yeah. And in fact, at the gray zone recently, there are some leaked documents that have come out about the role of some people with the National Endowment for Democracy and their involvement in regime change activities in Iran. It's by Kit Klarenberg, and it's based on leaked documents from the NED, which is just a cutout for the CIA.

And it's a very revealing look at how much effort is put into destabilizing other countries. And it's funny, we constantly rail against authoritarianism. That's said to be the biggest scourge of our time, democracy versus authoritarianism. That's how Joe Biden puts it. Nobody in Iran or in Syria or in Haiti or in Honduras or in Venezuela or in Russia voted for US neocons. But yet all these people in Washington across the spectrum give themselves the right to constantly meddle in these countries. That sounds authoritarian. When you feel the right to meddle in a country where you don't live and where the people didn't vote for you, that sounds like authoritarianism to me. So yes, there was authoritarianism around the world. I wish every country was a free democracy where everybody had equal rights.

But the authoritarians are not just the ones that we are trying to overthrow. There's also authoritarians in Washington, and it's a much more dangerous form of authoritarianism because it constantly leads to geopolitical conflict. What is the current status of Netanyahu politically, domestically? Domestically, he continues to basically face some protests in the streets, including from members of the families of captives who Netanyahu refuses to free by rejecting a ceasefire agreement. And there's also members of his cabinet who have voiced some displeasure with him and some leaked claims from officials saying he's

in the way of a ceasefire. But because he has the support of the most important constituency of them all, which is Washington, he's enabled to continue carrying out his policies of prolonging his mass murder campaign in Gaza and now expanding the war to Lebanon because Biden has given him carte blanche. The reaction of the resistance to Israeli war crimes. I want to play a clip for you of King Abdullah. And I want you to tell me if you think this is credible or if you think this is intended to mask his own problems and failure to respond to the wishes of his people in the face of war crimes next door to him. Cut number five. In the absence of global accountability, repeated horrors are normalized,

threatening to create a future where anything is permitted anywhere in the world. Those who continue to propagate the idea of Jordan as an alternative homeland. So let me be very, very clear. That will never happen. We will never accept the forced displacement of Palestinians, which is a war crime. For years the Arab world has extended a hand to Israel through the Arab peace initiative offering full recognition and normalization in exchange for peace. But consecutive Israeli governments emboldened by years of impunity, have rejected peace and chosen confrontation instead. Is he in danger of being deposed by the massive opposition amongst his people to what's happening in Gaza and his ostensible failure to do anything about it. It's more than a failure to do anything about it. He's reached out to the Israelis for years.

I don't know if he's in danger of being deposed, but he certainly faces massive unrest because Jordan is seen as a country that has enabled Israeli atrocities over the years and has joined the U.S. in helping keep down resistance to U.S.-Israeli hegemony. Jordan joined in on the dirty war in Syria, where a major goal was to bleed a key ally of Iran and Hezbollah. Syria is the transit point for weapons for Hezbollah, and that's why the U.S. and Israel took part in arming the insurgency, and Jordan took part in that. It hosted bases for the CIA

used in that dirty war. Jordan also helped defend Israel when Iran launched its retaliation for the embassy strikes back in April of this year. Jordan essentially took part in Israel's defense from that Iran retaliation, which Iran, by the way, telegraphed well in advance to avoid uh any serious damage so he is vulnerable and you know that's up for palestinians and their allies to decide you know um whether you know what they think of him but i will say what he's saying in his remarks there is correct and it you know i was i'm struck by first of all he mentions the arab league peace offer, which I talked about earlier, which Israel is constantly rejected, which is the solution that everyone in the world is supposed to support, including the U.S. But yet when it's actually offered, it gets rejected because Israel will never allow Palestinians to have their own state.

They don't want to recognize Palestinian self-determination. They don't see Palestinians as equal. That's what it comes down to. But additionally, he talked there about he went out of his way to reject this idea that Jordan can be a homeland for Palestinians. And what he's referring to there is over the years, Israel's position for a long time was there doesn't need to be an additional Palestinian state because there already is one. And that's Jordan. They've always seen Jordan as a Palestinian state. And that's because basically to them, all Arabs are alike. So why can't they just go over there? Why can't we just steal their land

over here from the river to the sea and they can go over to Jordan if they want? That's been the Israeli position for a very, very long time. And so that's what he's referring to there. Got it. One more clip for you, Aaron. President Erdogan at the United Nations using the H word, cut number 17. 70 years ago, just as Hitler was stopped by an alliance of humanity, Netanyahu and his murder network must be stopped by an alliance of humanity. We believe that the General Assembly's authority to recommend the use of force, as in the 1950 Resolution on Unity for Peace, should be considered in this process during this time. An immediate and a permanent ceasefire must be established.

Hostages and prisoners must be exchanged. And humanitarian aid must be delivered to Gaza unhindered and uninterrupted. Is it just empty words or is there an alliance of humanity prepared to do something to stop the slaughter? Well, I haven't seen much evidence of Turkey beyond issuing some very, very strong words doing much else for Palestine. And granted, look, everyone's in a tough position because Israel has shown what it will do to you if you resist it. It will target your civilians. It will punish you. Turkey had a very infamous incident where Israel murdered Turkish citizens aboard a flotilla trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza and break the blockade. So anybody opposing Israel is in a precarious situation. But Turkey has faced protests from within because Turkey is still facilitating

oil sales to Israel through Azerbaijan. And there are many people inside Turkey. And I saw them protesting when I was there recently, very upset about that, that who want Erdogan to match his words with action, like for example, stopping these oil sales. So that's something practical that he could do if he wanted to take more action to stand up for Palestine. Aaron, thank you, my dear friend. Always a pleasure. You know, we're all going to be together Saturday. We'll miss you, but I guarantee you, your name will be mentioned prominently and happily by at least three of the speakers there,

maybe four. I'm sorry to miss you guys. It's going to be a great event in Kingston on Saturday and best of luck with it, Judge. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Aaron. We'll see you next week. He is speaking, of course, of our rally for peace and freedom in Kingston, New York, this Saturday, featuring Scott Ritter, Max Blumenthal, Anya Parampol, Gerald Salenti and yours truly. Also featuring yours truly is the rest of today, which is Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson at three, excuse me, at two, Professor John Mearsheimer at three, Max Blumenthal at four, and somewhere around five o'clock from the middle of the night in Moscow, Pepe Escobar. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.