Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke : Is Trump Negotiating with Iran!?

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Alastair Crooke : Is Trump Negotiating with Iran!?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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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 30th, 2000, 26. Alster Crook will be with us in just a moment on, is Trump really negotiating with Iran? But first, this. Don't you just cringe when people say, I told you so, sorry, I told you,

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cost of living crises and a weaker dollar are driving central banks to boost their gold reserves forecast suggests gold could hit $6,000 an ounce and silver $200 in ounce even Morgan Stanley ditched the 6040 rule for 60 2020 putting 20 percent into precious metals their getting educated and you should too call the best in the business and the people i trust lear capital get their reports get the facts get some gold and silver tell him the judge sent you and get up to twenty thousand dollars in bonus gold or silver call 800 511 4620 or go to lear judge nap dot com alster crook welcome here my dear friend and as always thank you for accommodating my schedule Are Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner respected and trusted negotiators by foreign diplomats?

No, not at all. They've twice take part of it, not three times in deceptions. Deceptions that were intended to, if you like, suggest that negotiations were taking place, while in fact what was being prepared was escalation, military escalation, or indeed in the latter case, an escalation that was much more serious. It was an escalation to decapitate the supreme leader to kill him. So, you know, when you're negotiating with someone and they go and kill your religious leader, you're not going to go back and trust these people.

Does Iran have any interest in compromising with the United States? No, they don't. I need to explain it because it sounds a bit counterintuitive. But Iran is seeing these events that we have now more as an opportunity, an opportunity to change the whole, if you like, geopolitics of West Asia. to invert it completely, to remove the United States from West Asia, and also its whole infrastructure of finance from West Asia. And so they see this as an opportunity that they should take.

I mean, and if you put it into the context, they're not interested in compromises. I mean, think about it in terms of Gaza. You know, it would be like, you know, asking Hamas to go back into the sort of caged world of Gaza and asking Iran to compromise with the 15 points that were put by Whitkoff. I mean, it's like asking them to go into another sort of cage, a cage of siege, of restrictions, of tariffs, of isolation. no one is allowed to talk to you, you are excluded. And, you know, this is a big, this was the major power of this region in the 19th century,

huge country, very rich, very powerful with a huge intellectual class. And then in the 70s, the United States decided to change this and say, okay, well actually we are going to have, primacy is going to be given to the shakes and the monarchs of the Gulf states, the Sunni sheikhs and monarchs, and taken away, and Iran is going to be contained and besieged for the next period. And that's what they've been going through. And I think now they've decided this is the opportunity. But this is really the opportunity to change that whole prospect.

And they want to change the Gulf states too into this, because they can see the Gulf states are totally beholden to the United States because after 1974, of course, and the huge rise in the value of oil, in which America actually encouraged those Gulf states to increase the price. it didn't encourage them to lower it in 73 and 74. They said, keep it up. You can do what you like, but providing all of the reserves and excess savings you have, you put those into the United States or investments with the United States.

And that was so crucial. I mean, this is, of course, the underpinning to the whole idea of dollar hedge money. was the petrodot, and it is really totally sustained by the enormous wealth that these small shakedoms and statelets acquired during that period. And one of the prices was that they were to participate in, if you like, demeaning and besieging Iran. And now we are at a point where Iran sees the opportunity to undo all that and to change it completely in the sense that by putting the demand that passage through the Hormuz only comes

if you have your cargo paid for and can prove it in Juan, not in the dollar. In other words, they're taking control over that. And they see also that they have, they are in the driving seat because they control Hormuz utterly, and I don't think that is about to change. and controlling Hormuz does something else to the United States, which is of extreme significance. It means that if they are controlling who passes through the Hormuz, then they control the volume of oil,

because this is 20% of global exports, that's a large quantity. They can control the volume of oil that is going on the market to whom it is destined for. And in doing that and controlling the volume, either through or most or indeed the Red Sea, that would make it another 30% say of traffic going through the Red Sea. In that case, they are pricing oil.

This has been a privilege of the United States for the last, I don't know, since 1973, effectively, they have controlled the price of oil and the United States has benefit the whole of the financialized world of the United States, the financialized market, the movement away from real economy to a financialized world, came because of all the excess profits from the Gulf being poured into American banks and allowing American banks to then go into a complete financialization and a huge to the United States and to its people, because that is meant, if you like, the hollowing out of the real economy.

So, no, I think Iran sees themselves as having the cards, the big cards. They don't see, they may be wrong unless there's anything really the United States can do that would upset that analysis and destroy that position. So they're very confident in this. And so no, when Whitkoff poses these things, by the way, there is no negotiation. I have checked. There is no negotiations direct or indirect. What there are is simply these so-called mediator states, Egypt and Qatar and so on and Pakistan.

And sometimes, you know, the United States sends them and say, will you pass this message to Iran. Sometimes the Iranians won't even accept delivery of that message, or else they will say occasionally, no. But there's no negotiation in any meaningful term of the word. I know Mr. Trump has just said there is, and it's going very well, but that simply is not true. I mean, this is really getting to the point of being absurd. Here's what the President said just a few minutes ago in his truth social. United States of America is in Syria. The United States of America is in serious negotiations with, now the rest is in caps, a new and more reasonable regime, not back to lowercase, to end our military operations in Iran. He also says the U.S. will

completely obliterate Iran's electric generating plants, oil wells, and Card Island, if the negotiations do not immediately produce. the result he wants i mean is this an effort to manipulate the market well it is monday and so very likely it is it is very much with an eye on the market it's always you know mondays you know the negotiations are starting and they're going so well uh and then the actual military escalation starts at the weekend and that's been the patent. So I imagine, yes, this is directed at the market because the Iranians know there are no negotiations and they know there's nothing they want to negotiate with the United States about in those terms. As I say, they are not willing to go back

to sort of a new form of what I call the Gaza siege. In other words, a new JCPOA that's sort of restricts them that slowly tries to strangle their population by lowering and lowering their standard of living. They're not going to go back. And as to his comment about the leadership, you know, this is just typical because in Washington and some part of it, because they can't see the leadership now. And I've explained this mosaic system, I think, on this program, where, you know, as soon as a leadership was decapitated, they went into, there is a mechanism that takes over with all of these diverse leaders making their own decisions

within the framework that they have been giving. And when the supreme leader was killed, within an R, that mosaic system had immediately sprung into action and, you know, attacks were taking place. place on bases in the Gulf. It's functioning fine. The leadership is working very well. It's just gone dark, like Kessbollah has gone dark.

And the Israelis are complaining about that. We don't know who the leaders are anymore of Iran. We can't see them. And Trump is saying the same now. Oh, well, we can't see them. And so he imagines that they are going to be more pliant. Actually, they're not, because they are mostly comprise now the main leaders, people like Ghalibah and so on, are former IRGC commanders and military people.

And, you know, Possash Kian is not a part of this, that part of that. He is quite separate. I mean, in the constitution of Iran, the Iranian president has no function in foreign or defense security issues. That is the preserve of the Supreme National Security Council. What happens when the dollar hegemony is lost? Well, it was Trump himself who said this, I think, last year, and he said it would be the equivalent of losing a major war if we lost our dollar hegemony. It would be the equivalent of losing a major war. It would be the equivalent of losing a major war. But what now he's facing, and this is why he's so desperate, I think, is because he's

facing both the loss of dollar hegemony and losing a major war, because it seems, from all the signs, that he's heading into some sort of major war on Iran, putting, I know, troops into Iran. You know, I think there may be two things going on, because I know Larry Johnson, who who will be on your program very shortly is more up to date and all this, but there's been a huge amount of mobilization of what he calls soft, the special operations forces, special forces, in various categories across America, and that he thinks there's both going to be perhaps a special forces operation

and a more military operation, Now, Israel is pushing really hard for America to take Kagai Island. We see that in today's Hebrew press and elsewhere, they've given up on the idea that the state is going to collapse, that there's going to be a revolution in Iran. All of them across the board in Israel, maybe there's one or two outliers, but across the border there is consensus. We're not going to see Iran implode, but what we need to do is to take Kagai Island. This is the only way they can see themselves

in America of having a victory out of this. Wow. You know, it's so strange, Alistair. I wonder how the United States and the Israelis could have so miscalculated and so underestimated everything with respect. to Iran, why there was this rush without adequate preparation? I mean, at first, their goal was regime change off the table. Then their goal was destruction of Iran's ballistic missile capability off the table.

Now their goal is open the Strait of Hormuz. Well, the Strait of Hormuz was open before they started this war. It's almost a joke. It is a joke because it will be open, but only for certain vessels in the future. It's not going to be closed perpetually, but it is going to be open for people who are not paying in the dollar and who are not antagonistic to Iran. But to answer your question, I mean, I can draw on it from what is being written in the Hebrew press these days, which is pretty. clear. They're saying they are blaming, just to put the right word on it, they're blaming David Barnier, the head of Marsat. And they said, you know, in the run-up to this conflict, he was living

in the White House. I mean, I don't know exactly what that means, but that's what they say. He was literally living in the White House. And all the time, telling the White House, you know, Iran is a house of cards. One little push and it'll all be gone. And so I think probably out of that, given Trump's predilection for, you know, certain stunts like we've seen in Venezuela, he thought, well, I'll just do a quickie.

In and out, in, bang, boom, I'm out, and we've killed the supreme leader. Not that that was so difficult, because he was sitting at home in his well-known house at the edge of Tehran. I know it. I've seen it. It's a very simple house, just next to some woods where many people from many Iranians used to go and have picnic. It wasn't a secret bunker or anything like that, although they dropped, no less, they say, than 30 major bombs on his little house.

So, I mean, they did that, and I think they thought this was it. You know, we don't have to do any more. We go back and that's it, and they'll have collapsed. Game over. We've won. But it wasn't quite like that. Aside from it being a war crime, if he destroys Iran's energy structure, depriving the civilian population of electricity, what would be accomplished by this?

I don't think we can go on talking about this language about war crimes. I mean, because quite clearly both the United States and Israel are paying no attention to law, to legalities, or war crimes, or humanitarian cases. I mean, Trump all the time describes the Iranians in quite vile language and says, well, you know, we're going to bomb, bomb to hell. hell, all of Iran. And, you know, and what has happened is as they've run out of, you know, sites to bomb, i.e. the missile sites, which are not being destroyed. There's a lot of bombing going on, you know, and the statistics are racking up two and a half thousand sorties we've had

since the beginning of the war, Israel and America say. But it hasn't stopped the missiles because the missiles are under mountains. Literally, they are in these tunnels. The biggest one is at the highest. It's 800 meters down, and America is bombing it, but underneath there is a railway system with all the missiles. The railways bring the missiles to the entrance of one of many sort of tunnels, and then it takes off from the railway track

into flight, and the railway is immediately withdrawn back into the mountain. And they've been bombing and bombing this Yazd fortress. But it just, you know, it's a granite mountain. And so, yes, they bomb it and it goes a bit black at the top, but, you know, still missiles come out. Immediately after a bombing, big missiles come out of these silos deep inside, which are connected to the surface. They don't need, you know, any sort of device for firing them.

They just come straight up a tube and out. Right. So it's not being very effective at all. So they've taken to bombing schools and bombing hospitals. I think the Iranians say they have something like 1,000 children who've been wounded in schools, and they say 20 hospitals have been attacked. I mean, we shouldn't be surprised.

That's what I say when I, you know, forget war crimes because this is going on all the time in Gaza. This has been going on for years in Gaza. No one seems to mind. But that's, you know, they are trying to. And I suspect we need to watch because I suspect in the run up Trump saying, I want to have a big, you know,

I want to make a big effect on Iran. I want to do something that is massive. We'll sort of see a sort of two-day, a two-day carpet bombing of Tehran. But, you know, that's not where the missiles are. I've said it several times on this program. They are dispersed across the whole of Iran. They're not sitting in some command headquarters in Tehran. I don't know, but I fear that, you know, in order to get a space,

spectacular. You know, oh, we've really hit them this time. We've smashed the Iranians and then, you know, this is victory. Or what else? I mean, that's, or are the special forces supposed to do some clever antic and going to find the enriched uranium and pull that out of some place and say, we've got it. Here it is. This is the enriched uranium. I mean, it will not be just that simple. simple in any case 430 kilos, normally they are, would be in containers about five inches across, less than the size of an aquiland and with 20 or kilos in each. So, you know, 20 of those things, it would be like going on a dive trip with, you know, all of the cylinders just placed on the back of a pickup and gone. You don't want to have them too close, though.

That would be the only warning. Right, right. How bad off is Israel and how bad off is the IDF as we speak, Alistair? It's very important that you've raised that because the IDF is at breaking point, and they say that. And the chief of staff came into the cabinet meeting, and he said. said, look, I'm issuing 10 red lights. We do not.

We are under huge pressure in Lebanon. We are losing men. They lost something like every day they've so far in Lebanon lost more than 100 Makova tanks. And their crews, of course, too. A few of escaped at the time, but they've lost the tanks. They don't have the means to respond to Hezbollah. They say they're rationing their response because they don't have enough munitions.

And of course, in the other side of it, I mean, Israelis who were very enthusiastic about the war four weeks ago and saying this was wonderful and looking forward to it, and I was saying, we can't go on. Our people can't stay in the shelters, you know, for week after week. You know, their livelihoods are going. They're having, you know, their family are being killed. Their houses are being destroyed. You know, we don't have the resources and the government does nothing.

And there's going to be a huge row now because what the government has done in the vote last night is to give five billion shekels to the Heredis, the Orthodox Jews, who refused to fight and refuse conscript. And so there's going to be a big, big fuss. But getting the budget through means that Netanyahu can stay in office if he's there until October. Wow. Alstair, thank you very much, my dear friend. As always, a terrific analysis.

This is so dynamic in the literal sense that things are changing so rapidly, but you always keep us up to date, even up to the minute. Thank you, my dear friend. And if we don't speak through the rest of this week, I wish a happy Easter to you and your family. That's very kind of you. Same to you and to your mother as well. Thank you.

Oh, thank you. Thank you, Alasdair. Coming up later today, if you're watching us live in 34 minutes at 9 this morning, Larry Johnson, at 10 this morning, Ray McGovern, at 2 this afternoon, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, at 3 this afternoon, Kyle Anzalone. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.