Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke: Netanyahu's Trap.

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Alastair Crooke: Netanyahu's Trap.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 Monday, February 10th, 2025. Alistair Crook will be with us here in just a moment on Netanyahu and Trump. Who set a trap for whom? But first this. Markets are at an all-time high. Euphoria has set in. The economy seems unstoppable. But the last administration has buried us so deep in debt and deficits,

it's going to take a lot of digging to get us out of this hole. Are you prepared? Lear Capital specializes in helping people like me and you grow and protect our wealth with gold. Did you know that during Trump's last presidency, gold rose 54% to a record high? If that happens again, that puts gold at $4,200 an ounce in his next term. Don't wait. Do what I did. Call Lear at 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com for your free gold ownership kit and special report, $4,200 gold ahead. When you call, ask how you can also get up to $15,000 in bonus gold with a qualifying purchase. Call 800-511-4620, 800-511-4620, or go to learjudgenap.com and

tell them the judge sent you. Alistair Crook, welcome here, my dear friend. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu just spent a week in Washington, D.C., meeting with the President of the United States without the American Secretary of State, meeting with the congressional leaders as well, and spending time in a secured area of the Pentagon without any security check on him or the personnel with him. Do you think he had something up his sleeve? And do you think Donald Trump had something up his sleeve, so to speak, when they finally met and had their joint press conference?

Well, I think what was actually up Netanyahu's sleeve was a great deal of fear and trepidation because he was in a deep bind. He came to Washington believing that Trump and Witkoff, Trump's envoy, was going to put maximum pressure on him to go to phase two of the hostage release from Gaza. And he had this impossible dilemma. The agreement, the first phase of which is already expired on the 16th, is now in the

second phase, although it hasn't begun. And he does not want that to go ahead. He doesn't want a second phase of hostages to be released. And he has also, first of all, signed up to the second stage and third stage. It is part of the agreement of which America is a guarantor along with Qatar in Egypt. And at the same time, he gave a secret undertaking, which is held in the vaults in Tel Aviv, that he would go back to war against Hamas and not do the second phase. And so he didn't know how this was going to turn out, and he was going to try and divert Trump towards Iran or some other basis.

And then Trump surprised him by coming out, not with just a sort of comment that he'd made earlier about maybe some Palestinians could go to Jordan or Egypt. He came out and said, I'm going to take the whole of Gaza and I'm going to turn it into the Riviera. So, I mean, that did surprise Netanyahu and it took some time for him to regain his composure. But part of this,

I think we have to look at what's going on and understand it more clearly. Trump is a showman. We all know that. A big showman. And what he does is he uses these sort of big ideas, these big sort of shiny ideas, and they're not necessarily connected to reality, but they're intended if you like to shock people surprise people and in a sense to try and break up congealed stultified geopolitical paradigms to find some space to make

people think things through in in in a different way and so when he said this about Gaza, of course, it's never going to happen that it's going to be ethnically cleansed and rebuilt. It's not going to happen. What was the point of it? The point of it, well, there's a history to the point of it. and the history is this that um in i think it was 2018 um israel was on the verge of annexing large swathes of the west bank and there was a great outrage about this in the west and in the arab world this annexation and what happened was that trump did a deal with the UAE. He said, okay, no annexation. And in return, you will then normalize with Israel, which they did. And they normalized.

And I think what you're seeing here is what Trump intends is to do something similar with Saudi Arabia at the right moment. He will say, look, I gather the Arab world is aghast at what is being proposed, that there will be no more Palestinians in Gaza. Well, Mohammed bin Salman, you know, I think I could probably end that or we could put it aside and forget it. But will you normalize with Israel without insisting on a full Palestinian state? And if you do that, then we can, I don't think it'll happen, what's going on in Gaza. And this is part of his big plan about Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Abraham Accords being, if you like, a new Middle East. And I think this idea of a trademark way of doing politics,

of surprising people, of saying something outrageous in order to sort of loosen up politics, to shift them and move them and try and find an opening. Look, I mean, there's some validity to it, but it also has its downsides. I mean, I think, you know, it's possible he'll do this eventually. And of course, Saudi can't refuse him if he does it with the pressure from Gaza. And also it's going to loosen up the Arab states if there is a phase three of the hostage deal. Phase three is the reconstruction of Gaza. And I think, you know, he'll say, listen, do you want me to send all these Palestinians abroad or are you going to reconstruct Gaza?

In accordance with, in association with the United States. That's how it's got to be. You've got to do this. Otherwise, I might go back to my plan to create the Riviera and remove all the Palestinians from the area. Do you think...

Can I just say, it achieved two major things. Please. It saved Netanyahu's government from collapse and perhaps turmoil in Israel. The Israelis, in the wake of these releases of hostages, are really angry that the hostages have been so long, 491 days or something, 491 days, and they came out looking gaunt and unfed.

And they immediately, the Israelis said, you know, it's like they've come from Belsen. What are we, I mean, you know, you can't wait. You know, Netanyahu, you've got to do the deal now before these people die. They're in bad condition. We need the hostages done. Miriam Adelson has flown directly to Washington

in her private jet and told Netanyahu, do the deal, get it done quickly now. And so there's a lot of pressure, if you like, in that print. But equally, what it has done in a sense, is Trump has also normalized the idea of ethnic cleansing by saying, you know, I'm going to do it. And it's somehow actually normalized it. So the right wing in Israel are going down that path and making all sorts of plans. Even if we return to war, they say, in Gaza,

ultimately we have plans for how to get rid of the Palestinians. We're examining it. We've even found a possible place that they can go. Voluntary expulsion from Gaza. So Netanyahu is literally teetering on the edge. Netanyahu has him totally under his thumb because he's going to insist on the second phase, which may mean that he loses his government. He's going to insist also on the ceasefire in Lebanon.

Everything hangs on Trump and Witkoff. And Netanyahu is not well. He's very much weakened. He's under pressure. His poll ratings are failing because it's clear to everyone he's not going to do a phase two. It's clear to Hamas, so there may not be a phase two, that Israel does not want to go and release the remaining, I think there are something like 87 hostages, not all of whom are alive.

He's not going to go there. The ceasefire, the second phase in which he does not, in which he does not want to participate, is this a written document signed by him? I mean, stated differently, have we seen the document and might he be humiliated if he doesn't participate or will he come up with an excuse? So Hamas did this, Hamas did that, therefore we don't have to comply. Exactly. Yes, it's a written document that is guaranteed by the United States. It was the one Witkoff took to, if you like, to Netanyahu on a holiday, and they said, sign this, and do it, and get on with it. And this is the agreement. However, there is another codicil to this agreement, which is not public, which is in Hebrew,

and sitting in a vault in either Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, which says the opposite, that after phase one, Israel will return to full war as demanded by Ben-Gavir and Smotrich. Well, surely this is not signed by both sides and by the U.S., is it? No, it's a secret codicil. This is a secret understanding between Netanyahu. I mean, look, he's well known for doing this sort of thing, saying one thing to one people and saying another to another.

But he's chosen to say one thing to President Trump and another thing to the extreme right in Israel. And it's very dangerous for him. It's existentially dangerous for him because he might lose his government and then the court cases against him will proceed. Do you think that Mrs Adelson and the donor class in America, as well as the extreme Zionists in Israel, understand that Trump's proposal about the U.S. owning Gaza is farcical and will never come to pass? Or do you think that they'll be crushed when suddenly the proposal disappears. I think it's in his interest to make it reasonably realistic because this is intended to put pressure on Saudi Arabia principally, but also pressure on the other Arab states to say,

you know, look, you have to do something. You're going to have to, in the third stage or whichever stage, you're going to have to reconstruct Gaza and you're going to have to find a way to make sure that Hamas is not running Gaza. That's his promise to the right that, you know, as you've seen probably from the videos, that's a long way off because Hamas is very visibly there and their military are visibly there. Yes. But it has been a moment. It's just been, you know, this is a turning point in Israel, I think,

because the sight of these last three hostages which were not like the young ladies that were released they do look emaciated and as if they haven't eaten indeed they haven't eaten and it's partly because of last June when June, when the Israelis did a rescue operation and freed four hostages by military force. Then Hamas removed these people from, instead of being in houses above ground, removed them deep into the tunnels. And it was a time when there was very little food. And so they are emaciated. But they're not as emaciated as some of the Palestinians that were released on the same day from prison, who had to be carried off the bus in stretchers and were so gaunt and their faces so shrunken that people could hardly recognize them. So, you know, this is you have to put this in this context. The Saudi reaction to President Trump's statement about acquiring and owning and developing Gaza was severe, out of character for the Saudi government.

In fact, they referred to Trump and his idea as extremist twice in the statement. Is that sending a message to him? Well, I think they hope to send that message. But equally, as I said to you, they will do what Trump asks for one particular and very obvious reason, which is that Mohammed bin Salman wants to be king. Now, he's not at the top of, if you like, the tree. There are other brothers and cousins that are ahead of him in terms of becoming king. He's not, if you like, in the sort of like in the British case of being, you know, the heir to the throne.

He is one of many he heir to the throne he is one of many as to the throne many of whom who may contest his rise to the throne and uh america is hugely powerful in saudi arabia and i think it was muhammad bin bin bin zayed who advised him and said listen the only way you can go from being crown prince and go to become king is for washington uh and the lobby in in in washington and so i i think that um you know at the point at which this becomes um a key um i think that um that Trump will remind him and say, well, you know, you wish to become king when your father dies, who's in hospital and on sort of life support. Well, that depends on me. So I think you should do what I say. How do you think Prime Minister Netanyahu reacted to learning of Donald Trump's view on he will not support an attack on Iran? Michael Waltz told Ron Dermer the president will not support an attack on Iran.

Ron Dermer presumably told Prime Minister Netanyahu this must have been a tremendous setback for him. It was a tremendous setback. So, you know, although one, you know, rightly may say things about the way President Trump is trying to loosen up politics in the region, it's nonetheless a sort of valid path ahead to try and, you know, shock and surprise people so that they loosen up their politics. But it has consequences. The use of language has consequences. And the way you speak about other people does have consequences.

The way he spoke about Palestinians as if it was just a real estate thing, that again is, I think, intentional. It's intentional because he's taking it out of the history, out of all the structures of ideology, politics, and religion, and trying to bring it down to the most basic transactional level. But sometimes that's not possible. Sometimes it just doesn't work and it may go wrong. But with Iran, this does undermine the key element because Iran has said we're not going to negotiate with the Americans. The supreme leader has issued an injunction to the reformists and said there's to be no negotiations at all with the United States. Even though the reformers are determined to have a normalized commercial relationship

between the United States and Iran. Yes, but the reformers don't count in this. In the constitution of Iran, the president is largely responsible for the administration internally of the country. He doesn't have a particular role like in the United States for foreign policy at all. The foreign policy lies with the Supreme National Council in Iran, which is headed by the supreme leader or his nominee. But it is the supreme leader who has ultimate authority on foreign policy. And Pesach Kian or the president does not have it. It is determined by the collective wisdom of the National Security Council.

He has a place on the National Security Council, but so does the Revolutionary Gu so do the intelligence service so does the army all of those have a place and it comes to a collective decision and they will not if you like deviate from a statement like that by the supreme leader that he does not believe there's any point whatsoever to talking to the United States, and particularly Mr. Trump, because he has broken the agreement, the previous agreement, when he, if you like, derogated from the JCPOA, which is the nuclear deal, after having not fulfilled all the components of the deal. He didn't stick to the deal precisely,

and Obama didn't, and he does not accept to negotiate. So the reformers have no choice. They've been told very clearly, you'll have to stick to this. Is this a forever injunction? No. You know, politics is not, there's no such thing as never, but this is quite serious. And I would just add that I think this is something similar to the sort of feeling I got in Russia in this last week. You know that, I mean, I see people all sort of coming agog about you know that Trump has talked to Putin and that everything is moving along I'm not sure that it is quite like that I think that there have been soundings from his team but you know in a sort of meeting particularly a summit between the president a lot of work has to be done, preliminary work on the agenda,

what's going to be discussed and when. And the Russians are very hard-nosed about this. If America comes back and says, we want to discuss a frozen conflict in Ukraine, and if you like, some form a demilitarized zone there. What's there to talk about will be their reaction. We've told you many times it's not for discussion. Did you not get it? You should get it. That's what our position is. So if you want to talk, so there's been I think some sort of to-ing and fro-ing. I don't know the details, of course. But my sense is the Russians are taking a very firm and principled, sort of,

in their view, stand on this and say, no, sorry. And I think what's going on is what I've said a few times, is that the only way out of this, because they're not going to discuss the sort of proposals that the West is thinking of for Ukraine, but they're ready to discuss a big picture, the security of the region, on which Ukraine will be one small part, but a big picture discussion of the future of the spheres of influence. America's making a sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere. Russia will have a sphere of influence. And where those two will come together and how to manage, if you like,

that point of intersection of those two spheres. What to do about nuclear missiles? What to do about nuclear missiles? What to do about nuclear weapons? How to manage the whole, if you like, of Eurasia? What is its sphere of security? And I think you have to start off, you would have to start off by just saying one simple phrase to get this you know security is indivisible you can't give security half to one state and half to another state that doesn't work security has to be indivisible and that's what they're saying and that's what i think it would be very good for the team to say that they have heard it. Before we go and getting back to Israel, Netanyahu has nine lives like a cat. But what's your gut as to how much longer he'll be the prime minister?

You know, I've always said to you, I think, you know, he is a survivor and it's extraordinary how he survives. I think it's coming to an end. And I think this is why one of the reasons why Trump did what he did in Washington. It's better the devil you know than the devil you don't know, because no one knows what happens if his government falls. It's going to be deeply contentious, deeply divided country who don't know what's ahead and are deeply divided and about the way ahead. Yes, many, I mean, of course, many Israelis, 80% support the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the area. But that is not realistic either.

They know it's not realistic, that it is a fabricated reality. So how long do they go on before they start thinking about what is realistic, what can we realistically do in this region, because what they've done so far has made it almost impossible to contemplate the idea of their assimilation into the region in a peaceful way. Alistair Crook, a pleasure, my dear friend. As always, I realize we were across the board, but thank you very much. Thank you for coming to the microphone. I know you just got back from Moscow, but we appreciate everything and look forward to seeing you again next week. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Of course. Coming up later today at 10 this morning, Ray McGovern at 1130 this morning. Larry Johnson at 430 this afternoon. Scott Ritter, Justin Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.