Judging Freedom - Alastair Crooke : Trump's Escalatory Dominance Mimics Netanyahu's.

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Alastair Crooke : Trump's Escalatory Dominance Mimics Netanyahu's.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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That's an equivalent to $15 a month. Limited time new customer offer for first three months only. Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited. plan. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Monday, September 15th, 2000, 25, Alastair Crook will be here with us in just a moment, but first this. We all know how devastating war is. Lives lost, communities destroyed, but war can also threaten your financial freedom. That's where America's heading, our growing involvement in global conflicts.

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are buying gold hand over fist. They know what's coming and they're hedging against it, currency collapse, inflation, and market volatility. Gold has been a trusted store of value for thousands of years and today we need that protection more than ever. Call Lear Capital now at 800511-4620 or visit Learjudsonap.com. No one is going to protect your wealth for you. You need to do it yourself and now is the time. Alastair, good day to you, my dear friend, and welcome here. Is there any question in your mind but that the United States knew about, approved, authorized, and facilitated the Israeli attack on Doha last week? Oh, I think certainly because this final decision seems to have been taken by Netanyahu and Ron Dermah together, rather than.

than in a full cabinet meeting. And it seems to me that, you know, Derma is the link person for all of the White House. He's the person, he's a whisperer in Trump's year, and he is very close. I mean, there is not sort of written evidence of it, but I think it's very clear. And we see from the Israeli press, they say openly, I mean, without giving the evidence, but they say it openly, that it was approved by Trump. What they then go on to say is, and what they're saying now is that, you know, well, actually, the problem is that Trump likes success, you know, and he wanted big success.

And they say rather ruefully, well, you know, if it had been a successful strike in Doha, probably Trump would have been out there up front claiming it and saying this was, you know, a great achievement and being very taking ownership of it. But as it didn't work and there are now some ramifications across the Gulf states, suddenly he seems to. to be very irritated about the attack as a whole. Scott Ritter has pointed out that the Israeli planes had to fly over Iraq, and the United States controls Iraqi airspace. And, of course, once they entered Qatar, the United States controls that airspace. And we stood down and Qatar radar stood down, which we can. control and Qatar defenses stood down. So there doesn't seem to be any question, but that your

analysis there is spot on. And the president is yet again, in order to make himself look good, misleading everyone. But beyond President Trump's credibility, which we could talk about all day, what are the geopolitical ramifications? What is the geopolitical fallout from this American-supported Israeli perpetrated attack on a civilian neighborhood in the capital of Qatar? Well, it's too soon to say what the longer term consequences will be. But certainly it is a new chapter because Qatar was regarded as a safe place. It was a safe place because America had asked Doha to host the Hamas leadership. And I know that because I was in Damascus some time ago speaking with President Assad.

And he told me that at the beginning of the Iraq war, Colin Powell had come and warned him that if they didn't cut the links to Iran and to Hamas very quickly, then there would be, Syria would be sent back to the Stone Age virtually. And Assad said, so I said, well, you know, what do you want me to do with Hamas? You want me to send them to their deaths in Gaza? Is that what you're asking for? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, said Kulampal. No, they're going to Doha. It's all arranged.

So, you know, it was even back then, you know, and accepted this, that Gata would act in a special circumstances, mediator, a safe place for the leadership to exist, and also the financial relationships. First of all, with Gaza, but also then with Netanyahu and with others in Israel. All of this was down to Gata, and it's been playing a very complicated game. On the one hand, it has been hosting and acting as mediators. You recall, even with the Taliban a little time ago, the Taliban were in Doha, because the Americans wanted to talk to the Taliban. So this has been going on for some time,

and clearly under the auspices of the United States. And then suddenly what happens with this failed attack on the Hamas negotiating team, Hamas negotiating team had been set up, of course, because what were they doing, all being together? They were there to discuss the Whitkoff plan. What was happening in Iran a little time ago? Well, of course, the Iranians were preparing for discussions on the, the Whitkoff plan for the JCPOA, the nuclear agreement in OMA. And so they were taken by surprise by the coordinated attack on Iran.

So all of these things have a history of, if you do, you know, setting up peace talks. The same happened incidentally with Hezbollah. The Hezbollah were meeting to discuss another American proposal. So you have three of these cases where the U.S. proposals were used as bait to get a leadership together into one place, and then they were killed. The aim was to do the same in Iran to catch Iran balance, and then now we have Doha. I wonder if Whitkoff was engaged in a deceptive conspiracy with Trump to. to dupe the Iranians and to dupe Hamas or if Trump duped Whitkoff, but it is clear that the Whitkoff-Trump Gaza plans and the Whitkoff-Trump Iran plans were fraud, a farce, a deception,

and resulted in the deaths of people who took them seriously. And also because, you know, there are long-term consequences to destroying your mediators. I mean, this happened to me once in Gaza, and I negotiated a ceasefire with Hamas and also with the forces of Fatah. And it was all set up and it was due to start on the next. in a day or so, and I was just waiting for the OK from Damascus. And then it was consisted there was going to be an article prepared to explain it for the New York Times. And there was also all the complicated arrangements for between the Tanzim and Hamas about how to manage the details of a ceasefire and what to do if, you know, the Israelis invaded or bombed or something. something like that.

And then I went to bed and been told by Brussels that I had to inform the Israelis about that the ceasefire was about to start. And then I was woken up at 4 in the morning by Javier Salana, who was a high representative of the European Union. And he said, have you seen the news? And I said, no, I haven't. What is it? And he said, they've dropped a one-ton bomb on the house of Shahad.

who was the negotiator for Hamas, killing him and 13 others, his entire family, were killed. And that was the end of, of course, the ceasefire. And I remember sort of some people sort of from the Israeli side, sort of laughing at me and saying, how did it feel having all that blood on your hands? You were so naive to try and get a ceasefire. How do you view Trump in making foreign policy decisions?

In two months, he has taken two very close allies, India and Qatar, and turned them into profound bitter enemies, one Qatar, probably symbolic, one India, of profound economic significance. Well, I have heard, you know, there are theories that this is deliberate. This is an attempt to change the region, but I don't accept this. I think that it is, goes back to the team's really poor understanding of the region and foreign policy. In terms of India, I think it was thought that India was sort of halfway already to being an ally of the United States and just one little push would separate India from Russia and China and from the bricks. and that they would then come over to America in terms of dividing the bricks

and weakening, if you like, the relationship. But they didn't seem to understand. I mean, the two key things which were important was that India was also in the midst of doing a complicated, free trade. negotiation with the European Union. And for India, this was much more important in many ways because the amount of trade that India did with the United States is small, about 3% or something.

And also the sort of trade that can be, if you like, diverted to other markets can be pushed into other markets. Whereas the tradeways, particularly with the European Union on agricultural and other products is vital to India. And so it was an extremely silly idea, which apparently, I mean, I hear, but I can't confirm it exactly, but the thinking behind it, apparently, Friedman, who has been very much involved in these thinking,

George Friedman, was saying that, the idea behind us was that, you know, well, look, China, it's too difficult. I mean, you know, we can't go to war with the country that owns our supply lines. Right. I mean, we're dependent on China, and China is dependent on us. The latter part is not true. China is not dependent. It's not nearly so dependent on the United States as the U.S. is on China.

And they said, we're thinking, we'll take India off the table. and that will make it easier for China to come to terms with the U.S. And in fact, that didn't happen because on Saturday with Besant meeting with the Chinese foreign minister. The Chinese announced that they were instigating a trade investigation into the practices of America in terms of CHIP and related. items and whether it was contrary to the Trade Act. So, I mean, they're playing hardball still. And it's obvious why. It's called Siberia 2.

Because when China and Russia signed the agreement for Siberia 2, China did something which was hugely strategic. It made itself dependent on Russia as much as Russia becomes dependent on China. And this is a long historic way of China. I mean, from 2000 years back, China's foreign policy has always been based on how do you keep the kingdom, the middle kingdom, secure from the enemies on its borders. And even, you know, 1,000, 2,000 years ago, the idea was you have trade corridors, you have length to all of your far-reaching sort of elements of the kingdom. And they instituted even then the practice of making the axle lengths was to be standard.

So they could go on standard routes anywhere in the Middle Kingdom at any time. And this was their way of sort of galliverizing together the whole of the Middle Kingdom to protect themselves from trouble. And so this is what they've just done with Russia. They've extended the gas pipeline, or going to it, won't be until 2030. That'll be complete. But the Chinese are very quick in building these things. And then that is part of the connection, together with all the other trade agreements that they made, both with Russia and India. You can see that this is China going back to its roots about foreign policy, how we keep, if you like, our often quite heterogeneous kingdom together and linked to the centre.

Chris, can you put up the full screen of President Trump from Saturday about major sanctions on Russia? I'm ready to do major sanctions on Russia when all NATO nations have agreed and started to do the same thing, and when all NATO nations stop buying oil from Russia. This is absurd, isn't it? Turkey's not going to stop buying oil from Russia. Hungary's never going to agree to this. This is just political pap. Exactly.

And it seems to me to look exactly like that this is way of Trump avoiding the dilemma that he had of Lindsay Graham and the others pressing him more sanctioned. And so now he says, well, only when the Europeans do it all. When the Europeans put sanctions on everyone, and as you rightly point out, he ties it to NATO, which means Turkey too, which has direct piped gas coming through Turkstream to Turkey. And they're not about to give that up because that would destroy their economy. And of course, it's nonsense because the European Union, when it comes to putting tariffs or sanctions on India and China, requires all member states, it requires full consensus of member states to take that forward. And that's never going to come. I mean, Hungary and Slovakia, for a start, will not agree to it. but many other states will refuse.

And also because a European Union is frightened of Chinese reactions and counter-sactions against Europe. In the case of Europe with China, Europe is very vulnerable. And China is in the commanding position, particularly on vehicles and cars. And it's instituting also inquiries and legal actions. to impose sanctions on the EU over certain elements of electronic vehicles. So the EU, I mean, it's of course not the case. But what is going on then? Well, I think the more disturbing thing is what we hear,

and it was already present at the SEO meeting in China a little while ago, is that America has done nothing, nothing at all, nothing at all to prepare for a permanent agreement between Russia and Ukraine. There is no preparations. There are no, even the technical meetings don't happen. And there's no sign that Ukraine has any interest in coming to those technical meetings. There's no preparation for trilateral meetings. What good came from?

What good, if anything, came from the Alaska meeting between President Trump and President Putin? Two things, really. The first was that, you know, and this was intentional, they wanted to get to make sure that Trump understood what Putin's proposal is, that he was going to, if you like, impose a solution through force. on Europe and Zelensky in Ukraine. And the view in Moscow is that was successful. He seemed to get it. And indeed, that's what came out of the meeting.

The other thing, which was much more doubtful, they thought that Trump had agreed, and this was what they told their colleagues, in Jinjiang meeting of the SEO. They told, he, Putin told them he thought he had an understanding with Trump to delay sanctions and to give him Putin the space to take forward the military operation. As Putin has said, we are going to complete and finish the military, the objectives of the military operation. Really, come what may, whatever you, you know, want.

but that's what we're going to do. But that didn't last long because then we had the Europeans saying, well, we want more sanctions, we want bigger sanctions. And now we've had, of course, you know, a great scare, which was obviously part of this exercise

with the drones. You know, these drones, which contained no explosive or no warhead, that were supposedly fired from Russia into Poland is quite clearly, in my view, a set-up, quite clearly an attempt to, if you like, lay the foundations for a bigger NATO exercise against Russia. They've had Article 4 meetings in NATO. and the Europeans have just decided,

European members of NATO have decided that they're going to have preposition forces in certain seven or eight. It's the architecture for, you know, this ambition for having, you know, a wider conflict with Russia when they can get European forces into Ukraine. Before we go, Alastair, 110,000 people in London demonstrating against the government. Is that a big deal? Yeah, because it wasn't 110,000. That's what the police said it was. But everyone else who's looked at the videos and who has some experience in this saw one of the biggest demonstrations ever held in Britain, probably several hundred thousand, not just 110. The police always. give underestimations of these figures.

And I think it discredits them. I don't think it helps them. Yes, it is shocked Europe and it is shocked Britain. The size of the antagonism to the government and to the establishment. I mean, and it was huge. Lots of people went ordinary people who came and protested.

and wave the flags. I mean, it may sound amazing to you in the United States because you are often waving flags, the American flag, freely and cheerly. Well, in Britain, it is regarded as something that the government will not allow. They keep taking down the Union flag or the cross-Sin-George's cross-flag.

And we're moving it and say that this is a sign of far-right activism and won't be allowed. Well, they were waving the flags and they were saying we want our country back. And of course it was affected by what happened to Charlie Kirk. That's had its impact in Britain and in other parts of Europe as well, not just in its narrower perspectives, but perhaps in its wider perspectives too.

Now, Stere, thank you, my dear friend. Fascinating, fascinating analysis, as always, for us here in the U.S., first thing, Monday morning. It's a great way to start the week for us. You're deeply appreciated. Thanks for accommodating my schedule. We will look for schedule. We will look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you very much, Judge.

Thanks. Bye for now. Bye. Coming up later today, we originally had Scott Ritter scheduled. He'll be with us later in the week. But Ray McGovern will be here. at 10 this morning. Max Blumenthal in a must watch interview

that I will conduct with him at four in the afternoon. What was the nature and extent of the Zionist attempt to influence Charlie Kirk? And at 5.30 this afternoon, an unusual time, but he's as faithful as the day is long, Larry Johnson. Judge the Paletano for judging freedom. Thank you. Thank you.