Judging Freedom - AMB. Chas Freeman : When Israel Attacks Iran.

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

AMB. Chas Freeman : When Israel Attacks 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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Ambassador, welcome here, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. I want to ask you in some detail your views on what's happening with Israel and attacking journalists in Gaza. preparing for war with Iran. But before we do that, in the same week that President Trump wore a hat proclaiming that he is right about everything, he suggested that Ukraine should attack Russia. Then he authorized about 3,000 Iran.

You can tell us what those are from your years in the Defense Department. Department, long-range missiles, about 280-mile range to be manufactured and shipped to Ukraine. What do you think it's going on? Well, it's pretty clear that it has no relationship to the expectations that President Trump raised during his campaign for office. These are warlike war-mongering statements. And they are not conducive to peace, which is, I think, what he wants to achieve. His formula for achieving peace appears to be preemptive attack on various parties.

And he's not alone in this hypocrisy, of course. We have the Democratic Party, Democratic National Committee meeting, I think a week from yesterday, Monday, to, and one of the things before them is the resolution proposing to sever certain relationships with Israel stop backing it in the war, and the elders in the Democratic Party are busily trying to prevent any airing or passage of that resolution, even though only 8% of Democrats now approve of what Israel is doing in Gaza. So we have a complicity, a participation in genocide in Gaza. We are continuing to participate in the war in Ukraine.

It has not changed its character. It is still a proxy war between the United States and Russia. And it looks like a great deal of the so-called effort to produce peace. is really just a series of pseudo events, meaning events contrive to create the illusion that something's happening, that isn't. Chris, can you put up the full screen of President Trump's Truth Social? How do you think the Russians view this, Ambassador? This is from the President of the United States late last week.

It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invader's country. It's like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but it's not allowed to play offense. There's no chance of winning. It is like that with Ukraine and Russia. He then goes on to attack Joe Biden. Isn't this sort of an instigation suggested by him that Ukraine should attack inside of Russia? And if that is the case, where's the guy that showed up in? in Anchorage, proclaiming peace?

Good question. I think the major point of that statement is actually to blame Joe Biden for the war, which is fair enough. He basically apparently told President Putin to bring it on and we'd crush Russia with sanctions. So the provocation was real. It came from us. and Joe Biden does bear responsibility for the war. But President Trump is no less responsible.

He was the first person to provide Ukraine with offensive weapons in his first term as part of the NATO buildup of Ukraine to attack Russian separatists in the eastern provinces of Ukraine. He oblasts in Donbass, and since he's come into office in a second term, he has not at all halted the flow of weapons to Ukraine. In fact, what he's done is very clever politically. He's basically said to the Europeans, you want a war, you can have a war, I'll sell you the weapons that you can give to the Ukrainians, and we won't be responsible for what happens in Ukraine. You will be. Well, that's because he knows Ukraine is losing the war, and he wants to escape accountability for that. It's not to help Ukraine, particularly.

And attacking deep into Russia from Ukraine really does nothing except invite counterattacks from Russia, which are occurring. The Russians have been quite careful to attack military targets despite a great deal of propaganda. asserting otherwise. The Ukrainians are attacking energy infrastructure for the most part in Russia in an effort to drive up prices at the pump and achieve opposition to President Putin from Russians. But the main effect of their attacks is simply to cause Russians to rally around a flag. And finally, to make an important point, which seems to be overlooked, and that is, Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022 because it claimed, it asserted, it felt that the presence of Western weapons, long-range weaponry in a hostile Ukrainian state would be a threat to Russia. Well, every time the Ukrainians bomb something distant target in Russia, whether they do it in Operation Spiderweb with converted trucks and with drones, in them or whether they do it with missiles, they prove the Russian point, and that is that

their current posture is a threat to the Russian Federation that Russia has to deal with. So this is really a great mess. It makes no sense at all, and it's very disappointing to anyone who hope that President Trump would not just talk about peace, but actually produce it. You know, right after the Anchorage meeting in which Trump and Putin were very cordial and friendly and over the top, embracing each other, the neocons seem to be distressed. Now they seem to be resurgent again. Is General Kellogg in or out? Does he still whisper at the Trump's ears?

I hope he's out, but I don't know. there's no peace going to be produced by the creation of a demilitarized zone like one in Korea in Ukraine, which was basically General Kellogg's idea. That is a proposal that would perpetuate, sustain the confrontation and war between Ukraine and Russia, between Europe, the rest of Europe and Russia. It would not produce a peace. It has not done so in Korea. There's a constant danger of war breaking out.

And in fact, the existence of the tensions in Korea has finally, combined with U.S. policies of maximum pressure, similar to those that we've placed against Iran, has given the North Koreans to develop an effective nuclear-armed ICBM that can hit the United States. virtually any part of the united states so we've ended up creating a menace to our own country that didn't exist uh by failing to deal with the promise in the korean armistice that we would negotiate a peace we didn't try uh so uh i think that kind of recommendation is frankly boneheaded

and that's why i say i hope he is as appeared to be the case that anchorage sideline uh moscow um destroyed the terrorist long-range missiles that Germany delivered in parts to be reassembled and fired in Ukraine over the weekend, destroyed nearly all of them. What did Chancellor Mertz think the Russians would do, sit back and wait for the Ukrainians to fire these things? They were destroyed before they were used. Well, I think he, you know, the Germans have confronted the problem that the Russians basically said that if you provide the Taurus missile to the Ukrainians, that German manufactured missile, we will destroy the plant in Germany that manufactures the missiles. So they tried a trick. They let the Ukrainians assemble the missiles in a factory in Ukraine. And the Russians have now made good on their threat, which. ought to teach us something that we don't have the ability to control Russian behavior. Russian threats need to be taken seriously, and they mean business.

So I hope President, I'm sorry, Chancellor Merz, has taken this aboard. There are many parties in Germany that are not happy with this war. he's the head of one that is. Ambassador, the Western security services continue to leak to the press that Russia is losing. This is really absurd. Do you think they honestly believe that? It's very hard to believe that they would honestly believe it. Surely they have better sources of information and more accurate information.

I note that the other day, there was a hack of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense by the Russians, which produced an apparent listing of all of the people who've been killed or was seriously wounded or defected or deserted in the Ukrainian army over the last three and a half years. And the total was 1.7 million. And my first reaction in looking at this was that that wasn't very believable. But when you do the mass and you look at the history, it is believable.

And it underscores the point that we've been the victims, we in the West have been the victims, of an incredible disinformation campaign mounted by our own governments to create a false reality. And we've fallen victim to it. I can't say that the people who are producing this propaganda don't actually believe it. They may.

They may have inhaled it and gone nuts. Is Israel preparing to wage another war against Iran? They say they are. I think they are. The only question, there's no question about their intent at all because they've been quite open about that. Their intent is to do Iran what. they did to Syria. That is, for many years, they pursued a policy that successfully divided

Syrians against themselves. Iran is a complex society with many minorities. In fact, I don't think the Persian element in Iran is actually the majority of Iranians. There are Kurds, there are other Bactiaries, there are Arabs, there are all kinds of people. And so, Israel hopes to reduce Iran to the sort of rubble that Syria now consists of, and it has no way of doing that other than by force. It's probably lost a great number of the intelligence operatives that it had in place, or that it infiltrated over the border from Azerbaijan when it attacked Iran in the so-called 12-day war. war. But let's remember how that war ended. That war ended with Israel running out of interception capability against increasingly effective Iranian missile attack. And I think the Israelis should bear in mind that Iran basically slow rolled its response to all three Israeli

attacks on it. And yet at the end of the 12-day war, or Iran was clearly in a position to devastate Israel, which is one reason the Israelis agreed to President Trump's proposal of a ceasefire. They wanted a ceasefire. If they attack Iran again, I don't think the Iranians will slow roll the counterattack. I think they'll go for broke and they'll do what Israel has done, which has attacked civilian targets as well as military targets. They didn't do that in the first three rounds of this conflict.

So this is very dangerous, particularly to Israel. And we know that the government of Israel, headed by Prime Minister Netanyahu, favors war in the large measure because that is a guarantee against court proceedings and a jail sentence for corruption for Mr. Netanyahu. It's his ticket to surviving politically.

Here's an MSNBC report from late last week on the Israeli intentional attack on journalists in a hospital, bearing in mind that the Israeli attacks are guided by American-made AI and identify their targets. this is a little gut wrenching, but I'd like your thoughts on it. Chris cut number 10. So it happened around 10 a.m. this morning, and for context, to give our audience, a lay of the land, Nassar Hospital is the largest, the only functioning hospital in the South. And the part of Nassar Hospital that was hit, you guys, is really important. You can see it in the videos. It was a staircase. And the reason this staircase was targeted very clearly is that this is where journalists since the early days of the war have gathered to get Wi-Fi signal. We have seen videos they've posted on social media.

Our team, which used to work right close to that staircase, would share videos of them holding their phones to the sky, kind of huddled over laptops in the wee hours of the night. But journalists, since the beginning of this war, you guys, since they have been personally displaced, have flocked to hospitals to use resources like Wi-Fi to use power to use water. So this staircase, journalists were on the staircase this morning when it was struck around 10 a.m. And as Jonathan just laid out, minutes later, as first responders were racing. up to that area. As other journalists in the area, we're going to cover the strike. Another drone strike hit that same exact spot. Mika, we actually have updates from the numbers that you just read. As Jonathan says, this is a very fast-moving story. It is now at least 20 people killed, including five journalists.

As you mentioned, AP Reuters and Al Jazeera have all said that at least three of those journalists were working for them, excuse me. And this brings the total of journalists killed in Gaza since October 7th to 200, 45 journalists, media workers. These are our colleagues, our peers, who have been killed in the last 22 months, guys. Correct myself. This was not last week. This was yesterday, right. Ambassador. Can anybody believe the Israeli denunciations when it is pointed out that they have murdered 245 journalists? Well, 245 dead journalists is more journalists killed on the battlefield than in every war since the U.S. Civil War.

There's no question of that this is a deliberate campaign designed to cover up what's happening in Gaza and thereby facilitate the various lies that Israel has been propagating about that. For example, there's no starvation in Gaza. Israel is providing massive aid. to people in Gaza of a humanitarian nature, and so forth. These are the words of Prime Minister Netanyahu and really raises the question, who you're going to believe, Prime Minister Netanyahu or your lying eyes.

Well, the lying eyes are being put out by the Israelis and deliberately. And I think a particularly heinous aspect of this is the double tap. That is, first you kill a bunch of people, then you kill the first responders and the journalists trying to cover the murder of the first group. And that is exactly what the Israelis did. And it's typical of what they have been doing. So the reporters, San Fronterre, reporters without borders, has tried to move this issue before the UN Security Council with no success because the United States blocks it.

We're supposed to be dedicated to freedom of speech, the First Amendment, the protection of honest journalists, but we're behaving in exactly the opposite way under both the Biden and the administration. Watch this ambassador. This is the UN High Commissioner for Humanitarian Relief speaking to the Security Council at the UN. It's likely that either this, This resolution condemning Israel won't be voted on or will be vetoed by the U.S. This is gut-wrenching, but extremely articulate moving and well-documented cut number eight. It is a famine, the Gaza famine. It is a famine that we could have prevented if we had been allowed. Yet food stacks up at borders because of systematic obstruction by Israel. It is a famine within a few hundred meters of food in a fertile land

that forces a parent to choose which child to feed, that forces people to risk their lives to seek food. It is a famine that we repeatedly warned of, but that the international media has not been a human. allowed in to cover, to bear witness. It is a famine in 2025, a 21st century famine, watched over by drones and the most advanced military technology in history. It is a famine openly promoted by some Israeli leaders as a weapon of war. Everyone owns this. The Gaza famine is the world's famine. It is a famine that asks, but what did you do? A famine caused by cruelty,

justified by revenge, enabled by indifference and sustained by complicity. It is a famine that therefore also asks, and what now will you do? To Prime Minister Netanyahu, and anyone who can reach enough ceasefire open the crossings north and south all of them let us get food and other supplies in unimpeded

end the retribution it is too late for far too many but not for everyone in Gaza enough for humanity's sake let us in Who or what can stop this other than a phone call from Donald Trump or an enormous retaliatory response by the Iranians when Israel attacks again?

Probably no one. That was a very eloquent statement of reality, and I'm glad you aired it. People need to know what's happening, despite all the. laws and disinformation that have been spewed forth to obscure what is happening. I'd make two comments. Some of the food that's sitting at the border is sitting there because Israeli settlers, not the Israeli government, ordinary Israelis take joy in denying food to the Palestinians, and they rip it off the trucks that are parked to go into Gaza.

and not allowed to buy Israel. And second, we're told by the humanitarian groups who are trying to remediate the situation there without success because of Israeli obstruction that for many in Gaza, even if food is now supplied, it will be too late because starvation has proceeded to the point where medical, attention is required for survival.

We saw an example of that when one woman evacuated to Italy, who had been subject to severe malnutrition, died despite the medical attention she received there. So we're also told that there are 130,000 children in imminent danger of death. And yet the United States will veto a condemnation this? Unbelievable. You're as

eloquent and articulate as the Undersecretary of State for Humanitarian Affairs, Ambassador. Thank you. I know it's a vacation week for a lot of people in the U.S. leading up to Labor Day. Thank you very much for coming on. Thank you for accommodating my schedule. No matter what we talk about,

it is always instructive to hear your analysis, my dear friend. We look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you very much. Thank you. Coming up later today at 11 this morning, Kyle Anzalone, and at 1 this afternoon, Max Blumenthal. Full days for you coming on Wednesday and Thursday this week. Judgmental Judgment for Judging Freedom. Thank you.