Judging Freedom - COL. Douglas Macgregor : Is Trump Planning to Invade Iran Again?

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

COL. Douglas Macgregor : Is Trump Planning to Invade Iran Again?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? the government what if Jefferson was right what if that government is best which governs least what if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong what if it is better to perish 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 Tuesday September 22nd 2006. Colonel Douglas McGregor joins us now. Colonel McGregor always a pleasure. I was going to start by asking you about the drums of war beating in Europe, something you and I have communicated about, but I must go to the most recent news, which is a statement from the President of the United States just a few minutes ago when he addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations, and he used the word annihilate with respect to what he might be doing to Iran. I'll play the clip and you can tell us what you think. Chris, cut number 12.

But I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world. Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations? But I believe we'll make a deal right after the election.

What could he possibly mean by annihilate? Well, the word, if you look it up, is pretty clear. He's talking about the complete and under-destruction of the Iranian state and society. Judge, we've been down this road before. He's made these threats in the past. Should we take them any more seriously now than we have in the past? I think we probably should. I think the first thing that, and I'm sure your audience, which is global, by the way, congratulations.

notices something. Here is the President of the United States playing a role that he enjoys, and that's the role of God. He is behaving as though he holds the power of life and death over Iran, or for that matter, anyone, and that he is the principal source of justice in this war. This, of course, is deeply offensive to everyone in the world. If you listen to the Indian foreign minister, he's been very eloquent in criticizing this approach to American foreign and defense policy. So I think the first thing to take away from this is it's offensive for him to say these things, but it is offensive to people well beyond Iran. Secondly, it demonstrates conclusively that I'm not really sure he's in charge. I never have because this is not the man that

I knew back in 2020 by any stretch of the imagination. It also is absurd. This is Stalinist or Hitlerian in content. He's posturing his Jenghis Khan. The Mongolian armies led by Jenghis's generals would say to their opponent, join us or die. And that effectively is what he's doing. Now, to what does he want them to submit?

He wants them to submit to Israel's demands, and we are acting as Israel's agent. Everybody knows that. That is not a good thing, because it demonstrates conclusively that we Americans have lost control of our own government. Then finally, annihilation usually involves the use of a nuclear weapon, at least in modern parlance. I can't conceive of a situation in which an American president would attack another country that has not attacked us. And contrary to popular belief, Iran does not have this long record of assault against us. Our record against them is far more dubious. But unfortunately, the use of a nuclear weapon in this case probably implies Trump's readiness to support Israel's use of a nuclear weapon.

All of these things are really too terrible to contemplate and would lead to a chain of events over which we would have absolutely no control. So I hope this doesn't happen, but I'm afraid we have to take it seriously, and I'm sure the Iranians will take it seriously. Colonel, before he used the word annihilate, well, let me take a step back. he is not there's annihilate to destroy something completely so that nothing is left or to defeat an enemy or opponent in a total and decisive way the standard classic cambridge dictionary definition of annihilate who knows exactly how he meant it i can't imagine he looked up the word before he used it you mentioned he's not the same person you knew in 2020 he's not the same person i knew in 2016 it is well known that i spent a lot of time with him. Before I was on Fox News, many, many hours with him when I was on Fox News and a lot of time with him shortly after he was elected. He's not the same person. Now to where we are today. Before he used the word annihilate, I intended to ask you what you and I had emailed each other about a few days ago. Was he, is he planning?

planning a build-up of Air Force equipment and personnel so as to attempt to accomplish after the midterms what he failed to accomplish in June and in February, March, June of last year, and February, March and April of this year. Yes, I think that's absolutely certain. And if you look at the transfer of the Air Force personnel to Germany and Great Britain right now, and in some cases they're being given orders that would result in their presence in these two countries for two years, it's patently obvious that the plan is to build up stocks of weapons and munitions and aircraft and ready them for a massive assault on Iran. There's no doubt about it. when he entered, pardon me, Colonel, the United Nations building this morning,

he was met by a person he didn't expect to see because they threw her out of the White House the other day, Caitlin Collins of CNN. And she questioned him and he wondered, what are you doing here? What are you doing here? And then she said, you know, two-thirds of the country believes we are losing or have lost the war. Iran. What do you think? Here is his response. This is cut number 10, Chris. President came in. He briefly came over to speak to the reporters who I should note are here because we are credentialed by the United Nations while being blocked by the White House from

covering the president. And we asked him this question about that new CNN polling. Mr. President, two-thirds of Americans, two-thirds of Americans don't think the U.S. is winning the war with Iran. When will end? It's an honor to be here. I'm surprised that CNN is here covering me. The United Nations allowed us in, sir. You should not be here covering me. You said you weren't going to cover me.

You shouldn't be covering me. Two-thirds of Americans don't think that the U.S. is winning the war with Iran. When will it end? We're making a lot of progress. Our country is doing really, really well. Thank you very much. What could he possibly be talking about? We're making a lot of progress.

Our country's doing really, really well. Not inflation. not the price of fuel, not the war in Iran, not the war in Ukraine. What could it be talking about? You know, Judge, when I listened to the remarks in the U.N., I concluded that someone had handed him a state of the union address that he made some time ago, which is essentially another one of these exercises in self-promotion and reassuring the public that everything is just great.

But, of course, we know it isn't. I didn't see anything of real substance. being promising to annihilate another country with whatever weapons you have at your disposal, I think that probably qualifies. You're a better judge of this than I am as a war crime under an international law. It does. So the whole thing is macabre. Can he do it?

Well, again, if you use nuclear weapons, you're obviously going to be in a position where you could take the urban the centers and kill enough human beings that you could render the society incapable of sustaining itself. The real question is, what do the Iranians do? What have they got to throw back? Or what will they do before it even occurs? All of these are questions I can't answer, but I'm sure the Iranians are preparing for exactly what you described. And when you start talking about flying from Great Britain and Germany, there's little doubt in my mind that you're flying with very sophisticated weapons. It could include nuclear weapons. How a significant, Colonel, is the Ansarallah or Houthi, however you want to describe them,

military victories in Saudi Arabia? How is significant is that, are they? for the balance of power in the Middle East and for the international energy supply. Well, let's look at it from a purely Middle Eastern standpoint. And you've had, I'm sure, between Alistair Crook and Ambassador Chess Freeman, probably the two men with the best insights into the region that you're going to find anywhere. What I would add to their remarks is that this signals a strategic shift in the tectonic plates. In other words, we're watching the end of the old Middle East. This is not just about Yemen.

This is about the entire Arabian Peninsula. All the statelets as well as Saudi Arabia are now all on the path to extinction. What the Yemenis have demonstrated is something that all of us that spent time there understand very well. The people that live right now in Saudi Arabia and in these Emirates, they're not going to fight. They have a very comfortable existence. The average pay for a private in the UAE is in the UAE's military force is something in the neighborhood of $85,000 to $90,000 a year or more. People only operate for a brief period each day.

They do not take their professions very seriously. They're certainly not the military profession. Their readiness is very low. And now they're challenged by a warlike group of tribes. And these people are fighting for well. what they think is their right, but also their existence. For the Yemenis, this is existential. The Saudis and their friends are now discovering that their very existence is at stake.

And they've discovered that there are not lines of people rushing to come and rescue them. So they've either got to fight or surrender or leave, one of the three. My impression is that they will surrender or leave. I don't see much of it is they're going to fight. So we're going to see a new map when this is over. Now, the other piece of this, of course, as you point out, is if the Red Sea's access is blocked by Anzala, then it looks as though we're seeing 35% of the world's oil supply effectively removed from the market.

And now that the pipeline across Saudi Arabia, the pumping stations are effectively out of commission and also Yonbu could be destroyed in the space of a few minutes if the hoodies decide to do it. There's really no other way to go. Contrary to what the president says, very little is coming out of the straight of war moves. That's all nonsense when he says the U.S. Navy controls it and everything's slowing. He must think everybody is totally stupid and are willing to sit there and listen to the lies. But nobody is.

Everybody knows the truth. So our position as a great power and the position of the rest of the global economy is terrible. And no one is blaming Iran for that. And no one's going to blame Yemeni for the Yemenis or the Houthis, they're going to blame us. And they are. Let's go back to the issue of an invasion, whether it's Air Force or ground, non-nuclear for this hypothetical question. Would it be proper to ask? invade with what?

I mean, what do we have ammunition left to conduct the type of full-scale assault that failed earlier this year? Well, you know, when the president says we have inexhaustible quantities of munitions, I can tell you there are millions of tank rounds out there for 120 millimeter, there are millions of artillery rounds. Those aren't going to help you against Iran, obviously. So I think what he's really, what he's not telling you, which everybody knows, is that quite frankly, we're busy replenishing our stocks, a precision guided missiles and weaponry and radars and so forth as quickly as we possibly can. And that's why you haven't seen anything renewed in terms of warfare. I think probably General Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and others have told the president, this is not the time to divert our resources into a small.

war against the hoodies. We have to take care that we have enough on hand when we renew the attacks against Iran. So I think, you know, from that standpoint, we will have enough when they decide to strike again at Iran. Now, when you talk about a grounded invasion, and I've said this before several times, you said with what? I simply point out the army we have is far, far too small. It's spread out all over the world. You know, you've got them in, you know, Europe, in Romania, in Germany, Poland. You've got them in Korea, parts of the Philippines, Japan. You know, you've got them all over the United States. The point is there is no great ground force, combat-ready ground force that you could concentrate anywhere. Then you have to get

it there and then you have to protect it against all these unmanned systems. It can, for very little expense to a great deal of damage if you don't have air and missile defense. And right now, we don't have the air and missile defense to defend any of the ground station, ground posts that we've had in the region. Now, could you seize an island? Could you use a combination of Marine and Army power to seize an Allen? Could you, could you land at Chabahar on the Indian Ocean? Yeah, I suppose you could. Now, you would then become at some point a target that sits there and will eventually have to be rescued if there's anything left. But beyond that, I thought we discovered with the attempt to use special operations forces last year, that it was a dead end. And we should avoid it when we went into, I know if it was last year or this year, when we went into southern Iraq or Iran, presumably, to search for enriched uranium.

and we re-threw the towel on that, we recognized that wasn't going to work. I thought that was a cautionary tale, but it may yet still be under consideration. He is unwilling to walk away from this. He's unwilling to go back to the MOU. He's unwilling at this point to accept anything less in his mind than victory. Now, defining victory is prohibitively expensive and probably not attainable in reality for him. but he's not listening. And yet he signed the memorandum of ostentation.

He signed the memorandum of understanding ostentatiously at the Palace of Versailles. Who knows if he read it? His vice president who authored it certainly read it. It would be a deal from which he could claim certain accomplishments. Right now he can't claim a single accomplishment. from the $45 billion that De Hegeseth has spent on this war in Iran? Well, obviously his Israeli lobby handlers, once they understood what had been signed, made it clear to him, that was unacceptable. He still has to answer to them. I'm convinced of that. He doesn't seem to have true freedom of action.

If he had any freedom of action, he could at the very least have strategically disengaged from the disaster in Ukraine. You know, we're fighting two front wars right now. We really can't do it. We don't have the forces for it. It's prohibitively expensive. We can't win the two at once. Ukraine travesty is the easiest to end. But that hasn't happened.

And presumably it hasn't happened because the second. same people pushing the war in Ukraine or also pushing the war against Iran. Both want the same thing. They want to destroy Russia, seize its resources. Now they want to destroy Iran and control its resources. He's caught. So I, you know, I fail to believe, I fail to understand it all, but I have concluded he's not in charge. Think of what we're saying here, Colonel.

We know the Congress is controlled by the Israel lobby because APEC, Donate substantially to 354 congressional campaigns of the 535. It's two-thirds of the Congress right there. Now we've come to the understanding that the same mentality, maybe not the same human beings, but their collaborators, are literally controlling the president of the United States. Is the government of the United States responsible to the American people or to a foreign power? It's obviously not responsible to the American people.

to do is look at the polling data. And the last time I looked, more than 70% of Americans polled were absolutely opposed to the war in Iran. I don't know what the latest figures are on Ukraine. One of the problems that we have with the American electorate, and I'll say problems, probably not the right word, is that we're still dealing with what I call the original Wolfowitz Pearl strategy, which is to tell the American people as George Bush did. Oh, don't worry about what's happening now that we're invading Iraq. Everything will be fine. Just go to the mall and shop. And we've been borrowing money like madmen to pay for everything so that about a third of the debt that we've accumulated since 2001 or more is attributable to these wars and conflicts that were never budgeted for. And we have no planned tax to deal with it. We have no plan whatsoever in a fiscal.

sense to deal with any of this. So we're simply printing money that we can't normally borrow. We're headed to catastrophe, is my point financially. And I think that's the only way this stops. The question is, can we get to the fiscal crisis soon enough to prevent this war from blowing up in the way that Donald Trump described when he said either submit or we will annihilate? Let's move over to Europe for a minute or so, Colonel. Why are the drums of war beating amongst European elites and government leaders? I think the globalist elites are desperate to stay in power. And how can they stay in power given the situations inside the various countries?

I mean, they've allowed their countries to be invaded by millions of people that are unwanted who are committing terrible crimes against their populations. They have essentially treated their own people, particularly in great. Britain, France and Germany with complete contempt. So what do you do? You create an external enemy where there is none to justify what it is that you want to do, to justify control, justify censorship, justify your power. I don't think it's working very well, but unfortunately it's worked for quite a while.

And the whole electoral process has been very, very slow and ponderous, not because people have not changed their minds, but it takes time to turn over parliaments. It takes time to find new leadership. And then, of course, you have assistance coming from the United States, from the CIA, from MI6, internally in other countries, helping to maintain the status quo to keep the people who are in power. All of that is waning. It's on the downslide right now.

And Germany, of course, is the key to everything. If you take Germany out of the EU, what is the EU? It's nothing. You take Germany out of NATO. What are you going to do with the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance? I don't know. You know, have meetings and campfires in the forest and roast marshmallows. So Germany is the key to everything.

And right now, the German population, the German electorate is saying enough. We've put up with all of this for far too long and we want change. But it is slow. But it's coming. And I don't know that it will come as quickly as the Germans would like. But I think it's coming fast enough that the Russians in particular are watching carefully because they don't want to interrupt the process. They don't want to do something that will disrupt the eventual seizure of power by the nationalists in Western Europe who care more about their country than the people governing them. Well, we know from the Kremlin's behavior and from the words of President Putin and foreign minister,

Lavrov, that Russia has no intention of taking over Ukraine and running it, and no intention of invading Europe. But you wouldn't know that from certain European leaders. Watch this, I can only call it clownish performance by a former British Prime Minister Chris Cut number six. Ukraine wants to be part of the West. They want to be part of NATO. They want to join our clubs. We've got to allow that to happen. If we're serious, we've got to make that happen.

We've got to stop pussyfooting around about this thing. We will only get this thing done when we deliver the Ukrainians the clarity that they need about their destiny. It's really from the Department of some things. never changed and some people never learn. That man has a permanent bad hair day. I've never seen anything like in my life. You know, when I was at the Supreme Headquarters of Light Power in Europe, we stood up, stood on a stage for a photograph.

And the man taking a photograph was a German soldier. We were from all 19 nations, 19 at that point. And he suddenly said, please, please ask the fuzzy-headed Englishman to move to the right And we all looked at everybody, everybody started to laugh and said, which one? I don't know what it is. But it seems as though the British officers have the same sort of hair problems. They all run around in this disheveled appearance. It's beyond belief.

Unfortunately, I see Neil Ferguson sitting next to it, which is tragic because he knows better. But I guess he's sold out to the New York City crowd, and he's not going to contradict anything anybody says for fear of damaging his income. because he knows better. He knows the truth. This man is a fool. And, you know, he doesn't seem to take seriously the danger involved in all of this. You know, the Russians don't want a war. They'll go to great lengths to avoid it.

The same thing's true, by the way, with the Chinese. The only people to talk about war in Asia are Americans. And right now the people talking about war are these West Europeans. Now, that doesn't mean there are other diluted Europeans. But they're the ones that are talking about it the most. And you know from your recent visit that the Russians are exercising restraint. But you get tired of flamingo missiles and, what is it, storm shadow missiles and other things being tossed at your population, killing your population. And all the help and assistance is being given to this process in Ukraine by the British and the Germans primarily, but others.

and I'm sure they would like to pull the trigger and do some damage in response. Fortunately, that hasn't happened yet. But I don't think these people know what they're talking about. The British armed forces, tragically, are a shadow of their former selves. You know, the Navy is a joke. The Army is pathetic. The Air Force is almost non-existent. And yet we had the British Prime Minister, the new one,

promising to provide some sort of assistance from the Royal Air Force. force to the Saudis, maybe in terms of tanker refueling. I mean, you cannot make this stuff up. It is bizarre. What do you think, General Kane and Company, I mean, the team that works for him would do if Trump said, get a nuclear bomb ready to explode over Tehran? Well, remember that nuclear capable missiles, warheads and so forth, are already aboard ship in the ocean. So it doesn't take a great deal of preparation to launch a nuclear weapon. They're on hand.

Some Marines have them. Aircraft carries all of them. And you have nuclear weapons stored in Germany. And, well, actually, I don't know if we have any in Germany. They could actually move them in, I suppose, without telling anybody. We certainly have nuclear weapons in Great Britain. This is where the populations in Europe, in solidarity with the 70% of the American electorate that opposes this stuff, should make their voices heard and stand up and tell their governments we're not interested in being a platform for the potential launch of a nuclear war against Iran. because we all know that the use of a nuclear weapon in one area could rapidly spread to its use of others.

That doesn't seem to sink in, but they ought to be very concerned about that. So I hope people in Britain and Germany in particular are listening, because this is a very dangerous thing that could conceivably occur. If Mohammed bin Salman loses a substantial portion of his income, if the Saudi economy begins to sink because of the interference with the flow of oil caused by Ansarla. How would that affect Israel? Well, that's a good question. I mean, from the standpoint of Israel, you have to understand that historically, they view chaos in the region as working to their advantage.

And they do whatever they can to cultivate conflict between various powers. If it looks as though MBS, the Crown Prince, is on his way out, the government collapses, they could be tempted to intervene, particularly since they worry about Saudi Arabia's alleged possession of nuclear weapons. So I suppose they could be tempted by that, but that, of course, I think, would precipitate all hell across the Islamic world because you're still talking about the holy sites. And they've got problems now with the Saudis that have lost a lot of their credibility and stature, and there are questions being raised about who will take custody of those sites.

But, you know, it may be that Israel is finally getting what it has always wanted. It is always wanted to be surrounded by deterioration, decay, and chaos. Well, it's got it. But they may not like who intervenes to ultimately restore things. that may not work to their advantage. Apparently, President Trump overheard. My tongue is in my cheek. What we were talking about about the loss of weaponry

because he was asked at the UN, what does he think about people who say we're low on munitions and are we low on munitions? And here's what he said. The cowards and traders would love to say the United States is low on munitions, but that's not true. We have more munitions than we could ever possibly even think of using, and we're building them at levels that we have never done before. We are adding to our stockpiles faster than we have ever been able to do

before. Top-of-the-line stuff. Well, he's put enormous pressure on Lockheed Martin and Raytheon to speed up delivery of any of these missiles. That's happening. There's no question about it. Are we able to really surge in the sense that we were able to do so during World War II? No. I think it's unfortunate that he's labeling critics as traitors and cowards, particularly coming from a man who seems to have systematic and medically avoided military service at every opportunity. And that's a sore point with many, many people in uniform and many veterans. That never goes away. I saw that at the end of Desert Storm,

when W's vice president showed up to award people things, and several senior officers refused to be present because they saw him as another draft dodger. Of course, at that point, we had the Vietnam generation in command. That's largely gone, but the bad feeling remain. And he should be more careful in his use of those kinds of words, because many of the people that are criticizing or at least observing the facts that we don't have enough to do the things that he wants are Americans like me who have served and care deeply about the United States.

And we're certainly not traitors. And I don't think we're cowards. Well, thank you, Colonel. Great conversation all across the board. I did not know about the annihilate comment until a few minutes before we came on air, but I appreciate deeply the way you handled it as well as everything else we discussed. All my best to you, my friend. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Okay, Judge. Thanks a lot.

Bye-bye. Thank you. Coming up next, if you're watching us live in 10 minutes at 2 o'clock, Jim Webb, what is Trump doing to the landscape in Washington, D.C.? And why, in heaven's name, does he need a truce? tramful arch to house drones and snipers beside a cemetery. And at three o'clock on all of these things, Colonel Karen Koukowski, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.