Judging Freedom - Dr. Trita Parsi : Trump's Threats Strengthen Iran

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

Dr. Trita Parsi : Trump's Threats Strengthen IranSee 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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org. 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? 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 Monday, September 28th, 2006, Treata Parsi. Truly, one of the country's foremost authorities on Iran will be with us in just a moment. Trump's threats to the Iranian people actually strengthen their resolve. But first this. What if you could build a plan B legally

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These are practical legal strategies for anyone who wants greater freedom and more options in an uncertain world. The summit is completely free to attend, but you must register in advance. And if you want the VIP experience, my listeners can save 20% on VIP tickets. Just use discount code judge when you register. Join us on October 1st and 2nd. Reserve your ticket today at Escapewithajudge.com. That's escapewithajudge.com and remember to use code word judge for your VIP experience. Treate Parsi, welcome here, my dear friend.

You and I had the pleasure of being two of about 35 or 40 people, along with our friend and colleague Jeff Sachs, to a private interview session last week with President Poseshkin of Iran and Foreign Minister Arachi. I thought it was wonderful. It was a privilege to be there with you. What was the reaction? Not in that room, because I would have perceived it, but in the U.N. or even internationally, to President Donald Trump's threat to murder 91 million Iran. So I was at the UN, Unger, the high-level week for all of last week in several different sessions and meetings with numerous diplomats from many, many different countries. And there is a bit of a fatigue. People don't have the energy to be stunned and shocked by everything Trump says because it's just exhausting at the end of the day.

But there was a clear realization that this is absolutely a new though. Much of the conversation was people trying to remember, has there ever been anything similar to this before? And no one could come up with anything that reached the depth, the low, the nadir of this. I think the closest people could come to was Khrushchev banging his shoe on the desk and say, we will crush you, which nevertheless is still not even close to saying, should I annihilate them, as Trump said. He did specifically refer to the regime, but it's a contradiction because you usually don't use that verb when it comes to what you would do to regime. You know, if you're trying to do regime change or whatever, it's still not that term you're using. It's a term that you would use if you're talking about destroying a full people.

And this is, of course, stunning, but I think at this point, a lot of people are just too tired of being exhausted by the depths that Trump's. can go to at times. Our friend and colleague, Alster Crook, told me earlier today that by the use of a term like this, Trump is wittingly or unwittingly, in Trump's case, probably unwittingly, manifesting the absence of serious diplomacy by the American government. And from what you observed in the reaction, the people on the floor of the General Assembly when this was said, can you fairly state that that is a credible conclusion? I think so.

And I think, again, this is the language of genocide, even if it was directly tied to a regime. Nevertheless, it is the language of genocide. And Trump perhaps thinks that he gets something out of constantly shocking people or willing to go to these type of lengths. But I think it's also interesting to see a certain discipline on the Iranian side in terms of not playing the game of spending too much time reacting to those statements, but instead of keeping their eyes on the ball of what actually is happening. And we are in a situation right now, I would say, in which the really, Realities on the ground are so obscure, it's very difficult to get reliable data on what actually is happening. I mean, you constantly hear talk from the administration that the trade has been open and that X amount of oil is flowing.

And then you can at the same time see folks from the industry who are tracking these things, some of them agreeing with this and some of them fundamentally disagreeing. So we're in this information, misinformation space right now that it's just very difficult to get a full sense of what is actually happening on the ground. And Trump is a key reason as to why there is so much confusion. Has he come anywhere near achieving any of the goals that he established for himself, along with Prime Minister Netanyahu at the war's start? No, not a single strategic objective of the United States. has been achieved or is even close to being achieved. Instead, you're seeing a tremendous amount of energy being spent on praising themselves for what at most will likely be a tactical success,

which is that, yes, there is more oil flowing from the Strait of Hormuz now than it was 40 days ago and that it has been steadily growing. But there's a lot of caveats that need to be added to this picture to fully understand what is happening. First of all, the I banias are not currently calculating that they need to do much. I think that calculation may very well change very soon, but we're not seeing a scenario in which the banias are trying, but failing to stop that traffic. That's one. Secondly, the cost of this operation is just astounding. We don't have the full numbers from it, but I did talk to a U.S. service person about a week ago who told me that we're just not taking into account the

tremendous amount of cost it takes for the U.S. Air Force for all of these naval ships to do this degree of escorting to make sure that they do get five, six, seven, eight million barrels a day out of the strait of hormones. Remember that before the war, there was a very valid argument that was even used by people inside the administration that said, why is the United States paying for energy security for China? Because it's not the United States that is buying this oil coming out of this trade of hormones. So by providing for the security of this rate, the U.S. is actually underwriting the cost for China and making it very cheap. In fact, it costless for the Chinese to get their energy out of the Persian Gulf because the U.S.

is paying for that cost. And that was an argument that was being used as to why the U.S. actually needs to start leaving the Middle East militarily, because why should we be subsidizing Chinese oil imports? Whatever that cost was, it is probably 10 to 20 times larger now, because now the United States is not only providing that escort, is flying all of these airplanes, all of these naval ships, et cetera, to just make sure that a much, much small. amount of ships are safe as their passageing. But there's even efforts right now to what I think is called drudging. It's not my area of expertise. They're trying to make some of the seabed deeper in certain parts of the strait in order to open that for a new kind of a channel in the strait.

Because, you know, it is a very shallow straight at the end of the day. Can you just imagine the environmental impact and the cost of that. And none of this is being spoken about publicly. That's part of the cost of making sure that you have a traffic in the or a flow of oil in the strait that is what perhaps up to 50% of what it was before. There's a cost to it and that cost is just never being spoken to that. Trita, in light of what you just said about the U.S. is effectively paying for the security costs for China makes me think, we already know that Trump doesn't know what he's doing. Now we know for sure that Hegset and Scott Bessent don't know what they're doing. This whole thing is just astounding at the end of the day. It was a huge mistake

to go into this war. I can understand that there's a sense of comfort in the administration because by opening up the strait to a various degree, they believe that they have achieved the scenario in which the cost for the Iranians are much higher than it is for the U.S., because the Iranians still have tremendous difficulty getting their ships through because of the blockade. But all of this is coming at a cost as well. This is not cheap. This is certainly not free.

And its sustainability is highly questionable. And if it ends up becoming a war of attrition, which it may very well end up being, then the Iranians, yes, they're going to face a lot of challenges. there are a lot of difficulties for them, but it is also not going to be sustainable for the United States to keep aid, this level of engagement in the straits, combined with all of these different pressures

that are now being put in other countries, to force them to go along with extraterritorial sanctions, forced them to stop Iranian airplanes, passenger airplanes, civilian airplanes, from landing in their airports. You have to understand that whenever the US does something like that, it is expending a degree of its political capital with these countries. And by that, it cannot expend that same political capital for all other American priorities.

So we're sacrificing a tremendous amount of other priorities, many of them probably much more important than this issue, for the sake of tripling down on a war that should never have been started in the first place. Now, I know, as I mentioned earlier, that you and I heard President Posashkin and Foreign Minister Arachi last Thursday at a hotel not far from where I am now. But I want to listen, I want you to listen to something he said over the weekend on one of the talk shows. The question is, are you preparing for this war to resume?

Here's his answer, Chris, cut number five. Are you preparing for this war to resume? We are fully prepared for the time, for the war to be resumed. resumed. And I repeat, we stand firm in the face of any new aggression, even it comes to a doomsday war. But at the same time, we are ready, we stand ready for diplomacy. It is up to President Trump to choose. He wanted unconditional surrender in the previous war in two days, and now it's eight months that they are fighting with no result. A new aggression would be certainly the same. We are fully prepared for that.

We have learned our lesson from the two previous wars, and we have corrected our tactics. We have changed our tactics, and we are fully prepared to do that. Do you think he meant treated when he said, even if it comes to a doomsday war, I'm almost afraid of your answers. He talking about nuclear weapons? Yes, I've heard this now from the Iranian side

that they already have prepared plans for what they will do in case the United States or Israel uses nuclear weapons against Iran. The first decision is they are not going to be the next Japan, meaning Japan capitulated after the use of the nuclear weapons. Some data suggested that they capitated actually before, but nevertheless in this specific context, it means that the Iranians will not capitulate. even if nuclear weapons are used. And then they will go towards a level of escalation that goes beyond anything we have seen,

such as, for instance, unleashing militias in Iraq that would just run over Kuwait and take that country, potentially also leading to regime change in Bahrain. And that essentially we will see the redrawing of the political map in the region as a response to either the use of nuclear weapons or potentially even lower levels of escalation. And I think this is something that really should worry us because this should also worry Iranians, of course, use of nuclear weapons would of course be disastrous and so many different levels. But I think it suggests that we are now entering an era or a phase in all of this in which

we no longer have control on either side of the escalation. Everything that has happened so far, escalatory-wise, has actually been calibrated. It has been careful not to go too far. Trump, for instance, did not let the Israelis in on the second round of the war because he didn't trust them, knowing that they would escalate beyond what the U.S. was comfortable with at that time. But we may now be entering if we get into this arena. It may happen before the use of nuclear weapons, in which the escalation control is. essentially lost and we have uncontrollable escalation on all sides i mean this is really uh really

terrifying that as you pointed out in uh one of your very fine uh interviews in the past two or three days trump has tried uh bombing blockade sanctions what's left nuclear i think this is part of the problem a madman he can't he can't recognize when he's made a profound error he's willing to slaughter innocence so that he can claim that some sort of a bizarre grotesque macabre victory judge i do have to say uh folks i talk to in the administration say that no the nuclear issue is completely off the table that it is not something that is seriously being discussed two caveats to that that I think we nevertheless have to assess. Yes, that may be true, but that does not mean that it also prevents the Israelis from using nuclear weapons. So even if the U.S. actually is not

seriously considering it's off the table as the president, even as publicly, does not mean that it won't happen because the Israelis may make their own decisions on this. Secondly, whatever the administration is saying in terms of it being off the table, it nevertheless does not satisfy the conversation because he keeps on using language that is genocidal that seems to suggest that he is actually considering it. And it's that ambiguity, this contradictory information that I think Trump thrives on. He likes to put it to essentially create such instability and insecurity in this situation by giving this kind of contradictory information. And that nevertheless leads to many different things,

one of them being, of course, that people do not take his denials of the use of nuclear force seriously. But he also means that whatever he tries to achieve diplomatically, the other side simply doesn't take his words seriously. They don't trust him. And he's done such a good job in making sure that he's perceived as untrustable. And that makes it really difficult to have any de-escalation from this situation. It almost reminds me of that conversation between Nixon and Kissinger. Who knows if it ever actually happened in which Kissinger says,

Mr. President, they're going to think you're crazy. And he goes, that's what I want them to think. Yeah. Yeah, this is. I don't know if Trump is that smart as to a man and plot that this, with Trump, it may just be instinctual that he's so over the top. Yes, exactly. It's one thing to have a simulated madman theory is a completely different thing

to actually be a madman. And again, we don't know for certain exactly which ones it is. But I think something that is oftentimes forgotten in this scenario is that, yes, that may actually be useful in certain scenarios in wartime. But once you actually want to de-escalate and move towards diplomacy, then that strategy becomes disastrous. Because it means that whatever you are offering the other side, whatever incentives you're trying to give them whatever promises you give them about what you're not going to do,

etc. They simply will not take it seriously. They think that they cannot afford to take it seriously. And that makes any deal making so much more difficult. And perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that at the end of the day, the administration has failed to achieve any major deal so far. What was the reaction at the UN when President Posachian touched the third rail of international politics by stating publicly and in front of an enormous audience what a lot of us already believe, namely that Israel has nuclear weapons. And he said it in such a profound way. We have the inspectors, because we signed the treaties, they have the nuclear weapons, they signed no treaties, they have no inspectors, but we know they have. And I wish he had said

they stole the technology from the U.S., but he didn't go that far. But what was the reaction when he acknowledged this when he threw the bullet down to Benjamin Netanyahu, who cowardly wouldn't pick it up. Yeah. So I don't think, frankly, there were much of a reaction to it, Judge, because at the end of the day, it is not a secret in any way, shape, or form that the Israelis have nuclear weapons. There's not a secret, that there is a bit of an odd situation that there are no inspectors at all in Israel, and that Israel, who does have nuclear weapons, does not allow inspectors. is feeding the IAA with information that the IEA then uses to demand inspections of Iran. All of that is just kind of baked into the situation.

The big jaw drop would occur the day you have either a European or an American leader, stand at that stadium and call out the Israelis for their nuclear weapons. We're still far away from that day. But that's when the jaws would drop, not because anyone would be surprised to find out that the Israelis have it, but to understand that the pretense is now over, that the U.S. no longer is going to agree to play along with the pretense that the Israeli don't have weapons. Right. Well, you know, if the U.S. ever admits that, then it can't give a nickel to Israel

under federal law, which prohibits providing any aid to any country that has illegal nuclear weapons. Wow. Wow. Wow. I thought the Iranians were very reasonable when they asked for this modified version. This is what we heard President Posetschka talk about at that private meeting to which you and I were invited of the memorandum of understanding. After all, the memorandum of understanding was drafted by a guy by the name of J.D. Vance and it was signed by Donald Trump in the Palace of Versailles and now they want to reconstitute something the Americans drafted, signed, and then rejected. Yeah, so I mean, I have to say going back to what we talked earlier on, as you saw, it is acknowledged that Trump now hates the MOU, but he signed it.

And what does that tell you? He signed an agreement and only three weeks later he hates it. What does that tell you about the amount of thinking that goes in before he actually makes a decision and sign something? With that type of a conduct, it really makes the other side, whichever it is, whether it's the Iran. or the Russians or the Europeans or the Chinese, very hesitant about really relying on anything that Trump signs because apparently he can sign something and hate it three weeks later. How much thinking may have gone into that decision

in terms of really thinking through all the different aspects of an agreement before deciding to sign on to it? So it's just not coming across someone that is a serious interlocutor. And I think this is leading to a scenario in which whatever the diplomacy is trying to achieve right now, both on the Iranian end and on the American end, is just to manage the situation tactically rather than actually getting to a real deal. And this is a problem on the American side as well. The American side is convinced that the Iranians are not going to make a final deal with the U.S. That they're just trying to manage this situation and they're hoping to actually destroy Trump's presidency. And as a result, diplomacy simply will not give Trump the type of closure that he's looking for so he can say, well, this issue, it really is overweight, it's off my desk, I'm going to focus on other things.

And this then is furthering the administration's hesitation to give the type of concessions that are needed to actually get a full deal. So, for instance, how is the administration seriously considering getting a deal with Iranians, demand the mandate? of them to lift their blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and give nuclear concessions if Trump simultaneously is unwilling to lift the blockade that he has posed on the Persian Gulf and on the Iranians. Without concessions on these points, there is not going to be any deal. And there's a huge amount of hesitation on the American side to give these concessions because they believe the Iranians are not going to be serious at the end of the day. They don't trust Trump and that they actually are much more interested in destroying Trump's presidency.

And some of that may not be false at all, but it is also a function of how the experience of the Iranians have been with Trump so far, everything from bombing them twice in the middle of the negotiations to now hating an agreement three weeks after he signed it. You know, he's such a simpleton. Maybe if they just remove the name memorandum of understanding, but make those other points, which were so far, fair, he'd find it attractive. I don't know. Which side can outlast the other if this becomes a, if this stalemate continues? Well, first of all, I think we have to recognize such a stalemate is a lose-lose situation. This is costing the Iranians a tremendous amount. They're not selling oil at the level that they could or would have. Otherwise, this is putting a lot of pressure on their

civilian population. One of the first things that will happen, mindful of the fact that so many airplanes are now grounded and they can't fly to other countries. It's not just the exchange of individuals, but also medicine is already now starting to be reported of creating shortages in Iran. So this is costing the Iranians a tremendous amount. There's no doubt about that. But it is also costing the U.S. a lot. As I mentioned earlier on, the cost of just imposing, first, the blockade combined with this military

escort of every ship that goes out, combined with... Insurance costs adding 15 to 20 cents to each dollar right now is just it is intolerable in the long run. And both sides are playing this game that will just impose such a tremendous cost on both sides. And perhaps the Iranians will be able to outlast the US. Perhaps the American side would be able to outlast the US. But you know what would happen then? The side that feels that it is actually losing on the stalemate is not. not going to back down. It's going to escalate because both sides still have plenty of escalatory

options. So even if they think they can outlast the other side, they're miscalculating what the other side will do when they're being outlasted, which is they're not going to surrender, not going to back down. They're going to counter-escalate, and then the situation will get even worse. Right. I can't thank you enough for your time, treat. I also have to thank you for your substack, which I find so helpful, so informative, and I encourage all of our viewers who want to be able to dive deeply into an understanding of this terrible problem that Trump and Netanyahu have created to go to treataparcy.substack.com, and you'll find the same terrific analysis and information that I rely on and that many of us in this business rely on. You're a hero,

Trita, and I thank you very much for it, my dear question. Thank you so much. It's really, really appreciate it. Thank you. Sure. Sure. Hope to see you again soon. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Sure. Coming up, if you're watching us live in 93 minutes at 4 o'clock Eastern on all of this. And by the way, he was also in the UN General Assembly when these statements were. were made, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.