Judging Freedom - INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & RITTER (for McGovern this week) 3-July

Episode Date: July 4, 2025

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Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Music Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, July 3rd, 2025. It's the end of the day for all of us here in the U.S. It's the end of the week. It's time for the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Scott Ritter is here filling in for Ray McGovern who is traveling and giving lectures to the anti-war groups. Scott, what remains of the anti-war groups in Germany, about which more

in a minute. Scott, to you first, what is the current status of the special military operation in Ukraine, particularly in light of the Trump announcement of a cutback in the delivery of certain artillery shells and missiles? Well, I'll just take my guidance from the conversation that Vladimir Putin just finished having with Donald Trump, I think in the past two hours. Russia will not deviate one iota from its goals and objectives when it comes to solving the root causes of this conflict. And Russia has articulated this quite clearly

to the United States what these are, inclusive of Russia's territorial demands, inclusive of Russia seeking a massive reduction in the Ukrainian army, a change in the Ukrainian government, no NATO membership. Basically, Russia's not yielding on any of these fundamental points. And based upon the readout, Trump didn't push back.

So when you combine what is a clear statement of political will on the part of the Russians with battlefield reality, which has the Russians continuing to advance across the entire line of contact, continuing to pound Ukrainian industrial infrastructure, military sites at will. And now the news that the United States is not gonna be providing Ukraine with critical ammunitions, some of the most critical, the Patriot air defense missiles being first and foremost, this is a desperate need on the part of Ukraine for these missiles.

Without a continuous resupply, Ukraine's stockpiles will reach zero very soon. Then they're literally defenseless with no opportunity to defend themselves. The Patriot is the only system that can shoot down, not all the time, but it's capable of engaging and downing certain categories of Russian ballistic missiles. You eliminate the Patriot and these missiles will hit any target they want any time they want. And that will be devastating for the Ukrainians, but also artillery munitions, high Mars,

the particular kind of special kit to the rocket launchers. These are being denied, why? Because the United States has basically taken its own stockpiles down to dangerously low levels, zero in some cases, making the United States incapable of fighting and sustaining a winning war against a peer-level opponent like China and the Pacific. And this is fatal to Ukraine. This will be, I mean, Ukraine's already a hospice patient, but this

can go on for a long time. I think the denial of these munitions to Ukraine puts the hospice patient in the bed on life support. And it's just a question of when the plug is going to be pulled. Larry, you did some terrific research on exactly what was being held back. Is this symbolic, substantive or because we really are running low of our own supplies? Oh no, we're running low. What the special military operation has exposed is that the United States is no longer capable of ramping up production to engage in an industrial modern war. Think about what you just said. That is monumental.

Well, I used the statistic before, but it's noteworthy. Right now we can build an F-35 in 18 to 24 months. It cost, I think it works out to be like $200 million for that. Well, go back 80 years. In 1944, we were building B-24 Liberator bombers. We could assemble it in 63 minutes, build the and have the plane ready to fly in 18 hours. So we've gone from that to these very technologically sophisticated, highly complex, dependent upon rare earth minerals coming out of China and spending literally hundreds of millions and billions of dollars on stuff that breaks and gets destroyed more. So what we discovered is like with the Patriot missiles, Lockheed Martin produces 550 of those a year.

But then we got out in the battlefield conditions and found out, God, Russia's just fired off 50 ballistic missiles, Ziskanders. And so Ukraine's going to have to fire at least two Patriot missiles or maybe three for each one of those Ziskanders. So let's see three times 50. Yeah, that's 150. See, we're not real good at math. That's the problem. Scott, what do you think Trump thought he was going to accomplish talking to Putin? Does he really think he can talk Putin

into some kind of a standstill? When Putin's goals have been clear, consistent, systematic, and unchanging since before this started, going back to the agreement in Istanbul. We know we don't, I haven't seen a readout from the White House yet. I've seen Peshkov's readout

and I've seen Ushakov's readout to Peshkov, the press secretary, and Ushakov, the foreign policy advisor to Putin. I don't think Trump, according to this readout, Trump wasn't pressing Putin for anything. Putin made a clear statement. It seems that the focus of this effort was a re-engagement. If you remember, the Trump administration halted the ongoing negotiations that were taking place. And they did it because I think Trump

was frustrated with Putin. You remember he was talking about how he had a Putin problem and how he may have to show Putin and sanction Putin and talking tough. And I think Putin just went, so what what and I think Trump's at the point now where he realizes that that's just not sound that's not a sound approach and so what appears to be happening is that Trump reached out to talk and let's look at the what they talked about Thursday spent a lot of time talking about Iran in the Middle East and I think Trump is waking up to the fact

that Iran is a problem that isn't going to be solved unilaterally by the United States militarily, that to avoid the kind of war that Trump promised the American people he wasn't going to get entangled with, he'll need help from Russia. And Russia's prepared to provide that help. So I think they had an initial discussion upon that, on Gaza. You

also see them talking about, you know, just the sort of normalization things. I was taken in by one of the final points where they want to exchange movies that show each other in a positive light. You know, this is critical. Maybe it's, you know, Maybe Trump is finally being advised by people saying that we have a Russophobia problem here in the United States, that for too long the US government, the media, and others have been describing Russia in very crude, inaccurate terms so that the American people have a skewed or fundamentally flawed vision of what

Russia reality is. And so they're talking about this, this kind of stuff. I, I, what I saw was a, a lot of talk about everything but Ukraine. And, um, I think that is a sign that Trump is getting refocused on the absolute or strategic requirement of the United States, having good relations with Russia. Larry, what do you think Putin and Macron talked about? And is that as a result of the Ukrainian use of French missiles that may have killed Russians? Well, you know, I think really what's going on is the West has awakened that to the fact that they've now blinded themselves with respect to the status of Iran's enrichment program.

Because previously, you know, I don't think it's a mere coincidence that the initial judgment of the intelligence community in 2003 that Iran was not building a nuke coincided with Iran accepting IAEA inspections and signing on to the NPT. I believe that's when they signed on to the Nonproliferation Treaty. For a very important reason, IAEA provided intelligence, first official intelligence, about the status of Iran's nuclear program. But we also now, thanks to reporting by Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté on the gray zone, that foreign intelligence organizations, the Brits and Mossad in particular, but I'd be willing to wager that the US was also involved, had penetrated the IAEA and was also passing on information and able to collect information that went beyond the IAEA

mission. So now all of a sudden Iran's kicked them out and you know the United States and Israel said you gotta let them back in. What leverage do we have? You know what we're gonna come bomb you again? They're not afraid of that. And so these, and remember, wasn't it about 10 days ago that Donald Trump, they asked a question about Putin and the smart ass that he is, he popped off about, I told Putin he needs to worry about his own problem.

We don't need his help on Iran. Oh yeah, how about now? Now he needs Russia's help with Iran to try to keep Iran on the IAEA program. And Russia's sure will help, but there's gonna be, there's a price for the help. And Putin's no fool when it comes to these negotiations. And the same thing with the conversation with Macron.

Again, Macron, what he was really angling for was to see if Russia was softening it all on the latest demands. And Putin, in fact, said, hey, we gotta negotiate over the root causes of this war, and you have to accept the new territorial realities. And that means wherever Russian boots are, that's now Russian territory.

I got to play this clip for you. I don't know if you've seen it because we've played it a few times. It came out after each of you were on with me earlier in the week, but it's really a head scratcher. This is Senator John Kennedy being interviewed by someone at CNN, and what he says is truly astounding, particularly the last three words that he uses. He's talking about a briefing that the United States Senate was given. You'll note the conspicuous absence of the person

who by law is supposed to be the chief briefer. She's not there. But what he says at the end is mind boggling. Chris, cut number seven. Before Israel and America did what we did, Iran was within days of having a nuclear weapon. Within days? Within days. That's what they told you in this briefing? Within days. Sir, just to kind of circle back and put a finer point on this, the days that they were to getting a bomb, that seems to be different from what Tulsi Gabbard

had testified to in March. Was there a new assessment? Was that the Israeli assessment? Was that a new American assessment? Was that information new to you in this briefing? It was new to me. This was a good briefing. It was one of the best I've ever attended.

I mean, Rubio, Head Seth, Latcliffe, General Cain, they didn't bring out a script and read carefully from it. They just looked us in the eye and talked to us. The assessment that said that Iran was within days of having a bomb, is that Israeli or American assessment? I don't know. Surprise you, Scott. I don't know. And I guess I didn't ask.

Well, you know, again, I'm not going to judge. I've been very clear. I wrote an article that was published in Consortium News in October of last year. That said Iran is days away from having a nuclear weapon. And people are like, well, we've heard that for 20 years. Well, you didn't hear it from the Iranians. And that's the difference.. Well, you didn't hear it from the Iranians. And that's the difference. You see, in October of last year, the Iranians were saying they were days away from having nuclear weapons capability.

And I'm talking about the IRGC general in charge of nuclear security. I'm talking about the former head of the Iranian nuclear program. I'm talking about senior advisors to the supreme leader, senior members of the National Security Committee of the Iranian nuclear program. I'm talking about senior advisors to the supreme leader, senior members of the National Security Committee of the Iranian Parliament. They all said Iran has all the components,

already has all the components necessary to produce a nuclear weapon other than the fissile material and a political decision. That was October. And I said at the time, this is a very dangerous posture for Iran to take because what it does is it feeds the paranoia of people in the Trump administration, people in Israel, that it allows them to justify an attack on Iran. And again, Iran doubled down on stupid in my book by making even additional claims in January.

It got to the point, Professor Morandi, who I respect dearly, had to acknowledge upon questioning when I was in a debate with him. He said, yes, we have positioned ourselves to be a nuclear weapons threshold state. Boom, end of story. Once you're a threshold state, you might as well be a nuclear state. And it doesn't take much convincing even to, you know, brain dead idiot like Senator Kennedy to suddenly realize. And it doesn't have to be an Israeli assessment. I believe it was an American assessment. I believe it was Tulsi Gabbard's assessment. If you read the totality of her statement, she said that we have no evidence that Iran has, you know, made the decision to make a nuclear bomb.

That's true. We have no evidence that the Supreme Leader has reversed his nuclear bomb. That's true. We have no evidence that the Supreme Leader has reversed his fatwa. That's true. But later on, she said, we are concerned about the 60% enriched uranium because you're just one enrichment cycle away from weapons grade. We're concerned about the uranium, the ability to convert the uranium hexafluoride at 92% into uranium metal. We're concerned about that. We're concerned about other things. This is all true. You didn't have to work hard to find a justification to bomb Iran and you didn't need the Israeli intelligence.

Okay. Tulsi wasn't there, but she should, but I'll just, we'll say this. The thing that mitigates any justification for this is that the United States had in April 14th, I believe, begun engaging with Iran about resolving these issues. And we know around June 10th that Iran had committed to signing a treaty, which they would commit by treaty, which means verification, by the way.

Treaties just don't happen in the blue. So verifiably commit to not ever having a nuclear weapon. They would allow US inspectors to participate in the IAEA inspections and to participate in the verification of the non-nuclear weapons. They would get rid of their 60% enrichment, commit to a 3.75% cap, reduce the number of centrifuges they had. bottom line is the iranians said any fear you had that we posed an eminent threat will now be Resolved and all of those terms that you just articulated were blown away by trump figuratively and literally on june 21st and 22nd

On june 12th and 13th. Well, all right, whenever the Israelis attacked and then the Americans. Right. Yes, and I mean, it's amazing how stupid, because now we have a situation where the Iranians, again, if I were advising this Supreme Leader, I would say, please don't play with fire because this war happened because of you,

because of your stupidity, because of the words you said. stupidity, you know, because of the words you said. So be very careful with your words. But when Professor Morani speaks of now Iran be able to go forward without anybody knowing, I'm here to tell you right now, we will know. How does Israel get the penetration they did of Iran without having the Mossad, you know, in important areas, they penetrated the secure communications of the Supreme Leader and his inner circle

so they could track them. The CIA has a mission center in Azerbaijan working with the Israelis with the same level. And they have to know that if they make a decision to pursue a nuclear weapon, we will know and we will act. I think they should instead focus on rehabilitating the IAEA to get rid of Rafael Grossi, to change the way the IAEA works. Israel should never be allowed to interface with the IAEA on any level.

When I was there, I met with Israeli ambassadors, I met with Israeli intelligence officers about Saddam Hussein's nuclear program, together with the IAEA officials, the head of the IAEA action team. There's a reason Iran wasn't allowed, Iraq wasn't allowed to have a nuclear program. And Israel was concerned about that. But the question everybody asks is why is Israel here? We know they have a vested interest, but shouldn't they join the NPT? This is where I think Iran should put its focus on rehabilitation, getting safeguards where they are and getting back on the track of three point

seven five percent enrichment. No threat of a nuclear75% enrichment, no threat of a nuclear weapon. But Iran was attacked. They have every right to be upset with the way things are going. Larry, Trump is hosting Netanyahu this week, starting Monday, right after the 4th of July holiday. Do you think he understands that Netanyahu will never be satisfied until Iran is reduced to a Libya or a Syria. Yeah, no, no. And I think Trump frankly is complicit with it.

You know, he knew that this attack on the 13th was going to take place, which is why, you know, when it looked like it had succeeded in decapitating the Iranian regime, he was out all smiles. I knew everything. I knew the exact time. I knew it all. He was very insistent on that. But when it turned out it didn't decapitate and deactivate the Iranian government, when the Iranian government started retaliating and its missiles for shredding Israeli air defense. Remember Trump then did a turnabout. He became Sergeant Schultz from Hogan's Heroes. He knew nothing. I didn't know anything about this.

Oh boy, this is all a mystery to me. And the fact that he allowed it to go on two days before they were supposed to meet, US and Iran was supposed to meet again in negotiating the agreement that Scott was describing so, you know, this was This is not about the new so I maintain this is about regime change Because if the concern was about an Islamic country having a nuke well you ever heard of Pakistan and in fact when it comes to terrorist attacks out of Pakistan and in fact when it comes to terrorist attacks out of Pakistan Compared to Iran Iran is not the number one sponsor of terrorism in the world

You can make a case that Pakistan is gee Who were they hosting up and up in a one city in Pakistan? Oh, that would be Osama bin Laden And this recent terrorist attack into Kashmir. Where did that group come from? Pakistan. So terrorism, Islamic country with a nuke, that's not what this is all about. This is about taking out Iran. And Israel conveniently forgets that from 1980 through 1986, Israel was selling weapons to Iran to help Iran fight against Iraq.

You know, there's a little bit of history that people like to ignore. Scottie, what do you think Netanyahu is going to try and get from Trump next week? Well, first of all, you have to understand that every time Netanyahu visits the United States, there's a domestic political agenda for him to wrap himself to be cloaked in the flag of America, which implies the support of America. Netanyahu postures himself inside Israel as the only person capable of guaranteeing American support. I mean, to be able to say, hey, because of me, I got seven B-2 bombers to fly over Iran and drop bunker busters on their facilities.

That's a big win for Netanyahu. So he wants to maintain the image of the closeness between himself and Trump. I also think that Netanyahu, we don't know what damage Iran did, but speculation informed speculation and I happen to agree with it, Iran did a lot of damage to Israel and that Israel is scared. And so I think Netanyahu is going to be looking for strategies to manage this.

How do you continue to maintain pressure on Iran without having to cross the line of departure again because I mean, it's an amazing statement that came out today from the IRGC. I don't know if you saw it. You said that none of the missile cities that Iran had built where they store the best of the best missiles they have, you said none of those were activated. We used our old missiles, our old stores. We didn't use any of the new good stuff, he said. So let me know.

Chris, can you put up Larry's map showing all the places in now? Look at that. Yeah, I mean, that and now you're telling us that that damage was done using the old stuff, Scott. Using the old stuff and against a fully functional ballistic missile defense system. I mean, people can talk about all they want about the exhaustion of missiles, et cetera. Israel never exhausted their missiles. Had this war gone, they would have. But my point in saying this is that

it wasn't that the missile defense system broke down through a lack of available interceptors. It was that the Iranian missiles overwhelmed the system. And later on, as they fired the more advanced versions, and remember, the most advanced versions they fired appeared to be old Shahab III liquid-fueled missiles with modern separating warheads. I think the Imaad and the Ghider H are two with cluster warheads. What does that mean for those of us unschooled in the technical understanding of missiles? Well, if we're talking about a hypersonic missile, you're looking at a missile that's

going to not only take off at high speed, see a ballistic missile does a ballistic trajectory. A hypersonic missile is capable of high-speed flight, so ballistic missile does a ballistic trajectory. A hypersonic missile is capable of high-speed flight, so it's going to deviate off course. It's going to maneuver. Generally speaking, you can do that with liquid fuel, but the best one to use it is with solid fuel. And the Iranians have solid fuel missiles that do this. But a ballistic missile that goes on a ballistic trajectory and then has a separating warhead. So the warhead separates, the booster falls off, actually the booster keeps flying and absorbs interceptor hits. All those interceptor hits you see blowing up in the sky, those are separated boosters being hit because the radars can't differentiate

between the small target and the big target. Nobody talks about that. But the warhead comes in and now the warhead can maneuver. It's got various sensors in it that are looking for their targets. The warhead itself, as it maneuvers, also has its own capability to maneuver and then hyper-accelerate down. So it has a propulsion package on the back of it. But a warhead can also separate and then split into sub-munitions. If you remember, the Orashnik missile that Russia fired against Ukraine was a missile that came in separated,

the booster came in, opened up and it had six warheads, each one of which had six sub munitions. So you saw six separate strikes with six sub munitions hitting down each one. Iran has the same thing. I think the IHAD or the IMAAD missile is that kind, the GADR has same things. Cluster munitions. They also deploy decoys. So you'll see the warhead come in. What's interesting

is it separates and slows down. So there's a breaking mechanism that pops open, slows it down. It deploys decoys and then the decoys go out and you see all the interceptors go out for the decoys because the decoys are superheated, etc. and they're moving on the trajectory that was projected, predicted. Now warhead pops the fins, holds up, decoys go forward, absorb and then you see the warhead go in. Bam! This is the old stuff.

We're talking these are warheads that are like six, 10 years old. The good stuff is still in the missile, the hypersonic missiles, the maneuvering, the extraordinarily accurate systems. Iran hasn't used them. They may have used one or two. There's talk about they came in with a FATA, just to prove a point, FATA being the hypersonic, but I think it was the FATA-1, not the FATA-2.

So Iran hasn't even used its good stuff yet larry Did the iranians damage the israeli defense industry its domestic defense industry Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, they they that's why israel was begging The united states to put this to an end They miscalculated that they really underestimated Iran's both capability for pain as well as its ability to punch back. And, you know, I for the life of me, I don't understand the military planners

because when they sit, you sit down and look at the size differential. So all, all Iran has to do is knock out one international airport and Israel shut down. They have no more commercial flight for civilians. You'd have to go to a military airfield. Israel only has two ports and they are very much dependent upon these container ships which come and deliver food and medicine and other supplies, energy. So it's easy for Iran to knock those out, whereas Israel, hey, they knocked out two or three Iranian airports. Okay, Iran still had 26 other international airports, for starters. Iran, you look at the amount of damage just by comparison that Ukraine has sustained from Russian attacks going now, you know, probably 42 months since the since the war started.

And when you realize that Iran is three times both the geographic size, physical size, and population size of Ukraine. So, man, Israel could, yeah, keep pouring it on, guys. They can cause a lot of damage, but Iran, by virtue of its size, can absorb a lot of damage, whereas Israel, by virtue of its small size, cannot. And when you start, basically, Iran hit their equivalent of the Pentagon,

their equivalent of the CIA, their equivalent of the FBI, their equivalent of the National Security Agency, as well as their equivalent of our national laboratories. So yeah, Iran inflicted some serious damage on Israel. What is Netanyahu going to ask Trump for, Scott, that we haven't already given them? Well, yeah, there's this whole rumor about B2s being given to Israel. I find that treasonous and joking. It's the most advanced piece of equipment, the US military on active duty. I know we have follow-on systems, but highly classified, I mean, extraordinarily classified.

And to turn this over to the Israelis, who have a history of selling our technology and our intelligence to China and Russia, point people to the lobby fighter program back in the 1980s, F-16 technology testbed. We said this is F-16 technology. We don't want to share it with anybody. The next thing you know, testbed. We didn't, you know, we said this is F-16 technology. We don't want to share it with anybody. The next thing you know, a lobby is in China at a research and development facility being reverse engineered by the Chinese because

the Israelis gave it to them in favor for, you know, favors from the Chinese. Jonathan Pollard stole the crown jewels of the U.S. intelligence community. Basically the Bible that had all of the codes around the world, all the frequencies that we were monitoring, what we were getting from them, what their encryption was, how we could break the encryption, all of this, which systems collected it. He stole that, gave it to the Israelis who then turned around and sold it to the Russians in favor of, or the Soviets in favor of, you know, immigration benefits. So Israel has betrayed us across the board. They spy on us. Obama White House was infiltrated with Israeli listening devices, the whole thing. So I don't buy into

this B2 thing. I think that's just a popular. Netanyahu is going to be asking for continued American support. But he's also going to be saying that I believe he wants to avoid conflict. Larry's 100% right. It was Netanyahu who was calling Trump saying, we've got to bring this thing to an end. We can't stand. We can't go another week. He was desperate to bring a war to an end by weeks in.

And that's why Trump did his little charade with the Iranians to set up the conditions of the ceasefire. But I think Netanyahu right now is also worried about his domestic, you know, he just was in court. Trump sent out his ridiculous tweets interfering with the judicial process of Israel threatening sanctions if they dare press forward with their charges of corruption against Netanyahu. I think he's going to be looking for more political support. He's going to be also meeting with members of Congress, getting Congress to use their ability to pressure Israel.

Netanyahu is a survivor. And I think basically this entire trip is going to be about the political survival of Benjamin Netanyahu. Larry, the last word. Oh, I think he's going to look for Trump's help and getting, you know, because they've now lost intelligence access to Iran. So what they need to do is get IAEA back in there.

Because when you run this kind of operation, you expose a lot of intelligence operatives and now to rebuild back that network is going to take some time. Wow. Gentlemen, thank you very much. Thanks for the double duty for both of you. Much appreciated. Have a great patriotic 4th of July weekend. We'll see you both next week.

All right. Thank you, Judge. And I've been with Scott so much today. I think we're gonna start buying furniture together. Yeah. Let's not get carried away. Thank you, guys. At least shirt.

All right. Later, guys. All the away. Thank you guys. Later guys. All the best. All the best. We will be posting some things for you tomorrow, but our live work is concluded because of the Fourth of July holiday. On Monday, July 7th, we'll be back full bore with Alastair Crook at eight in the morning, Ray McGovern at 10 in the morning from Germany,

Larry Johnson at 11.30 in the morning, and probably our buddy Scott Ritter in the afternoon. Thank you for watching. Have a great holiday weekend. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. MUSIC