Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson : Troops on the move! Is the US Empire about to strike?

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

Larry Johnson : Troops on the move! Is the US Empire about to strike?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? 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, May 5th, 2026, Larry Johnson will be with us in just a moment on. The Americans and the Israelis are coming. But first this. Even if things go back to normal, the damage is already done. We're staring down the barrel of a massive energy crisis. Shattered supply chains and even potential food shortages.

It's enough to make you stop and think, as my family actually prepared for what comes next? These days we all need to stock up on stuff, like storable food, water filtration, and backup generators, but most of us haven't done it. Well, now is a great time to get started because my Patriot Supply, America's original Patriot Preparedness Company, is making it easy with their family preparedness starter packs. Each kit gives you an emergency food supply that feeds your family. for a full week, plus the essentials you'll need in a real emergency, like off-grid cooking, water

filtration, and backup power supply, all for as little as $100 a person. It's in stock now and ready to ship today at preparewithajudge.com. Take this one simple affordable step to make sure your family is prepared with all the essentials. Go to prepare withajudge.com to see everything you need. That's prepare with the judge.com. Larry Johnson, welcome here, my dear friend. Thank you for the double and by Friday, triple duty this week. Everybody's betting on your shirts, as you know. Is President Trump still counting on negotiations to end the war or slash stalemate or whatever you want to call it in Iran? No, no. The word I'm getting out of the United Arab Emirates.

This is from someone who is in a position to know who has good contacts in the government. That they've been told by U.S. sources that the attack will come on 7 May against Iran. So all of what we're witnessing right now, the political theater that's taking place at the White House, the pretense where Marco Rubio is outside, oh, we're all about defense. We're not offense, forgetting the fact that they launched. a surprise attack on Iran on the 28th of February. You know, completely unjustified, completely illegal. But now they're wanted to take the attitude that, oh, it's Iran that's doing the illegal thing.

And, you know, here's Marco Rubio, who should know better, but he ignorantly claims that this is an international waterway. It is not. It is 12 miles out is, it was nation's limits. And that 12 miles stretches right into the middle of, the strait of Hormuz. Oman has the other half. So it is not, that area is actually not international waters under, it's not covered by international

law. Who side is Oman on in this? Iran. Iran and Oman are working now closely together on this. And so they've been coordinating. Remember, Amman tried to play a mediator. It was Amman who got betrayed by the United States. They had just held what the Amman thought was productive meetings on the

26th, and then they came with the Washington for a meeting, and then came out thinking, oh, boy, you know, we've got, we're going to be in business on March 2nd. We're going to be talking peace. And it was the next day that the United States launched the attack on Iran. So this is, the president chose Marco Rubio to make his daily statement from the press room, and he was up there. I just looked at the screens outside my office here. He was up there for about 90 minutes, I'm sure, enjoying all of it.

Where's J.D. Vance these days? Is he still arguing against more war? Yeah, I would assume that he is, but he's probably getting the mushroom treatment, you know, keep him in the dark and covered with manure. So it is, you know, I see why they trotted Rubio out because he's, quote, Secretary of State, although he's not been involved with any of the negotiations to try to bring an end to this. And they're using him for cover. They're going to great lengths to insist that, oh, Operation Epic Fury, yeah, man, that ended. That ended at the 60-day mark.

That is done. No more epic fury for us. But now we're talking about Project Freedom. And we're going to go to the United Nations and ask the United Nations to condemn Iran. Now, none of this would have happened if the United States had not, and with Israel, carried out an unjust, illegal, surprise attack on Iran that killed its top political leadership. and killed 168 young ladies. You know, and the Iranian people are justifiably outraged. They keep pushing this mythology that they're radical clerics.

You know what? The version of Islam that is practiced in Iran is far more moderate compared to that, which is carried out by our Saudi allies, the Sunnis with the Islamists that are radical that have carried out 80% of the terrorist attacks. over the last 30 years. You know, that's not Iran. That's Saudi Arabia. But yet, we overlook Saudi Arabia because they're our ally.

Right. This thing is so sick and twisted. What will outrage people? What will happen on May 7th? Will it be all jets and bombs and missiles or will it be ground troops? It might be ground troops. I wouldn't put it past them to be that foolish. The military leadership has advised against it, but we can't rule out that one of the things that they've been ferried over on the C-17s and the C-5s that have been flying in are helicopters, pave-hawks, to insert some either special operations forces on Carg Island and or Keshem Island.

But, you know, if they do that, it'll be a suicide mission for those forces. They won't have protection, and the Iranians will bombard them with drones and short-range ballistic missiles. And it will just, it'll be an untenable situation. So, but still, the only primary means of attack the United States have is still air power. We can't put our ships in within the 200-mile range, otherwise they're going to get attacked. They'll be sunk. And so the- Is there still no.

Army or Marine General there with sufficient combat experience to command troops on the ground? I mean, would an Admiral be sending in special forces? An Admiral could see, this is the command structure right now as it exists. You've got the Joint Forces Commander. That is Admiral Brad Cooper. He is the Central Command Commander. But for this particular operation for Epic Fury, and I'm presuming now for a Project Freedom,

you've got him as Joint Forces Commander, then you have the Combined Forces Aviation Component Commander, which is an Air Force General, and the Combined Forces Maritime Component Commander, which is an Admiral. So so far, to my knowledge, they have not selected a Combined Forces Ground Component Command. And they're not going to conduct any kind of major ground operation unless they have selected someone who would be either an army or Marine general.

Because Air Force guys, they're great at flying planes. They don't know anything about the land operations. And most admirals don't really know about land operations. The SEAL community, they're good at raids. But in terms of anything larger than that, no. So we don't really have a ground forces option either. It's not to say they're not going to try it. They may try something that crazy.

What are they going to target with missiles and bombs? I mean, the last time the president spoke about this was when he made his wild claim about destroying bridges and power plants. Yeah. They'll target nuclear power plants. They'll target other power plants that are producing electricity, via coal or... Well, that would be a war crime if they target civilian electricity. Not that they care, but...

But they don't care. You know, killing civilians is their thing. That's why they back the Israelis so ardently. There will be significant civilian infrastructure will be attacked. Iran's going to respond in kind. Iran has already... They've got the targets set up and ready to go. They've avoided what they have done in the last now 48 hours.

they've launched two attacks on targets inside the United Arab Emirates. That was provoked by the United Arab Emirates outwardly coming out in full embrace and endorsement of Israel. They accepted Israeli Iron Dome, one Iron Dome missile defense system. Apparently, it didn't work. It was their one major oil port, which is on the Gulf of Oman, was hit yesterday with an Iranian. I don't know if it was missile or drone. drone, but it sure put up a big explosion, set the place on fire. And if the Iron Dome was used there, it failed. So, but the United Arab Emirates had become very open in their support for

Israel and the United States. And it goes to point that MBZ, you know, Muhammad bin Zayed, Al-Han, this guy is in the Epstein files. This guy was having... Wait, wait a minute. Who is this? He's the president of the, yeah, MBZ, they call him. He's the president of the UAE. He's in the Epstein files as one of the perpetrators. So, yeah, yeah, that's who we're lining up to side with, you know, a pederast. Did Mrs. Aedleson and her colleagues put pressure on President Trump, or was he going to do this all along?

Oh, no, I'm sure this is in response to pressure he's been getting. It's been unrelenting. them the likes, not only Miriam Edelson, the other, you know, Rupert Murdoch, I'm sure. Then you look at you get the Jack Keens and the Keith Kellogg's and the Lindsey Graham's and the Richard Blumenthal's. You know, there's a whole cast and crew. They can't let Iran off. But, you see, Iran withstood the United States and Israel for, you know, nine weeks. So yesterday, Steve Whitkoff and his group announced the addition of a new negotiator, this guy, Nick Stewart, who's an arch Zionist.

But there's not going to be any more negotiations. Why would they have gone through this charade? Yeah, Iran is, Iran's laid out its final plan. It's added to its 10-point plan that it had sent, added four additional points. And the key point in there is, there is, there's not. not going to discuss anything else to do with nuclear enrichment or any controls on nuclear enrichment until there is a firm peace agreement in place. And then Iran is going to be treated with the respect it deserves as a signatory to the nonproliferation treaty, as someone who's

cooperated with the International Atomic Energy Agency, unlike Israel, Israel who's not a signatory to the NPT, Israel who doesn't allow any IAEA inspections. And Iran's just going to assert a sovereignty. Now, this is, you know, once the United States, once planes lift off with the intent of attacking Iran, Iran's going to retaliate and will retaliate on a massive scale. From where will American planes take off, given the destruction Iran has caused on U.S. basis in the Gulf? Well, there are reports that I can't confirm these independently, that you've got U.S. aircraft, at Aldafra Air Base in Oman,

I mean in just south of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirate, that you have aircraft at Al-Udid in Qatar and that you have aircraft also located at Prince South Air Base. I think more of them would most likely be at the Jordanian base, on Moffat, Muafuk al-Salti.

That, but see, to fly from there, to like Riyadh, that's 825 miles. The combat radius of an F-35 is 500, 600 miles. So that means that plane, even before it gets to Riyadh, is going to have to be refueled. And then it's going to, it can continue on. It can launch one of the jasm's, the joint air, the surface missile.

It's like a cruise missile, because that can then travel another 500, hundred miles, turned back, get air refueled back to Jordan. So Jordan also, I would expect, will be targeted. Iran's had four weeks now to prepare for this. They've tried the negotiation route, but the United States hasn't been interested. How many ground troops, American ground troops, are in the area, Larry, do we know? Yeah, not enough to make a difference.

I mean, there's the report 50,000. There are reports that there's been a significant deployment, of special operations forces that, you know, that would associate with Delta Force, Steel Team 6, that you've got an element of the, you know, like a brigade element

of the 82nd airborne. But these, you know, special operations forces, while they're gifted at doing certain specialized missions, such as a braid, they're not the kind of forces that you'd use to drop in

to hold territory. take and seize something. That would be, it would be a stretch. You've got the 82nd and also you've got the 75th Ranger Battalion. You've got a couple of elements of the 75th Rangers. But these really are, you know, these are minimal forces. They don't have the logistics change in the logistic chains in place to sustain operations. For example, they get dumped on Karg Island or Kempsh Island.

you know, they've got enough ammunition and food to last maybe for 24, 48 hours. Then they've got to get resupplied, and they're going to try to resupply them and what Iran's going to be shooting off ground to air missiles, air defense missiles and other things. Is Trump going to try and steal the nuclear enriched material again after having failed to do so under the guise of the rescue operation a month or so ago? I'm sure that was one of the plans briefed. That is, it is not only highly, very, very risky, and very likely to fail and cause significant casualties,

it's still, that is not going to eliminate Iran's ability to enrich uranium. You know, they've got a stockpile of 60% enriched, while in theory you can construct, you can construct a very clunky, unwieldy nuclear bomb from 60% uranium. But it's just too big, too heavy, it's not manageable. You need something of over 90%.

So far, Iran has shown no inclination to do that. They went to 60% in a way to try to pressure the West to negotiate. But now they realize, you know, the West is not a legitimate or honest negotiator so they are and and they have they haven't concentrated the nuclear material in one place i mean i i don't i don't have access i can't believe that they would do that they would have it scattered distributed make it a difficult target and then go ahead is iran stronger today than it was two or three months ago is it stronger today than it was before the ceasefire started yes yeah no i would argue that

they are because their support from both Russia and China has increased. It has not diminished. They've had time to repair what damage was done, but also to build new, new missiles that are now, they're underground safely and they're in locations that the United States, even with a nuke, could not destroy. So even if the United States or Israel just try to use it, try to use, a nuclear device on one of these locations. Iran, they were built specifically to survive a nuclear attack.

What do you think Russia, they learned? What do you think Russia or China will do if Trump unleashes and Netanyahu joins another massive air assault? Well, you know, as we talked with Ray on Friday, Ray was hoping that Putin's warning to Trump would dissuade Trump from doing this. But I think if they renew the attack, one, we'll get the first clue because based upon what Rubio said today, likely they're going to convene a session of the United Nations Security Council probably tomorrow Wednesday, which will be the 6th, and fully anticipating that Russia and China will veto the resolution that the United States will bring to condemn Iran and to try to force Iran to

cease its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the control over the Strait of Hormuz. And the irony is the United States is going to make an argument that this is piracy while it's the United States itself, according to even Donald Trump's own words, who's been engaged with piracy over the course of the last two weeks with its with its um i call it the symbolic blockade because it really they haven't stopped anything of any substance simply because the united states does not have enough ships will trump call up vladimir putin and and give him a heads up no i doubt that i doubt that at all but but the russians will know it's coming you know Russian and Chinese intelligence, they're monitoring all the different, let's call it,

warnings and indicators of impending U.S. action. We saw some of that yesterday, and I actually, I thought this was before I had heard from my friend in the United Arab Emirates, but you were seeing a number of KC-135s in the air doing air refueling for F-35As, and that may have been just now a prep exercise in in anticipation of what's going to come, probably Thursday, early Friday morning, Tehran time. Do you have any indication from your friends on active duty, not of secret plans? They're not going to tell you that.

Right, right. But of the attitude and mood of the officers and the troops. Yeah, a lot of frustration. You know, early on, they sort of bought into the, notion. This is going to be a quick mission in and out. Well, it's turned out not to be a quick mission. And even the attitude that has leaked out from Admiral Cooper, the head of Sentcom, and then his two, let's call it subordinate commanders, one that commands the aviation wing, one that commands the maritime wing, their attitude is one of, we think this is a mistake. Because they realize,

that if the United States launches this new round of attacks, we're going to use up more Tomahawk cruise missiles, more jasmus, and there are limited supplies of each. There also will further deplete an already depleted air defense system with Patriot missiles and that's. So there were already concerns that they had been, you know, run down to critical levels. And the problem is the United States,

does not have the industrial base in place to rapidly reproduce or replace those munitions, coupled with the fact that China controls the rare earth minerals that are critical for making, for helping build a tomahawk, for helping build a jasm, for helping build a PAC three for the Patriot, to help build a Thad Interceptor. You can't deal without these rare earth minerals, and China's holding back on those. coupled with now, China also is telling the United States, you can take your sanctions and shove it. We're not going to buy by that.

And then on top of it, Russia says, you know what, going forward, anybody wants to buy our oil, you're going to pay for it in yuan, not dollars, yuan. So they're doing everything to really shift away from the U.S., the ability of the U.S. to control the financial fates of other countries. I know you like to discuss economics since you educated me and some of it at our breakfast in Moscow, but what will be the consequences of China not buying U.S. bonds anymore? Yeah. No, this is, we're headed for hyperinflation in this country.

And it'll be a combination of hyperinflation and stagflation. Just this week, we got news that the, They've reached a six-year high level of defaults, basically people not paying their mortgages. So they've stopped paying mortgages and some of it's private, some of its business, real estate. But they haven't seen this since 2020. What was going on in 2020? Oh, yeah, COVID. The emergency we had during COVID.

So, you know, this is significant that when the, you know, what are called foreclosure filings have surged to their highest level. That's just one, if you will, indicator of a sick economy. That's not the sign of a healthy economy. And what we're going to, what we are going to see in the weeks coming, that the price of oil is continuing to spike. What happened is after the initial spike in the early weeks of this war, the Trump administration,

you know, dipped into the Strategic Reserve, It poured out a lot of oil from the Strategic Reserve. That helped then stabilize the price. But now over the course of the last week, I know here in Florida, the price of oil has gone up 43 cents. So before we were like 357, now it's over $4. So it was just hit $4 yesterday. So the United States is, it's not just the United States. The world economy is going to be in severe.

contraction. That process has started. And you're seeing it with aviation. You know, you had the bank, the Spirit Airlines went out of business. You're seeing the triple, quadruple, the price on airfares from what they used to be. Airlines cutting back on flights. All of this is, all of this coalesces and comes and it's going to shrink the economy. So you know what? The advertisement for food prep you did at the outset, yeah, folks, pay attention to that. You're going to actually probably need that. At the risk of you sounding like Phil Giraldi. Does Trump understand any of this? I don't know.

You would, you know, it's a mixed bag, but he appears not to. You know, I guess part of the problem is he's clearly been lied to by the intelligence community. It's not Donald Trump that came up with the notion that we can choke off the Iranian economy, that, you know, the storyline that's going out, the narrative that's being put out there is that the soldiers are not getting paid, so they're unhappy, and they're going to rise up and overthrow the government. That's, that all of that is simply not true. What they're ignoring is that Pakistan, for example,

has opened up six lanes of overland transport into Iran to supply Iran with the goods it needs. Russia is doing the same through the Caspian Sea. And then you got Turkmenistan, which is also a sort of, of food and support. So Iran's not cut off. You know, Iran is not blocked. And in fact, the blockade itself has been a charade. It's not real because the United States does not have enough ships to, if you're going to stop an Iranian ship, then a U.S. Navy ship's going to have to accompany that. Well, there have been 150 Iranian ships that have come out since April 15, at least 150.

The United States doesn't have 15 ships that could be assigned to a mission to intercept. So just do the math. It is 90% well over 90% have got through this so-called blockade, and yet the United States persist in Trump administration persists in line to the American people about what's being accomplished. The hostilities that you say will begin on May 7. Is this sort of a quick and down and dirty?

We're in and out in 90 hours, Donald Trump's special? Or is this going to go on for another two months like the last one did? I think it would go on for two months. No matter what your intention is, remember, the initial intention on 28 February, this is going to be a quick hit. We're going to kill these guys. They're going to rise up. Iran's going to fight back.

And so when Iran starts inflicting serious damage, not only on Saudi, Qatari, and Maradi targets, but on U.S. personnel, U.S. facilities. We have already learned that the damage that was done

to U.S. bases, despite initial claims, oh, they'd barely laid a glove on it, was far more serious than we had been led to believe. So those reports have now come out, and I guarantee you, this next round of attacks

will be far worse than what the United States and Israel experienced in the first five weeks of this war. Larry Johnson, thank you very much. I know you've had a busy day, a busy week, and you have busy days coming up, but you're such a great educator to the audience and to me, to all of us, and we deeply appreciate it. We'll see you on Friday, but we might be seeing you before that. Always got time for the judge.

God bless you, my man. All right. Thank you, Larry. Have a fine evening. Coming up tomorrow, Wednesday, a full day for you at 8 in the month. morning, Gilbert Doctoro, at 10 in the morning from Tehran, Professor Muhammad Miranda. At 11 in the morning, Professor Glenn Deeson, at two in the afternoon, I think he's in China, Pepe Escobar. And at three in the afternoon, we just mentioned him, the great Phil Giraldi. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.