Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson : US Watches as Houthis Choke Saudis

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Larry Johnson : US Watches as Houthis Choke SaudisSee 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. Fragically, 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 Monday, September 14th, 2006, Larry Johnson joins us from Moscow. Why did the United States stand by and allow the Houthis to take over a very important port that it was of great interest to the Saudis? But first, this. If you're serious about preparedness like I am, head over to preparewithachadge.com right now. Let me tell you why.

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This offer ends on September 30th, so go now to prepare with the judge. Larry Johnson, welcome here, my dear friend. I know you're very busy and deeply appreciate your time and as always and our friendship. By the way, much to my surprise, I did receive a delivery on Saturday morning of a Larry Johnson Hawaiian shirt at my home in New Jersey. Larry, are you still with us? Yeah, I'm here. So you got the shirt. I did get the shirt. Thank you very much. Over the weekend, the Russian military attacked a train station at the border between Ukraine and Poland shortly before or shortly after, it's unclear to me which, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and

former head of sent com and head of the CIA general David Petraeus passed through. Just a coincidence or is the Kremlin sending a message? Larry, can you respond? Yeah, yeah, I hear you now. I'm watching the video. Yeah, you know, it looks like they took out the engine. They didn't take out the passenger cars, but I'm sure that Boris Johnson had to go for a change of underwear after that. And, you know, it's a reminder that Russia takes very seriously these threats coming out of the UK and out of Germany. They essentially recognize that, you know, Russia is at war with at least some of the NATO countries, with Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, despite being no formal declaration. And up to this point, Russia is not shown in willingness to start launching attacks inside those countries.

But if they persist in building missiles and launching those inside Russia, I think the Russians are going to retaliate. So this must tell you, you're the experienced intelligence officer. I'm not. it tells me that Russian intelligence knew exactly who was on that train and what car they were in and when the train would arrive and how they could send a message. Yeah, and taking out the engines, it doesn't kill civilians. It destroys the ability of those trains to run in the future because Ukraine does not have an unlimited supply of the engines. Now, what would be interested to see is if Ukraine is going to try to retaliate in kind against Russian trains.

You know, I spent the weekend coming back from St. Petersburg on a train to Moscow and had traveled up to St. Petersburg a few days prior to that on the train going from Moscow to St. Petersburg. So, you know, those, but I think the key thing to note here is the attack was on the engine, not on the passenger compartments. But do you agree with Alistair that the Russians knew exactly who was on the train and were sending us? Oh, yes. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no doubt. Also, over the weekend, Iran caused substantial damage at a U.S. air base in your own. Jordan, according to Alastair, the damage to helicopters and technical equipment was quite significant. What's your takeaway on this, Larry?

Yeah. You know, the United States tried to pretend, I guess they said it was eight. It was either six or eight F-15s. They quote, had light damage. Yeah, that's, you know, those planes. are very sensitive that you have to have pristine air strips for them to operate on. Otherwise, it could suck up some debris and it could destroy the engines. So the fact that you got lost at least 1,8,10, at least 6 F-15s, and at least four Black Hawk helicopters,

so that significant damage was done. And what makes this even more interesting is that despite Trump's Val a week ago that every time a tanker was attacked, he was going to respond with attacking Iranian tankers. He hasn't fulfilled with that promise. And I think in part because he's fearful that the Iranians can continue to carry out massive strikes on U.S. military facilities. what did the Houthis accomplish over the weekend Larry?

What you're looking at is Trump coming up against the fact that continued U.S. military strikes on Iranian targets has a blowback, has a cost, and not just in terms of military equipment, but also in terms of economic costs, which we're seeing the skyrocketing price today of diesel and, you know,

regular crude. The Brent is up to almost $110 now. Larry, before we get to the Houthis and the takeover of the port, the reason the gasoline is so expensive in the United States is because of President Zelensky, according to Donald Trump, Chris cut number one. Diesel is being driven up by the fact that It's having a hard time coming out of Russia. And that's the case that hurts the world. We've got to stop.

Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia. Let him go after targets, but not diesel fuel, because he's causing a shortage of diesel fuel. This isn't done by the Middle East. This is done by what's happening with Russia and Ukraine. So we spoke to Mr. Zelensky about it. There are plenty of other targets.

Don't hit diesel fuel. Because that's hurting the world. We don't want him to hit diesel field. He's hitting diesel refineries. Anything to put the blame on somebody else. You know, number one, what is the shortage of diesel is directly a result of the shutdown of the oil coming out of the Persian Gulf. The oil from the Persian Gulf is high in sulfur. that high sulfur content is basically treated in four geographic regions in the world.

The Gulf Coast of the United States, which accounted for about 8 to 10 percent of the oil that came out of the Persian Gulf, then India, China, and South Korea and Japan, representing, let's call it the rest of Asia. That sour crude has to go through refineries. that are specifically designed and built to handle sour crude. The sweet crude, which is produced in the United States, like West Texas Intermediate, it doesn't, if you put it through a refinery built to handle that, yes, you can get diesel out of that. But the majority of the diesel comes out of this oil that was coming out of the Persian Gulf. It has nothing to do with Russia.

That's just that that's simply not true. And so what what Trump is doing right now with his attempts to blockade Iran and then his attacks on ships where Iran is reciprocating and not letting any other ships out. And now the shutdown of the East-West pipeline by the Houthis that was running through Saudi Arabia to Yambu, this is exact. the price of diesel around the world. Has nothing to do with Ukraine. That is just, that's just sheer nonsense. What happened this past weekend involving the Houthis, the Saudis, and Bob L. Mandab straight?

So, yeah, I think we got a little bit of a delay going on. Let me, I'll jump in. What happened was the Houthis made, really this started last Thursday when they made a dramatic move to the south. To, they took mocha, you know, and that is, that's the origin of cafe mocha, you know, chocolate, you know, if people are wondering, it came out of Yemen. Yemen is known for its coffee. They moved farther south to a place called Dubob, D-H-O-U-B-A-B. And in fact, I was in this seminar with John Mearsheimer and Alistair Kruk, and one of the Russian leading experts on Yemen was there in the meeting.

And I went up to him, I said, hey, did you hear the Houthis just took Dubab? And he goes, no, no, that's not possible. And I said, dude, he looked it up. And his words, and I'm quoting, it was in Russian, but this is the literal translation was, holy shit. So he was equally surprised by it, caught unawares. What that does is it improves the ability of the Houthis

to completely shut down the Babel-Mandab straight. And they can do it with artillery now, because they captured the island out in the middle of that strait. So in a period of roughly two days, the Houthis captured 4,000 square kilometers of territory. Let me repeat that. Four thousand square kilometers. They are moving against these, basically, they're mercenary forces.

These are forces hired by Saudi Arabia to fight on behalf of the Saudi. And apparently we've now got reports that these mercenaries were pretty clever entrepreneurs. They claimed to have two to three times the number of soldiers. So they were collecting, say, for an army of 60,000, when in fact all they had were 20,000. But they were pocketing the money. In contrast, the Houthi fighters are genuine warriors. They are moving very rapidly across Yemen, moving as well to the east towards Aden. There's some dispute whether or not they'll take it, but one of the things they're doing

is they're actually negotiating with some of the opposition who are happy to surrender rather than run the risk of getting killed. So Yemen is rapidly falling apart as far as the Saudis are concerned. And it turns out that Pakistan and Turkey and some of the other Gulf states, they're acting a lot like American medical insurance companies. And what do I mean by that? Well, the Saudis are asking them to intervene militarily. And these countries are talking about pre-existing conditions. So they look at what the Houthis are doing as a pre-existing condition.

So I've taken it to calling it Houthiitis. We now have a severe case of Houthiitis going on in Yemen. So why is it that when Muhammad bin Salman, the autocrat who effectively rules Saudi Arabia, called his dear friend President Donald Trump twice and asked for military assistance to repel the Houthis, Trump declined. Yeah. That was, well, let's give Trump credit. He recognized we failed the first time to stop the Houthis.

You know, remember he launched Operation, what was it, Rough Rider last in March, last week, second week in March of 2025. It went until the first week in May. during those it was a seven covered seven weeks during those seven weeks the Houthi shot down seven MQ9 reapers now the reason they were shooting down the reapers

is the reaper was the best way the United States could get offensive power over a mobile launcher and then hit it real time the problem was the Houthis figured that out and so they began putting out dummy decoy launchers and then set up basically ambush positions waiting for our reapers to show up.

They'd show up and the Houthis would shoot it down. And each Reaper with both the airframe and then the pods, the weapon pods and optic pods that were put on the Reaper cost a total of about $60 to $65 million a piece. So in the course of seven weeks, the Houthis shot down almost a half. a billion dollars worth of MQ9 reapers. And it was at the end of that seven weeks that Donald Trump said, oh, the Houthis have capitulated. We're declaring victory.

We're leaving. Is this the end of the American Saudi alliance? Well, I think we're at that stage in a relationship where we're going to start seeing other people. I don't know if it's an actual divorce yet, but it's certainly headed in that direction. I mean, here are the Saudis who had essentially been promised by the Americans, we got your back. And when it time to get their back covered, the United States said, you know what? You got some preexisting conditions.

So we can't help you out. And again, what was the United States going to do? Do what we've already tried? We tried launching air strikes on Houthi positions. previously. And that didn't stop the Houthis at all. Well, what do you expect will be the immediate effect or maybe even the short-term and long-term effect on international energy markets as a result of this capture of Bob Elmendabe Strait? I missed the very last one. What about the Bob Il-Mandab?

What do you think will be the effect on energy markets, short-term and long-term as a result of the Hootie victory at Bob Elmandab over the weekend? Oh, yeah, no, it's significant. It's going to really boost the supply of the price for oil across the board, not just for, quote, diesel. Again, diesel is something that's produced out of refineries, and you've got to go to the refineries that use the, a heavy or sour crude. But this is also going to drive up the price of other, you know, West Texas intermediate and Brent. So this is another major disruption.

See, the Saudis, they were up until the destruction of that pipeline, they were getting about $4 million, up to 5 million barrels a day out of Yambu. Now, it had to go the long route and had to go up through the Suez Canal. Now, that's not happening. And so that is another, you know, five million barrels that the world's not getting. Now, there may be a delayed effect because there were still some storage tanks in Yambu that they can still load onto tankers and get out. But within another five days, that's going to be done. And the estimate is it's going to take more than a month to repair that pipe.

pipeline. And the Saudis, this creates a real fiscal, financial crisis for the Saudis. Who had the thought that the Saudis would be out begging for some loans to keep afloat economically? Wow. So outside of Atlanta, Georgia, I know you've been traveling for a couple weeks. You haven't been filling up your vehicles. Diesel is $6.5.4. 40 cents a gallon. There you go. In Northern New Jersey, so-called super or high-test gasoline, $5 a gallon. These numbers are profoundly affecting people, Larry.

Did you see that Ghalibov, the head of the parliament in Iran, was trolling Donald Trump with Homer Simpson? No. He showed, yeah, so out in, out in San Diego, the price of diesel is now $9.99. Wow. Or it's $9.90. So it shows Homer Simpson there pumping oil and pumping the diesel fuel and it goes $990, 99, 911, and then it flips over to $0,000, except it's zero, zero, and it's $9.00.

over goes, yay, diesel is free. Is it any wonder Trump's trying to blame the price of fuel? And of course, we're not yet winter here in the U.S. on Zelensky. Larry, I'll let you go. Thank you very much for your time, my dear friend. Let me just say that this is going to kill Donald Trump in the midterm election. Yeah, there it is. Chris pulled it up. It's hilarious.

Because as long as he continues to blockade Iran and sanction Iran, no more oil is coming out. And that oil then affects the global price of diesel. It's not just Ukraine. And so people, American voters who are paying these high prices, both for regular gasoline, but especially for diesel. because the diesel impacts the farming industry, it impacts the transportation industry, and Donald Trump doesn't have enough time to recover now to get that down before the midterm. You got it right. Leave it across to find this very cartoon that you're talking about.

Thank you, Larry. Safe travels. We'll see you next week. All the bad. Oh, we'll see you Friday for the Intelligence Roundtable from wherever you are. Thanks, Judge. Okay, all the best. Wow, a great conversation with my dear friend and traveling companion. Coming up next, if you're watching us live in 36 minutes at 10 o'clock, Colonel Bill Astori,

what is the legacy of 9-11? And at 1.30 this afternoon, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Judge Lepaltono for Judging Freedom.