Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: Will Biden Stick With Israel?

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

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Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, April 15th, 2024. Larry Johnson is here with us. Will Joe Biden stick with Israel, no matter what it does? But first this. How do you really feel about your financial future right now, today? Stable or uncertain? Despite all the happy talk that the Fed and the banks want you to buy into, I believe that 2024 is going to be a very unstable year, politically and financially. That's one of the reasons I decided to buy physical gold and silver. And I suggest you should do the same and do it now. Why?

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Larry Johnson, welcome here, my dear friend. So this morning, the newspapers and the media are filled with the same story over and over and over again. Israel, Great Britain, Jordan, the United States managed to intercept 99% of everything the Iranians sent toward Israel. Nothing hit, nothing crashed, nothing went through. The Iranians are humiliated. Do you see it that way, my friend? No. It looks like Israel hired Ukraine's information guys to come down and tell the same story they tell up in Ukraine.

Oh, yeah, we shot down all those Russian missiles. Ignore that burning building behind us. That didn't happen, okay? What is really telling is that, you know, if there's a hurricane, you know, you got the reporters out there, they're showing the damage. If there's been a tornado, you see all the houses scattered about. If there's a crash, you know, the news media goes where the damage is and they show the damage. Israel's not showing that because the easiest way to convince everybody that, hey, nothing happened is they say they hit this airbase. Come on, guys.

Let's take a look see this nothing they're not doing that so that tells you right away there was there was significant damage you can see the uh there's video of the hypersonic or the ballistic missiles hitting the airbase it's at a distance but it's's not one, it's at least three or four, and they're coming in one after another. And actually one of them you see comes down, and then you see a missile, an air defense missile coming up, and this thing takes evasive action, and then goes down. Wow. So, I mean, there's some remarkable, Iran demonstrated some remarkable capability. And as Alistair Kirk explained in your first hour, this was a coordinated attack where the, it's like a chess game.

The drones were pawns. They were put out to be sacrificed in order to draw out Israel's air defense. And then Iran followed up and like boom, boom, with the cruise missiles and the ballistic missiles, you really overwhelmed Israel's defense at that point and the US and the UK and everybody else who was joining in. So it was really a very smart tactical operation by Iran, but it also gave them, it was symbolic

because they were demonstrating that for the first time in 75 years, a country outside of Israel was able to send missiles into Israel and hit targets. Is it fair to characterize the two assaults like this. Israel attacked and killed civilians and a diplomatic target immune under all international law. The Iranians attacked military and intelligence targets and didn't kill anybody.

Yeah. Well, I did see one message posted that some young girl had been wounded. So, but there was no, there was no, no, but what I, the Iranians were surgical. They were like military and intelligence assets. Yeah, no, I'm, I'm agreeing with you. I'm just, I'm just noting, you know, the word chutzpah in Yiddish applies in this case. Here's Israel trying to report out, oh, yeah, there was this one girl that was wounded where they've killed over 13,000 or 15,000 children in Gaza. And you correctly note that what Iran was trying to do was not inflict mass casualties. And Iran was showing that, hey, we're not out there about killing as many civilians as we possibly can,

which is the image, the terrorist image that's portrayed about Iran throughout the world. So, or at least by the West. They pushed that theme quite strongly. But they were sending a clear message that this is what we can do. We're not showing you all of our power, but we can hit you, and we'll hit you harder if you want to keep escalating. And in the future, if you attack us, we will attack you in Israel. That's the message. Larry, if I heard this phrase once over the weekend, I heard it a dozen times. Israel is our greatest ally. What the hell does that mean?

I guess they pay our politicians better than anybody else. But it has been, this is really a creation that goes back to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee when it got up and rolling in the 70s, in the aftermath of the 73 war. Because, you know, Israel is an independent nation, almost totally dependent on the United States for financial and military assistance. If the United States cut it off today, Israel could not stand. Israel would not survive. And the problem with Israel's policies since the outbreak, since the October 7th attack and its ensuing response, is it has alienated itself from so many countries in the world that previously were at least

disposed to have relations with Israel. But that's not the case. Israel is largely being ostracized, and it's only the West that is, you know, providing sort of hanging in there with it. I think the one thing people need to understand about the West's relationship with Iran, we're just angry at Iran because it's the one place where we took over, we overthrew the government, we thought we had it under control, and the people, the Iranian people, took it back, and we've never gotten over that. You're referring to the popular election of Mossadegh and the Eisenhower administration. We took it over. We found the Shah, the young guy, made him the king, and then the people took it back from the Shah after 20 years of subservience to the United States.

And you're right, we never got over it. We probably also never got over what their people did to the workers in our embassy in the last year or two of the Carter administration. Well, and draw, take that parallel. You remember, we were so angry at the violation of our embassy when those students stormed the wall and took it over and began holding all these diplomats hostage. I mean, I knew several of them personally when I worked

at State who had survived that. And we were outraged because this was a violation of the Vienna Convention of 1961. They have crossed the line. Not unforgivable. Now, when Israel strikes a diplomatic facility, we're going, oh, we're not sure if that really crosses the line here. We think Israel was justified. Now, the world sees that, and it just exposes our hypocrisy in this country, and frankly, I think it's sickening.

Here's, getting back to the events over the weekend, the military events over the weekend, here's David Cameron. Chris tells me his real title is Lord David Cameron. He's the former prime minister. He's now the defense minister of Great Britain, saying there's a massive degree of difference between the attack in Damascus and the Iranian drones. What about Iran's frustration at part of its sovereign territory being flattened? Well, I would argue there is a massive degree of difference between what Israel did in Damascus and, as I said, 301 weapons being launched by the state of Iran at the state of Israel for the first time, a state-on-state attack 101 ballistic missiles 36 cruise missiles

185 drones that is a degree of difference and I think a reckless and dangerous thing for Iran to have done and I think the whole world can see all these countries that have somehow wondered well you know what is the true nature of Iran it's there in black and white. Yeah, true nature of Iran. Hey, they get punched and they punch back. Boy, there's a novel concept. It's really absurd, particularly in light of what you just talked about, the comparison of the invasion of the two embassies. I don't think the Iranians killed anybody

when they invaded the American embassy and the Carter administration. The Israelis killed about 15 people when they demolished the Iranian consulate adjacent to the Iranian embassy. Everybody knows what international law is. The Israelis know what international law is. They don't care.

Look at what they're doing. Look at what they're doing in Gaza. Do you think that Joe Biden is serious when he lets it be known publicly the United States will not back Israel if it retaliates on Iran? Larry? Larry looks like you might have you might have frozen looks like we lost you my friend are you still there can you hear me do you expect has Israel given the United States any assurances that it will give the U.S. a warning, a heads up before it moves forward with any type of counterattack?

Whether and how the Israelis respond is going to be up to them. I'm certainly not going to get ahead of their decision making. retaliatory strikes. Are you concerned that there will that he will not be responsible about it, given that the United States was not given a heads up before Israel lobbed that attack in Syria against Iranian officials? We have and we will stay in touch with our Israeli counterparts so that the information flow is as robust as possible. Well, if Israel does decide to move forward with retaliatory strikes, will the United States support Israel, or will Israel be going it alone? I won't get into hypotheticals one way or another here, since Israel hasn't made any decisions that I'm aware of about what the next step is.

They performed extraordinarily well last night, and it really was a largely unsuccessful attack by Iran. That is noteworthy and that should be remembered. And again, as I said earlier, it wasn't that they didn't do it alone. They had the United States support. And as the president said to the prime minister last night, that support for Israel's self-defense will stay ironclad. It will not change. All right.

I'm back. Yeah, I know one of the viewers said, Larry is frozen. The NSA is at it again. Yeah. Yeah, what I was going to point out, and it's relevant to what Kirby, what we're seeing is a lot of political theater.

Haaretz, the left-wing Israeli newspaper, reports today that the United States pressured Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirate to divulge Iran's plans for attacking Israel. Now, think about that. That means Iran told the Saudis and the UAE what they were going to do. There are other reports that Turkey was fully advised and frankly the United States was told by Iran as well what it was going to do in Israel and Iran was

playing a smart game here. We're going to hit them and we're going to give them advance warning where we're going to hit them and we're going to give them advanced warning where we're going to hit them. And they can put out all their air defense systems to shoot us down if they want. But we're still going to be able to hit what we're going to come after. But we're sending a message. We can get you if we want. And, you know, then it's being portrayed as all this great Israeli victory. They shot down all these drones that, as Alistair correctly noted in your first interview this morning with him, they were intended to be shot down all these drones that is Alistair correctly noted in your first interview this morning with him they were intended to be shot

down they were pawns that could be sacrificed what got through were the ballistic missiles and these were not the best the most sophisticated ballistic missiles that Iran had they but they got through. And the Israel and the United States and the United Kingdom could not stop them. That's the result of this, that Iran has now put Israel on notice. And if Israel decides to retaliate, Iran has been very clear. If you do that, we will come back at you again, only bigger this time. And what they demonstrated here is this pattern, this plan of using drones

in combination with cruise missiles, in combination with ballistic missiles. They each travel at different speeds. The drones are slower. They go first, and then the cruise missiles are faster, and then the ballistic missiles are really fast. Well, you have to do math. You know, it's like that the train's traveling in one direction at 60 miles an hour, but to get them all to arrive about the same time, because if they're arriving like one after another in that wave, it overwhelms any, not just Israel, not just the United States, any defense system, if you do it in sufficient quantity. And so that means Israel's really, you know, they can put out all this bravado about, oh boy, we

put that down, but it's really dangerous what they face now. Well, somebody is revealing, you see what we have up on the screen, damage done by Iran's missile attack. You can see that. That's substantial. That's not a campfire. Yeah. Are you hearing this morning stories that Iran informed the U.S. of the nature of its attack ahead of time? So who would they have informed?

Is this diplomatic or intelligence? And why would that have been done? Why would that have been their hand to Israel? The story reportedly is that they went through Turkey. And that's what I was referring to when I said the U.S. pressured the Saudis and the U.S. to divulge Iran's plans. No, they knew it was coming. And that's why Iran wanted to make sure that even the United States knew, so that the United States would not take an unnecessary step of launching direct attacks on Iran. This is one of these U.S. military fantasies that so many people hold in this country.

That, oh man, all we got to do is drop a few bombs on Iran and that'll teach them. And I keep coming back and said, yeah, how's that worked out with the Houthis? You know, we can't even stop the Houthis, and we think we're going to stop Iran by dropping a few bombs. We haven't learned a damn thing in our over 30 years of intervening with military force in the region. Dropping bombs solves nothing. And in this case, Iran was going out of its way to make sure that the United States knew exactly what Iran's plans were for Israel. And it informed these other countries. That's why you saw all these other countries closing their embassies, diplomatic tunnel

in both Jerusalem and Tehran, closing aerospace. You know, this was like Babe Ruth pointing the center field. Hey, I'm going to hit it out there. All right, so when Iran tells somebody through Turkey or whoever, what does the U.S. do? Does the U.S. send a message back saying, thank you? Or does the U.S. send a message back saying, don't do it? Or does the U.S. remain

silent? Or does the U.S. tell Israel? Well, this is actually sort of what, if you remember the sarin gas attack that took place in Syria. And it was alleged that it was done by the Syrian government and the United States was going to respond. What was

happening behind the scenes is at the Air Force Base in Al Udeid, Qatar, they got on the phone with the Russians and said, hey, we're going to hit your base here in Syria. So, and we'll be hitting you in about three or four hours. You know, you need to get your personnel and your equipment out of there so nobody's hurt. That's exactly sort of what happened here from that standpoint of Iran telling the United States what they're going to do, not expecting an answer. They weren't interested in whether the United States, if the United States came back and

said, don't do it, Iran was still going to do what Iran was going to do. But they were taking the step to defuse it. So there is, in a lot of these situations, there is back channel communication in order to try to minimize response and minimize casualties. Who had the better weekend, Israel or Iran? Oh, Iran, by far. Iran has now established itself. Because before people said, ah, these Iranians, they're all talk. Because it's not just the attack on the consulate in Damascus or the embassy annex. It was the assassination over the last six months of several different IRGC commanders and officials. And it's

been the assassination of Soleimani, which, yeah, they hit a U.S. base, but nothing significant. So I think Iran was viewed as a bit of a blowhard. That's disappeared. And that's part of the West's propaganda effort is to try to portray all of the Iranian missiles as failures in order to try to counter that propaganda victory by Iran. But I don't think it'll work. Where does all of this leave Netanyahu, Larry? He's pulled troops out of Gaza. He's promised he's going to invade Rafah.

He was unable to prevent the deepest penetration of the strongest missiles ever to hit Israel. The crowds are still demonstrating that he leave office. 60% of the public still supports the slaughter in Gaza. What does he do next? Yeah, well, I think as Alistair correctly shared, we're not dealing with rational thinking here. We're not dealing with logic. We're dealing with emotion and religious fanaticism. I think it's highly likely that Netanyahu is going,

they are going to hit Iran in some form or fashion. And then that will, this can escalate. And once you start escalating it gets out of control pretty quickly that is the danger that's why you've got Russia and China back you know working with Iran and reassuring Iran look we got your back here just be calm don't do anything crazy to a lesser extent the West is you know outwardly oh yeah we, we're with Israel all the way, but I guarantee you that behind the scenes there are some words of counsel coming in saying, don't do it. But that doesn't mean that Israel will accept that advice.

Again, once you're dealing with this level of emotion, people aren't thinking with their heads, they're thinking with their hearts. Here's Admiral Kirby being asked yesterday about has this escalated into a wider war? Number four, Chris. Has this now escalated into a wider war? I don't think there's any reason that it needs to. But has it? Are we now in the midst of a wider war? The president doesn't believe that it needs to move in that direction whatsoever, Kristen. What Israel demonstrated last night was an incredible ability to defend itself. Just their own military superiority was quite remarkable yesterday. I mean, very little got through and the damage was extraordinarily light. And also Israel demonstrated again, as I said, that they're not standing alone, that they have friends. So the president's been clear. We don't want to see this escalate. We don't we're not

looking for a wider war with Iran. I think I think, you know, the coming hours and days will tell us a lot. Do you believe that the United States would not back Israel if it retaliates again or even commences a war with Iran? Let's deconstruct. What do we mean by back Israel? Are we going to cut off funding? No, probably not. That politically wouldn't fly in this country uh are we going to continue to send them uh weapons you know bombs two thousand pound bombs probably are we going to send our troops our ships uh to directly attack iran i

don't think so because what the the other thing that Iran demonstrated the other day, the same day that they launched this attack was when they took out a ship in the Persian Gulf that's owned by an Israeli and sending the message, hey, we can shut down the Persian Gulf too. And that's where the what's going on in the Red Sea with the Houthis becomes relevant because the United States there, after almost six months of effort, has been unable to open the Red Sea. And we've had an aircraft carrier group. We had our coalition of the willing, the allies. And in fact, on Saturday, the French said, we're out of here. This is too violent. We're not used to this level of violence, and we're not willing to take the risk.

So I think on that front, the United States is not going to back Israel in launching a direct attack onto Iran. And frankly, without U.S. support, logistic support, I don't think Israel can pull it off. Our friend Scott Ritter just waited. Now, I can't read it, Chris. You're going to have to increase the size. The U.S. has, I can't see it. Here we go.

Move it down a little. There we go. The U.S. has an advanced advanced you know what that is larry banned radar stationed at har karen in the negev desert its mission is to detect iranian missile launches and pass targeting data to israeli arrow and david sling u.s thud abm batteries deployed to protect sensitive israeli, including Damona, Nevatim, and Ramon. Iranian missiles struck both Nevatim and Ramon air bases. The best surveillance radar in the world, working in concert with the most sophisticated anti-missile defenses in the world, were impotent in the face of the Iranian attack. For all those trying to spin yesterday's events as an Israeli victory,

chew on that fact. The best missile defense system, only Scott could say that, in the world could not protect the sites they were tasked with protecting from attacks by Iranian missiles. Who has deterrent supremacy? It ain't Israel.

I'm going to get you to agree with that. Yeah, no, he's absolutely right. And that's why all this spin is coming out. They're not dealing with the facts that when the event was over, the ballistic missiles,

which could potentially carry nuclear warheads, penetrated Israel's air defense.heads, penetrated Israel's air defense. So Iran penetrated Israel's air defense with ballistic missiles. Israel and the United States and the United Kingdom were unable to stop it. That's what happened. Shooting down drones,

anybody that's ever gone hunting, you send the dog out to sort of scare up the birds in some instances. Or you want to create a distraction or to send something out that's going to bait the other side to come out and expose themselves. That's what the drones were intended to do to Israel's air defense to give you something they could collect data off of how they were operating what kind of signals they were attaching to and remember that each one of the air defense

systems when they fire think of having a revolver that's got six rounds of ammunition in it and boom boom boom boom you fire it well then you got to reload it. Only they don't have what they're called speed loaders for the Iron Dome and the Patriot.

You have to literally get a big stocket with the missiles. Right. What is the Iron Dome? If you get an attack, that takes time. It's like the Patriot. What is the Iron Dome, Larry? Yeah, it's like the Patriot. What is the Iron Dome, Larry? Yeah, it's like the Patriot missile battery. It's got each of the units on it.

It's a combination. You've got radar, and then you have the launchers. And in each of those launchers, there are like three or four units that contain about 20 missiles apiece. And so once the radar locks in on what's coming in, then those, usually you fire two, so two missiles per incoming target. And those missiles can be expensive. Some of them can range upwards of a million dollars. I think the Iron Dome is down around 100,000.

But again, this creates another problem for Israel. It was in a fireism. It's not like they've got an unlimited stockpile sitting back there in the warehouse. They don't. And so it takes time to produce it. And all of a sudden, they can run, you can send enough drones

that those drones are relatively inexpensive. The numbers, you know, that were cited earlier were correct about that entire counter offensive with these missiles, air defense costs $1.3 billion. Whereas the Iranian may have spent a hundred million, probably not even that much. But, you know, that kind of disproportion in the, you know, the cost cost benefit is you can't sustain that uh israel can't sustain that right now in particular since its economy is not booming with the red sea shut down with the the port of elliott shut down uh and not or not operating it anywhere near capacity and a lot of its workforce out wearing a uniform getting shot at so yahoo is really between a rock and a lot of its workforce out wearing a uniform getting shot at. Netanyahu is really between a rock and a hard place.

He is blamed for either indifference or incompetence on October 7. He hasn't defeated Hamas. He can't defend Israel from Iran. The boys want to go back and girls want to go back to their civilian lives and the economy is tanking and they spent a billion dollars,

which they don't have over the weekend to try and stop the Iranian onslaught. What does he do next? Beg Joe Biden to go to war? Will all those guys take you to war?

I think where this is headed is uh there will be a move of foot to get rid of him um to take him down out of power put in benny gantz uh someone else who has a far friendlier face is seen as more uh likable to many of the western nations because netanyahu's just not liked he's's not a warm, cuddly human being. And then try to see if they can dig themselves out of this hole. Because they started off with, let's call it, the one front war in Gaza. That's a lopsided war. You know, they've got the guns and the Gaza civilians largely don't.

They're now talking about going into southern Lebanon. And now they face a war with Iran that they are not equipped. They do not have the ability. This, you know, just when you look at the size difference of the two countries, Israel faces more problems launching missiles and aircraft to get to iran than iran does getting to israel how and how much of its arsenal did iran use over the weekend a fraction i'm not even sure they you could classify as less than one percent nothing and they use old they used old stuff reportedly you know they weren't sending

out their best stuff uh because they could they could just swarm it and this is this is really an interesting tactic uh that it's that when you use three different types of weapon systems or you know the drones the cruise missiles, and then the ballistic missiles, each traveling at a different rate of speed. And you do a coordinated launch so that they can arrive roughly in the same time frame, or they come in waves one after another so that Israel would not have time to reload its air defense systems. That's what Iran was demonstrating.

It was a very sophisticated military tactic. And the West ought to pay attention because they really, Iran and this sort of showed the future of warfare. Thank you, Larry. Very, very astute analysis. We'll look forward to seeing you with Ray at the Intelligence Roundtable at the end of the week. All right, my friend. Thank you. Thank you. All the best. A great analysis from Larry. At 4.30 this afternoon Eastern, from his own sources with his own analysis, Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.