Judging Freedom - LIVE FROM TEHRAN: Foreign Pressure or Internal Crisis? : Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi

Episode Date: January 15, 2026

LIVE FROM TEHRAN: Foreign Pressure or Internal Crisis? : Prof. Seyed Mohammad MarandiSee 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? the government? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best, which governs least?

What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Wednesday, January 14th, 2006, joining us now live from Tehran, Iran is my longtime friend, Professor Mohamed Marandi. Professor Mirandi, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. I know you're in Tehran. I know you're in a television studio because it's one of the few places there where Internet is available. Let's get right down to what's going on. In the West, the mainstream media, is nearly unanimous in presenting the view of what's happening in the streets in many cities in Iran

as a spontaneous uprising against a corrupt and incompetent government. In reality, who or what is behind this chaos? Well, Judge, thank you very much for having me. It's always an honor. It began with a manipulation of the Iranian currency from abroad. Apparently the Americans, well, apparently not the Americans, put pressure on neighboring countries to block Iran's access to currency. So we had a sharp drop in the currency. I don't know exactly how much 30, 40 percent.

And that caused shopkeepers in some areas, in two or three areas, including Tehran, to protest. because it makes it very difficult for them to trade and they could go bankrupt. And a couple of, I don't know how many people protested, but a few thousand, a couple of thousand, three, four places. There was no violence. There was no police interference. And it passed off peacefully.

And the next day, they also went to the streets. Then we had, now I'm not great about dates, but then we had the graduate. we had the infiltration of these rioters. And they started increasingly becoming violent and destroying property. But on Thursday night, it became really bad. And there was a lot of fighting, a lot of killing. The rioters killed a lot of people.

A hundred police officers, roughly, I don't know the exact numbers, but were killed in a couple of hundreds. at least, Bassege and guards and also riot guards were killed as well, which makes it between 300 and 400 who were killed by the rioters and the terrorists. And they were shot with different types of guns. I also have a very close friend, my father being a physician. I have a very close friend who's been operating in one of the key hospitals. and he said most of his patients, they were killed with small arms, or sorry, injured or killed,

mostly injured because he operated on them, but a couple, or I don't know the number, maybe more, were killed, but most of the injuries or most of those who were shot were shot with pistols and from close range, which indicates that people were fine from within the crowd. I know that in the United States, the anti-Iranian mood is, you know, exploding. But these are the realities on the ground. We didn't have violence the first two days, no arrests. And then we have indication, clear indication that there was foreign interference. There's Mike Pompeo's tweet.

There is the Persian message by Musad to Iranians that they are on the ground. And also, I think just yesterday or a few hours ago, Channel 14 of Israel, they said that foreign states, meaning Israel and probably the United States, are funneling in weapons. And now people, the Western media, denies what Israeli media is admitting. It's sort of like someone who's guilty in the court of law. He's saying, I did it. And then the people around them saying, no, no, no, he didn't do it.

So this is the state of affairs. A lot of police officers were guilty. A lot of innocent people were killed, but nothing to do with it, and a lot of rioters were killed. But it's not clear exactly how many, because since there were so much police activity and riots in different places, organized crime becomes more active because when there's a police presence. So in some places, there were deaths, and it's not clear why they died. Or in other places, for example, when the police went to way and rioters went to a marketplace, the marketplace, they brought in their own people.

They paid people to protect them, and they'd get into fights, and then perhaps they were injured or killed. So they are still trying to figure out who was who and killed what happened. But the fact that, let's say, between 300 to 400 people of the police and the Basij and the guards and the riot guards, these four groups, were killed. and I think roughly 100 police officers or officers of the law, that says a great deal. And especially coming from the attacks on Iran coming from the United States, which right now, a woman who was shot in the face by an ICE official, the argument is whether she was turning to the right enough for it not to be justified for him to shoot her in the face,

or was it not enough, and so he was justified to shoot her? That, I think, you know, when the United States is having this sort of debate, and we have 100 police officers and overall 300 to 400 people who were killed by the rioters who were policing the Basiege and the guards and the riot police, I think that's the criticism from the United States is seen here as a bit rich. The case in Minneapolis, in my view, is a case of manslaughter, and the ICE officer should expect to be indicted by the state of Minnesota once the federal government, which has seized all the evidence, releases the evidence. but back to what you were just

describing. You mentioned a tweet from a former CIA director and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Let's post it and I'll read it for the benefit of those who are taking us on audio only. This is from Mike Pompeo.

The Iranian regime is in trouble. Bringing in mercenaries is its last best hope. Riots in dozens of cities and the something under siege. Mached, Tehran, Zahedan, next stop, Balochistan. 47 years of this regime,

POTUS 47. Coincidence. Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets and also to every Mossad agent walking beside them. Why would Mike Pompeo have admitted what we in the West who are rejecting the mainstream media narrative have been saying for two weeks now?

Well, I think probably the Israelis, Musad itself, and Pompeo, they've been boasting because they misread Iran. They think that Iran is a house of cars. They've been saying that for decades now. They're always saying, just give it a little push and it's finished. That's what they were doing during the 12-day war. They thought, okay, well, attack Iran and it's going to be all over. And the exact opposite happened. And we had a discussion back then together, too. So I think that he thought it would be over and then afterwards, you know, the glory would be given to Mossad. But that's not the case. These rioters were never with the rest of society. During the war, these people weren't with the absolute strong majority of people who were supporting the war effort.

And now in the West, they're also trying to do on Monday, we had huge rallies across the country against the rioters and in support of the state and the Constitution and the leader. And in Tehran, the estimates are between 2.3 million. I was there to 3 million people, participants, and in cities across the country, huge numbers. Each city had its own. And now in the West, they're trying to say this is AI. Whereas Al Jazeera was there, Al Jazeera English was there, RT was there, CGTN, CCTP, Al Jazeera, English and Arabic were there. Journalists were there from different, of course, they don't like RT or CCTV, but Al Jazeera, I mean, you know, there are lots of people.

And during the whole day, they were going, what do you call it in? in English, rolling, there was rolling coverage. It was all being broadcast live. And now they're trying to say, like, this is fake or this was old footage, whereas they showed the old footage and the two are not the same. So the point is that they're trying to negate reality. They want to believe their fantasies about Iran. And those fantasies always lead to miscalculation.

16 years ago, Fari Zakaria had me on CNN during the 2009 elections where there are also people on the streets protesting. And he said that you're a mouthpiece for a dying regime to me. Whereas I'm just telling it as it is. I'm not even, I wasn't in any of these administrations from 16 years ago till now. But it's been 16 years since I've been the mouthpiece of a dying regime. That's a very, very slow death. Right, right. Our colleagues, Alistair Crook, and you know these folks, Jeff Sacks, Scott Ritter, have all said that the tide has turned dramatically in favor of massive supports for the government of Iran.

It sounds like you would agree with that from what you observed and even participated in earlier this week. Yes, without a doubt. I mean, the Americans do their own polls in Iran regularly from Turkey or Turkey. And I know that they do that. And other people know. They call into Iran and they do polls all the time. They know that in Iran, the state has always had a high degree of legitimacy. But during this period, when the riots became very violent and a lot of people, And they destroyed tens of public buses, many ambulances, tens of fire engines. They burned down a clinic and a young nurse inside burned alive. They burned many mosques.

And inside one mosque, they trapped two young passage members and kept throwing Molotov cocktails inside and burned them alive. They cut off people's heads. They smashed people's heads. People saw this in their own towns. neighbors of mine or students of mine, they would go on the streets to watch and then they'd see these things or not necessarily my students seeing these. But people, my son, my students saw fighting between like people on the street. Just a few nights ago, they wanted to attack a mosque in Ashafi-es-Fahani street or somewhere

near there. And then a neighbor of a close relative of mine, he was there and he said that when they were going to attack the mosque. People on the streets attack them. There are no police there. So the point is that even ordinary people are now angered. So you see that often you have these protests in support of the government or the state or the constitution, but now it's even greater because people feel threatened by these rioters.

So the West can pretend that this is AI or its fate. But the reality on the ground is that what the Israeli and the, with the Musad and the CIA and others have done, is they've united people again together, just like they did during the 12-day war. And one other thing that I should point out is that it's been quiet for the last three, four nights and days. We have no problem at all.

And nothing's happening now. When they pulled the plug on the internet, I think on early Friday morning, immediately the riots began to go downhill. and on Saturday they were literally almost finished. Why? Because they no longer had contact with their group leaders abroad. There were teams in different parts of Tehran in different cities.

And then finally, suddenly, when they lost communication, they couldn't continue for many more hours. And so the whole thing quickly within 24 hours, let's say 36 hours again, I'm not good with time. It collapsed. Why? So they were using the internet because they were coordinating. This was not spontaneous.

These are narratives that Western pundits in Western media are just repeating because that's what they want to believe. When President Trump says that help is on the way, how does the Iranian government interpret a statement like that? Well, that's another thing, Judge. Does anyone in their right mind think that ordinary Iranians support the Israelis, the regime and Trump. And when Netanyahu is supporting or Trump is supporting the rioters, like the rioters, ordinary Iranians would look upon that favorably after the United States bombed Iran and Europeans all supported the air strikes. I mean, these people are living Western pundits and Western leaders and Western politicians are living in fantasy land.

Ordinary Iranians do not like them. They dislike them. They despise them. Now, what is Trump trying to do? It's unclear because, you know, Trump is Trump. But what the Iranians are thinking is that Trump may carry out a major attack on Iran. He may carry out a minor attack on Iran. And he may not do anything.

But what they are preparing for is for a major attack and war. And the Iranians are going to hit. back very hard and they've been preparing themselves for this. But again, no one knows what Trump really wants to do, but many believe that this whole operation was to push the country towards war. It began with the sudden currency manipulation. Then there were these protests and then you had the rioters infiltrate and then the whole Western media from and then you have politicians from AOC, a so-called progressive, to Trump, all of them saying we have to help the Iranian people. So the belief here is that the currency fall and the subsequent events were all intended from the very

beginning to push us towards war. Right. Here's President Trump yesterday. I don't know if you'll be able to hear it, but we're going to play it for the the benefit of the audience, basically saying to the protesters, keep protesting, take over your institutions, save the names of the killers and abusers that are abusing you. I don't know how bad it is. I keep hearing bad numbers, and those who are harming you will pay a very big price. I mean, this is so generalized. It's hard to know what he's talking about.

You must know that his own CIA has been fomenting this, but let me play the clip and then you can respond. Chris, number five. And by the way, to all Iranian patriots, keep protesting, take over your institutions, if possible, and save the name of the killers and the abusers that are abusing you, you're being very badly abused. If the numbers are right, now, I hear five different sets of numbers. I hear numbers. Look, one death is too much. But I hear much lower numbers, and then I hear much higher numbers. But I say save their names because they'll pay a very big price.

And I've canceled all meetings with the Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters stops. And all I say to them is help is on its way. You saw that I put tariffs on anybody doing business with Iran. Just went into effect today. And I say, make Iran great again. You know, it was a great country until these monsters came in and took it over. Can you imagine if President Peschkian went on international television and said to the people in Minneapolis, keep demonstrating and pull the masks off the faces of those police who are abusing you?

Again, the statement was very generalized, but the conundrum is what does he mean by Help is on the way. Nobody knows. Is the Iranian regime, I shouldn't say regime, I'm falling into the language of the Western media. Is the Iranian, forgive me, is the Iranian government prepared for what is likely to come from the United States and Israel? Would the Iranian government not consider a preemptive strike? As Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to say, if the rattlesnake is about to bite you, shouldn't you crush its head before it sinks its teeth into you? Well, Judge, a couple of things. One is that it's not really clear what Trump, what information he is being fed.

He is dishonest quite often. I mean, right here we saw him say, I'm not talking to Iranian officials. There are no negotiations taking place. And the Iranians are not going to negotiate as long as the United States has preconditions over the nuclear program or the missile defense capabilities. That's just not going to happen. So he's speaking as if the Iranians asked him to talk and he's not going to talk, which is not true. But also a few days ago, and this is I'd like to really hear what people like what your other guests have to say about this. When Trump said the city of Mashhad, which is like a city of, I don't know, three million people, it's fallen.

A town, a village in this country didn't fall for five minutes. But I don't know where he gets this from. So are they giving him misinformation? or is he just looking on the internet, seeing these pundits saying all sorts of nonsense, like the fact that they're saying 10,000 people died, 2,000 people. It's going up. I think within a couple of days, we'll get to a few million deaths the way the pundits are pushing in. And they're pretending as if the riots are going on.

And as I said, they've been over for the last few days. But I think that no one here knows what will happen, as I said before, but the Iranians are preparing for the worst. And Iranians have stated, alluding to the point you made, that an assault by the Iranians is possible in that the Iranians may not wait for the Americans or the Israelis attack.

If they feel that there is an imminent threat, they may strike. And that makes the situation even more dangerous because if Trump, does something provocative without actually attacking Iran, that could be interpreted as an attack, and then Iran could launch missiles all over the place. So it's sort of like what's going on between the United States and the Russians. They're playing, you know, the U.S. government is playing a game where some misunderstanding

could create catastrophic consequences. But the Iranian defense capabilities are quite formidable, very formidable. And the Persian Gulf is very vulnerable. And if there is war, there won't be any oil from Iraq, the Caucasus, the Persian Gulf. And that will lead to global economic meltdown. They can pretend that they can win over Iran easily. But I think they will see economic collapse very swiftly. With the exception of the shutdown Internet, is life returning to normal?

Are you able to lecture to your students or students? able to go to school? Can you go to shops? Can you go to mosque? Can you travel from A to B? Yes. I mean, classes are over. Last week was my last week of classes. This is Reading Week, and next week we have exams. The University of Tehran says our exams have to be on campus. That's what they're saying now. But yes, I was on, I was in this student. I was in this, well, this is not a studio, but this is press TV. I was in this building last night till late. I went home late.

I drove here. I went to the funeral that was a hundred officers of the law. Today were, they had a mass funeral in Tehran. I went there, but I couldn't make it because I was afraid I'd missed your program. So I went halfway there and came over here. So I've been traveling around Tehran today last night, the day before. it's very quiet. The war, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, it's all, all this stuff right now is just

online. And by the way, the reason why they continue to, um, cut, keep, leave the internet cut is one, one major reason is because Trump spoke of a cyber attack. And another is that, uh, if the United States strikes, the Iranians know that the Americans get most of their information from, they get it, they get it from the internet or they use digital means to obtain. intelligence. So right now it's both to, it's for multiple purposes. But gradually they say that they're going to lift the restrictions. Right now we can use Iranian websites. And Iranian apps are

increasingly becoming available and then gradually they're going to open up the rest. But it is difficult because businesses have serious difficulties. I cannot communicate with my students in group chats anymore. So there are, there are, there are, there are, there are, there are, difficulties. Professor Miranda, thank you very much. Thank you for your personal courage, for your intellectual honesty, and for changing your schedule so as to be on with us. You and I may be together soon. I won't say when and where, but I look forward to it. You know I do. And God be with you. Thank you, my dear friend. Thank you, Judge. It's always an honor. Thank you. And a great a great opportunity to hear firsthand the view of an American born in the United States,

but an Iranian and a professor at the University of Tehran, a highly recorded, brilliant, and gifted academic. Coming up at 2 o'clock this afternoon on more of this, Max Blumenthal, and at 3 o'clock, Phil Giraldi. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.