Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh: Is Iran an Enemy of the US?

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

Matt Hoh: Is Iran an Enemy of the US?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, October 29th, 2024. Matt Ho will be here with us in just a moment on, is Iran really an enemy of the United States, no matter what certain politicians say about it. But first, this. A divisive presidential election is upon us, and the winner is gold.

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somewhat on Iran and whether Iran is truly an enemy of and a threat to the United States. But before we get there, some background first on Ukraine and on Israel, and then we'll get to Iran. Russian troops have the Ukrainians completely surrounded in Kursk. There are some Americans in there, and the main Russian military is slowly marching toward and almost in eyesight of the Dnieper River. What does this tell you? How much longer, no matter who wins on November 5th, how much longer can Ukraine last? I think, you know, they're pulling out all the stops. Now, of course, Judge, we're seeing these reports. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, right? There was a report a couple of weeks ago we talked about where supposedly they had captured North Koreans in Ukraine, right? And that turned out to be completely bogus.

And now it's this idea that there are North Korean troops in Russia who may go to fight in Ukraine. Who knows if that story is true or not? But we see the result from that today. Reuters quoting the Pentagon, an unnamed source of the Pentagon, saying if North Korean troops are there, that means the Ukrainians can use our weapons however they want. No limitations on American weapons being used by Ukraine, so they can fire them wherever they want to in Russia, right? So you see how that story is very

convenient for the increasingly desperate situation that Ukraine is in. But no, I mean, I think rationally looking at this, right, the end game's approaching. It has to be approaching. However, we're dealing with irrational actors. And so particularly irrational actors in terms of the Ukrainian government who are in a corner, who best case for them when this thing truly falls apart is that they're able to abscond to their villas and their mansions and their condos in Dubai and Turkey and Greece and Miami and wherever they're going to go. So I think what we're seeing with Kursk in particular was a political stunt done by the Ukrainians to try and keep the West's favor, particularly Americans. It was lined up so that it would happen in August, this great Ukrainian thrust invasion, these plucky Ukrainians. We talked about this. We saw this immediately in

the Western media, how the Ukrainians have flipped the gloomy narrative on the Ukrainian war. And this was a talk at the DNC in August. And then, of course, it was lined up for Volodymyr Zelensky to come to the United States and present his victory plan at the UN and to the American president, to the Congress, to Donald Trump, the American people, and it went nowhere. And now all those men that Ukraine put into Russia, that thrust into Russia for nothing other than a political stunt, are now being killed off in small groups. And eventually that news flew tight. And as you're saying, Judge, the interesting thing will be is whether they've evacuated all the foreign nationals out of there.

Right. So all the Americans, the Brits, the Poles, the Germans, the whoever's who are fighting on behalf of Ukraine against Russia. We'll be interested to see whether or not they're able to fully evacuate those men before the Russians completely ensnare them. And these these Ukrainian forces have to surrender. Because that will certainly be interesting if you now have Americans and Brits and French and white appearing on Russian television stations. Here's President Putin himself on this very topic, of course, at the tail end of the BRICS meeting. Chris, cut number two. Our troops are very active in the Kursk direction.

Part some of the Ukrainian units that have mounted an incursion into the Kursk region have been blocked and encircled. This group totals around 2000 people. There are attempts at deblocking that from outside. There are also attempts at a breakthrough from the inside right now. The Russian troops are proceeding to eliminate this group of forces that has been encircled. Look at the word he uses. I realize it's translated into English, eliminate.

Yeah, yeah. If there are Americans in there, they're not coming home alive. Well, the propaganda to the Russians to capture Americans is outstanding. So if they can do it, they will. But in this type of war, in any type of war, to do such a thing is very difficult. You're dropping those very large glide bombs that are 1,500 pounds, 2,000 pounds, 3,000-pound bombs on these guys. You're killing them with drones,

with automatic weapons fire. Really hard to pick and choose which ones you eliminate. So certainly, but anyway, they might be able to identify some of the dead as being foreign forces. But I think now that I talk about it, I think the Ukrainians probably did evacuate those people before it was too late. That would be the smart thing to do. But, you know, you watch Putin's body language throughout all this. I certainly had gotten this wrong. I thought that the Russian response would be immediate, that politically the Russians would not want to have any Ukrainian troops on their soil. And the Russians were probably the most nonchalant anyone has ever been about their country being invaded. They exercised an incredible, particularly from a Western perspective, an incredible amount of patience, not just operational patience, but strategic and political patience in reaching

this point where, okay, it's done, we're eliminating them. And of course, the word choice they use, right, Judge, as Putin, you know, as he communicates this, it shows that this was nothing more than a pesk. This was nothing more than a nuisance. Right, right. Very, very interesting observation. Switching to Israel, according to an Israeli publication, which Alistair Crook says is credible, the IDF suffered catastrophic, that's according to Alistair, the direct translation from Hebrew into English, losses in Lebanon last weekend and is telling its illegal settlers, don't come back. What does this tell you? Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in

personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Well, certainly, again, they're trying to achieve something political here. And it's not even Israelis are trying to achieve something political. The governing coalition is, I should be very specific the way I talk about this, right? In a sense that- You're talking about the Netanyahu coalition. Netanyahu government. And that the primary purpose is the preservation, is the political

gain to the Netanyahu government from taking this war into Lebanon, right? So as you came up upon the year anniversary of Gaza, that's still going on, no end in sight. The hostages are still not home with their families. We have to shift. We have to distract. And of course, there are plenty of those in Israel who are in favor of going into Lebanon, whether there are militarist nationalists who want to buffer, whether there are Zionists who want to expand greater Israel. Certainly, there are plenty of people who hopped on board this idea or already on board the idea of invading Lebanon. But the idea, yes, so we have to realize that the IDF is now being utilized not to achieve any type of strategic objective for a military purpose, but trying to achieve a political objective for a domestic political purpose. You know,

so even when you see Hasram Nasrallah, the late leader of Hezbollah, be killed, certainly there's reasons why that's done, right? I mean, you want to kill the head of your enemy. Everyone understands that. But the political bump, the benefit that Netanyahu got from killing Nasrallah in terms of his public opinion approval, this is all the Netanyahu coalition look at this and saying, hey, look, if we held elections today, we'd be back in power. So Netanyahu, we really shouldn't be surprised because this guy is a political master.

He is a survivor. So six months, nine months, six months, nine months ago, when we were, what's going to happen with Netanyahu? What's going to happen with Gantz and Lapid? Are they going to leave? Is the government going to collapse? Are Ben-Gavir and Smotra going to throw up their hands and leave? Netanyahu is going to be isolated. Look at this guy. Where is that right now? And yet the IDF is overextended. He's put Israel in a terrible position operationally and strategically. The economy is bleeding out on and on and on. But if elections

were held today, he was going to, he's going to be reelected. He and Defense Minister Gallant planned three waves of missile attacks on Iran. After the first one, they turned around and went home and didn't trigger the second and the third because they confronted some sort of a defense with which they were unfamiliar. What does that tell you? Russian equipment? It's absolutely Russian equipment. It's the Russian air defense missiles, so not the S-300s and most importantly, the S-400s, which many people, people who are better informed than I am on this will say it's the best air defense missile in the world. You also have the Russian radar systems and the Russian

electronic warfare systems as well, which are the best in the world because the Russians invest a lot in that, but they've also had almost three years of experience with them now in Ukraine, fighting Western equipment. I do believe the Israelis did get two waves in, but the Israeli attack never even approached Israel. I mean, the missiles were fired from over Iraq. It's a standoff attack. That's predictable. That's prudent. That's what you would expect them to do. I look at the Israeli attack as being very limited, different opinions out there, whether it was a tail-to-failure or a great success. You know, I don't know, but I look overall in the sense of what they actually accomplished that we can actually observe and measure and what their response was immediately,

the way that, you know, literally as I'm watching the reports out of Tehran, Al Jazeera switches to Tel Aviv and Hagari, the Israeli IDF spokesperson, is saying we're done, you know. And so that tells me this was a limited face-saving measure. It was meant not to escalate things further. That commentary of mine goes out the window in a week after the elections, but the Israelis know that they can't engage or get involved in the full scare war with Iran until the Americans are on board with them. The Americans are not going to get on board until after the elections, again, after next Tuesday, who knows what happens. We can talk about that then. But I think also too, there may have been some,

some, dare I say, judge, you know, because we've compared Netanyahu and this Israeli government to Nixon and Kissinger's madman theory. You just don't know what these people are going to do. They're so scared because they're unpredictable. Well, I think there may have been some wisdom and prudency involved with the Israelis. One, they don't want to – they need the American support. Two, they realize that the threat of retaliation from Iran is very serious, that the Iranian missile strikes that they could incur could be devastating. The other thing is that they're also pursuing a strategy that doesn't go along with this idea of engaging with Iran right now.

So it took them a year to transition from Gaza to Lebanon, and it'll probably take them a year to transition from Lebanon to wherever they want to go next. But the idea of fighting the axis of resistance one at a time, right? The axis of resistance, those five or six nations, their strength is like a fist, right? And so is it easier to take on a finger or a fist? And I think that's the Israeli strategy is just to go after their enemies one after another. Now, again, what happens after Tuesday, what the Biden administration wants to do, I'm very scared that the Biden administration may say we want Joe Biden's legacy to be the American president who finally stood up to Iran on behalf of Israel, as well as for other reasons, not allowing the Republicans to say we didn't do enough about it. Giving Harris, if Harris wins, she takes the White House, you know, giving her a war that she inherits rather than has to start. If Trump takes the White House, you know, again, you're including the Republicans from saying, look, the Democrats

weren't doing enough, so we're doing it. So again, base domestic political concerns involved in all this. But I'm really concerned that the Biden White House after next week will say, okay, Israel, let's do this. And at that point, there's really concern about fighting the axis of resistance one at a time really isn't that big a deal because now you've got the Americans coming in and we're effectively doubling, tripling the Israeli Air Force, you know, without any problem on our end. Sure, we're running out of missiles. We can't refuel our ships at sea. But those are operational concerns that someone else will worry about. I mean, like did the did the Israeli fighter jets fly over Jordanian airspace?

That's that's my understanding. You know, in order to get where they were in Iraq and send off their missiles. And how does that sit with the rest of the Arab street? Your Majesty. Right, you know. King Abdullah. Exactly. So King Abdullah, we talked about this after the UN General Assembly, that great speech he gave.

Right. Abdullah, we talked about this after the UN General Assembly, that great speech he gave, you know, and I was excited by it because I guess I'm a romanticist about this maybe in some ways. And, you know, I wasn't probably as cautious as I should have been as I, you know, in sense of, hey, maybe Abdullah really might do something here. And of course you see, no, but we see this over and over judge throughout the international community. South Africa just showed up at the Hague with over 5,000 pages of documents relating to their genocide case against Israel, like 750-page argument and like 4,500 pages of evidence and annexes and everything else. You know who the lead exporter of coal to Israel is? South Africa. Right. See, see this hypocrisy throughout the world. You know, it is it's frustrating to witness. His relationship with the Israelis and the Americans and staying in the favor of the graces of the overall empire with the reality of his population.

If you remember, two million Palestinians who are refugees live in Jordan. And those same Palestinians tried to execute a coup about 50 years or so ago to remove his father. So that's all still there. So this balancing act at some point is going to topple. At some point, one of these monarchs, and I could see precisely it being Jordan because he's probably the least secure, but the same could be said about the Saudis. I think lesser for the Gulf monarchies, maybe the smaller Gulf monarchies. But, you know, at some point at one of these places, Judge, this balancing act is going to fall apart. The, you know, the balance, it's just going to be too

much on one side and there's going to be repercussions. I want to ask you if Iran is truly an enemy of the United States and if it is what the threat is, and if it's not why certain characters say it is. But before I ask you, and before you answer, on Sunday, while Scott Ritter and Dennis Fritz and Colonel Wilkerson and I, you were unable to be there because of a family commitment, were with a few hundred people at a restaurant in New York City talking about war and peace. On the other side of Manhattan was a rally at which a madman spoke. You will know in an instant who this madman is, and I'd like your thoughts on this. It's about a minute long. Chris, cut number four. They are our best friend. I worked for Ronald Reagan for

eight years. Ronald Reagan said we have to be there for Israel always because they are always there for us. Hamas is not there for us. Iran is not there for us. They want to good people. I'm sorry I don't take a risk with people that are taught to kill Americans at two. I'm on the side of Israel. You're on the side of Israel. Donald Trump's on the side of Israel. And they're on the side of the terrorists. Where to start, Matt?

I don't know if you saw this, Judge. Maybe folks watching saw it. But the New York Times interviewed John Fetterman, the senator from Pennsylvania, who is just as mad as Rudy Giuliani is in many ways. And his commentary on Israel was actually even more insipid. His commentary on Israel and the Palestinians was actually even more insipid than what we just heard from Rudy Giuliani. It was a collection of slogans and talking points and catchphrases, things he had been taught to memorize by the Israel lobby to repeat.

And this made me recall what the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in 1942. Ten years after the Nazis take power, Bonhoeffer writes an essay called After Ten Years. And in this, and I encourage people to read it, it's rather short, but he's got one section in there, probably the most famous section of his essay, when he talks about stupidity. And Bonhoeffer speaks of just like people like Giuliani, just like people like Fetterman, and how stupidity is more dangerous than maliciousness. That stupidity can't be argued with. It can't be reasoned with. That an evil person knows what they're doing, and they've made a calculation

to achieve some type of interest for themselves, while a stupid person just goes along with the slogans and the talking points, and they repeat what they've heard. He makes this brilliant point that the powerful must need the stupid, and in some way as well, the stupid need the powerful. And the two combined together create forces that bring about genocide. And so if people want to understand, I think, how we have this genocide occurring in Gaza, how this ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people is being fully, I don't know if we want to say supported, is being conducted by the American government. Because we just had a study from Brown University that on top of all the other things, we know that 70% of the cost of the genocide in Gaza that Israel is putting out is being paid for by the United States.

Every dollar Israel is spending on the genocide of the Palestinians, the United States, according to Brown University, is providing them with 70 cents of it. I want to focus on one of Giuliani's lines, and I realize this was all propaganda, and he was very angry, and I don't know what was going through his head. At one point, it's comical. On another point, it's downright depressing. Iran wants to kill you. What would be the basis for that other than pure propaganda scare tactics?

There is not a scintilla of evidence of which I'm aware, correct me if you can, that the Iranian government threatens the United States of America. You hear this combined with the idea that the Iranians have blood, American blood on their hands. You hear this from Democrats and Republicans across the board in corporate media. And it's referencing the 1983 barracks bombing of the Marines in Beirut, the embassy bombing in Beirut. I think most people who understand the context said, what the heck were they doing there in the first place? And Ronald Reagan, to his great credit, people who know me know I'm not a huge Ronald Reagan fan, but one of the best moves by any president in modern history was Ronald Reagan recognizing the danger that the United States was

in, being in Lebanon, taking part in that civil war on behalf of Israel and getting out. And this idea, though, that Iran has blown on its hands, the Iranians are coming to kill us, is just simply that, Judge. It's propaganda. It's just fiction meant to drive support for the war. There's two things that nations always do to drive support for war, to sustain support for war. There's two things that nations always do to drive support for war, to sustain support for war. It's moralized and it's scaremongering. So Israel, of course, is the only democracy in the Middle East, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The Iranians are coming to kill us, right? And you hear this from Netanyahu. We are fighting your battles. We are fighting your wars. I mean, I heard this when I was in Iraq and Afghanistan from members of Congress. You guys are over there fighting them over there.

So we don't have to fight them here. You know, that's it about the Russians in the last 10 years. We need to be in Ukraine, helping Ukrainians fight the Russians. We don't have to fight them here. It's just scaremongering meant to drive again to cite Bonhoeffer and not to be, you know, because I'm not, you know, I have my bill. It's not because I'm not articulate. It's because Bonhoeffer is exactly right. We're overthinking this. It's stupidity that, you know, people who are stupid who say, yes, the Iranians are because I've heard this all my life. So it must be true. And there's not one, as you said, scintilla of evidence.

Now, here's Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who's the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., making the same argument that Giuliani made in a far more sober way with respect to Iran. This is yesterday. state's message for Israel remains clear. We will always help secure its people and territory from Iran and its terrorist proxies and partners. Our message for Iran remains clear as well. Should it choose to undertake further aggressive acts against Israel or U.S. personnel in the region, there will be severe consequences. We will not hesitate. Or against U.S. personnel in the region. There's the 200 troops that are tripwired, supposedly guarding the THAAD air defense system. Right. I mean, the construct of this was back

decades. And, you know, if people are familiar with the history, know that in 1953, the Americans overthrow democratically elected government in Iran and install the Shah. They install essentially a Western puppet. And for 30 or for 25 years, the Shah runs a cruel and brutal police state in Iran. And then, of course, he's overthrown in 79, not just by the Islamists, but by nearly everyone in the society. And the Islamists come on top because they were better organized and everything else. But the history, the context, the understanding of why is there this Israel, I mean, Iranian hatred for the Americans, or why are they our enemy? We've done everything we can, Judge, in the last 80 years nearly to ensure that they are our enemies. And we do this for a number of reasons. One, because the Iranian government, at least since 1979, has stood up to the American empire in the Middle East.

Not saying that the Iranian government doesn't have its own objectives, its own aims in the Middle East, doesn't want to see its influence expand, but also, too, a prime part of that. I wouldn't even say a part of it. Something we have to really understand is that what Iran has been doing for the last four decades in the Middle East is standing up to the American empire. So that has made Iran a very easy enemy for the Americans. And if you're an empire, you need to be at war at all times. You need to have enemies at all times. And so someone who's standing up against you, that's really easy to diminish them. That's really easy to demonize them. That's really easy to like degrade them in terms of how you how you speak about them, how you deal with them, even to it's the point of the arrogance of it. So I can't remember if I've shared this story with you, Judge, but I have a friend who goes to the United Nations very often and he goes to a lot of these meetings. He goes to a lot of social events.

And Ambassador Woods, who is Linda Thomas Greenfield deputy, he's the deputy ambassador for the Americans at the UN. He's the man who, when I was speaking at the UN, got up and walked out while I was talking. My friend was there at this event, and the Iranian delegation was literally just a handful of feet away, just 10 feet away or so. And he says to Ambassador Woods, why don't you just go over there and talk to them? And Ambassador Woods says, why would I do that? I mean, that type of the arrogance, the imperial arrogance here just is one more aspect that people have to understand. It's our entitlement. It's our right to rule the Middle East. And who

are these Iranians to stand up against us? And so that has brought us to the point now where we have a culture in the United States. And of course, there's been things that have really enabled it, such as the hostage crisis in 79, right? I mean, I was born in 73. So the hostage crisis was kind of the first thing I remember about the world, you know, about six years old or so. So that informed who I was. That informed my, that conditioned me all through my life. So we've had this conditioning for decades that the Iranians are our greatest enemy. Now, of course, the Iraqis at times, the Libyans, the Syrians, the Russians, the Chinese, you know, whoever, the Serbs, you know, they all get supplanted at times.

The British. Whoever, right? You know, but if you listen to the Vice President of the United States, a Democratic nominee for the White House, she says over and over again these last weeks that Iran is our biggest enemy. Now, the important thing to note about all this is that this is exactly what Israel wants, because we have to to remember, Iran is not Israel's priority. Iran is not what the Israelis are concerned about most. The biggest priority for the Israelis are the Palestinians. The Iranians, of course, support the Palestinians, and so that bothers the Israelis.

The Iranians oppose Israeli expansion in the Middle East, so that bothers the Israelis. The Iranians oppose Israeli expansion in the Middle East, so that bothers the Israelis. But the big thing about the Iranians for the Israelis is that it distracts from what they're doing to the Palestinians, in particular for the Americans and the British and some other Western countries. So the Israelis are able to make the whole story about the Middle East about being, as they describe it, Iran, this octopus with its tentacles. And the Palestinians, of course, are just one tentacle of the octopus. They're their puppets. And that is what the narrative is in the West.

That enables people like Kamala Harris to say Iran is our greatest adversary. It's our greatest threat. And it distracts from the fact that Israel is conducting a brutal occupation, a brutal humiliating apartheid on the Palestinian people. And for the last year, they've been conducting a genocide against them, of which, as we were just saying, the United States is giving them 70 cents on every dollar they spend doing that. Right. You understand when you pull it apart like that and you recognize just, you know, again, we criticize the Israelis a lot for not being sound or not being smart or going about things in ways that we don't understand.

But when you see how they certainly do things and figure out how they're able to manipulate the Americans, control the Americans, get the Americans to do what they want, flip the empire on its head, essentially. And we're here in the U.S. consider Iran to be the biggest threat to Israel, when no, that's what the Israelis want us to think. It makes us be distracted from this idea that the priority for, not the idea, the reality that the priority for Israel is and always has been and always will be the Palestinians up until when the Israelis are successful in ethnically cleansing and annexing Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Matt Ho, thank you very much. Great, great, great analysis, particularly on Iran. Much appreciated. All my best to your family, and we'll see you again next week. All right. Thank you, Judge. Of course. And coming up at three o'clock this afternoon, Karen Kwiatkowski and at four o'clock this afternoon, Colonel Douglas McGregor, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.