Judging Freedom - Max Blumenthal : Protecting Protesters or Manipulating Unrest? Trump and Iran

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

Max Blumenthal : Protecting Protesters or Manipulating Unrest? Trump and IranSee 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. Tragically, 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 Wednesday, January 14th, 2006. My dear friend, Max Blumenthal, joins us now. Max, thank you very much for your time. Are you able to discern any central driving force

behind Donald Trump's foreign policy? Yes. What is it? Israel. Israel. I'm not surprised to hear you say that in the evidence is plentiful but expand that that's the only reason that Donald Trump is on the verge of striking Iran because doing so seems to violate all the precepts or at least the marketing

precepts of his America first brand and violates even the new national security doctrine that was rolled out just a few weeks ago there's also the sense of gullibility gullibility and hubris and inviability, if we include the Don Roe doctrine. And then, you know, if you really go to the core of what the Trump administration represents, it's not an administration. It's kind of an incorporation or a business mafia. And Trump and his cronies are defined by this golden age that Donald Trump rolled out at his inauguration. And I think if you think about everything Donald Trump has done, go back to his inauguration, you don't even need to listen to his words.

Just look at his inauguration. It was held in a small room, not in front of the national mall with supposedly the American people. It was a small exclusive room in which billionaires received the best seats. And which billionaire got the best seat? It was Miriam Adelson. Miriam Adelson had better seats than most cabinet members of the incoming Trump administration, better seats than senators, members of Congress. She was directly behind Donald Trump.

And she's driving this entire train straight to a confrontation with Iran, with her money acting on behalf of her country, Israel. And that's really what defines. Trump's policy and will define Trump's legacy if he strikes Iran. Is there a connection of which you are aware between Israel, Netanyahu on one side, and the invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of Maduro on the other? Well, Netanyahu immediately came out and celebrated the kidnapping of Maduro. Yes, why? Why would Netanyahu be celebrating that?

So too did Zelensky, so you could argue, that this was something that they did in order to make close partnership and friendship with Donald Trump. It was a success from Trump's perspective. But the Israelis have had it in for Venezuela under Hugo Chavez because their embassy was kicked out. Chavez denounced Israel's savage assaults on occupied Palestinians. He opened up doors for Venezuela to Iran and diversified Venezuela's foreign policy relationships to include countries across the global south that Israel considers hostile and enemies. Chavez was when he stood at the United Nations and said, I smell sulfur here after George W. Bush had just stood at the podium. Right. He was attacking Bush for carrying out this campaign of,

of regime change in eight nations in five years or whatever it was after 9-11, which was essentially the clean break document that had been presented to Netanyahu in the late 90s by his neo-conservative advisors who then went on to advise George W. Bush. I'm talking about Douglas Fythe, Merav Wormser, Richard Pearl. These are the figures who defined George W. Bush's targets, and all of his targets, were enemies designated by Israel. And so now they're reaching towards the final target on the target board, first presented to Netanyahu in the late 90s,

with Netanyahu closing out his career, and it's Iran. Iran is the beating heart of the resistance axis that is the last thing standing between the people of the region and complete Israeli hegemony and control. We want to spend some time in Iran, but just before we do, sticking with this big picture themes of Trump's foreign policy, by the way, Marya Madison had a better seat at that inauguration than Joe Biden did, who was at least before it started, the sitting president of the States. Who gains when Trump steals oil and kills innocence?

Well, that's the thing that a lot of very gullible people in MAGA believe is that they gain when Trump steals oil, that somehow oil prices are going to go down and that the U.S. had no relationship with, no trading relationship with Venezuela. It was actually in Trump's first term in 2019 when Trump banned U.S. companies from drilling in Venezuela. that includes not just oil companies themselves, but the oil service industry, like Halliburton. So all those companies are a meeting with Trump in a scene at the White House that could have, if it had taken place in the 1970s or 80s, without any alteration, been very effective propaganda for the Soviet Union and its model because of the sheer plutocracy on display and dementia, as Trump stood up to gaze out in the middle of the meeting at the old oak stands that he had, the old growth oak stands that he had raised in order to build his golden White House ballroom.

The oil industry executives had all been forced out of Venezuela by Trump. Venezuela was already providing low oil prices in the United States, as well as free. this is something a lot of Americans don't know. Under Chavez, there was a program to provide free heating oil to impoverished Americans in Massachusetts, in the Bronx, all across the country. So Venezuela wanted to partner with the U.S. In fact, during Hurricane Katrina, Chavez offered to bring two large mobile hospitals and something like 50,000 tons of food to the suffering residents of the poor neighborhoods of New Orleans who were not being tended to by their own government and the U.S. rejected it.

The rejection has always been coming from Washington while Venezuela stretches its hand out. And now Trump is seeking to take the oil in order to plunder it on behalf of his business cronies, which is a very small circle of loyalists and nepotism connections like his sons. And what they're going to do in their fantasy pipe dream of plundering Venezuela is put the oil in an offshore account. An offshore account outside of the U.S. Treasury, so it's not accountable to the American public. There will be no transparency, and it will become a slush fund for Trump Incorporated, which could also mean it could be a slush fund for black operations for paramilitary Trump cronies like Eric Prince. And we've seen this before.

We've seen it through the BCCI scandal. And there was another scandal in the UK where an offshore fund was created by the government. And it basically sponsored a lot of very disturbing black operations by the MI6 that were off the books and unaccountable to the British public. What is going on in Iran now? Is there any serious dispute but that this has been. And what has now ended was fermented by CIA Mossad and MI6. The Mossad is taking credit for what took place. But we're not even allowed to say what took place.

Like the reality that Iranians have been living through, the reason why millions of Iranians were out today with the coffins of security officers, including unarmed guards in the streets of Tehran and other cities to mourn those who were killed by these riots, regime change riots, and militarized, increasingly militarized gang assaults. We're not even allowed to talk about that. The only thing you're allowed to say is that Iran is just gunning down protesters, as though they're walking in the streets with signs declaring their peaceful intentions and singing, we shall overcome and holding hands at the crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge and singing

old Iranian spirituals at Woolworth counters. Like that's not what's taking place. These are militarized riots that are destroying entire Iranian cities. Cities have had their marketplaces burned down. Mosques have been burned on camera in cities across Iran, including in the middle of Tehran. Huge mosques have gone up in flames. claims. Security officers have been beaten to death on camera in the street by gangs of men. There have been gun battles between police and gunmen, where are they getting the guns from?

Iran isn't like the United States where everyone owns assault weapons. Burnings of fire stations, something like 50 banks were burned in one night in Tehran. Torching of civilian homes, attacks on judges, public prosecutors who have been killed. It's something, an unprecedented, violent rampage across Iran. And the videos that you see, which are very plentiful, and the monarchist forces that are principally behind these assaults make no secret of what they're doing and promote it on their own social media channels. you see bands of masked men carrying out mayhem and violence that no society would accept.

And what Iran has sought to do is provide security for its citizens as any country would do. And they're left with no choice. Either let this mayhem continue and escalate and become Syria in 2013 where armed gunmen take over large sections of your cities and then you have to bring in tanks and air strikes in order to prevent. them from taking over the government, as al-Qaeda essentially did last year in Syria, or you have to get in the streets and engage with them and use your own weapons. And that's what's taken place. And so now you have the Israelis. There was just this big conference in Dural, interestingly, in Miami, which is the home of Marco Rubio by the Jerusalem Post, where

retired and current Israeli military intelligence honchos have been declaring that there absolutely will be a war one after another and it will destroy Iran and Donald Trump is going to agree to this. They're not even questioning whether Trump will agree. On social media, you're seeing a unprecedented sciop play out with lie after lie designed to goad Donald Trump into agreeing to a military. assault on Iran. And he's obviously, I would assume he's presumably being pushed in meetings like the one he held with his National Security Council yesterday to authorize some kind of assault on Iran.

But why? Why? To protect protesters? That's something we would expect from like a Hillary Clinton responsibility to protect humanitarian interventionist liberal and that they would be pushed by Samantha Power. And actually Barack Obama. after Libya resisted Samantha Powers incessant lobbying to do the same in Syria because he and his main advisor, Ben Rhodes, had some understanding of how destabilizing that would be. But now Trump is sort of embracing a kind of R2P liberal humanitarian interventionist doctrine to attack Iran because he's on some early stage dementia sugar high after Venezuela. And we've even seen his main envoy to one of his major foreign policy envoys, Rick Grinnell,

who is supposed to come out of MAGA and represent conservative Republicans, go on Twitter and declare that he smuggles gay men and lesbians out of Iran and that he's so happy that the quote unquote regime will fall because it will basically, then there will be gay pride parades in Tehran. So like Trump's foreign policy envoy did the meme that was introduced to mock liberal humanitarian interventionist. And it's the meme of a rainbow drone bombing brown people. That's that's pretty much what they're doing.

They're doing something that's actually very neocon and very liberal in their proposed attack on Iran. At least that's how it's being justified. they are being goaded into it by Netanyahu's forces. Elon Musk is playing a huge role by cranking up the Mighty Whirlitzer on Twitter. It's just lie after lie. CBS News, of course, under Barry Weiss is pushing a death toll of 12,000, which is completely fake and was invented by Israel and Fed to her.

That's why Barry Weiss is there. And so the narrative is baked in the cake, regardless of the reality on the ground, which I've been illustrating at the gray zone. on my own Twitter X account, which is that Iran is facing violent regime change riots. And they've basically ended. The protests against the government are basically over at this point. Professor Mirandi, who spoke to us from Tehran a few hours ago, agrees with you. I mean, I didn't go into the granular detail that you went into.

But in terms of the demonstrations in the streets now are pro-governmental. He said he was involved in one yesterday with three million people in the main square and main boulevards of, I don't know the geography you do, of Tehran. And that the people that Mossad and CIA have been feeding are either dead, arrested or gone home. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was looking at the, I'm looking at it right now, the Twitter feed of a Turkish journalist who's in Iran, and he's showing video of Tehran being at peace and a video from, I think, Mashad, which was a city that last Saturday saw gigantic riots that caused $18 million in damage there, militarized riots. That city is at peace as well. And lots of the, And if your producer wants to get any of this on screen, it's mostly on my Twitter timeline. You can't hear about any of this from the expert class of Iranian Beltway think tank experts,

even the relatively good ones. They refuse to talk about the violence that the Iranian government has been targeting the Iranian government. However, Israel's Channel 14, which is sort of like Israel's Fox News, is a pro-Nettingahu, pro-Settler, pro-genocide network, is saying quite openly that this is taking place. I'm going to read you the quote in a second. Tonight we published in the main edition of Channel 14. This is Tamir Murag, who's a correspondent. foreign elements are arming the protesters in Iran with live weapons.

And this is the reason for the hundreds of dead among the regime's people. Anyone is free to guess who we're talking about. So they're not talking about Lichtenstein. They're taking credit for it. And they're taking credit for hundreds of deaths. So you see all these videos, if you're paying attention to this, of body bags at morgues in Iran. And opposition propagandists will say, look at the woman crying. But they'll never ask, is this woman crying for someone who has killed?

by the rioters and gunmen who are being armed by the Mossad? They never provide context. But yes, yes, they often are. Many of those body bags are people who were killed by the monarchist opposition being encouraged by the Potomac Maryland-based clown prince, Reza Pahlavi, explicitly to kill government workers, to attack state media stations, and to destroy as much as possible. Trump is called for them reading an Israeli script that was fed to him to take over institutions. So they're being basically sent into the streets to rampage with weapons.

They're doing things that are just unbelievable and unpalatable to the average Iranian. Because the average Iranian is religious, and they are Shia, and they are burning mosques. It's all on camera, a major mosque in Sadat Abad Square in northwest Tehran. Look that up. That was set on fire in front of a cheering crowd. There was another mosque. Let's see. Sabzakada. This is the mosque where the great, great, great grandson of the prophet Muhammad is said to be buried. And they burned that down. And so you have, and they're being cheered on by professional Islamophobic,

paid Israeli and United Arab Emirates influencers all across Twitter, including Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson. The premier Islamophobic hooligan who's led riots against Muslims in the UK is cheering on these mosque burnings because why not? In the middle of Iran, you now have an anti-Islam movement. So consider what that means for neighbors like Turkey, Islamic states like Turkey or majority Muslim states like Turkey or Iraq, any of the neighboring states, or Syria, where ironically, Turkey and Qatar helped overthrow the government and weaken Iran and make this more possible. Let me stop you.

That is very ominous. Let me stop you just for a second, Max. I want the audience to know that what they're seeing now is from your Twitter X account and some of it is from press TV and Tehran. which is where Professor Miranda was when we interviewed him a few hours ago. I do want to post this crazy tweet from, of all people, Mike Pompeo. We all know who he is, the former U.S. Secretary of State and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Look at this.

I can't wait to get to the last line, but I'm going to read it. The Iranian regime is in trouble, bringing in mercenaries as its last best hope, riots and dozens of cities. I don't need to name them. 47 years of this regime. POTUS 47, coincidence, question mark. Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them. Why would he have said that?

He was told to. The Mossad wants this to be known. The Mossad subsequently came out on its Farsi channel on Twitter X and said this almost. almost the same thing in almost the same language as Pompeo. They said that rise up, Iranians, your time is now to get into the streets and know that we will be walking beside you and that we are there with you in the streets. So they're taking credit for it.

When they take credit for something, it means they did it. It's like one of the few times you see Israelis telling the truth. What they want to do, it's clear to me what they want to do by taking credit for it. First of all, it's psychological warfare. They want to goad Iranian security forces into taking a more ham-handed approach toward the protesters. They want to escalate the death toll, but they also want Iranians who are at least mildly supportive of the Islamic Republic to blame the Islamic Republic and specifically the IRGC

for failing to take care of their security in the face of Mossad infiltration. And that's why they also hyped up and promoted their involvement in the 12-day war in recruiting cells of not just Iranians, but also migrant workers from other countries who are often mistreated in Iran as their own agents to carry out bombing attacks inside Iran, to attack Iranian radar systems, to give up the details of the locations. of nuclear scientists. I mean, they've made no secret about it. So I think it's a factual and an objective statement to refer to the violence plaguing Iran as Mossad-backed regime change riots. And increasingly they are militarized. The guns can come in through Kurdistan.

There's actually a group in Kurdistan called Komala. It's spelled almost like Kamala Harris's name, like K-O-M-A-L-A. and it's similar to the M.E.K, the people's M.E.K. And that it used to be a Marxist organization. It's a Kurdish separatist group that is heavily armed. It's been armed by the U.S. They have an office here in Washington. They're backed by U.S. intelligence.

And groups like that can help bring weapons into Iran, which has pretty porous borders. And having visited Iran, it's like a chaotic society with gigantic cities. It's not this heavily controlled police state. But here's another statement by Major General Tamir Hyman in Israeli media. He was the head of the Israeli military intelligence directorate. He said, if the question is, is there a zero operation right now? The answer is no, because there already is an operation.

There is currently a very significant U.S. influence operation. And so that's another point that I think is important here. The Internet is a major weapon directed against Iran. That's where not only are rioters and saboteurs receiving instructions, where many people are being propagandized, but also where they're being paid. They're being paid through crypto. This is known through captured rioters, saboteurs, gunmen who have acknowledged the they were paid in crypto, often through Germany. Germany is where the Mossad is operating through

to communicate to his assets inside Iran. It's recruiting a lot of Iranians openly through Germany. And so the internet is this weapon aimed at Iran. And so Iran has essentially turned off the internet. And then Elon Musk's Starlink became the key link for the regime change rioters who were being backed and supported by the West and Israel. And Russia has apparently supplied Iran with the ability to cut off Starlink, which was a major blow to this hybrid warfare operation that is plaguing Iran. So Iran gained the upper hand there. They're not turning off the Internet because they just hate freedom. They're turning it off because it's been destroying their society. And this is sort of a lesson. Just as the lesson from North Korea was get nuclear weapons or the West will come and

destroy you as they did to Libya after you negotiate them away and think that you've normalized, the lesson here is develop your own internet, have your own fiber optic cables, do not depend on the West's internet of all things because it's actually a weapon of regime change. And that's unfortunate because I've benefited so much from all of the cultural, political, and personal connections I've made on the Internet. It's really sad to say that, but it's not I who poisoned the Internet. And if we go back and look at who designed the Internet in the first place, there were a whole lot of grants coming out of ARPA net, ARPA and DARPA from the Pentagon as well as the CIA and its venture capital arm in QTEL. Well, this is an extraordinary, extraordinary analysis, Max.

We could go on for hours and only have a few more minutes. Why would Netanyahu risk the existence of Israel over an attack where he knows that the blowback will be more than he can tolerate? Well, there are different options that are being considered. and I think one of them does risk the existence of Israel, but that may not be at the, that's more of an ambitious option. And Netanyahu is known for risking the existence of Israel. That's sort of his stock and trade, but so far he believes he's succeeded by being aggressive and by having Trump under his control, it's an ace card for Netanyahu and his

forces that span from the U.S. to Tel Aviv. One option is a limited strike. Trump comes in and does some damage to Iranian oil or IRGC facilities and then demands Iran sit down and negotiate from a weaker position. Another option, which I've heard Israeli, national security sort of military intelligence figures put on the table for Trump at this Jerusalem post conference in Miami are decapitation strikes, including those targeting the symbols of the Islamic Republic, which are civilian targets like Iran's Majlis, its parliament, basically like it would be like when Al Qaeda tried to bomb the U.S. Capitol or the Supreme Court of Iran, and then targeting Iranian leadership.

That's also very possible. It will produce a rally around the flag effect, and new figures will fill the void. Iran's institutions are extremely united right now and are very durable. And it will lead to massive damage in Israel and U.S. military bases will be attacked with Iran's very large stockpile of short-range ballistic missiles. because those bases are much closer to Iran than Israel is. Actually, those bases are the main target in Iran's target bank if the U.S. attacks. And then the third option is to just go all in, try to destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran in a gigantic combined U.S.-Israeli war.

And this is something that Saudi Arabia has already conveyed their opposition to in meetings and discussions with Trump. I don't even know if the United Arab Emirates is on board. All the neighbors in the region are opposed to it. Turkey, certainly Iraq is opposed to it. It could destabilize Iraq because of the presence of Hachdel-Shabi, these popular mobilization units, which will defend Iran. And Iran will hit back and will demonstrate, I think, in that case,

the ability to hang on in some form and we'll see a country of 80 to 100 million people transformed into a kind of Syria situation. Syria is a much smaller country. And flooding Syria with weapons caused the largest migration wave since World War II at that point. So imagine how this would destabilize not just Central Asia and the Levant, but also Europe as well, to do this. to Iran. And that is potentially where things could go. We also have to consider how radical Israel's leadership is and how deranged they are. We recently saw, and I believe it was Israel's Channel 12, a former Israeli army official declare that after regime change in Iran, they will

continue to strike Iran as they're doing in Syria. So there's no good solution for the regime changers in the opponents of Iran. It's almost like they're seeking destruction and war for its own sake. The regime change should take place in Tel Aviv. Max, your knowledge is encyclopedic, literally. Thank you for sharing all of it with us. I wish we had more time. We'll look forward to resuming with you next week. All the best, my dear friend. Thanks a lot, Judge. Thank you. Truly, truly encyclopedic, wonderful, brilliant, gifted lecture on the true state of things in Iran today. You won't hear it anywhere else. You'll hear it from my colleagues in the alternate media, but you're certainly not going to hear it in mainstream. I want to tell you about tomorrow.

Aaron Monta at 11 in the morning, Colonel Larry Wilkerson at 1 at 2 o'clock. Okay, Chris, I jumped the gun. There you go. We have a debate for you between Dinesh DeSuzza and Dave Smith. What is America First? I will be moderating the debate. It is hosted by judging freedom. It is sponsored by Zero Hedge. It'll go on for about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes after their opening statements. I will be grilling them. They'll get to question each other and then they'll make their closing comments. It should be fascinating. When all of that is over at 3.30 tomorrow afternoon, the great Professor John Mearsheimer, today at three o'clock the great Phil Giraldi judge Napolitano for judging freedom