Judging Freedom - Pepe Escobar : Trump ‘Mows the Lawn’ at Iranian Wedding. Death Toll Rising!

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

Pepe Escobar : Trump ‘Mows the Lawn’ at Iranian Wedding. Death Toll Rising!See 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? 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. Welcome to Moscow, coming to you from the bar of the Hotel National across the street from Red Square, a venue with which our guest today is intimately familiar. Pepe Escobar finds us from outside of Paris. Pepe, welcome here. Pepe, a lot of your friends miss you in Moscow, which, of course, I'm visiting for the week, and I appreciate your accommodating my schedule and joining us today. While I was flying here, and of course it takes 30 hours to get here, thanks to Joe Biden and Donald Trump's sanctions.

The United States of America attacked a wedding in Iran. What do we know about this? Well, I'll be very frank with you, Judge. I did not follow this story in detail because I was buried not only in the SCO summit in Kyrgyzstan, but the Vladivostok Summit. And as we speak, you and me, right? I'm going to stop you for a second. Chris, I can't hear him.

I'm not sure what I might be doing wrong, but I can't hear Pepe. Hang on for those of you who are watching. I might have to refresh. Chris, I'm going to refresh. Maybe that'll bring me in. So bear with me. Well, to all of you waiting.

Pepe, now I hear you loud and clear. Yes, fantastic. All right, and thank you for all of you who have been waiting for us. us and appreciate your understanding of the difficulties of this communication. What happened at the wedding in Iran? Well, Judge, I was trying to tell you before we were rudely interrupted. I did not follow in detail because I was buried simultaneously in the SCO summit in Kyrgyzstan

and in the Vladivostok summit. I usually go to these summits back to back. back like I did last year. This year I had other commitments and I have to go to South Korea tomorrow. So that changed everything. But it was essentially, how could we put it diplomatically, a sort of mini-minab incident or a MNAP 2.0 instead of school, a wedding. And there were several civilian victims.

Iranian public opinion is absolutely petrified with horror that this could happen. And obviously, it was not an accident. Obviously, it is a process of terrorizing the whole population. And it's born out of desperation, of course. The desperation is reaching unbelievable levels on all fronts because once again, the president of the United States is born. be the only off-ramp existing at the moment to towards some sort of diplomatic arrangement, which is resurrecting the memorandum of understanding the MOU that cat. And he preferred to go

through the escalation ladder. So, yes, I'm waiting to see if you have a follow-up question. Oh, yeah, I do have a follow-up question. And then, of course, I want to get into the economics of the efforts to strangle Iran and what happened of profound significance at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and their resolutions afterwards. How were Scott Bessence's sanctions met and reviewed at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting? What do they think of what Bessent is trying to do? Well, they dismissed the, as, well, to put it not diplomatically, a totally stupid economic move that is going to hurt, especially the U.S. and the global economy.

A very, very simple example. Iran is an ultra-sanctioned economy operating a very large shadow fleet to export energy, mostly to Asian clients, mostly to China, but also to other big Asian clients. These old tankers or super tankers, some of them are being kept afloat by miracles of engineering. So they are part of the Iranian state. So if they go off the, they are already off the books everywhere in terms of international shipping arrangements and security. security, et cetera. So if you lose 10 of these supertankers or 20, that's not a big deal. But, and now we come to the new Iranian policy. The Americans want to start a tanker for a tanker

attack. The Iranians can say, okay, it's going to be one tanker of ours, five tankers of yours. And when they say five tankers of yours, is tankers that are covered by the international shipping security risk premium arrangements. So there is a cascading effect. If one single petrol tanker coming from Saudi, Kuwait, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, for instance, is hit, there is a cascading effect in the whole international security financial system. So it's the global economy that fuels the repercussions. If you hit an Iranian tanker, these are already dark by definition because they are part of a dark, non-existent fleet.

So once again, Trump is hurting Western interests more than Iran itself. Please, go ahead. What were the agreements into which the Shanghai Cooperation Group entered? And actually, before you get there, how much of the world's population, Pepe, is covered by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization? How significant is this organization economically, notwithstanding what the Trump people are trying to accomplish? Well, this is fake news and propaganda compared to reality, Judge. I've been following the SEO from the beginning. Literally. And many among our audience may know that the SEO was founded three months before 9-11, in June 2001, when both Russia and China were not superpowers.

So it was Russia and China and three Central Asian stands, Uzbekistan came later, and they were worried essentially about three things. terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism. So this was the initial brief of the SEO. Over the years, the SEO became a giant geo-economic body, a multilateral organization, which works in parallel with bricks in terms of setting up a multipolar world and a different system of international relations

geo-economically and geopolitically. And that's why it's so important. Last year, the summit was in Tianjin, like the same thing, one day before Vladivostok, just like this year. And in Tianjin, presided by Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping basically announced that the SEO was getting to the next level, which is to implement a system of global governance and a system completely different from the Western geopolitical and geopolitical and geoeconomic system. This year, they went one step ahead on a system. practical achievements. Among them, one that it's already on the way and is going to be announced within the next few months. They're setting up a development bank, the SCO development bank,

just like the BRICS and DB development bank. But Putin, in his own words, he said, this has to be totally independent from pressure by other nations, without naming them, of course. This means the statutes of this bank, unlike the NDB, the BRICS bank, are not going to be linked to the US dollar. And it was proposed by most of them, and especially by Russia and Iran, to build an energy consortium, because there are many important oil producers among the SCO. So this is the new incarnation of the SCO. Basically, they are laying down the tracks for Eurasia as a whole to build a new. an independent system of international relations and economic relations,

completely independent from the West, in the long run. If a Chinese bank is funding an arms manufacturer in Iran, and the Americans threaten the bank in order to get it to stop its funding, what will the bankers do? Isn't it a crime? under Chinese law to obey American sanctions. Absolutely, Judge. And that's the point. And this is relatively new.

Beijing told every Chinese company in every jurisdiction. If any of you is hit by essentially American sanctions, whatever these jurisdictions, we are going to go after them. And on top of it, you will not fulfill any commitments or pay any penalties or follow what they're saying. And this applies especially to Chinese teapot refineries that buy energy, especially oil, from coming delivered by these Iranian petrol tankers. And this is all settled in Petro Yuan, essentially. First of all, they are already outside of the system. But if the Americas decide to finance some of these banks,

Chinese banks who help this Chinese teapot refiners, they're going to say bye-bye, take a hike. We're not going to follow anything that you're saying. And we follow Chinese law. If you have a problem, talk to Beijing directly. because these sanctions essentially judge, they are against China. Because the number one buyer of Iranian energy is China. So these sanctions are not essentially against Iran.

They are mostly against China. And I guess the United States of America doesn't understand that it doesn't run the Chinese central banking system, that the Chinese central banking system doesn't need the American Federal Reserve, doesn't need the SWIFT system, that because power in the world is moving eastward, wealth in the world is moving eastward, the powers in the east, Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, New Delhi, Mumbai, don't need the Western systems any longer. Question, does Scott Bessent understand that because he acts as if he doesn't.

Well, he has no bloody idea about any of it, a judge. If you ask Scott Bassett, what do Briggs and the S.A.U. do? What are the members? Did you pay attention to what they were discussing in Kyrgyzstan on Monday and Tuesday? He's going to be speechless. And I make a bet. problem is in the U.S. mainstream media, investigative journalism disappeared completely. So nobody's going to ask him this question. What, for instance, I was looking at the time, the list of sessions in Vladivostok yesterday and today about the Arctic Silk Road, the North and Sea route. And this is exactly one of the things that Putin said today in his speech.

in the planet recession, that Russia is investing, you know, whatever it takes to solidify 24-7, 365 days a year navigation across the Arctic throughout the Arctic Silk Road. So this bypasses the petrol dollar, and this bypasses the Swiss Canal. And the number one investor in the Arctic Silk Road apart from Russia is China. And they already tested the Arctic Silk Road, which can go to Russia.

And then in the Chinese case, it can go to ports in Western Europe. So this is the kind of stuff that is being discussed. And these people around Trump, they have absolutely no idea. Prabowo, leader of Indonesia, he's the guest of honor in Vladivostok. Today, he's sitting, as we speak right now, on the stage in Vladivostok with Putin, as the guest of honor. He is the number one economy in ASEAN, Association of Southeast Asian Nations. And Prabhu was saying, look, Russia, they are investing in everything here in Indonesia, come, invest even more. So this is it. Russia is becoming incredibly not only because of soft power, but incredibly active in markets all across Southeast Asia, which is one of the top two areas on the planet that is growing very, very fast.

apart from Africa. And this is what Putin has been saying at these forums, year after year. Pepe, can you hear me? Yes, I can. All right. This is producer, Chris, for those of you listening, you can't see me, but you can hear me.

It looks like we've lost Judge. I think he's trying to log back in. Let me see if this works. I could listen to the sounds of the bar of the National Hotel. I think we've got him back. Judge, can you hear us? He's going to log in on the sound now.

Can you still hear me, Pepe? Yes, I can hear absolutely fine, yes. Judge, can you hear us? We can hear you, Judge. No, we can. Not yet. Oh, now I'm on screen. Wow. Okay. That wasn't supposed to happen.

My debut on Judging Freedom. Hopefully he'll be back with us in just a minute. Look, everybody, all of you who watched judging freedom, I did a lot of podcasts from Russia with Judge and Chris. And sometimes we do have communication problems. It's normal. And the judge is sitting on the bar outside in the street of the National Hotel across the Costa, the road from the travel.

And Wi-Fi can go up and down. And now, depending on what you're using, it can be a problem. will bear with us you know it's normal judge can you hear us we're at pepe yes we can hear you can't hear me brilliant right you can hear me but i can't hear pepe and i can't see you welcome to the modern world i actually got kicked out of the bar and i haven't been kicked out of a bar since i was about 19 years old but he asked me to move to sort of a side room which is where i am now and that's why we're having these issues. Pepe, I'm going to have to sign off.

I really appreciate everything you've said, and I really appreciate you and the audience being on with us in these trying circumstances. But we will resume this when we have better communication. And for those of us, you are watching us, in 10 minutes, Uncle Larry, Larry Wilkerson, will be with us. That's 9.15 in the morning, Eastern Time.

Pepe, all the best to you, my friend. Thank you for watching. All the best. See you in Moscow, Judge. I'll be arriving on Wednesday in Moscow, if you can hear me. 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? What if Jefferson was right? What if that government is best, which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right?