Judging Freedom - Pepe Escobar : What Will Moscow and Beijing Do?

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Pepe Escobar : What Will Moscow and Beijing Do?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

you Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, June 23rd, 2025. From the middle of the night, Pepe Escobar joins us from Moscow. Pepe, a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining the show. There's so many things happening so rapidly and we need your expertise in many, many of these. What is your opinion of the international opinion of Trump's attack on Iran on Saturday evening?

Behind the scenes is being condemned virtually everywhere, all across the global South. Of course, not the Chihuahuas in Europe. That's different. And this is something that was relayed by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and also by Iranian diplomats. As you know, Judge, this early afternoon today in Moscow, there was the key meeting between Putin and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arakshi.

We know that Ayatollah Khamenei sent a personal letter to Vladimir Putin delivered by hand by Araksh. We don't know what's inside that letter, of course. But considering that Peskov, Kremlin spokesman later said, it all depends on now, it all depends on what the Iranians want from us. So this means Russia is open to everything

that the Iranians ask. And this complements something that we have known here in Russia since two and a half years ago almost. When there were Iranian delegations coming here all the time, they were still negotiating the strategic partnership. And whenever I asked the Iranians, they would say, ah, it went very well. And the Russians say, OK, anything you want to ask. And the Iranians said, you Russians, anything you want from us, just ask.

So let's see where this is getting us from now on, right? But what do you think the Kremlin thinks of Trump's decision, Pepe? It seems pretty obvious now that this was a PR stunt. The uranium and the centrifuges were not there. The United States wasted $100 million. The Secretary of Defense called it brilliant. It wasn't. It was actually concocted

in the prior administration, whom they claimed to hate. The President of the United States said we totally obliterated their nuclear capabilities. We didn't lay a glove on it. Why would they do something as dumb as this? And now it's universally recognized as dumb and a failure. Well, faulty intelligence to start with, a delirium provoked essentially by the Zionist axis that this should be a coup de grâce to kill the Iranian nuclear program for good. When we remember that a few days before, Sy Hirsch once again, he got the scoop. And of course, he's Sy Hirsch.

Everybody knows him in Washington. And when they need something very important, they call Sy. So he had the scoop. And when you, I read his piece before the attack. And it was frightening, because they actually believed that an attack would work. Tsai was writing that the attack would be exactly this wicked, like it happened. And of course that this would lead to regime change inside Iran. They actually believed that. The Zionist Axis, everybody.

From Washington, Maryland, from Washington, Maryland, to all the way to Tel Aviv. So it's wishful thinking. And of course, wishful thinking that started in 1998, at least, when the neo-con's were not in power and they were conspiring with Bibi, the clean break plan, etc. And everything that they started to implement after 9-11 leading to seven countries in five years. And now the cherry on the cake is Iran. They see a window of opportunity. Let's go and kill their nuclear program. It could never work. There's no intelligence on the ground. The Americans don't know what happens at the highest levels of the IRGC. And this is something you only understand

when you go to Iran and you talk to the people at the IRGC. And you talk to the best Iranian analysts. Once again. Is it recognized amongst the diplomatic elites that the United States is subordinate to Israel. Yes. That Benjamin Netanyahu talked President Trump into rejecting the intel from his own, into our own intelligence agencies and accept what Netanyahu was saying.

And now yet Netanyahu is ready to cry uncle. He's already crying uncle, Judge. I'm sure our audience, you and I, may have seen a report from Channel 11 in Israel, basically saying that Tel Aviv sent a formal letter to Tehran to end the war as soon as possible. Tehran's response was, no, we end the war when we want to do it. Start the war is very easy. So Iran was attacked by Israel, unprovoked. Yes. Iran was operating a lawful, inspected, accepted nuclear program. The United States attacked it it unprovoked. The United States was negotiating with Tehran and Netanyahu attacked Tehran in order to

disrupt those negotiations unprovoked. How do these people get away with this? Because they are the Zionists. It's horrible. Abba Zarachi, he wrote a post yesterday that was absolutely excellent. In three or four sentences he said we were on the table with Israel and Israel blew up the negotiating table. We were on the table with the US and the US blew up the negotiating table. And now they want us to go back to the table.

How can we go back to... We are still there. We never left the table. How can we go back? That was perfect. That sums it all up. The whole dementia. The problem is now we are in an irreversible chain of events. The response today by Tehran that no, we're not going to finish the war now, we finish when we want it. It's because they think that between two and three weeks, they can collapse the Israeli economy, paralyze the Israeli economy.

They are hitting all the nodes that matter. Ports, airport, Ben Gurion, oil refineries, power plants, etc. And they haven't launched yet the hardcore missiles. Today was the first time that they launched the Khaybar missile, the Ghadr missile as well. The Hajj Qasem, they launched only a few of them. These are the top of the line missiles. The Fatah 1, they already used it, but not too many. These are the top of the line missiles of Iran. We've seen some of them when we were in Iran last month when we visited the IRGC Aerospace Museum. So they are pretty confident now. The price that they are paying, Judge, is unimaginable

because there is no air defenses, period, from the western borders of Iran all the way to Tehran and all the way to the axis that goes from Tehran to Qom and Isfahan. So they are, Israeli attacks, they destroyed the IRGC headquarters today. So the price they are paying is enormous. But they are Shiites, they understand the notion of martyrdom and they understand the notion of suffering, and suffering for a higher cause which is Iranian national unity So what Israel did and what Trump did afterwards was to coalesce?

Iranian national unity there won't be regime change there won't be a pathetic son of the Shah Riding in the streets of Tehran forget it. This is what they wanted in the first place. Because this is above all, there are two vectors. The two headlines go side by side. This is a war for regime change in Iran, the first headline. Second headline, this is a war against BRICS. And the second headline was being discussed in St. Petersburg throughout this past week during the forum in St. Petersburg.

In virtually all the major panels, there were panels about BRICS, about the International or South Transportation Corridor, Eurasian Economic Union, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, everything. And the North and Sea Road, which is a connectivity corridor across the Arctic. And always there was, yes, we need to do all this because we need to start building the multipolar world away from this demented empire. have the Israeli people come to the realization that Netanyahu made a tremendous mistake by attacking Iran? Do you know what happened today, George, which is something obviously you won't read it in mainstream, in Western mainstream media. Members of the Knesset are already fleeing the Al-A fleeing. There was an LR rescue plane with lots of VIPs inside.

They had to turn back in midair because Iranian missiles this morning start flying. So panic is already set in. There's no question about that. Where would the plane take off from? There must be other airports at Ben Gurion. Exactly. Obviously it didn't take off from Ben Gurion. Exactly. Ben Gurion is practically immobilized at the moment. As much as Haifa port is

immobilized at the moment. They attacked the port of Ashdod, Judge. First time the Iranians attacked the port of Ashdod, Judge. First time the Iranians attacked the port of Ashdod. So sooner or later Israel won't have functioning ports. Will Netanyahu flee or will he go down with the ship? That's a great question. I think his ideal destiny would be Mussolini hanging upside down in a public square by Israelis themselves.

That would be very fitting. But probably he'll flee. He's a coward, essentially. Wow. If there was a war between the United States and Iran, how do you think it would play out? There won't be because the Iranians don't want it, Judge, and the response today was a piece of theater. Okay, symbolic, it's very important because those missiles that were, that landed at Al Udeid base in Qatar. It's a symbolic message to the whole GCC. Basically the Iranians are telling all their neighbors, Qatar and the other ones, UAE, Bahrain, etc. Look, Trump brought this on you. These missiles are not against Qatar. These missiles are against occupied American territory

in Qatar. Al-Udayt is a gigantic base, you know, with over 10,000 people, super infrastructure, et cetera. And it's the nerve command of CENTCOM in West Asia. So today was a message. Basically the RGC were saying, look, if this goes out of control, you will be paying the price. You didn't ask for it,

but it was imposed on you by the Americans. They don't want, and I was discussing this extensively yesterday. They don't want a frontal attack on the US. They want to undermine the US little by little. They are expanding their footprint. Now it's not only Israel. If push comes to shove, they can attack any American base anywhere they want it with all the missiles that they want. So this was the message, the symbolic message today. Talk to us about Beijing. Beijing must understand that this whole thing is some sort of an attack on BRICS. Beijing does not want the streets of Hormuz to be closed. It does not want Iran to be

damaged. What is it thinking and what will it do? What can it do? Judge, I had a very important piece of information from one of my old school sources, old deep state sources. Now he's out of the picture, but he, of course, he has all this Cyhurst style Rolodex with everybody that matters in Washington. He said that the CIA... I'm sure you know about this. The CIA told Trump that the Chinese were horrified with the prospect of the straight-over moves being shut down. So Trump went for it. One of the reasons was, okay, so this is going to be bad for the Chinese. But that's much more complicated than that.

The Chinese do not depend a lot from what they import via the straight-up hormones from Iran. They have other sources as well. Or even from Saudi Arabia, they have other sources. They could redirect their purchases to Russia, for instance. So they are not totally dependent because they have multiple sources. India would be in much more dire straits. And the Chinese, of course, they were calculating what the Iranians are calculating. A select blockade of Hormuz. All this

blah, blah, blah in Western mainstream media about Hormuz is gonna be shut down, it's gonna be horrible. No, it's different. What is being discussed at the moment, considering that the parliament in Tehran approved shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. But this is not the final decision.

Now this is being decided by the Supreme Council and the final decision is by Ayatollah Khamenei. They can opt for a select blockade of hormones. If you are a cargo tanker going to China, India, other Asian customers, free passage. If you are a cargo tanker delivering oil to Europe and the collective West, no way. So this would be already in terms of collapsing part of the Western economy, we would work brilliantly. So we could expect something like this in the next, let's say in the next few days. They will never play their ultimate card, which is to completely block the straight of Hormuz. This is the Iranian nuclear card, much more than a real nuclear card because they know they read everything that Goldman Sachs was predicting since the

middle of the 2010s as far as I remember. So 10 years ago Goldman Sachs was already gaming. If you close the straight up for moves, what could happen? OK, a barrel of oil go to 120, 130, 200, it could reach 500 in a matter of weeks, in a few weeks. And the collapse of that pile of derivatives, which once again, projection by Goldman Sachs was readjusted by the Bank of International Settlements later, much less, but the real projection is quadrillions of dollars. So this is the collapse of the

international financial system, period. Russia knows that. China knows that. And the Iranians, they follow everything that happens in the West. They also know that. So this is their ultimate card. They will play it if they are, you know. Did Trump gamble and lose with the decision he made on Saturday night? Yes. The short answer is yes. Faulty intelligence, a hasty decision, manipulated by the Zionist axis and people around him, the illusion of a quick victory that he could sell as a quick victory.

Still, he sold a quick victory. Spectacular, his own term, victory. Only the American army could pull that off, et cetera. Nuclear program devastator, obliterator, you name it. It was a reality show. Once again, it was a PR operation, a reality show. And he went immediately afterwards on air to control the narrative and to set the narrative

and everybody had to repeat it. But then one day later, now, you know, almost two days later, we start to see what really happened. And we had from the beginning, Iranian sources, including members of parliament, high-level members of parliament say, look, nothing happened. Everything that was of value in Fordow was removed before, including 400 kilos of enriched uranium. It was empty, essentially, just like Natanz was empty and

Isfahan was also empty. So they bombed three empty installations essentially. Did he do damage to his own reputation on the international scene and to the credibility of the United States of America in the diplomatic community, which is every major country in the world. Judge, the short answer is unfortunately as in space. Nobody can trust anything coming from this presidency or anyone related to this presidency or part of the Trump 2.0 team from now on.

Because that move and the June 22nd date, wow, that we could talk about that for days. The day of the start of Operation Barbarossa by the Nazis in 1941. Here in Russia, everybody made the connection. Everybody. In China, they made the connection as well. Yes. The symbols speak like mounted, zero volumes.

So he, in one stroke, he bunker busted the UN charter. He bunker busted international law. He bunker busted the system of international relations. He bunker busted the authority of the UN. He bunker busted the global south. And you know, very well, Judge, he bunker busted the U.S. Constitution. And he bunker busted his own base, MAGA, which is now irreversibly split.

How can you qualify this as a victory? Wow. Pepe, thank you very much. Thanks for your brilliant and gifted summary, particularly that oration at the end, which was terrific. And thank you for staying up late for us. I know you work during the day also, but every time you come to us, it's the middle of the night. Thank you so much.

Cheers. All the best. We'll see you next time, dear friend. All the best. Thank you. All the best. Thank you very much. Well busy hectic and fulfilling day Chris. Did we break the 600? Not yet. We're very close to 600,000

Subscriptions if you can get your friends to subscribe and if you haven't subscribed do so yourself We'll break that number tomorrow. Tomorrow at 8 in the morning Ambassador Charles Freeman at 11 in the morning Aaron Maté at 1 in the afternoon and I've been waiting for him since Saturday night because of the emails that we exchanged back and forth and I know you've been waiting for him as well Colonel Douglas McGregor. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. You