Judging Freedom - Pepe Escobar : Will China and Russia Tell Trump to Leave Iran?

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

Pepe Escobar : Will China and Russia Tell Trump to Leave Iran?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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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 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 Thursday, May 28, 2006. Pepe Escobar joins us from Shanghai, China. Pepe, a pleasure, my dear man. Thank you very much. My pleasure, Judge. And the grits is from Shanghai. My last night, it has been epic. Oh, glad to hear that, my friend. Why did the chief Pakistani mediator, who happens to be the head of the Pakistani army, which is the power base in Pakistan, the mediator between the U.S. and Iran,

report on the mediations in person to President Xi in China. Because China is the guarantor of everything that Pakistan is mediating. I'm not sure this is well understood in Washington or across the Beltway. Everything that Pakistan is doing, and it's a Sisyphian task of trying to bridge the gap between the Trump administration, the Gulf petro monarchies, Iran, and of course China in the background. It's not an act on the contrary. Earlier this week we had a very, very important meeting in Beijing after C and Trump

and after C and Putin. This was before, before sea and a high-level Pakistani delegation. The prime minister, field marshal Assim Munir, their foreign minister, everybody was there. Of course, they were discussing many issues including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is part of the Belt and road initiative and all that. But the most important thing was, of course, the Pakistani mediation with Iran. And of course, the Chinese were listening face to face from Assim Munir, what he has been discussing with the Iranians and his mediating efforts with the Americas. This is the most important geopolitical alliance at the moment trying to solve the Iran-Riddle,

the Iran-U-S riddle. It's the Pakistani mediation totally backed up by China. Does any deal between the U.S. and Pakistan require the de facto, not de jure, the de facto approval of China and Russia? Of course. And in fact, this is what the interlocking strategic partnerships between Iran, Russia and China have been discussing face to face in these past. meetings and of course with the Pakistani input including this Pakistani trip to Beijing that the guarantors of a possible post memorandum of understanding negotiation which the negotiators they say this could last between 30 and 60 days it could be much much longer than that but this is their I would say optimistic assumption the guarantors from the Iranian side are going to be China and Russia. And this is something that

the Trump administration has to be, first of all, has to understand the geopolitical and diplomatic and military implications and understand that Iran is not negotiating by itself. Iran is negotiating from the point of view of an alliance of three top BRICs nations. Iran, Russia and China. And apparently, you know, to say being very diplomatic, they still don't get it in Washington. Will Iran agree to any deal with the United States that fails to restrain Israel from slaughtering civilians, innocence and stealing land, in Gaza, West Bank, and Lebanon? Absolutely not. And that's one of the main problems, Judge,

of the road, the pass towards the memorandum of understanding, which is something that could be signed in the next few days or until middle of next week, let's put it this way. And then the negotiations leading to a possible final deal. Iran has been saying over and over again from the beginning. First of all, our number one demand, all wars in West Asia have to cease. This means the war by Israel and the U.S. against Iran and the war of Israel and the U.S. against the axis of resistance as a whole, including, of course, in Lebanon, where as we speak, the Israelis are once again bombing everything inside

in southern Lebanon, completely illegally, against any formal or informal basis of international law, and there's not a peep from the so-called international community, much less the UN. So this is a number one condition. All wars have to cease. And that includes, of course, the Israeli war against Lebanon. The problem is, even assuming we would get to a negotiation, a direct negotiation, after the memorandum of understanding between U.S. and Iran, what if Israel continues to attack and kill civilians all over the place across the southern Lebanon? Which you know they will. Which we all know, Judge, they will. So what will be, and this is something that I post, this is a question that I pose directly to some of the negotiators. My last column, I built the column based on inputs from China, Pakistan, and Iran.

And after that, after I published the column, I asked three questions to the negotiators on the table. and my sources told me, look, they answer your questions in an indirect way. But one of the key questions was even assuming we get the pastors a deal, a possible deal after a memorandum of the extent. What if Israel continues to attack Lebanon? The Iranians can tell the U.S., look, this is a completely different story. This is not between us and you. This is between us and Lebanon. So we're going to take care of it our own way.

And what will be the response of the Trump administration? Nobody can answer this question. Well, who could restrain Israel? Can Trump restrain Netanyahu? Trump famously said, I think we played this clip for you last week. Netanyahu will do whatever I want him to. He said it twice in a brief about 30-second clip. Is that true?

Or is it the other way around? that Trump will do whatever Netanyahu wants him to do. You're absolutely right, Judge. It's the other way around. And everybody knows that. I would say everybody from the Beltway and Washington and the Atlantis'ist coalitions to camels plying the ancient silk roads in Central Asia. Everybody knows that.

Nothing can restrain Israel. And that's a problem. Because the whole global economy for that, man, all of us and the whole global economy and the American economy, everybody is hostage to those lunatics running a state that is not a state that is constantly expanding their borders. And their main strategy, short and long term, is to bomb the hell out of everyone they consider their enemies

and annexed lands that don't belong to them. the only possible restraining order against this regime would be, I would say, a devastating military victory against them. And the only ones who can pull that off is the Islamic Republic of Iran. So you are effectively saying that all this negotiation, whoever's doing it, I don't know if Whitkoffin and, And Kushner involved with the president himself is doing it because he's such a micromanager. All these negotiations are for naught because of the inability to control Israel. Suppose Trump were to say to Netanyahu, that's it. No more money, no more military equipment.

Would that restrain Israel? No, it won't judge because this is, this goes way beyond Trump. Trump is just a messenger. Trump is a lowly grifter and a lowly messenger. This is all about the people who run Israel, the international Zionist axis, which is extremely powerful, not only in geopolitical terms, but in terms of the international financial system as well.

There's no way to restrain them. And of course, they run the show. They run the show. And obviously, it was, I would say a gift from the different layers of Indian heaven, let's put it this way to be very diplomatic, that now they have a president that it just follows their dictates because of sequential compromats of what he's done in the past, because of the donors that financed his re-election, because he's totally controlled by this interest, domestic,

and international in terms of the Zionist international access. And of course, it's very, very easy. It's totally controllable. Does Washington, in your view, understand the role of China and Russia and the unique relationship that Pakistan has to both in this entire complex process? No, they don't. In fact, what the Trump administration assumes that they are doing is instrumentalizing Pakistan to get concessions from Iran. This is what Trump and the circle around him think they are doing in terms of instrumentalizing Pakistan.

But what's really happening on the table and in terms of negotiations is something completely different. So in my latest column, it took a lot of work, but I had to talk to sources from Pakistan, from Iran and from China, and then compare what they were saying, and then trying to figure out their overall strategy. And they are all working together. The Russians are in the backseat for obvious reasons. And we all know, and of course, many of your guests on your show, very well informed, also know that the number one preoccupation in Russia is how to tweak the next stage of the special military operation. But the Russians are following the whole thing in the background and, of course, in close consultation with the Chinese. The Chinese, in this case, they are in the forefront. And that explains, for instance, not only what they discussed in the two-hour tea ceremony in Beijing when Putin visited President Xi, when they discussed Ukraine, the United States, and Iran, and the visit of the high-level Pakistani delegation earlier this week to Beijing, where they explained to one year and to President Xi in detail what.

they are discussing with Iranians. Not to mention what the Iranians are discussing directly with the Chinese, because they have a strategic partnership. So they are all working together as realist, solid, real politic practitioners. This is immensely important. It's absolutely impossible for the very mediocre people around Trump 2.0 to understand how deep that is and how complex and how sophisticated that is. And the fact that they have a common policy that they discuss among

themselves on a daily basis. And they tweak this policy on a daily basis. So essentially, the Chinese want a resolution. They want a ceasefire. They want the straight of Hormuz to be let's say unblocked by all means on all sides, of course, and they want a peaceful resolution, and they want to be the guarantors of this possible peace resolution. And that's why this is so important, because this is not Pakistan mediating between the U.S. and Iran. This is Pakistan mediating on behalf of China. Changes everything.

What does Trump want from Pakistan that Pakistan will not give him. Wow, Judge, this is a $60 billion question. Absolutely. He would expect Pakistan to deliver to the Americans a semblance of a victory deal extracting concessions from the Iranian leadership. This will never happen, never happen. All he cares about is a way out that he can plausibly claim is an American, therefore a Trumpian victory. Absolutely correct. And this is when we heard from the negotiators from these three sides that are working together, the Chinese, the people that I talked to here in Shanghai, the Iranians, many of us are our friends, and the Pakistanis, which is something that I went through my old Pakistani connections, I'm sorry, to get them on board again.

And finally have the picture of how close they are all of them are working together. From the Iranian point of view, they are not going to deliver anything to Trump, especially because this goes back to, wow, not only destroying, the former JCPOA, which was quite imperfect, but it was to a certain extent working. But the assassination of General... It started with the assassination of General Soleimani, which defined the raging 20s, as I label it, the decade that we're living. The decade that we're living started with an assassination by the Americas of General Soleimani, which was the master tactician and strategist of this stretch of the 25th.

century. And of course, killing Ayatollah Kamene, the leader, and for nothing. Because Mostabha Kamenei is as straightforward as his dad and even more supported by the whole leadership of the IRGC. So this didn't change anything in terms of, okay, we're going to undermine the Islamic regime in Iran. No, you didn't. Basically, you forced. You force. fortified them to a position that they were not enjoying three months ago, for that matter. And the Pakistanis understood that, Judge. This is very important. The relationship between Iran and Pakistan, there were some ups and downs in the past few years, but now they totally understand to the point, which is very important for you and for our audience to understand.

Can you imagine that the Guadar ports in the Arabian Sea, which is part of the of the Chinese Silk Road. It's the most important stretch of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which goes from the North and Pakistan, from Xinjiang to North Pakistan to the Arabia City, Port of Guad. Now it's a sister port of Chabahar in Iran, which is 80 kilometers away, and we have a Pakistani port working as an extra Iranian port as well.

So we have the, you know, we have this connectivity, corridors in Eurasia, one of them from Russia to Iran and theoretically going to India, India is out of the picture as well, now totally mixed with a Chinese connectivity corridor. So in terms of the geo-economic rearrangement of the region, it's just something completely different. People could not even imagine two or three months ago that this would ever happen. So these relations are much, much closer. And China is behind all that because China has a very good partnership with Pakistan and strategic partnership with Iran at the same time. And China wants a peaceful, stable Eurasian continents. And that's exactly what Russia also wants.

So from the point of view of the Trump administration, to understand how their absolutely lunatic actions are leading to this. unwanted result, unwanted consequence. It's very hard for them to understand. I want to play a clip from President Trump yesterday at his, pardon me, his cabinet meeting in which he makes a threat to Elman and asks you what you think of this. Chris, cut number two. This straight's going to be open to everybody. It's international waters.

Nobody's going to control it. We're going to watch out for it. We'll watch over it, but nobody's going to control it. That's part of the negotiation that we have. They would like to control. Nobody's going to control it. It's international waters, and Oman will behave just like everybody else who will have to blow them up.

They understand that. They'll be fine. Why would an American president threaten to blow up an ally, particularly in that location and at this moment? Judge, I'm really sorry, but sometimes we have to you know, it's mind-blowing the ignorance and this stupidity coming from an assertion like that. First of all, the straight of our news is not international waters.

Correct. First, it belongs to territorial waters of Iran in the north and territorial waters of Oman in the south. So he's lying from the start. And second, typical Trump reaction. I don't like you, so I'm going to blow you, or I'm going to bomb you or whatever. Come on, this is not even childish. This is beyond stupid, really, absurd.

And the problem is, because he controls the new cycle all over the planet, he can say this intergalactic stupidities, and everybody is replaying it over and over again without checking the merits of what he said. Not only the stupidity, but this uncontrollable, aggression. I have to play you another president and his mental degradation. You'll appreciate this. Cut number seven, Chris. Making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with,

we finally beat Medicare. As I watched it, I thought, oh my God, he's having a stroke. And it scared me to death. Were you horrified as you saw it unfold? I wasn't horrified. I was frightened because I had never, ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never. Or since?

Yes. You've never seen him like that. Never. No. What happened? I don't know what happened. I mean, as I watched it, I thought, oh, my God, he's having a stroke. And it scared me to death. Wow.

So, Judge, essentially what we are watching is serial dementia in different levels incarnated by the president of the United States. This is how the absolute majority of the global South, We'll interpret it. Yes, yes. Pepe, I have to run because of another commitment, but I wanted you to see both of those clips. Thank you very much for your time.

Safe travels, I think you're off to St. Petersburg, right? Yes, next week we'll be talking from St. Petersburg. You'll be with a lot of mutual friends of ours. Unfortunately, I can't be there, but we'll look forward to chatting with you from there. Fantastic. Thank you, my dear friend. Thank you so much, Judge. Greetings from Shanghai to you and everybody.

Thank you. Thank you. Safe travels. All the best. Coming up later today at 2.15 this afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. And at 3 o'clock, Colonel Douglas McGregor. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.