Judging Freedom - Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: The Looming War With Iran

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: The Looming War With IranSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024. Professor Jeffrey Sachs will be with us here in just a moment on the U.S. looming war with Iran. But first, this. A divisive presidential election is upon us, and the winner is gold. Let me tell you what I mean. Since 2016, our national debt has grown a staggering 70 percent, and gold has increased by 60 percent. Do you own gold? I do. I bought my gold in February 2023, and it has risen 33%. You've heard me talk about Lear Capital, the company I trust. Let me

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So take action right now, my friends. Call 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. Protect your savings and retirement before it's too late. 800-511-4620, learjudgenap.com. Remember, hope is not a strategy, but gold is. Professor Sachs, my dear friend, welcome here as always. I do want to talk to you about the looming United States war with Iran or your views on how looming that is. But first, some of the relatively breaking news. Earlier today, two ballistic missiles were fired by the Russian military and they destroyed a Ukrainian military school and killed 47 people at last count and injured about 200. Does any of this surprise you? No. The war is raging. Russia is actually advancing on the battlefield very, very rapidly, as I think people who watch

day to day know. Russia has missile dominance, of course, air dominance, troop dominance, artillery dominance, electric warfare dominance. So the situation for Ukraine is bad and it's going to get worse. And this is predictable and it will get worse until there are negotiations to end the war. As far as you know, are there any backannel negotiations whatsoever going on? Well, I do not know anything other than what we hear publicly, but according to Russian leaders, the answer is no. And the Russian leaders that I know and listen to tell it like it is. Minister Lavrov, the foreign minister, says no, there are no discussions right now. But from the Ukrainian side, Zelensky took a position already several years ago, no negotiations with the Russians. This was a reckless action in terms of the

interests of the Ukrainian people. Maybe it was out of Zelensky's need to save his own hide from extremists within his country or within his government. People have said to me that if he tried to negotiate, he'd be assassinated. I don't know. But I can tell you the idea of no negotiation is absolutely suicidal for the Ukrainians. They could have gotten vastly, vastly, vastly better terms in March and April 2022 when negotiations were on the table. By the way, Ukraine wouldn't have lost any territory if we rewind the clock and have the United States behave with responsibility, not participating in the coup in February 2014, not arming Ukraine the way that it did, not rejecting negotiations with Russia the way that the U.S. did. The situation just gets worse and worse, which is what happens in this kind of game of chicken

that the U.S. has been playing with a lousy position. Your take, Professor Sachs, on the German elections this weekend, the rise of the AFD and the somewhat rise of this new leftish party, which is as opposed to the German involvement in the Ukrainian war, as is the right-ish one. Yes. So these terms are a little vague, but what is true of this AFD, which is called the far-right party, and what's true of the left party, the party of Sarah Wagenknecht, is that they both oppose Germany's very heavy investment in the militarization of relations against Russia and then the support for the war rather than negotiations. The German people see and feel that things are not right in Europe. This war has been, of course, devastating for Ukraine because of the lack of negotiations. But it has been hard

for Germany and for Europe. The first thing that happened, of course, was cutting off the low-cost energy, which supported German industry. And German industry is really in decline right now. And the German people feel it in their daily lives, in the falling living standards, in companies like Volkswagen saying, well, we're going to have to shut factories and close down and major chemical works companies like BASF saying, you know, we can't really compete anymore. And so the current government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which has been completely oriented towards NATO enlargement, the US position, defeat Russia, and so forth, is profoundly unpopular. Schultz's approval rating is something around 21, 22, 23 percent, his disapproval rating more than twice that amount. And these Lander or state-level elections that just took place. The ruling parties suffered incredibly. They barely showed up on the voter map. And disgruntlement and unhappiness

with the situation in Germany is what showed up in a dominant way. For me, the message is that the two leading parties that don't want this war to go on had this tremendous advance. Of course, the left party that I mentioned came in third. The center-right party, the CDU party, came in second, but with a lousy showing. And this AFD, which has its roots on the far right in Germany, came in first. But basically, this is a vote of disgruntlement, and it's a reflection of the profound unpopularity of the Scholz government. I know Scholz. I was happy when he came into office. I wanted a SPD-led government. I thought they would have some sense, but I have to say it's been an incredibly disappointing government. And well, my disappointment, I don't vote in Germany, but the Germans that vote are expressing this

overwhelming disapproval of a government that basically walked Germany into really a devastating economic downturn. Right. It has no end in sight as long as this war continues. Also over the weekend, we haven't even gotten to Israel yet. Also over the weekend, President Erdogan of Turkey revealed that the Turkish government has made an application to join BRICS. I can understand why they would want to do that, Professor Sachs, but can they be in BRICS and NATO at the same time?

Well, isn't it amazing? The U.S. won't kick them out of NATO because, my God, Turkey has been part of American strategy all along for control in the Black Sea region of NATO. So, yeah, they probably can get away with it. But what an amazing thing for the BRICS countries. Remember who the BRICS are. That is Russia and China and India to start and Brazil, South Africa and now several more strategically important countries, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the Emirates. No, not the Iran. Is it the Emirates? Oh, my God.

We get the picture, though. No, no, but yes, sorry about... No, no, that's all right. You're at heart an economist. You can tell us what this is going to do to the dollar. Well, look, this is part of the point. What we have here is right now 10 countries that constitute about 36% of world output versus 29% of world output of the G7. That's the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan.

You know, the BRICs are now larger than the G7 by a wide margin. The BRICs are about 46% of the world population. And what is absolutely stunning is dozens of countries are lining up to join the BRICS. Now, what this does mean, one of the motives right now is countries don't like the U.S. sanctions regime. What this means is the U.S. says, no, you can't do business with Russia. And they say, but, you know, it's none of your business. You're the United States. We're India. We want to trade with Russia. No, no, no. If you do, we will sanction your banking system. And this has been the threat that the U.S. has for third countries that aren't party to the conflict in Ukraine, for example, that want to have relations with Russia, with other countries. But the U.S. thinks that it has the right to say which countries other countries trade with. And now to come to the BRICS, the point is that the BRICS are going to

make a non-dollar payment system. I've been involved in many discussions with these experts, because this is one of my areas of expertise, is how payment systems and monetary systems work. There will be non-dollar payment systems at a much larger rate in the coming years. Already, Russia-India trade, for example, which the U.S. tries to stop, is booming without, of course, any role of the dollar whatsoever. And this will become a general proposition. It's going to accelerate. The U.S. will feel it because right now the U.S. has what General de Gaulle, President de Gaulle of France, now 60 years ago, called America's exorbitant privilege, which is that because everybody uses the dollars, the U.S. gets to issue dollar credits without too much consequence. But if other countries aren't using dollars, we're going to have to tighten our belts, balance our budgets, do all those things Americans hate, and Congress people hate even more, which is actually have a budget that makes sense. And this is what is coming. And the BRICS are going to be a huge motive force of

that. And I think it's already without a return. The US has just confiscated the reserves of too many countries, interfered in too many other countries, meddled in too many countries. It's undermined the confidence in the dollar as a true means of payment rather than as a weapon of foreign policy. How about this? You dare trade with the Russians and we will steal your president's jet. Isn't it something, of course? Unbelievable. The federal government sent FBI agents to steal a jet in the Dominican Republic because it was owned by and used by President Maduro of Venezuela, who trades with Russia. You know, what's happening right now is that the U.S. power is diminishing. The BRICS are real, they're powerful.

Russia is not collapsing because of US sanctions, thank you. It has plenty of trade partners all over the world, contrary to what the Biden administration expected. And so we're seeing acts that are more desperate, more crude, more illegal, more superficial, confiscating the Venezuelans president in, I think it was the Dominican Republic where they grabbed it, if I saw the headline quickly this morning correctly. But what about arresting the founder and owner of the Telegram channel in France? This is a completely desperate move, reckless, lawless, dangerous, and does not only no credit to France, very bad for France, because who can trust putting assets or property or businesses in France if foreign policy like that is going to dominate? And so this is happening relentlessly and it all boomerangs.

And it all comes to the point that you don't get these privileges because somehow they're irrevocably yours. You only get them if you act responsibly. And the US is not acting responsibly now. France is not acting responsibly. There's a kind of desperation that's taking place, confiscating $300 billion of Russian assets, totally illegal, and then saying, okay, we're going to borrow against the interest earned on these assets that have been frozen in a Belgian account. This stuff is ludicrous. And it's all machinations that the executive branch can carry out because the public in our countries would say, this is ridiculous. Don't behave in this way. So they do things that are increasingly flagrantly illegal because they're losing options and they don't have public support for what they're doing. of Israel today after a weekend of massive demonstrations and a day of a general strike

and President and Prime Minister Netanyahu's public defiance? Yes. So first, to be clear, I don't predict a war with Iran. I say that Israel is trying to pull us into such a war. Understood. By the way, it's not even Israel that's trying to pull us into the war, obviously. It's not even the Israeli Defense Forces trying to pull us into the war because the generals don't want that. It is extremist politicians led by the prime minister, Netanyahu, who got 58 standing ovations from a U.S. Congress paid by the Israel lobby. Ridiculous and so sad for our own political system. But the extremists aren't achieving any of their aims. So like I was just saying about the US and France and others, when you don't achieve

your aims, you become more and more desperate. And one of the areas of desperation is that against the recommendations of the Israeli military, Netanyahu is trying to provoke a wider war. Why? Because just like Ukraine, Ukraine cannot win against Russia. In fact, the whole concept means it doesn't make any sense. But Ukraine would love for the United States to put its troops in and its air force in and so forth and to go

into direct combat with Russia. Of course, the world would likely end in nuclear annihilation if any such step happened. But from Ukraine's point of view, yeah, get the U.S. to do your bidding. That's Israel's point also. What Israel is right now is an extremist government trying to defend an extremist political point of view, which is that Israel should be the permanent owner of all of the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, meaning not only today's Israel, but all the occupied territories. And however many millions of Palestinians live there, of course, these extremists would like as many to flee, to leave, to be killed in Gaza or to be ethnically cleansed. But the Israeli extremist government wants total control. It can't win a battle by itself against Hamas in Gaza. It can't win.

It can't win against Hezbollah in the north of Israel. It can't win against the Houthis in Yemen. It can't win. But it thinks, ah, if we can just get the U.S. to come in on our side and to go to war with the real backer of this so-called axis of resistance with Iran, then we'll win. Of course, Iran has a backer too, by the way, Russia. They have very close relations. Iran, I mentioned earlier, I hope I got it in the count, is a member of the BRICS now. They have plenty of backers. So Israel's recipe, and again, it's hard to use the words properly, but these extremist leaders in Israel, their recipe is a recipe for World War

III. Zelensky's recipe is a recipe for World War III. This is the danger. The U.S. is getting yanked around by extremists, and our president has been so weak, really, and maybe completely dysfunctional, I don't know, but so weak that the U.S. has been allowed to be yanked around in this way. Is the United States' support, financial and military and PR, for Israel unconditional? I mean, suppose Netanyahu lies and deceives, as we know he's been doing, in order to induce Biden and Blinken and company to support him. Whatever Israel does to this moment has had the unconditional backing of the United States. Of course, maybe in the back rooms they're saying, don't do that. That's bad. You have to do this and that.

But the moment that any response comes to Israel's provocations, for example, when Israel murdered the political head of Hamas in Tehran, Iran, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Iranian president, the first words out of the United States government, out of the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, is we fully back Israel. Not a word about maybe not so prudent to assassinate your negotiating counterpart on the occasion of the Iranian president's inauguration. Not a word about that, just the, quote, unconditional backing. So we know Biden's not happy with Netanyahu. He had cross words with him and so forth. But when push comes to shove, so far, Netanyahu has gotten his way on everything and got his 50-plus standing ovations in the U.S. Congress

in one of the most disgraceful moments of modern American political history. I mean, it's absolutely shocking and disgraceful and revealing. So it is unconditional to this moment. Of course, it's completely detrimental to U.S. interests. U.S. interests are for peace in the region. U.S. interests are for the two-state solution. The beauty of it, by the way, right now is that all the rest of the world other than Israel is on side for what's really needed. We have no beef with Russia over what should happen in Israel and Palestine. We have no beef with China over what should happen. We have no beef with any of the BRICS countries over what should happen. In principle, we say we support the two-state solution, but we support Israel's right to reject the two-state solution over our support for the two-state solution. There's no big power rivalry. There's no division in the world. This could be decided

in a day at the United Nations and would have been, by the way, a few weeks ago, but for the veto of the United States in the UN Security Council. Oh, but President, I almost said President. I should be so lucky. Professor Sachs, none of this is Israel's fault. Cut number one. We're asked to make concessions? What message does this send Hamas? It says, kill more hostages, murder more hostages, you'll get more concessions.

The pressure internationally must be directed at these killers, at Hamas, not at Israel. We say yes, they say no all the time, but they also murdered these people. And now we need maximum pressure on Hamas. I don't believe that either President Biden or anyone serious about achieving peace and achieving the release would seriously ask Israel to make these concessions. We've already made them. Hamas has to make the concession. Political claptrap. Such utter nonsense by such an utterly despicable human being, by the way. He's just an awful person and an awful leader. The fact of the matter is he has led a party, the Likud party, which is dead set against a two-state solution. So he should just

say so. That's not a matter of now or Hamas or anything else. That's period. He doesn't say, well, under these terms, this is how the two-state solution would work. His party's completely against it. His political allies are completely against it. The simple fact for everybody to understand is that Israel offers not any iota of a political solution, none, because it's led by extremist parties that believe that there should be no political rights for the Palestinian people in a state of Palestine, period. That's the essence of the parties of this coalition. So that's why Netanyahu says, oh, we have to attack them, attack them. That's the thing to do. Nothing positive, no positive agenda at all, not any, but that's the whole game.

Talk about Hamas, don't talk about a solution because they don't want a solution other than the one that they all know is their real political objective, which is full Israeli control over all of the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. That's their political goal. If Netanyahu were to say even once, okay, Hamas, terrible, we'll never negotiate with them, but here is how the two-state solution can work. Oh, then we'd be in a completely different world. But don't hold your breath for it. It's completely contrary to the essence of this extremist government. Here's the proposed solution by the senior senator from the state of South Carolina.

Cut number three. Oh, you're really going to get to me. If you want the hostages home, which we all do, you have to increase the cost to Iran. Iran is the great Satan here. Hamas is the junior partner. They're barbaric religious Hamas. They could care less about the Palestinian people. I would urge the Biden administration and Israel to hold Iran accountable for the fate of remaining hostages and put on the target list oil refineries in Iran if the hostages are not released. Does Iran pose the slightest, even an iota, danger or threat to the national security of the United States? Of course not. But I can only say that Lindsey Graham has essentially a perfect record with me.

I can't remember a time in the last 20 years where I agreed with one word that that guy said on anything. So at least he's consistent. I know of almost nobody who is so consistently wrong as Lindsey Graham. helping us get into this Ukraine complete disaster as well. The man has just been a walking disaster for the interests of the United States of America throughout his political life. Professor Sachs, thank you very much for your time and for your analysis. Very much appreciated as always. The Lindsey Graham thing was partly in jest. How you feel about him. All the best, my friend. We'll see you next week. See you next week. Thank you. Coming up later today at 2

o'clock, Matt Ho at 2.30, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.