Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter: Will Iran Take the Bait?

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

Scott Ritter: Will Iran Take the Bait?See 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. Ritter will be with us in just a moment on will Iran take the bait of Netanyahu's slaughter of the leader of Hezbollah. 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% and gold has increased by 60%. 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,

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And they're honest to the core. 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. Scott Ritter, it's always a pleasure, my dear friend. As viewers of this show and of your various platforms know, we spent all day Saturday together in Kingston, New York, and it was very, very personally and professionally rewarding. What the viewers don't know is that that wonderful event

would not have come off the way it did, but for your, shall we say, Marine Corps sense of order and orderliness. And it was very much appreciated, I know. From a New York City hotel room, or from the Israeli consulate in New York, or from an Israeli office in the UN. It's unclear to me from where. Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday ordered a murder, which was then carried out thousands of miles away, a federal crime and a crime under New York state law. Nothing will come of it with respect to criminal prosecution. What do you make of this? Well, first of all, the U.S. government not only will not condemn or prosecute Netanyahu's actions, they're praising it. The Secretary of State, the senior diplomat for the United States is called Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah,

a terrorist, and it applauds the Israeli action, assassination by any other name. And I think the US government in general, the White House has made similar statements. So I think the only agency of the U.S. government that has expressed dismay and in some corners even outrage is the Pentagon because they understand the ramifications of this action. This is a massive escalation and it creates the, not just possibility, but probability of a regional conflict. We have yet to see what will come of this, but generally speaking, when you take out kill, murder, a figure of such importance as Hassan Nasrallah, there will be, or there should be, or there ought to be, you know, consequences for your actions. And the Pentagon, I think, is concerned about, you know, unleashing forces when you can't predict the outcome. You know, in the military,

you don't like to initiate a battle until you have thought through the consequences and you have a good idea how, what the outcome is going to be. And generally speaking, it means the outcome is going to be favorable for you or else you wouldn't initiate that. The fact that the Pentagon is hesitant and indeed pushing back against the Israeli action means that they're not confident in how this is going to end. Are you, can you tell us if in your, if you believe that the Pentagon, the CIA and MI6 knew about this in advance, whether the State Department knew about it, whether the White House knew about it? Well, first of all, the Biden administration acknowledges that from the very beginning

on October, after Hezbollah intervened on October 8th in response to Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel, Israel made it clear to the United States that they wanted to kill Hassan Nasrallah. Apparently the Israelis have for many years now been collecting data, targeting data on Hezbollah's senior leadership, not just Hassan Nasrallah, but his major deputies and the military commanders, tracking them using a variety of techniques, much of it open source. It just goes to show how, A, important devices such as cell phones have become and how we become dependent upon it and how vulnerable the use of these devices make us. We saw what the Israelis did with the pagers and with the

handheld walkie-talkies, weaponized them. So, and the White House pushed back and said, no, that taking out Nasrallah would lead to a regional conflict, and that's something the United States wanted to avoid. So we know that the United States was aware that Israel wanted to kill Hassan Nasrallah. We also know that the United States has in the past green-lighted targeted assassinations by Israel of senior Hezbollah officials, and I believe that the United States gave Israel permission to begin targeted assassination of combat commanders, you know, Israel operations and briefing the White House on them. If you didn't think that Israel was, once you gave them the green light to start killing the Hezbollah leadership, that Israel would take it all the way. Whether the White House knew exactly what was going to happen, when it was going to happen, that's just an element of

briefing. That means that somebody didn't brief them. But I can guarantee you 100% certainty that the CIA knew, the Department of State knew, and the Pentagon knew in one way or another that Hassan Rasrola was going to be targeted on the day that Israel actually killed him. And nobody cares about the lawfulness of this. I shouldn't say nobody. Nobody in the West, nobody in the U.S., nobody in the United States government cares about the criminality of this behavior. I mean, if a mafia chieftain in a hotel room in New York City ordered the murder of somebody in Sicily and it was carried out, the government would be all over that mafia chieftain as soon as they found out about it and knew where he was. Well, I agree. Look, we ordered the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, who was a senior Iranian

military figure, a member of the Iranian government, not a terrorist, not an outlaw, not the non-state individual. He was a senior Iranian government official on a diplomatic mission of peace, by the way, when we assassinated him in Baghdad. So who are we to point the fingers at Israel who carried out the assassination, not of just the head of what we call a terrorist organization, but the head of a political party that plays a major role in the governance of Lebanon. Hezbollah is a political party. Hezbollah is part of the government of Lebanon. We assassinated a Lebanese government official. I mean, Netanyahu did, and we're doing nothing about that. You're right. This is murder. And, you know, there's the old saying, what goes around comes

around. Live by the sword, die by by the sword all we're doing is legitimizing the targeting of american officials down the road and if we're naive enough to believe that um at some point in time um those whom we target are going to get their revenge revenge is the dish best served cold as an old saying then you know um if you don't think that's going to happen, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you because there will be consequences. We will pay a price and Americans shouldn't be shocked when the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense or President is assassinated by foreign actors who are seeking revenge for the assassinations that we either carried out directly or facilitated and approved. As our friend Ambassador Charles Freeman is fond of saying, the problem with going abroad

searching for monsters to slay is that they follow you home. And that's the lesson that you are articulating. Alistair Crook said, it seems like an extreme number, but I accept what he says, that the Israelis dropped 80, 8-0, 2,000-pound U.S.-made bombs to kill one person. Give them more credit. A half-dozen people, Nasrallah and the people around him. That's an extraordinary amount of weaponry. What is 82,000 pound bombs equivalent to? Well, 160 tons. But it's more than that because what, again, I'm not on the Israeli targeting cell, but I can justify 80 this way. If, in fact, it appears that the Hezbollah command center was underground, it will be significantly underground. And it appears that it basically was under at least three major apartment buildings. So the first thing you have

to do from a targeting standpoint is clear the apartment buildings. That means collapse them. So you've got to drop and again they'll look at the designs. Trust me, I've done this before. They actually get the blueprints that are there and it's like you know doing a controlled demolition. You determine where the bombs are going to drop. You're going to drop, you're going to get the building to collapse. So you're going to collapse the structures. And then what you're going to do is begin putting munitions on the ground to clear the debris away. So you're going to be clearing it.

You're going to be ground burst, clear the debris away. And then you're going to start putting holes in the ground. And you're going to continue to put weapons on that in successive attacks until you penetrate deep enough that you either penetrate the bunker or cause the bunker to collapse. Apparently, they have recovered the body of Hassan Nasrallah. They said that there were no, you know, the body was intact, but the cause of death was blunt force trauma caused by a blast. So they succeeded in penetrating the bunker and having the final bomb come in, and the overpressure is what killed Hassan Nasrallah. And depending how deep it was, you could, I could see, and again, if the bunker is big enough, you can't just collapse in one place you've got to you're bringing the whole structure down and so i i couldn't see how 82

000 pound mark 84 bombs would be um would be part of the targeting strategy under american law if you pay for the murder you're as guilty as the person who pulls the trigger joe biden oh there's no doubt first of, we knew what we were doing. There's a reason why these bombs were built. And they're bunker busters. We call them bunker busters. And we gave them to the Israelis to do just this or to strike bunkers in Iran. You know, so we knew what we were doing when we gave them. This is the equivalent of in the Godfather, putting the gun in the bathroom, you know, by the toilet. You may not have pulled the trigger, but you put the gun there and you knew that, you know, Michael was going to kill the guy and take the cannoli and leave the gun.

Right, right, right. How significant militarily is his death? Is this mainly significant politically and symbolically and from a public relations point of view, or is it significant militarily as well? Well, this isn't the first time that Israel's killed the leader of Hezbollah. Back in 1992, Israel killed the leader of Hezbollah who was traveling in a convoy, and they got him. That's when Nasrallah came in to be. And Nasrallah has been targeted before. In 2006, they targeted him, again in the southern suburbs of Beirut. And there's been attempts on his life ever since then. And so, as an organization, there will be a plan of succession

so that by taking out Nasrallah, you don't eliminate. There will be, as we like to talk, continuity of government plans in place that go down quite a ways. And we already have the leader, a cousin of Nasrallah, who was the number two in hezbollah um you know led the executive council fully uh fully read in on every aspect of what hezbollah does was actively involved in fact is more so than nasrallah because nasrallah was the the not you

know more than sabacc but he was the head of hezbollah so he is distance away from much of the day-to-day activity his cousin was actually the man running the show so a much more capable person in terms of knowledge of what's going on is now the head of hezbollah in a time of conflict so the idea that uh israel weakened the political uh structure of hezbollah is is ludicrous like any resistance organization that's broken up into cells and knows how to survive targeted assassinations at this temp. As I said, it's not the first time Israel has been taking out Hezbollah leadership. From a military standpoint, again, these are people who believe in martyrdom. These are people who are prepared to give their lives. And from their religious standpoint,

he is now a martyr who has gone to heaven. He's the highest form of exalted martyr who died in jihad. So I think from the morale standpoint, this only makes the Hezbollah fighters want to fight even more. The problem, though, is that Nasrallah has been around forever, since 1992, and he has become the face of Hezbollah. So even as I talk about how conceptually there's continuity of government and that the resistance fighters themselves are hardened to this kind of loss. The reality is Israel has inflicted a huge blow against Hezbollah. Nasrallah was, I don't know, there's a journalist that I'm friendly with, Marwa Osman.

She's a Lebanese journalist, a sympathetic to the Hezbollah cause. And she was broadcasting, talking about, you know, the strike and all that. And she was informed by the person that she was talking to that Hassan Nasrallah, it's confirmed by Hezbollah that he died. She broke down and cried. She couldn't go on. And that's the impact here, that this is deeply emotional. He was seen as the father figure by many, a grandfather figure. And it's impossible to calculate the harm, especially from a distance, the damage that was done by taking him out there. Let there be no doubt that this was perhaps the most significant blow against Hezbollah Israel has ever struck. What is the impact in Iran? Nasrallah is an extension of Iran.

I mean, he is linked to the supreme leader from a religious standpoint. In fact, his will, which has been read out, instructs the faithful, the Hezbollah, to show allegiance to the Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader uh to maintain that uh that allegiance and so hezbollah is uh an extension of this um this is a deep blow to iran uh this is a psychological blow and it's one too that the iranians i mean it's will be it for me to advise the iranians on anything but you know israel has shown a an ability to get inside Tehran and kill a senior Hamas figure who was being protected by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. They now have struck Hassan Esra. I will bet a dime to a dollar that Israeli intelligence has spent a good time, a good amount of time, figuring out, you know, the daily routines of senior Iranian leadership, and that if the time ever came, they would seek to target them as well. And that has to be something that

weighs on the Iranians' mind. I mean, you don't have to like the Israelis, but you darn well better respect the fact that they are focused on violence, and they're very good at inflicting violence, and they've proven that. Whether or not this translates into victory is a completely different question. Here's Prime Minister Netanyahu on Saturday basically saying, killing Nasrallah is not enough for us. Cut number three. This week, we reached the conclusion that the devastating blows leveled at Hezbollah by the IDF will not be enough. The elimination of Nasrallah is a necessary condition for the fulfillment of our goals, sending back the Israelis who live near the

northern border to their homes and bringing to an equilibrium in the region for decades. Do you think that there is debate going on in the Iranian government now as to what, if any, military response there should be? And if there is, are there any phone calls to Moscow? Well, let me put it this way. The Iranians are fully read into Hezbollah's war plans and capabilities. You know, again, sitting back here, we've watched Israel drop a tremendous amount of ordnance on southern Lebanon, in the Bekaa Valley and in areas throughout Lebanon that traditionally have been linked to areas where Hezbollah would have stored weaponry. You know, people like myself tend to believe that since Hezbollah understood the

capabilities of Israeli munitions provided by the United States, that they would have built storage facilities capable of with uh bombardment I mean I'm not talking about 80 bombs in one hole I'm talking about you know just standard bombardment um you know have there been losses amongst the Hezbollah capabilities undoubtedly but again like any military organization you plan you build in redundancies to you know take on certain level casualties so you can accomplish your mission so Iran is fully versed on what is left in hezbollah's arsenals and um what hezbollah is capable of doing and what is hezbollah's plans are to do that um and that will guide iran's actions and what i mean by that is is if if hezbollah has retained significant capability,

that will, A, enable them to continue to rocket the north so that Netanyahu won't be able to send 60,000 settlers back. That's a defeat for Israel. B, they'll be able to disrupt and blunt any Israeli offensive. And from what I understand reading, it looks like Israel has begun at least a limited offensive, the goal of which might be to punch in a 20 kilometer buffer zone. I want to remind you, they were unable to do that in 2006. And many people, including myself, don't believe they'll be able to do that again, but here they are trying. That

means somebody in Israel thinks they can do that. You know, Hezbollah has plans for that. And if they have those plans, the manpower and the munitions capable, they'll implement those plans. You know, we'll find out. The proof is in the pudding. But, you know, Iran has to know that if you strategically defeat Hezbollah, if Israel is able to strategically defeat Hezbollah, they have taken away one of Iran's greatest weapons. Because Hezbollah, if Israel is able to strategically defeat Hezbollah, they have taken away one of Iran's greatest weapons, because Hezbollah was always a loaded gun at the head of Israel from the standpoint of an Israeli-Iranian regional conflict, meaning that Israel could never talk about taking on Iran without fear of Hezbollah intervention. If Israel is able to neutralize

Hezbollah, to minimize Hezbollah's military pretension or eliminate it altogether, that drastically changes the equation when it comes to an Israeli-Iranian conflict. Because now Israel only has to focus on striking Iran and dealing with Iranian retaliation. The notion of this loaded gun called Hezbollah being able to be pointed at Israel is no longer there. So Iran has to take all of this into account, plus the fact that they have a strategic objective, which is linked to the successful implementation of the BRICS forum, which meets later on this month, that a regional war would be disruptive to that effort. And so all of these factors are being weighed by Iran right now to guide them as to what the next action is.

I believe that the Iranians aren't stupid. I believe that the Iranians have anticipated a scenario where Hassan Nasrallah was killed and that they have a plan for that. Part of the, you know, one of the realities of politics is that you have to go through the motion of appeasing the emotions of the base. And Iran has a base, a very, you know, conservative base that's very anti-Israeli, and they're screaming for blood right now. And so one of the problems that's confronting the iranian government is how to deal with that um without being sucked into a conflict that

disrupts what i believe continue to believe is the strategic path towards victory that iran is on israel's economy is devastated nothing about the assassin of nasrallah changes that reality there's still 60 000 settlers who aren't in their homes, and they're not going home until, you know, as long as Hezbollah can fire rockets in. The Houthis are still shutting down the shipping. They're still, you know, they shut down the port of Eilat. Haifa is under attack. More and more nations are rallying against Israel. From a strategic standpoint, Israel's position has become much worse. We're buying into the headlines of Nasrallah killed. But when you take a look at the big picture items, this is still an exhausted military that's now being mobilized to go into what's probably going

to be the most intensive ground combat they've ever experienced. I still believe that Iran and Hezbollah and the resistance have the advantage. But the death of Hassan Nasrallah is a major event and one that will demand some sort of response. Here's what the New York Times posted on its website as we've been on air scott israeli commandos conduct raids in lebanon as cabinet debates ground invasion israel's cabinet was meeting on monday evening that's today to discuss whether and when to launch a major ground operation in southern lebanon which would be israel's first there in nearly two decades yeah I mean this is you know the two decades was 2006 and I remind everybody that Israel failed back then um Hezbollah I believe has gotten stronger more capable better prepared Israel of course has you know built up its capabilities and um they had a plan to go into Lebanon to fight Hezbollah.

But that plan didn't have built into it a year's worth of exhaustive combat in Gaza against Hamas that wore down the military. The military that Israel is mobilizing or has mobilized to go into Lebanon is not a fresh military. They're an exhausted military. They have maintenance issues, et cetera. And also, I'm sure if we read down in that article, you'd see that the United States is putting tremendous pressure on Israel not to go into Lebanon. Again, Lloyd Austin's Pentagon is of the belief that Israel is not positioned to prevail and that this could,

if Israel went in big, that that could lead to actually a big reversal of fortune for the Israelis, which would prompt further Israeli escalation, maybe to include bombing Iran, and this whole thing spins out of control. And so I think what you're seeing right now is, you know, these commando probes done, reconnaissance enforced, designed to take out certain capabilities to allow some movement forward that the Israelis will say constitutes proof that they can defeat Hezbollah without decisively engaging Hezbollah. Can Israel take on Iran alone, that is, without the active participation of the United States military in that conflagration? It depends on what Iran is going to do. I mean,

you know, and when you say take on... Attack, attempt to decapitate. Well, see, that's about the only chance Israel has is to carry out a major act of decapitation. And I would say that, you know, having seen the Israelis use pagers and walkie talkies explosively, that Israel probably has some sort of, you know, clever decapitation support plan already in Tehran waiting to be used. You know, there's rumors out about Israeli penetration of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command. They may even be on the inside of, you know, the Supreme Leader's inner circle. This could be deception designed to cause, you to cause the Iranians to self-destruct from within as they go on a spy hunt, looking for a spy that doesn't exist. There's all sorts

of games being played right now. But Israel, I think, would be able to carry out one major decapitation effort. But the idea of them carrying out a sustained aerial campaign, equivalent to what we did against Iraq during the Gulf War, the strategic air campaign, Israel doesn't have that ability, especially by itself. The refueling requirements, the suppression of air defense, the counter air, defending their own territory. Remember, to defend against Iranian missiles, Israel had to deploy its air force as part of an air screen. So if you're devoting a big chunk of your air force to carry out operations against Iran, you don't have that air force there to carry out the air screen. And at some point in time, even the vaunted Israeli air force, it runs out of capacity.

And I don't think Israel has the ability to do a sustained air campaign against Iran without American help. And right now, the United States is not inclined to help the Israelis. Here's Benjamin Netanyahu earlier today, purporting to address in English the Iranian people. This may raise your blood pressure a little bit, Scotty. Number 15, Chris. When Iran is finally free, and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think, everything will be different. Our two ancient peoples, the Jewish people and the Persian people, will finally be at peace. Our two countries, Israel and Iran, will be at peace. When that day comes, the terror network that the regime built in five continents

will be bankrupt, dismantled. Iran will thrive as never before. Global investment, massive tourism, brilliant technological innovation based on the tremendous talents that exist inside Iran. Doesn't that sound better than endless poverty, repression, and war? It has to be aimed at the Israeli public. There isn't a human being in Iran that would take that at face value, is there? No. Netanyahu is speaking to Iranian expatriates in the United States and in Europe, but particularly in the United States. Notice he, I've been studying this guy for a while, he was speaking his best American English right there.

You know, there's other times when Netanyahu speaks English and he has the heavy, thick Israeli accent. Today he was speaking to the Iranian expatriate community in Los Angeles. That's where a large group of Iranians are who fled Iran during the time of Reza Shah Pahlavi. They're monarchists. They support Reza Shah's son. They want him to be returned as a monarchist. And the disruptions that took place in 2023 after the tragic death of the Kurdish girl who got detained because she wasn't wearing her job right, and then she died in police custody. That and the Mujahideen al-Qaq, another terrorist organization, he's addressing the Israelis who worked with them. The Israelis have been working with Iranian opposition groups for decades now to bring down the regime. He was speaking to them. And then what they're going to do is package his statement into the Persian language or the Arabic language, because there's an Arab side of this, the

Turkish language, the Azeris, and then they're going to be rebroadcasting it into Iran. But they've been doing that. This isn't the first time. They've been doing this on an ongoing basis. So this is just an exercise in self, it's a self-licking ice cream cone. It pleases only Netanyahu. It doesn't accomplish anything. Scotty, thank you very much, my dear friend. An unpleasant subject, but your analysis helps so many of us to get a better handle on exactly what's going on and what's likely to come. All the best, my friend. Thank you. Of course. Coming up at four o'clock Eastern, on the same subject matter from an academic

perspective, our dear friend, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.