Judging Freedom - [SPECIAL] Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi :The View From Tehran!

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

[SPECIAL] Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi :The View From Tehran!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 16, 2025. and in 2025, joining us from Tehran is the great Professor Saeed Mohammed Marandi. Professor Marandi, it is a pleasure for me and for our very large audience to hear you. Thank you very much for your time. I realize there was a long delay between my words and your response, but we'll do our best to conduct this interview.

Thank you for joining us. Thank you very much, Judge. It's a pleasure and an honor. Thank you. Your dear friends, Alistair Crook, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson and Scott Ritter, all of whom have been on before you all, send their warmest regards to you and their prayers for your safety. Are you being bombed by the Israelis as we speak?

There were sounds of explosions a few minutes ago, There were sounds of explosions a few minutes ago, and I was about to do an interview a couple of hours ago when the Iranian radio and television was bombed. And a number of journalists and employees were murdered. I continue to be in, I'm still in a complex because the internet here is better and I'm alone in the building. Wow. Well, how, how is, what is your safety and your family's safety like today? Well, because I have been told that I may be a target. I've separated myself from my family.

And this building, as I said, has been evacuated. And so let's see what happens. Does the Iran government have the nuclear secrets of Israel, which of course Israel dreads having revealed to the world? What I'm understanding is that the Iranians have obtained a very large amount of documents that are top secret, and they reveal an extraordinarily great deal about the workings of the regime, as well as the nuclear program and the role that the West and Western countries, especially European countries, have played in even helping them upgrade their nuclear program, meaning their military nuclear program. The West, particularly the United States, won't even talk about the Israeli nuclear program. In fact, if you work for the federal government of the United States, once headed by Joe Biden, now headed by Donald Trump, you are told not ever to mention the existence of Israel's nuclear weapons.

I assure you that if one day the madmen in Tel Aviv use nuclear weapons, the Western elites, Western media will somehow justify it. I was just in an interview with Pierce Morgan and he was antagonizing Iran and creating a caricature of Iran in order to justify war, death, and destruction. And ironically, as we were doing the interview, Iranian journalists were dying very close to where I am. What is the extent of the damage that the Israelis have caused in Tehran, both to civilians and to military sites? The damage is a lot less than we hear in the Western media and online. First of all, their warheads are much smaller, and a lot of the damage is caused by drones. So the Iranian warheads which strike Israel are very large and very destructive. On the other hand, the Israelis claim that they've destroyed jets and missiles as well

as radar systems, but most of them are decoys. And if you look at the footage of the explosions, there is no secondary explosion. And the irony is that these are military officials that post them inside Israel, yet they don't recognize that when a missile is supposed to explode, the secondary explosion is much greater. But since we don't see that, it is clear that the Iranians have been using decoys everywhere to deceive the Israelis and to force them to spend their missiles without actually causing damage. Damage has been done. People have died.

In a building near my home on the first night, they wanted to kill, I think, two senior officers and they brought down the building, killing 65 people, including over 20 children. That is not a fantastic intelligence coup. That is mass slaughter just to kill one or two people whose place of residence is known to everyone. Can Israel, in your view, in your well-known in this field, can Israel defend itself from the Iranian No, the Israelis do not have that capability, and that is why they are dependent on the entire NATO force. They have mobilized their forces to stop Iranian missiles, but to a large degree they've failed so far. And the more advanced Iranian missiles and the more destructive Iranian missiles haven't

been used yet. The Iranians are largely using older missiles that have been in stock for 20, 25 years and a few more advanced missiles. But the Israelis so far, despite that, they have not shown the US and the Europeans, they have not shown the capability to lock Iran, despite the fact that their radar bases in Turkey and Qatar and the Emirates in Bahrain and elsewhere have been used to help them and the airspace of Jordan has been put at their service in order for them to block Iranian missiles and drones. But we see that despite all that they are still effectively targeting Israeli machine. Professor Morandi, you were born in the United States of America.

You are a scholar of literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran. You hold joint citizenship. You are a world renowned academic, are you a target of the Mossad and of the Israeli military? I do not know. I do know that security in Iran has asked me to put aside my cell phone. But if I put aside my cell phone, I cannot do interviews. That's the only means that I have to communicate.

And I have a responsibility to, as far as it's possible for me, to raise awareness and to prevent the demonization of the Iranian people and to the caricature of the Islamic Republic of Iran, whose only sin for the last 40 some years has been its independence and its support for the Palestinian people. So I don't know if I'm a target, but I thank the gentleman who asked me to get rid of my cell phone for the time being, but I told them I have no option but to remain active online. Professor Remerandi, does Iran, you are a former advisor to the nuclear negotiation team.

Does Iran have a nuclear weapon? No. I was the media advisor, but no. Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. Iran does not have a plan to produce a nuclear weapon. You know, and I'm sure many in your audience know that just recently Kelsey Gabbard stated that Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon. And Iran in the past has never been developing a nuclear weapon.

The United States government admits that at least from 2003, Iran has not been developing a nuclear weapon, and I assure you that before then it was not doing so either. However, Netanyahu has been lying about Iran for well over 30 years. In fact, I think the first time that he lied was a weapon. And he's been lying ever since regularly, saying it's months away, weeks away, a year or two away, ever since. But Western media will not take that context into account.

They'll simply, in order to justify aggression, to justify actions, they, what he says. The buildings actually that belong to the nuclear program that have been bombed, these are buildings that experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency regularly visit, and they have never reported that Iran is building a nuclear weapon. One thing that I should add, because there's a lot of misinformation and disinformation on this.

Yes. Go ahead. Go. Professor Morandi, does Iran pose the slightest threat to the national security of the United States of America? Absolutely not. It has never been a security threat to the United States of America. The United States has been attacked once by terrorist organizations based on their own narrative, based on their version of events that they themselves created, and that was

blowback. They created al-Qaeda. Whether one believes that narrative or not, the point is that the only major attack carried out in the United States was brought about by their own creation. From then on, they used Al-Qaeda again in Syria, in Libya, and elsewhere. Just one point, Judge, that I'd like to point out, and that is that with regards to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Board of Governors is a political entity and it is dominated by the West. The recent resolution that was passed against Iran,

only Western countries voted for it. But since they dominate this body, like all the international institutions and bodies that were created after the Second World War, they got the majority. The only non-Western countries, as far as I know, were Argentina, which you know who's in charge now, Korea and Japan, which are clearly in the Western camp. The Global South voted against or did not vote for the resolution, such as China, India, Russia and others. Yet the resolution was passed because the West was behind it.

This is a political decision and that is in order to put pressure on Iran. But there has never been evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon. Iran is well within its rights to enrich uranium at whatever level it wants. And the reason why Iran today enriches uranium at 60% is because Iran wants leverage so that the United States would be forced to remove sanctions that are targeting women and children in Iran, just like in Cuba and elsewhere. The United States removes sanctions against al-Qaeda, against Syria that is dominated by al-Qaeda and ISIS today, but it won't remove sanctions from Cuba or Iran.

And so this is leverage. And during the nuclear negotiations three years ago when I was a media advisor I said this repeatedly and on our talk on the BBC that Iran enriches uranium at 60 percent so that it can use this to force the Americans to stop crushing ordinary Iranians. How do you see the military conflagration see the military conflagration between Israel and Iran ending? The only way is for the Israeli regime to be convinced that this was a grave mistake. The Iranians, under no circumstances, will accept an end to this conflict where the Israeli regime achieves anything, because they carried out this unprovoked aggression, slaughtered women and children, targeted media, targeted journalists, they bombed a hospital this morning in the city

of Kermanshah. I posted it on Twitter. They are targeting ordinary people, but Western media, they ignore it, just like they ignore it in Gaza. Just remember in Gaza how they were saying initially that the tunnels were under the hospitals. Well, why are Israeli anti-defense systems in the middle of Tel Aviv in crowded streets? And when they bombed the hospitals, Western media and even Western intelligence agencies initially tried to pin the blame on the resistance in Gaza.

But then the Israelis bombed hospital after hospital after hospital and killed babies in incubators by pulling the, by cutting the electricity. And then Western media, instead of condemning the Israelis, they moved on. I was in Lebanon when the war started and when Sayed Hassan Nasrallah was martyred. Western journalists based in Beirut, they have fixers that are Lebanese, drivers that are Lebanese, producers that are Lebanese. They would constantly say Hezbollah's targets are being struck, Hezbollah strongholds are being struck, whereas they knew that the apartment buildings that were being brought down in

Beirut and elsewhere, they all belong to ordinary citizens. But they simply repeat these narratives in order to justify mass murder. Last subject matter, Professor Morandi, what do the Iranian people think of the American people? What do the Iranian people think of the American government? Iranians have no dislike whatsoever for American people. Americans who visit Iran can tell you that they are treated with great kindness, and the dislike is towards the American government. The American government has done great injustice to the Iranian people.

They overthrew the Iranian government in 1953 and installed a cruel Shah and created his secret police to SAVAK, a brutal and barbaric organization. During the revolution, when the Shah was gunning down people on the streets. The US president called him and gave him support. After the revolution, they gave the Shah refuge. The Shah killed so many people.

And that's why the students took over the embassy, because it's like Iran or any other country in the world after 9-11 giving refuge to Osama bin Laden. That's how young Iranians felt when they took over the embassy. But later, the Americans supported Saddam Hussein. The West gave him chemical weapons. Germany in particular, the irony of Germany giving Saddam Hussein chemical weapons. I survived two chemical attacks, Judge.

I survived mustard gas and I survived the nerve agent. No one ever apologized. And only when Saddam invaded Kuwait did Western media and the US President George Bush, the father and mother, start talking about chemical weapons in Iraq. They gave him the weapons to use against his own people and Iranians, and they destroyed Iraq later on in the name of chemical weapons, which you know,

Vambrha had. Professor Morandi, I know our connection is not that good and I've tested your patience long enough. Will you come back and visit with us again? patience long enough. Will you come back and visit with us again? I will visit you, Judge, whenever you tell me to come online, although I know that your other guests are much better than I, and all of them are people of great significance and of great principle like yourself. But whenever you ask me to come online, I will be there. You are a great and courageous man, a brilliant and gifted scholar.

We wish you and your family well. We wish you safety and we look forward to seeing you again, Professor. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Judge. Thank you very much for having me. I wish you and everyone safe. Oh, all the best. And thank you for tolerating the difficulties of communicating between New York City and Iran.

Coming up tomorrow, Tuesday at 8 in the morning, that was a great interview, not from my part, but from his part, to expose to all of you and to the American people how a principled academic born in the United States and now living and working in Iran, a world renowned academic views, an academic the Israelis have tried to kill, views all of this. Tomorrow, Tuesday at eight in the morning, Ambassador Charles Freeman. At ten in the morning, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. At eleven in the morning, Aaron Mate. At three in the afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. MUSIC