Judging Freedom - [SPECIAL] - TRITA PARSI - How Washington Underestimated Iran

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

[SPECIAL] - TRITA PARSI - How Washington Underestimated IranSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 pre-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? 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 Monday, March 16th, 2006. Our guest is Trita Parcy. Trita is a world-renowned expert on Iran, is the co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an organization that many of you know I have admired for many years. Tita, welcome here. I know you're very much in demand, and we're very privileged to have you here. Thank you for having me. I'm a huge fan, so delighted to be able to be on with you. Thank you. Can you explain the unrelenting hatred that the Israeli governments and the American governments have had for Iran for 50 years? So, you know, the roots of those sentiments are quite different. I think it's very important to recognize that the Israelis actually did everything they could back in the 1980s to get the United States and Iran back on talking terms and actually helping Iran. The U.S., of course, had its fallout with Iranians because of the hostage crisis.

The Iranians were very upset because of the 1953 coup, which then, you know, obviously backfired on the U.S. by the time you had the revolution. But from the Israeli standpoint, they were adamant about making sure that despite this very significant change of regime in Iran, that they would still be able to count on Iran as a geostrategic ally. Iran had played a critical role for Israel's security. since the early 1950s, when Ben-Gurion's doctrine of the periphery was put in place, the idea that Israel's security will be achieved by creating alliances with the non-Arab states

in the periphery of the Middle East in order to balance the Arab states in Israel's vicinity. No periphery power was more important than Iran, not just because of its size, its military, but most importantly also because of its old reserves, which at one point covered up to 80, percent of Israel's needs. So when the revolution happens and this new regime comes into place that is very anti-Israeli, at least on the surface, the Israelis immediately reached out and tried to convince the Iranians that despite their ideological opposition to Israel, they would be faced with the geopolitical reality that necessitated some collaboration. And that's part of the reason why you had the Iran-Contra scandal in which the Israelis were pushing the U.S. to sell arms to the Iranians out of a fear

that if Iran lost the war against Saddam Hussein, Iraq would become a very powerful state and would be very, very bad for Israel geopolitically. So this hatred that we're seeing is really rooted in the changes that happen in the region in 1991 to 1993. That's when the two key factors that actually pushed Israel and Iran closer together, the common threat from the Soviet Union and the common threat from strong Arab nationalist countries such as Egypt and the Nasr or Iraq and the Saddam Hussein. were all gone. And a completely new geopolitical reality emerged in the region in which Iran and Israel

actually emerged as two of the more powerful states. And now suddenly these Israelis started to fear that the United States, 10 years after the revolution, would move towards a warm up with Iran, which would then potentially reduce Israel's strategic significance to the United States. This was already a shock because of the fall of the Soviet Empire meant that the Cold War was over. And Israelis played a key role for the U.S. in the core as an outpost of Western friendliness in a region that otherwise saw the Soviets make a lot of headway. But without the Soviet Union, what was the need for Israel? So this is the moment you suddenly see the Israelis really turning against Iran, pushing the U.S. to sanction Iran, push, you know, this constant talk that Iran is two years away from a nuclear weapon. This is what we started to hear back in 1994, 95.

time passes, but they're always two years away from a nuclear weapon. That all started with Israelis back then because they were trying to do something to make sure that Iran rose on the list of geostrategic threats from the American perspective. And they were quite successful because we had decades in which the American politicians constantly kept on saying that Iran is the greatest national security threat to the United States, which was laughable on its face. But it was the politically convenient thing to say. Labable on its face because Iran never threatened the United States and had no ability to harm the United States. A hostile state in many different ways.

There were clearly efforts by some within the Iranian system to reach out to the U.S. and try to find a new balance. But at the end of the day, it was zero capability to threaten the American homeland in any serious way. Even now, if you take a look at what's happening in the war, the Iranians do have significant. capabilities to spike at these bases in the Persian Gulf. But the U.S. Navy is keeping itself 3,000 kilometers away from Iranian shorelines, and as a result, cannot be reached by the Iranians. Well, if the ships can be that far away and be safe, the United States is thousands more kilometers away from Iran. It was a really legitimate threat picture in terms of the Iranians threatening the American homeland. Is there any basis for the ubiquitous climate?

ubiquitous claim by the American neocons that Iran is the world's greatest sponsor of terrorism. And I would argue that Israel is the world's greatest sponsor of terrorism, but we won't make the comparison. Is there any basis for that argument condemning Iran as a progenitor of terrorism? I think for the last 20 or plus years, that statement really can only be taken seriously if we, fundamentally change the definition of terrorism. So, you know, essentially, if Iran is supporting groups that the United States doesn't like, and as a result we call that terrorism, then yes, they're one of the biggest sponsors of terrorism. If Iran is the country that is fueling terrorist acts in Europe in the United States,

behind the 9-11 and things of that nature, then absolutely not. In fact, we've seen far more support for that type of a Sunni jihadism coming out of some of the GCC states, particularly Saudi Arabia, state sponsored rather than coming out of Iran. But, you know, to be frank with you, the U.S. list of terrorist organizations at this point really laughable because we take groups off willy-nilly based on whether we like them politically or not, not whether they actually are engaged in or continue to be engaged in terrorists. One of those groups, for instance, is Divan and Maja, that was on the terrorist list for a long time because it didn't disavow violence. It was involved in a lot of terrorist attacks. It killed a lot of Americans. But because of a massive lobbying campaign under the Obama administration, the Clinton State Department took them off the list. And they had a lot of support both from Republicans and Democrats to do so.

But a year later or two years later, we found out that the Israelis were using that very same group to conduct terrorist attacks inside of Iran. Oh, boy. And of course, we have the infamous case of the so-called president of Syria, who on day one had a $10 million bounty on his head for cutting people's heads off. And on day two was dressed in a Brooks brother's suit and on his way to the Oval Office. I mean, you can't make this stuff up. All right. And you also saw, you know, the Sudanese got off of the state's department's terrorist list by simply agreeing to normalize relations with Israel. Nothing else.

Right. I mean, it's undermining our own credibility. That list at this point is just seen as completely political. Do the Iranian people generally support the structures of government in Iran, the supreme leader, the Council of Elders, a Revolutionary Guard, an elected president, and elected parliament? I do not believe that a majority do. I think the support base of the current theocracy is probably

between 15 and 20%. But that still means up to 18 million people, and they're very, very dedicated supporters. Incidentally, they have been dramatically energized by this war. Frank, we've not seen them as energized now compared to at least 10, 20 years. I think there is another segment of this society that is against the regime in a way

that they're almost willing to go get rid of the regime at any cost. I don't think that percentage is very, very, very, high, but it is common amongst the younger generation who look back at the last 25 or so years, they see that the reform agenda did not generate the type of a change at all that they expected in many ways, frankly, Iran is more closed politically today than it was 25 years ago. But then you have a very significant group of people in the middle who are not supporters of the regime, but they're not going to support any change in the regime at any cost.

for instance, at the cost of a foreign invader or a foreign country bombing their country. And as long as that group remains a very solid majority, it means that the combination of the two enables theocracy to live on as long as there's a bit of a promise that there can be some sort of a change coming from within. The more that promise has become hollow, the more you see that people have been pushed in more radical directions of wanting to get rid of it. right and that's a process we've seen in the last couple of years we all know from a history that an air campaign generally hardens the unity of the victim look at the british people

during the early part of world war two and there are many many other examples of this but how could the united states and israel have so miscalculated misunderstood the resolve of the Iranian people and underestimated the strategic advances of the Iranian military? I don't think the Israelis miscalculated. I think the US miscalculated. I think the Israelis knew very well that this is the likely scenario that would emerge, not the only scenario, but a likely scenario. But they're fine with it because they finally managed to get the United States into this war. Bibi Netanyahu has tried to get the U.S. to do Israel's dirty work for it, essentially, for more than 25 years, constantly pushing to go to war, and now they finally succeeded. And even if this does not lead to a change of the regime, even if it leaves some capacity left in Iran, bottom line is if there was a ceasefire tomorrow, if there were to be one, Iran would probably be set back 10 or so years.

From an Israeli standpoint, that is a success. not as successful as they may want it to be, but that is a success. From the American standpoint, that is a strategic defeat. It is the United States that miscalculated, that didn't understand that from the Israeli standpoint, just degrading Iran is good enough for them, as long as the United States is the country that is mainly doing it, and as long as this leaves a situation in which the Israelis will not have to worry

any future approach from between the U.S. and Iran, because that's not going to happen for another two or three decades. Well, is it your view, treaty that the United States with respect to Iran is subservient to Israel, is just doing Israel's dirty work without Israel informing it truthfully, openly, and honestly, of the state of affairs? Because you know, Donald Trump, in and out, we're going to get the sofa in a weekend. I can't imagine that Netanyahu believed this would be over in a weekend. Look, don't take it for me. Take it from Marco Rubio. He said it himself. The Israeli

were going to attack, and as a result, the administration, apparently, according to his account, calculated that the Iranians would retaliate against the U.S., and they thought, well, in that case, the U.S. should be in that war itself, which, of course, is the wrong decision. If the Israelis are going to do something that will endanger in the United States, the responsible thing for the administration is to tell the Israelis not to do so, rather than to let the Israelis decide when the United States goes to war. Do you believe that Netanyahu forced Trump's hand? Or do you believe that they agreed back in December and Mar-a-Lago on the date of the attack?

I don't think they agreed on the dates. But I do think that already back then Trump was bought in. And part of the reason why I think the Israelis were successful is they really played to Trump's psychology. I think it would be erroneous to say that Trump is in principle against war, that he is in principle against regime change. I think Trump, in principle, is against anything that is messy and does not have a guaranteed success of tremendous glory at the end of it in a short period of time so that he can bask in that glory. And I think that's actually a good thing. He has shown himself to be resistance towards going into things that actually could be too risky. That's not a bad thing at all.

So how do you then convince Trump to do something if this is how he functions? Well, you convince him that this is going to be very easy. You're convinced him that the Islamic Republic is on its last legs because of these protests, because of the manner in which the Israelis had degraded some of their capabilities, their air defense systems are down. So this is going to be amazingly simple. And you're going to have essentially a Venezuela success, but on crack within just four days if you do this. And no one else has the guts to do this.

And everyone else who's telling you that this is going to be complicated, they were wrong about all of these other things. So Trump ended up believing that, yes, they warned him about moving. the embassy to Jerusalem. Nothing happened. They warned him about recognizing Golan. Nothing happened. They warned him about killing Soleimani into 2021 or 2020. And he was successful. Nothing happened. So they're constantly gone on with this view that he has been proven right every time he's taking these bold measures. And this one is going to be very simple. And this is part of the reason why Trump really believed that after the Supreme Leader had been killed, the Iranians will be ready

to capitulate. And it turned out that they absolutely were not. And now after that plan A crash down, we are now more than two weeks or almost three weeks into this war. And we still don't even see a plan B beyond just bombing the country. We also don't see a president or a secretary of state or a secretary of defense who calls himself Secretary of War able to articulate an imminent threat, which is, you know, the law requires to justify this kind of an aggressive attack. not a single imminent threat the best argument was that marco rubia won which is nonsense exactly they could have stayed baby's hand they could have stayed baby's hand with a phone call exactly according to what marco rubio said the imminent threat was israel not iran wow well uh trump told uh nbc news on saturday

uh that the iran foreign minister reached out via an intermediary one that he he declined going to identify and offered proposals for a ceasefire. And the Iranian foreign minister says it didn't happen. Who do you believe? I mean, I've spoken to a lot of people. I see absolutely no evidence that the Iranians are looking for a ceasefire. The Iranians believe themselves to be in control. They are the ones that are deciding who goes through the Strait of Hormuz and who doesn't.

Take a look at those countries that have now tried to negotiate a free passage through the Strait of Hormuz. France, Italy, China, India. Where did they go? Did they negotiate that free passage with the United States? Or did they negotiate it with Iran? They went to Tehran to negotiate it. Because they are the ones who are in control of this situation. So for the first time in a couple of years,

the Iranians actually have significant leverage. The idea that they would give that up without getting something in return and a ceasefire is not good enough for them. From their standpoint, if there's a ceasefire right now, all that means is that Israel and the United States will attack them in a couple of months. They are going to continue this war until, A, the cost has been overwhelming for the United States and Israel because they believe that that is a deterrent.

They need to make sure that the U.S. and Israel never tries this again because it's just been proven to be too costly. If it is not costly enough, they believe the U.S. and Israel will attack them again. Secondly, I think they're going to be very adamant about demanding sanctions relief in order to open the straits again. If they can, perhaps there will be some military defeats that will cause this whole thing, not to work out for them, but where they stand right now, they're going to ask for sanctions relief.

And the reason for that, again, is not just because they do need sanctions relief. They absolutely need it. But if the war ends right now and there's no sanctions relief, that means that Iran is in a militarily weaker position than it was before the war, even though may have reasserted some deterrence. It's been degraded in many different ways,

but also a pathway to sanctions relief wouldn't exist, which means then that over time, Iran would not just be in a weaker position compared to before, it would be continuously weakening. And if it is further weakening, what will that do? It will just tempt the United States and Israel to attack it again. To attack it earlier on. It was the false perception of their weakness that paved the way for this attack.

So it's critical for them to end in such a way so that their trajectory moves in the state in which they become stronger as the buffer, as the deterrent against the Israelis and the United States once again, starting this war. And again, remember, this is the second time in just. eight months. Correct. Based on some fantasy. And not only is it the second time in eight months, it's the second time they attacked

in the middle of negotiations while negotiators were literally on their way to the next negotiating session. I don't know who would trust, would cough. And let me say something on that as well, Judge, if I could. I think from the Israeli standpoint, that was also a huge victory for them. Because the more the United States destroys its own diplomatic credibility in the region, the less the Israelis will have to work. worry about other countries engaging in diplomacy with the United States at moments where

the Israelis don't want the U.S. to engage in diplomacy. As part of the effort of getting the United States to attack Iran for the last 25 years, the Israelis have done everything they could to prevent U.S.-Iran diplomacy. And when diplomacy did occur, they did everything they could to sabotage it. But if the diplomatic credibility of the United States is so low that no country in the region that the Israelis don't want the U.S. to talk to. If they feel that the U.S. is completely untrustworthy, they won't even try negotiating. And then the Israelis don't have to worry about that. So there is I want to go back to, I want to go back to Hormuz for a moment, because here is the Iranian

foreign minister just two hours ago today, summarizing some things, but making some very interesting comments about Hormuz. Chris, cut number 11. When our adversaries first began by insisting upon a total and unconditional surrender, and then, after a period of 12 long days, they requested, please, an unconditional ceasefire. This time they implemented the same scenario, but with even greater intensity and force. They mobilized all their forces so that this unconditional surrender would happen. This time, they were determined to make it happen for sure.

while the sheer scale of the attacks. The action they took on the very first day, you know all of this better than I do. And again, they started with the phrase, unconditional surrender. And today, after almost 15 days have passed since the war began, for the security of the Strait of Hormuz, they are turning to those whom they considered enemies

until just yesterday. They are asking other countries to come and help them. so that the Strait of Hormuz remains open, which of course, from our perspective, it is open. It is only closed to our enemies. Only closed to our enemies. This is enormous leverage, as you pointed out a few minutes ago, Trita, that Iran now has. It doesn't seem to be a damn thing that the United States Navy can do about it. Look, Trump has been talking about getting a coalition of countries.

I've not seen a single country actually accepted outright. I think more than 10 or so have rejected it. I'm not seeing any signs that any other one, any meaningful countries truly will join in. The Brits seem to be on the fence, but I think it would be a very risky decision for Kirstarmer to go along with this. But also it does mean that the U.S. Navy would actually have to move into the Persian Gulf, which means that they would become targets of the Iranian missiles.

So far, they've stayed pretty far away. you know, that's why there's so much refueling needed in order to make sure that the jets can fly the full distance and back to conduct those bombing campaigns. Because it's too dangerous to be within the range of the Iranian missile. So opening the straits militarily means to move in. And that would be an absolute military disaster in many different ways because the Iranians still have the capability to strike at those ships. They may have the capability of sinking quite a lot of those different ships. So this was not thought through in any way she performed. This was a war started by choice based on the assumption of hubris and profound Iranian weakness.

And now when it's come crashing down, we're seeing that Trump for the first time, who I think has been quite good at avoiding putting himself in lose-lose situations, he's now put himself in the mother of all lose-lose situations. How determined, in your view, is the Iranian government to cause catastrophic damage to Israel? At this point, I think their focus is primarily on the areas where they can find the most accessible threshold of pain. That is not Israel. They are striking at Israel, but it is nothing compared to what they could do. Their focus is on the GCC states and with through that the global economy.

and on U.S. basis, because they know that the global economy is actually the most accessible pain threshold. If they were trying to end this war just by getting the Israelis to cry uncle, that would take a very, very long time. But going at it against the GCC states, closing the straits, that could cause the United States to call an end to this war with some concessions to Iran within a couple of weeks. At least that's their calculation. If it ends up working that way or not, we don't know. But keep in mind, I mean, Coleman Sachs just came out with their estimate of what would happen if this war continues for a couple of more weeks. We're talking about 14% contraction in the GDP of countries like Qatar, I think 3% for Saudi, 5% for the UAE,

that will have massive trickle-down effects for everyone else. I mean, right now, the Philippines, or Sri Lanka just announced that they're going to have to, people are going to have to work from home instead of commuting because there's not enough fuel. Schools in Bangladesh Philippines have been closed because of a lack of fuel. And this war has just been going on for two weeks. How do you see it ending? I will never admit that he made a mistake. You know that.

No, he won't. And I think that the ability for him to just declare victory unilaterally is not as simple as he felt. Because again, the Iranis are not going to open up the straits unless they get something. I suspect that there may end up having to be in a couple of weeks, probably not quite yet. A scenario in which the pain is just intolerable on so many sides, the Chinese, the Russians, others will step in diplomatically. It will be some sort of arrangement. The Iranians will have to open up the straight, but they will get sanctions relief.

They will get other types of compensation. Trump will still declare victory, and he has to politically, but it will absolutely not be anything near what he originally thought. And it's still, that's probably the best case scenario. And there will be no regime change or structural governmental change in Iran as Trump's advisors talked to him into believing. And Netanyahu talked to him into believing. Look, war favors the hawks, not the doves. And what we're seeing in Iran is a significant shift into the direction of the IRGC. And that's going to last beyond this war, I fear.

So rather than thinking that this will lead to the fall of the regime and the rebirth of some sort of a democracy, I fear that the most likely scenario is that we're going to see a much more repressive Evonian state going forward, but also that at the same time will be in much greater control of society than they have been before. Wow. Trita Parsi, thank you very much, my dear friend. A great, great analysis. A wonderful, serious conversation. I truly hope you can come back and join us again, my question.

Anytime. Thank you so much for having me. We really appreciate it. Give my best and my heart to Colonel Bacevich. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me again. Thank you. All the best. Thank you. Coming up at 3 o'clock today, Kyle Anzalone, do you believe the president actually said,

some of my people think war is fun? Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.