Transcription
Undeclared wars are commonplace. Tragically, 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, June 25th, 2026. Pepe Escobar will be with us in just a moment. Are the Israelis planning more assassinations? And just why did Donald Trump panic 10 days ago? But first, this.
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Pepe Escobar. Welcome here my dear friend before we judge.
Oh, thank you. Thank you. I know you've been having a busy day and you're on the other side of the world from where I am. Before we get uh to uh assassinations, I've been asking this question all week of all of our guests and getting different answers, but you have sources at the source.
Is the Gulf of Hormuz open?
I LOVE IT. WELL, IT DEPENDS WHO YOU ASK, JUDGE. UH, the IRGC Navy uh tells you that of course it's open if you follow the procedures of uh the new uh organization, the Persian Gulf uh association, of course, and if you pay uh your transit fees and then no problem. The Americans say, "Okay, it's open because we open it." No, no, no, no, no. That's not the case. And of course, some uh most in fact uh shippers, they look at the two possibilities to navigate uh close to Iranian territorial waters and follow the RRG IRGC navy uh recommendations and procedure etc. or risk uh or money uh navigation uh territorial waters very, very tricky. They don't know if this is going to to work or there will be interception by the RC navy after that. They don't know if the Americans can guarantee uh their safe passage and of course nobody uh is going through the middle of the strait of Hormuz which is heavily mined.
Wow. So it's an extremely tricky situation. Once again, it dep it depends what kind of tanker are you, who owns your tanker, where you're going, and who you want to talk to. Has the United States Navy, which as I understand was five or 600 kilometers from the actual corner of the strait? Has the US Navy departed the area? No, they are still between the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, which is between as as you mentioned 600 to 1,000 kilometers east of the strait of a very, very far away in a huge area. You cannot patrol the Arabian Sea. You you would need you need, you know, uh the Vikings to do that with a thousand Viking vessels. No, it's not working. So, uh what we know for sure from uh our Iranian sources is that tankers that are Iranian, Chinese or Iranian and are going to their uh um Asian clients. they are uh going through via the usual uh territory water near the island of Kashm with no problems following those uh procedures.
Wow. Uh, let's get to uh the reason we have an um a memorandum of understanding signed by President Trump at the Palace of Versailles with all the historical meaning of that. We can talk about that another time or later. But how significant in Trump's thinking from your sources was the radical depletion of the United States strategic petroleum reserve? And how panicked was Trump when they told him how low the reserve was?
Well, I received a report, a detailed report from one of my old school deep state sources. the time I lived in Washington a long time ago and uh he read one of my articles and he told me directly, look, you missed the main point. And then he detailed the main point is that according to the numbers, the point of uh no return for the strategic reserves is going to be mid-August. And when Trump was confronted with the numbers, this was mid-June, so he had to act immediately. If he decided to act a few weeks later in July or late July or early August, it would be too late. And then there's a set of numbers explaining uh why we're going to have uh we will reach a point where it will be impossible to basically feed the American military machine. This this is the key point. When when the strategic reserves uh reach a certain level, if I'm not mistaken, is around 263 million barrels or it is in in the article I quote the report in detail.
So we all know before you go on, so we all know what happened. The federal government tapped the strategic reserves.
In order to give the oil companies more oil to refine into gasoline so as to As high as gasoline went, I paid $5.99 a gallon six days ago uh to try and keep that number down. And then they reached the point where they couldn't couldn't take any more oil because there wouldn't be enough for the uh military. Is that it, in a nutshell?
Yes. Yes. That's it in a nutshell, judge. So well after I read the report, I was convinced that yeah, I had missed the main point because my article was essentially on the geopolitics and the geo economics of the whole situation and of course uh the contours of uh how Iran they could do anything they wanted with the strait of Hormuz and they already had the mechanisms in place and everybody was already paying without even discussing. So th but this was not the main point from from the point of view of uh trying to disguise the strategic defeat of the US. There was a much more interesting uh a much more pressing issue which is if we get to mid-August and not and the strait of Hormuz is totally blocked or almost totally blocked like it was a few days ago, then there's no extra to be dumped by the Americans and the global economy will go down the drain in a matter of days. What does this tell you about Heg Seth and military planning? Um even the Department of Energy that they would allow this number to get so low that they came running to the president at the last minute saying you got to stop the war cuz we'll run out of oil. I think it proves to all of us and to the whole planet that there's no planning at all.
It's it's as as simple as that. If they had at least foreseen, look, we can dump our reserves for maybe a month or two, but not like almost indefinitely, which was the case until Trump took this decision only a few days ago. If if he if these numbers were not available to him, and there are many ways it could be lost in the Washington bureaucracy, he would have been too late. If he if he took the same decision one month from now in mid-July, it would have been too late already. This is what the report that I received was saying explicitly. And of course uh they they were saying, look, the point is not you block the strait of Hormuz and then oil gets to $100, $120 and all that. It's not the price tag. It's the long-term implications. If you take, I think it's more than 1 billion barrels of oil off the market, you destabilize the global market completely, which is the the stage that we are now. And this was essentially because of American actions.
Did Trump uh come to the rescue so to speak too late? In other words, are these problems triggered by the closing of the Strait of Hormuz and the depletion of the American strategic um uh petroleum reserve? They're not going to be solved overnight.
No, they won't. And that's why we need to wait for what's going to happen between now and let's say mid-July and late July. Uh it depends of course on the Americans really ending their blockade of Iranian ports, which is not a blockade of a strait of Hormuz. They decided to blockade all Iranian ports exporting from uh the Persian Gulf. Let's see if this happens. Number one. Number two, uh they are already complaining that Iranians cannot charge anything on their territorial waters. But this is a a sovereign Iranian issue. They don't depend on the United States if they decide to charge uh maintenance fees, security fees, environmental fees, whatever any way you want to describe it. Right? So this is what's going to happen in the next few weeks. If we see uh Hormuz getting back to a semblance of normality compared to uh in relation to the beginning of the before the beginning of the war, maybe we can say you through the depol the American depolution. But if don't forget that the depolution continues, uh judge, it's not that they stopped it. They're still putting American uh uh reserves uh uh on the market to suppress the price of oil. So, this has not started. This has not uh the new situation has not started yet.
Let me uh switch gears uh to Israel. How um how can Trump stop Netanyahu and Lebanon? Will Trump stop Netanyahu in Lebanon? Can Trump Can Netanyahu afford to be stopped in Lebanon?
No, he can. First, exactly. First of all, he cannot afford to be stopped in Lebanon because then uh he'll go to jail essentially. Number one. Number two, the most important thing that happened these past few uh days, judge, uh uh I'm sure it's more or less outside of the spectrum of American mainstream media. Part of it was reported of course was Burgenstock in Switzerland this past weekend when there was the let's say the ratification of the memorandum of understanding, essentially meaning, okay, we're going to start discussing the details of the 14 points of the memorandum of understanding. But then something happened very, very important. This is something that Larry and I emphasized over and over again because we heard from our sources at the negotiating table in Switzerland that Iran left three times. They were about to enter their cars and leave Burgentock and at the last minute Aimir and the Prime Minister Shahif convinced Iran to come back because they say, look, look at what's coming out from Washington. Can we deal with uh with some
He threatened he threatened to assassinate them in
Is that exactly
in Switzerland of all places?
In Switzerland, of all places. Exactly. So, uh do you and this is something that Larry and I reported. Do you know who saved Burgentock, judge? The foreign minister of Saudi Arabia. He picked up the phone. He called uh Aimir directly and he said, look
Who is this? Who is this that he called? The head
Yeah, Prince Faisal, foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, picks up the phone and calls uh Field Marshal Asim Munir, the head of the army in Pakistan. And by the way, Trump loves him. This is this is something that has been reported in the US widely.
Yes. And Faisal tells Munir, look, two things very, very important. The first one, this cannot fail. Do anything you need, but don't let the Iranians leave. Number one. We can guarantee the money for them. And this after Qatar had already guaranteed to the Iranians because these funds, the six billion plus six billion, 12 billion, and then the other 12 billion in the next stage of the MOU, they are in Qatari banks essentially. So the Qataris had already told the Iranians, look, if Trump walks away, we're going to give you your money back. And then Faisal tells the Pakistanis, look, we Saudis, we also guarantee that the Iranians are going to get their money back. Tell them now. And I'm going to tell them again. I'm going to call them after I talk to you. This number one. Number two, Faisal invited Munir directly to say, look, guys, after you finish Switzerland, come here to Saudi Arabia and then you're going to meet MBS face to face and we're going to upgrade our military pact. This is immense because this is the beginning of a new security umbrella in West Asia, which is the next step of the Saudi Pakistani military pact. It is going to turn into a security umbrella and then we can bring other uh the Saudis and the Pakistanis want to bring other GCC players to be part of the umbrella. They can convince Egypt to be part of it and they can even talk to Turkey, even though Turkey is a NATO member, say, look, indivisibility of security. So indivisibility of security for Iran and for us also for you and Turkey cannot say no. So this is this is immense, immense. This this is the most important thing because it ties up with your question. The Israelis looking at all that, they must be absolutely terrified because now they are totally isolated, completely isolated in West Asia. And the Americans looking at that, they said, are we going to go to war against the new security umbrella in West Asia to defend Israel? No, we're not.
So it's
Are the Americans and the Pakistanis and the Iranians concerned about Israeli sabotage?
Of course. Of course. And this is another thing uh judge that Larry and I were were talking about and we got a lot of flack from it by uh idiot people who have no idea how intel circulates. Pakistani military intel before Switzerland, they intercepted a very credible threat under orders of Netanyahu to the Mossad to assassinate Asim Munir and probably other members of the Pakistani delegation.
And then the head of the army. Yes, the head of the army, which by the way, as we were we were discussing, is very close to Donald Trump. So, Israel was thinking of assassinating a very close ally of Donald Trump and the key mediator in the whole process between Iran and Pakistan. So, the Pakistanis sent a message according to our source, and our source got this from Pakistani military intel. It's so sensitive that we started to have uh no, the proverbial officials from Pakistan say, no, this is absurd, that this is an absurd claim and all that. But it came from the source that you and we, Larry and I, we did the the obvious. Are you absolutely sure about this information? And this was confirmed over and over. It took us three days to get total confirmation across the board about this. So they sent a message via the usual middleman to Tel Aviv saying, if you try anything against our delegation going to Switzerland, we will wipe you off the map, literally.
Wow.
Yes. This is very, very serious. And no wonder people are saying, ah, you are fabricated. No, no, no. Okay. You you want you want to you want to put in contact with our source. He will confirm. He he said, look, I can confirm this to anybody. That's it. And we sent a message to them, and apparently they got the message because nothing happened in Switzerland. And you know who guaranteed everything in Switzerland? The venue, the Burgentock Palace, owned by the Qatar royal family, by the way. The perimeter there was a 48-kilometer air bubble coordinated between the federal government of Switzerland and the Pakistanis and of course, the security of the Pakistani delegation and the Iranian delegation. The Pakistanis did all that, which is
Can you uh can you describe the source in terms that will allow viewers to evaluate the person's credibility without blowing his his or her identity?
First of all, judge, he is one of the guys who is at the table in Burgestok and he has been at the table uh in Islamabad all the way.
Wow.
Yes. So, this is as serious as it gets. And that's why Larry and I, we trust this guy. And another source told us, look, he trusts Larry and you that you're not going to distort or misinterpret the information that he's passing to you. So, it's
Why why were you and Larry so aggressively lambasted for saying
I don't know. You should you should ask the lambasters, judge, because this well, first of all, these people have no idea how intel circulates and how when you have access to very sensitive intel, this is something that our friends Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, they all know how it works. Simuh, they all know how it works. You check, you recheck, you double-check, and when you're sure, you release it. And the public, they make their own conclusions. This is what Larry and I are doing. We have a very small channel, very young channel, starting to to grow now, but we decided to get into it because we have access to these people and very few people anywhere have access to these people who are at the table. And if they tell us something that is uh on face value out of sight, we can reconfirm with our American sources via Larry, with our Iranian sources, and eventually with our Russian sources if it involves Russia as well. So we can reconfirm what they're saying. And some of the things that they say are so hardcore that we're going to have, for instance, when we first broke a story about the phone call by President Pzashkin to Prime Minister Sharif, uh I wrote a column. I sent this column to my friends at the cradle in Beirut who sent this to a guy sitting side by side with Moshtaba. He's part of the inner circle of Moshtaba committee. And we asked, could you please go?
This is this is the new Ayatollah.
Exactly. The new leader of Iran. We got an answer and he said, his textual answer from Farsi to English, I won't comment on this matter, which was a non-response response. He did not deny our information. He could not because this was obtained from a phone call by his president. There you go.
So, has um Netanyahu and his crew backed down since they were threatened by the Pakistanis?
Yes, they backed down. And uh something else that we were discussing yesterday, judge, Larry and I, uh if you can you can recommend our very young baby channel to your audience. uh we are called transition protocol. uh our mini channel for the moment, it's growing fast, but we are still very, very young compared to everybody else. Uh there was um serious explanation which finally came to light via one of our Pakistani military sources who told another one of the sources at the table and then they said, look, you can pass this to them and we received this early in the week and then we asked for extra confirmation. Do you know why the serial assassinations of uh top Iranian uh political leaders suddenly stopped after the assassination of Ali Larijani, which at the time we could say that he was the most powerful person in Iran after the death of Ayat and he was the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. He was assassinated, members of his family, etc. Because the Pakistani military intel managed to crack the code on what was being used by the Israelis for these assassinations.
Wow.
That's the story. And they could only do that with help from the Chinese, of course, number one. So this is what the Chinese have been doing in terms of electronic warfare. The Chinese are very advanced. They passed this information to the Pakistanis and helped the Pakistanis to set up an electronic warfare center between Rawalpindi and Islamabad in Pakistan, state of the art. And after the assassination of Larijani, they approached the IRGC and they said, look, do you want our help? We can help you with that. We know how to make these assassinations stop. And this is something that uh you judge and your audience, all of you watching us, you can go on the public record and confirm that after the assassination of Larijani, there were no more assassinations of anyone in power in Iran.
Wow.
This is the proof of the pudding, you know.
This is uh fascinating stuff, Pepe, as is your uh analysis on uh on Trump and Heg Seth panicking. Deeply, deeply appreciated, my friend. And
Judge and Larry and I, we are now like kids, you know. We're starting a young ch starting.
You look I don't know how you do it, but you look younger than you did the last time you were on here. Thank you so much.
God bless you. Thank you, my dear man. God bless you. See you next week. Thank you.
Thanks everybody.
Sure. All the best.
Wow. Friday tomorrow uh at 8:45 in the morning on all of this. Colonel Douglas McGregor at 4 in the afternoon. the aforementioned Larry Johnson with Ray McGovern, the intelligence community uh roundtable and an announcement tomorrow about who will be joining the intelligence community roundtable. A very, very significant name in the American intelligence community, known to all of you. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Heat. Heat.