Read the full transcript of former CIA officer Phil Giraldi in conversation with Judge Napolitano of Judging Freedom Podcast on “Will Israel Attack the US Navy Again?”, June 18, 2025.
Opening Discussion
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, June 18, 2025. Phil Giraldi will be here with us in a minute. Are you ready for this? Should the United States fear an attack from Israel, he’ll explain right after this.
Phil Giraldi, welcome here. Welcome back from your travels. We missed you last week and glad you are with us. There’s really not very much to talk about.
PHIL GIRALDI: Are you kidding?
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Is the United States in danger of an Israeli attack masked as an attack from the Iranians?
PHIL GIRALDI: Well, no, I think basically Iran has never posed a threat to the United States. This has been a fake argument that’s been trotted out by the Israel lobby and by the Israelis themselves in the form of that creature, Benjamin, what’s his name? Netanyahu. This is the kind of thing to fool the Americans into doing stupid things. And so I don’t think there’s a threat coming from Iran. I think of course that the real threat to our liberties and to our former government comes from Israel.
The USS Liberty Precedent
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Well, I know, I agree, but I’m talking about the Israelis making it look like it was Iran that attacked us so they have their false flag. You know, they once attacked us and killed Americans and they weren’t pretending it was somebody else. They acknowledged it was them. This time they may make it look like it was the Iranians so as to bolster Netanyahu’s argument that somehow Iran poses a threat to the United States.
PHIL GIRALDI: Yeah, that’s of course, the other story, the other narrative. We go, we look back on at the USS Liberty back in June 1967, in which 34 American sailors were killed and over 170 were wounded. And every attempt was made to sink the ship and kill everyone on board, including Israeli aircraft which had their Star of David insignia covered up and gunboats machining life rafts and that sort of thing. They did everything to kill everyone and sink everyone.
And this might have been with, I hate to say it, with the maybe a little bit of cooperation from the U.S. Government in the form of Lyndon B. Johnson, but anyway, that’s another story. That’s a. Now that’s was a definite false flag. It was intended to get the U.S just like today with Iran, to get the U.S Involved in going against, in a war against Israel’s perceived Arab enemies. In this case, it would have been set up to make it look like it was the Egyptians who had done it. And the expectation was that if the ship sank and the narrative went out saying that this was done by the Egyptians against an American ship in international orders, that this would be enough for the US to go after Egypt. And also, incidentally, Russia had an air base in Cairo at that time, so maybe the Russians would have been rolled into it too.
Trump’s Threats Against Iran
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Do you think Trump is serious about leveling a city with 18 million inhabitants?
PHIL GIRALDI: Well, of course he’s serious, but this man is an idiot and doesn’t know what entails is entailed by that kind of destruction. He’s also just said about an hour ago that he doesn’t know whether he’s going to do it or not do it. And this is in terms of war with Iran, and of course that would be on the side of Israel.
The fact is that if a president is so ignorant that he doesn’t realize that the interests of the country that he leads and represents are what is the critical factor and whether you go to war or not, it’s not a question of whether some clown at the top somehow getting elected and deciding that he’s the world ruler. This game is getting very old and it’s getting very tiring. And I read today that some opinion polls were suggesting that even conservative Republicans who would identify with MAGA are beginning to get a little tired of it. There were, this was verified by some people who were doing polls on specific attitudes towards going to war.
Intelligence Operations in Ukraine
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: So talking about attitudes on going to war, we’ll go back to before you were doing your travels. Isn’t it a certainty that CIA, MI6 and probably Mossad aided the Ukrainian drone attack on four Russian air bases on a train line and a bridge?
PHIL GIRALDI: Yeah, and in fact, you know, this is something I’ve been alluding to having been a former intelligence officer on the ground and somewhat familiar how these things work. I suspect in a lot of cases in Ukraine, Ukraine and Russia, before they ran off the rails were of course like sister countries and very close language, affinity, religion and whole lot of other issues. I believe there were a whole lot of stay behinds who, when after Russia abandoned communism that were set up by foreign intelligence agencies and also by some of the local intelligence agencies. So I believe you had a lot of these people already sitting in place with this equipment getting smuggled across the border one way or another and just waiting for the word to go. So I think that’s a lot of what happened.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: And why, why would Mossad be helping the Ukrainians against Russia? Isn’t the last thing Netanyahu wants is animosity from the Kremlin?
PHIL GIRALDI: Well, I can put it in one sentence. Jews hate Russians because of the largely false narrative about the pogroms under the czars and other things. There’s a, if you talk to kind of leftist Jews, intellectuals in the United States who are very involved in foreign policy, you’ll see this anti Russian sentiment surfacing all the time.
Even though many of these American Jews are ethnically at least part Russian or maybe even complete Russian. But it’s that kind of historical, searing into the brain about who did what to whom. That I think drives a lot of the sentiment against Russia. And also it has that same effect here in the United States where many so called intellectuals at our universities and think tanks also come out of this mold.
Joint Intelligence Operations
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Isn’t it also a certainty that CIA and MI6 worked with Mossad on the Israeli surprise attack last Thursday night?
PHIL GIRALDI: I think that’s an absolute certainty and I think that a number of people you’ve had on your program have come to the same conclusion. Would not have happened for any number of reasons. So I mean we’re even looking at, actually what comes to mind immediately are the technical reasons. The sharing of intelligence on where all these top leaders were would have been something that came from the bigger and more capable intelligence agencies in past on to Mossad and again passed on by Mossad to its own agents on the ground in Iran have been, who have been successful at killing scientists and other figures. So we know they’re there. And so, yeah, I think that this is a given that this was done as a joint job. And of course, our esteemed president immediately denied any knowledge before admitting that, yeah, he knew about it.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: First he said he didn’t know about it, then he said he did before he said he did. I guess he didn’t talk to his de facto Secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who reached a statement saying, we don’t know anything about it. I mean, and Rubio hasn’t said a peep about anything since issuing that statement on Friday morning. Here it is Wednesday afternoon of the following week. Even get their lies straight.
PHIL GIRALDI: He might be terrified after what happened to Tulsi Gabbard.
Netanyahu’s Decades of Lies About Iran
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: He might. He might. I don’t know if you saw the clip. Well, you know what? Before I show you the clip of Tulsi Gabbard, I’m going to show you a clip. You know, I love you, Phil, but this will make your blood boil. These are the highlights of Netanyahu’s appearances before various bodies in the United States. It’s a montage that CNN put together. It’s 30 years of Netanyahu’s gross exaggerations and lies about Iran. Hang on to your chair, Chris.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
NETANYAHU: The deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely, extremely close.
NETANYAHU: And Iran, by the way, is also outpacing Iraq in the development of ballistic missile systems that they hope will reach the eastern seaboard of the United States within 15 years.
NETANYAHU: By next spring at most, by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb. The foremost sponsor of global terrorism could be weeks away from having enough enriched uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons. That would place a militant Islamic terror regime weeks away from having the fissile material for an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs. If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time.
NETANYAHU: It could be a year. It could be within a few months, less than a year.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Now, most of those statements he knew were lies because of this. Chris, run Tulsi Gabbard, not the one with Trump on the plane, but just her testimony, which you’ve enhanced.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
TULSI GABBARD: The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. Not building a nuclear weapon. And Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003. The IC continues to monitor closely if Tehran decides to reauthorize its nuclear weapons program.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Since 2003, the intelligence community, American, British and Israeli knew that there was no development of a nuclear weapon. That’s 22 years ago. And still he attempted to perpetrate those lies which were believed by his audiences, which had had their campaigns financed by AIPAC. Do I have that right?
PHIL GIRALDI: Yeah, that’s absolutely correct. It’s convenient for him because he can just keep repeating the same line over and over again. And I don’t imagine that there’s too much critical review of what he says on many media outlets in the United States. I mean, this guy has always been taken as full of rectitude, for lack of a better word. And this guy, in fact, is a con job who basically would be very happy to see the United States kind of just get bled white by him and his colleagues until we have no more to give them than if we just blew away in the wind. He would care less.
The Trump-Netanyahu Relationship
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Wow. Is Trump in his pocket or is he in Trump’s pocket?
PHIL GIRALDI: I think they’re both in each other’s pockets. But the fact is that it seems to me that Netanyahu has the net new, let’s face it, is a lot smarter than Trump. And I think he has successfully manipulated him. And he’s also obviously worked through some of the people working for Trump who view the world in the same way that Netanyahu and his colleagues see it. So it’s that kind of game going on.
I think that. I keep hoping that. I think the one thing that would tip Trump the other way is that if Netanyahu were to do something personally very, very insulting to Trump, that would be. But of course, I don’t think Netanyahu is dumb enough to do that, because Trump and his ego are the only vulnerability to make him shift the policy like this, the other way. Otherwise, he doesn’t care about Palestinians. He doesn’t care about Iranians. He probably doesn’t even care about Jews. Who does he care about? He cares about himself.
Trump’s Intelligence Sources
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Here’s that ego on display. You may have seen this. This is the brief Q&A by a reporter on Air Force One on Sunday night, bearing in mind that Tulsi Gabbard, under the law is his sole exclusive informer of American intel. Where the hell does he get anything from any other source? Watch this.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: You’ve always said that you don’t believe Iran should be able to have a nuclear weapon, but how close do you personally think that they were to getting one? Because Tulsi Gabbard…
Intelligence Community Assessment on Iran’s Nuclear Program
Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon. The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon. What she said, I think they were very close to heaven.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Stay in that job. If he says, I don’t care what she said.
PHIL GIRALDI: Well, so these long conversations on the phone that he has with Bibi obviously has convinced him that the truth is something different. And if he’s really convinced of that, he’s more stupid than I’ve given him credit for.
The Path to War
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Where do you see this going, Phil?
PHIL GIRALDI: I see this going to war very soon. I think Trump is weak. I think he’s going to be manipulated into this. And I think it’s going to be a disaster for everyone involved, including the Israelis, including the United States. You know, this kind of stuff just has a tendency to snowball. And there are a lot of people in the world community now who really despise Israel for what it’s doing, and also the United States for its ability to connive at what Israel is doing and to support it.
If the United States, if Trump would pick up his goddamn phone one day and call up Bibi and tell him, okay, B, today it’s over. No more money, no more weapons, no more political support. You’ve been carrying out a genocide. You are a disgrace to the human race, and you just spend the rest of your life in jail. And apart from that, I have nothing to tell you.
Iran’s Warning to America
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Wow. Somebody who agrees with you is the ayatollah who just released what I understand is a rather incendiary statement that Chris has translated. Here it is.
VIDEO CLIP:
Ayatollah: The Iranian nation will not surrender to anyone in the face of imposition. The Zionist enemy has made a big mistake, committed a big crime, and must be punished and is being punished. The damage America will suffer if it makes a military intervention in this field will undoubtedly be irreparable.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: The damage America will suffer if it makes a military intervention into this field will be irreparable. I think I’ve quoted that precisely. Do you think that Trump and Rubio and Hegseth and whoever else advises him. I guess Rubio has two jobs there. He still has Mike Waltz’s old job, advise him of the likely consequences of the things he says and threatens to do.
PHIL GIRALDI: Well, I would say the facts tell us that maybe they actually have been a little upfront with it because they’ve been shifting around troops and allegedly making these hundreds of bases in the region less insecure from attack. So somebody’s waking up to it. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a shift in policy or anything like that. I mean, we see this kind of thing, this policy kind of marching ahead under its own speed and it’s very, it’s going to be very dangerous to apply the break at this point.
The Nuclear Threat
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: But, you know, I think, I mean, I’m trying to picture him before the joint session of Congress or even addressing the American people. I don’t know how he can make the case for war in light of what Tulsi Gabbard said. I believe — Well, what is Bibi relying on? His intelligence community agrees with ours that they haven’t had anything to do with nuclear weapons since 2003.
PHIL GIRALDI: Yeah. Well, I think the other thing we’re all forgetting about here is that Israel does not have the capability, obviously, of taking on Iran in any conventional way, but Israel is nuclear armed. And all of this nonsense about we’re going to do away with Tehran, the city of 18 million people. I can see a nuke in the imaginings of Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu. And this is real scary where this goes. It’s just something totally unpredictable. And, but it’s something that the Israelis have played with before with their Samson option. The whole idea that if they’re losing a fight, you destroy the world.
Pakistan’s Potential Involvement
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Might the Pakistanis get involved? And we know what they have on the side of Iran.
PHIL GIRALDI: The packs have already said that they are in this race to a certain extent. They haven’t necessarily threatened that they’d go nuclear, but they have threatened the fact that they have warned that they would be supporting Iran. So take that where you want it to go.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Well, of what would that support consist? Do they have ballistic missiles? We know they have nuclear.
PHIL GIRALDI: Oh, they have a very respectable military and they have, they’re very well equipped with missiles. And you know, they are one of the better militaries in Central Asia. There was, if you go back to our experience in Afghanistan, the Pakis were always kind of in there and up on things and they would make for very, I think, helpful allies for a country like Iran. But Iran also has, of course, those ties, as you noted, with China and Russia.
Ted Cruz’s Uncomfortable Interview
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Before we go. This will make you laugh a little bit. Part of the cabal in the Senate that is trying to tug Trump towards war. Lindsey Graham, Richard Blumenthal, Tom Cotton, and Ted Cruz. Cruz. Senator Cruz made the mistake of sitting down with Tucker Carlson two days ago. Carlson, who, of course was once one of Donald Trump’s intimates in his inner circle, now is being blasted to the skies by Trump because Tucker, God bless him, is against these wars. Anyway, just watch the first few minutes of this interview. You’ve never seen Ted Cruz squirm like you’re about to see how many people.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
Tucker Carlson: Live in Iran, by the way.
Ted Cruz: I don’t know the population at all. No, I don’t know the population.
Tucker Carlson: You don’t know the population of the country you seek to topple? How many people living around 92 million.
Ted Cruz: Okay. Yeah.
Tucker Carlson: How could you not know that?
Ted Cruz: I don’t sit around memorizing population tables.
Tucker Carlson: Well, it’s kind of relevant because you’re calling for the overthrow of the government.
Ted Cruz: Why is it relevant whether it’s….Well, because 90 million or 80 million. Or 1 million million. Why?
Tucker Carlson: Because if you don’t know anything about the country.
Ted Cruz: I didn’t say I don’t know anything about.
Tucker Carlson: Okay. What’s the ethnic mix of Iran?
Ted Cruz: They are Persians and predominantly Shia.
Tucker Carlson: Okay, you don’t know anything about Iran, so.
Ted Cruz: Okay. I am not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran.
Tucker Carlson: You’re a senator. Who’s calling. You’re the one who’s the one who claims anything about the country.
Ted Cruz: No, you don’t know anything about the country. You’re the one who claims they’re not trying to murder Donald Trump.
Tucker Carlson: You know, I’m not saying that. Who can’t figure out if it’s a.
Ted Cruz: Good idea to kill General Soleimani.
Tucker Carlson: And you said it was bad they’re trying to murder Trump.
Ted Cruz: Yes, I do.
Tucker Carlson: Because you’re not calling for military strikes. Against them in retaliation. And if they really believe that carrying out military strikes today. You said Israel was right with our help.
Ted Cruz: I’ve said we. Israel is leading them, but we’re supporting them. Well, this.
Tucker Carlson: You’re breaking news here because the US Government last night denied the National Security Council spokesman Alex Pfeiffer denied on behalf of Trump that we were acting on Israel’s behalf in any offensive capacity. We’re not bombing them. Israel’s bombing them. You just said we were are supporting Israel. Senator, if you’re saying the United States government is Iran right now, people are listening.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Wow.
PHIL GIRALDI: That is a wow. That’s incredible. The guy first of all demonstrates that he doesn’t know anything about who he’s killing and, and then he doesn’t even have his facts straight. Incredible. Yeah, incredible. You know, you are aware of fact that Senator Tim Kaine of New Jersey and our good friend Tom Massie have introduced legislation in both houses of Congress to stop Donald Trump from going unilaterally and going to war with Iran. So this is kind of an interesting development. I doubt if either of them has.
Congressional Efforts to Prevent War
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: The votes to doubt that the neocons that run the House and the Senate and the Republican Party would allow those things even to come to the floor for a vote. But, I mean, I read Congressman Massey’s legislation. It is brilliant in its simplicity. Under the Constitution, only Congress can declare war. Section one, Section two, Congress has not declared war on Iran. Section three, there shall be no war on Iran without a declaration from the Congress. It’s three sentences long. It’s brilliant. And I’m sure that Mike Johnson, who’s in Mike Huckabee’s back pocket, will not allow it to come to the floor of the House for a vote.
Wow. Thank you, Phil. Thank you for all your intellect and ability to understand these things. Thank you for your great peace at Luns and elsewhere. And welcome back from your vacation. We look forward to seeing you next week at your usual time.
PHIL GIRALDI: Look forward to it. Thank you.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Thank you. My dear friend, coming up at 4 o’clock this afternoon from. We found him from St. Petersburg, Russia, Pepe Escobar. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom, Sam.
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