Editor’s Notes: In this special update, Judge Andrew Napolitano sits down with former CIA analyst Larry Johnson to analyze the latest military developments in the conflict between Iran and Israel. Johnson provides a detailed look at Iran’s deployment of advanced ballistic missiles with cluster warheads designed to bypass Iron Dome and Patriot defenses to strike key targets. They also discuss the reported destruction of several high-cost US radar systems, which has significantly “blinded” early warning capabilities in the region. The episode further challenges mainstream narratives regarding US military dominance, highlighting the severe depletion of interceptor inventories and Iran’s readiness for a potential ground invasion. (March 6, 2026)
TRANSCRIPT:
Introduction
“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.”
Opening Remarks
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: 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 Friday, March 6, 2026. Larry Johnson joins us now. Larry, thank you for the double duty. We, of course, will be seeing you again at the end of the day with our colleagues Ray McGovern and John Kiriakou for the intelligence community roundtable.
But there were so many events in the past 24 hours that I wanted to prevail on your understanding and ability to explain the military significance of it. So before we get to the warheads that the Iranians have been delivering to Israel, is Hezbollah back attacking the IDF in Lebanon and northern Israel? I thought Hezbollah had been wiped out.
Hezbollah’s Return and the Broader War
LARRY JOHNSON: Yeah, that’s what we were told. Those exploding cell phones supposedly took care of that threat. No, they’re back. In fact, they were abiding by the ceasefire, but that’s clearly been broken, violated by Israel. So now they are fighting against the Israeli military. They’re not launching indiscriminate rockets into civilian areas. They are targeting Israeli military sites.
And Israel — they never learn. They’ve tried repeatedly to invade southern Lebanon, take control of southern Lebanon, and have been beaten repeatedly over the years. They’ve already suffered significant losses in their latest incursion. So Hezbollah is now working — they are supporting the Iranian military effort. This is a full blown war. This is not just an isolated incident.
Did Iran Call for a Deal?
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Was President Trump being truthful when he claimed yesterday that Iran called and wants a deal?
LARRY JOHNSON: No. Iran has made it clear they’re not looking for a negotiated settlement out of this because the United States cannot be trusted. They violated twice the integrity of the negotiating process.
Last June, when the Israelis struck on June 13, the Iranians were busy preparing for a meeting on Monday, June 16 to discuss going forward with negotiations — to reassure the United States that, “Hey, we’re not building a nuke.” And instead Israel hit. Initially, Trump was all over the place: “Oh, I didn’t know about it.” And then, “Oh, I knew everything. I knew all about it ahead of time.”
So that was then. And then this latest incident that started on February 28th — again, the negotiations were supposed to take place in Geneva on March 2, and the Iranians thought, “Hey, things went pretty well, we’re making some progress.” And then this was a pre-planned attack.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Here’s the Iranian foreign minister on this very topic. Number 16. Chris.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: We are not asking for a ceasefire and we don’t see any reason why we should negotiate with the US when we negotiated with them twice and every time they attacked us at the middle of negotiations. So there is no request for a ceasefire by us and there is no request for the negotiation with the U.S. from us. You have never sent any messages to…
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
Trump’s “Unconditional Surrender” Rhetoric
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: After that was stated, Trump stopped saying they called for a deal and said, “We’ll accept nothing less than unconditional surrender” — almost as if he wants to sound like Winston Churchill. I don’t know what unconditional surrender would mean. He’d have to have boots on the ground for that.
LARRY JOHNSON: Yeah, and what they’re trying to do with boots on the ground right now is a proxy through the Kurds. And if the Kurds are stupid enough to trust the United States on this, they’ll suffer the same fate as a whole legion of insurgents that we’ve ginned up and supported and that have wound up getting killed. Look at the Hmong tribesmen in Vietnam — they’re a classic case where we used them as a proxy to try to attack the North Vietnamese and they ended up suffering a lot as a people. So this is just sheer madness on Trump’s part.
Listen, he’s in trouble. And the US military effort, despite all the propaganda being spun out about, “Oh man, we’re wiping them out, we’ve got full control of the skies” — the reality is the opposite.
Iran has destroyed five radars. There are two types — one is the AN/TPY and the other is the AN/FPS. These radars cost between half a billion dollars and a billion dollars a piece. They are radars designed to detect the launches of missiles and to provide early warning information, and they are integrated with the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense weapon — the THAAD — as well as the Patriot.
Iran has destroyed five of those. The big ones were at the Jordanian air base Al-Salti, then at Al Udeid Air Force Base in Qatar, and then at the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
So we are now blinded. The United States and Israel are now blinded. Before, they could get a 15 to 30 minute warning. Now we’ve got incoming missiles with maybe a minute of warning, maybe two minutes, but it’s down. So Iran has accomplished that.
And we’re told, “Oh yeah, our missiles were knocking down 90% of everything that Iran’s firing.” Sorry, I call the bovine excrement card on that one. It sounds like the same guys that were in Ukraine shooting down all the Russian missiles are now doing the same work for the US Department of Defense.
Iran’s Response to the Threat of US Ground Invasion
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: We talked about boots on the ground a few minutes ago. The Iranian foreign minister was asked about it. I’m going to play the question and the answer — just as interesting as his answer is the look of bewilderment on the face of the questioner. Chris, number 15.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Are you afraid of a U.S. invasion in your country?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: No, we are waiting for them.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You are waiting for the US military to invade with ground troops?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes, because we are confident that we can confront them and that would be a big disaster for them.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: So you’re saying that Iran is ready and willing to take on the US military if there were to be ground troops?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: When we were ready for this war, even more than the previous war. So you can see the quality of our missiles, how much they are upgraded after the last war, because we learned lots of lessons and we are prepared for any other eventuality — even a ground invasion. So our soldiers are prepared for any scenario.
When I said we are waiting for them, it didn’t mean that we are waiting for continuation of the war. No, what we have prepared ourselves to confront with any scenario, with any eventuality, any possibility — and we know that we can handle that.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS
America’s Failure to Understand Iran
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Does the Pentagon understand that?
LARRY JOHNSON: No, we underestimate. These are Iranians — what are you talking about? They’re almost subhuman. That’s how we approach it. We forget that they fought a nine-year war — albeit 40-plus years ago — with Iraq. That was where we were backing Iraq. We provided Iraq with the precursors for chemical weapons that were used against the Iranians, and they lost at least 300,000 people — more likely 500,000 — but hundreds of thousands.
Think about it this way, Judge: the Iranians, in that one war, lost more soldiers than we did in Korea, Vietnam, and all the other military adventures we’ve been involved with over the last 71 years. So Iran knows the reality of what they’re looking at. We don’t. We rarely, we hardly ever suffer significant losses. We haven’t suffered significant losses in any of our imperialist adventures over the last 70 years.
Impatience vs. Long War: The Strategic Miscalculation
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: You and Colonel Larry Wilkerson were on our friend Danny Haiphong’s show recently, and the two of you made a fascinating observation — that the Americans do not understand the nature of this war. The United States, because of Trump’s patience and desire to boast to MAGA and Mrs. Adelson, wants a quick in and out. The Iranians are patient and are in it for the long run. So what are the military ramifications of impatience versus long war, attack versus defense of the homeland?
LARRY JOHNSON: We don’t have the military base — the industrial base — to sustain a war. We’ve deluded ourselves into thinking that. We’re finding that out now.
Over the last six days, Iran has destroyed 40% of the total number of THAADs — the air defense systems — in the US inventory. We don’t have that many. And when they’re manufactured, you make maybe one or two maximum a year. So they’ve already knocked out some of our most sophisticated radar.
And the planes — we’ve been through this so many times and it’s like nobody learns a thing. You recall during the whole “shock and awe” of our invasion of Iraq in 2003 — “Man, we’re just knocking out those Iraqis right and left.” And then it turned out that despite George W. Bush’s claim of “mission accomplished,” an insurgency started up that we finally — we pulled out our military force. Same in Afghanistan.
I was listening to this buffoon Pete Hegseth and he’s talking about, “Oh, we’ve got full dominance, we control the skies.” Really? You know what? Israel controls the skies over Gaza. How’s that working out for them? Two and a half years they have failed to defeat Hamas. We controlled the skies over Iraq — insurgency went on, we couldn’t do a thing about it. We controlled the skies over Afghanistan for 20 years, and billions of dollars later, we had to fly out in retreat because we couldn’t defeat the Taliban.
So there’s no learning on our part going on. And if we think we’re going to continue to just drop these bombs and that the Iranians are going to throw up their hands and cry and surrender, we’re going to be in for a bad surprise.
Iran’s Strikes on US Bases in the Gulf
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Aside from the destruction of that half-billion to billion-dollar radar equipment that you talked about earlier, do we know how heavily or aggressively or successfully Iran is hitting US bases in the Gulf?
LARRY JOHNSON: Oh yeah, they’ve hit every single one and effectively stopped our operations at those bases. And again, the Pentagon is lying about what’s going on. They say that our air defense is so great that we’re shooting down 90% of what Iran is launching. Yet, as I mentioned with respect to those radars, there’s a video out of a drone that took out one of them. Now, a drone is a much easier target to take down with air defense. So there was a clear failure on that part.
What Iran is doing is effectively driving the United States out of the Persian Gulf. And while the West is trying to portray that Iran is attacking its neighbors — no, Iran’s attacks are focused on US military infrastructure and intelligence targets, such as CIA offices. They’ve been effective at that, and it’s showing up with our reduced operations on the ground there.
Now, the control of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran is the really most significant military development, because that means the Fifth Fleet — our Fifth Fleet headquarters for the Navy was in Bahrain. You can’t get there. Our ships are no longer able to arrive there and be serviced, even though it’s been largely destroyed.
Iran’s Strikes on Israel
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Wow. How about hitting Israel yesterday? Last night, American east coast time, we were receiving reports that Israel was sustaining a serious barrage of missile and drone attacks. Now, I know that the Israeli sensors are infamous and infamously successful in blocking the truth from coming out. But do you know from sources how heavily Israel is being damaged by the Iranian counterattack?
Iran’s Missile Strategy and U.S. Defense Depletion
LARRY JOHNSON: Why? I know from videos that have been — and these are not AI videos — that I’ve seen over the last two days. Now, if you listen to the Pentagon spokesman, they’ll say, “Oh wow, we have really decimated the Iranian missile capability. They’re firing 80% fewer today.” Well, maybe, but they forget that we saw the similar pattern during the 12-day war.
What Iran does is it floods the zone up front with older missiles that are not their most modern, as well as drones, in part to saturate and deplete the air defense systems. And that appears to be what they’ve done effectively here, because they’ve launched new — it’s, I think it’s Karamsher for this new missile. And it’s a ballistic missile that detaches at about, let’s say about three miles above the target, out of the range of the Iron Dome and out of the range of the Patriot. It detaches and then releases clusters of munitions of explosives. And there’s no defense against that.
So that is hitting and causing explosions across the city. I have spoken with our friend Stanislav Karpivnik. The Russians are able to see some things in social media that are being blocked here in the West. You know, they don’t have to worry about Larry Ellison, the valed Zionist, clamping down. And he said that Tel Aviv is getting the Gaza treatment. So there have been significant damage to installations and buildings across Tel Aviv.
So this reduction right now is Iran taking its time. And you know, are they running out of missiles? We’ve heard that refrain about Russia over four years. I suspect that Iran is in a much better position with missiles than we want to believe.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Are the Russians — or how are the Russians helping Iran?
U.S. Weapons Inventory and Military Infighting
LARRY JOHNSON: At a minimum, providing intelligence. You know, we don’t know what air defense systems are actually operating. Now, again, the Pentagon’s making the claim that they’ve wiped them all out, that they’ve been completely suppressed. But we’ve had in the last three days five F-15 fighters shot down. We are seeing a number of drones shot down. And the drones — the Hermes and the MQ-9 Reaper, and they’ve got another one, I think it’s called the Triton — they’re being used to try to locate missile launchers and positions so that we can then hit them with a JDAM or a JASSM missile.
And mentioning those two missile classes again, we’re depleting those. We fired a lot and we don’t have an unlimited supply. And it’s not like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon or General Dynamics are sitting there with a plant that’s going 24/7 and they’re just cranking out one a day or one a week. No, not at all.
So the United States is rapidly depleting a lot of its inventory of weapons. And there’s a fight brewing between the commander of CENTCOM — the Central Command that has the responsibility for Iran — and the commander of what’s now known as INDOPACOM. It used to be PACOM, but Pacific Command — they’re in charge of China.
And right now there are probably fewer than 600 Patriot missiles — not the batteries, but missiles — left in the U.S. inventory, apart from what is held by INDOPACOM. INDOPACOM probably has about 1,500 in its existing inventory. And then they say, “Well, we’re going to need that if we go to war with China.” So we’ve got this kind of infighting between the military commands. So despite Donald Trump’s claim that we’ve got unlimited supplies — he’s lying.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Are you telling me that Secretary Hegseth and General Kane did not adequately plan for this?
Cluster Munitions and the Limits of Air Defense
LARRY JOHNSON: Yeah, well, they couldn’t plan for this. I mean, even if they say, “Okay, we want to launch this attack, let’s ramp up production,” we can’t ramp up production. Part of the problem is the Chinese restrictions on rare earth minerals is depriving us of being able to build certain systems. And there are — you can see those cluster munitions right now. Chris is showing that on the screen there. There’s no defense for that.
So they are lying in terms of insisting that we’ve got unlimited supplies, which we do not, because a lot of that has been depleted in the war with Ukraine, between Russia and Ukraine.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: What do those cluster warheads do when they hit the ground? Just cause massive explosions?
LARRY JOHNSON: Yes. I’m not sure how large the explosive head on them is. I would suspect you’re looking at somewhere around 10 to 20 pounds of explosives on that head. And then it can become — if it hits the ground and doesn’t immediately detonate — it’s like having a landmine laying around. So it’s created a real new challenge that, frankly, our air defense systems can’t handle.
Questions Over Satellite Imagery and Psychological Operations
But it’s noteworthy that the Israelis are going to such lengths to try to hide the actual damage that’s being done. Notice that we’re seeing all sorts of damage with respect to the attacks in Tehran, and the Iranians aren’t trying to hide that.
There’s another curiosity out there, though. We’re told that the B-2 bomber and the B-52s have been dropping heavy loads on Iran. Well, okay, where are the satellite photos? If you recall last June 25, when Donald Trump launched the raid that obliterated the Iranian nuclear capability within a day, we were getting the overhead imagery, the satellite pictures showing, quote, “the damage.” So whenever I hear these claims — “the B-2s are doing XYZ” — all right, show us. Show us the satellite imagery. They’re not showing that. So that leads me to suspect that, well, maybe we’re not actually doing that. That could be just another psychological operation to try to discourage the Iranians.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Larry, thank you very much, my dear man, for jumping on with this. We’ll see you later in the day, at the end of the week, with John Kiriakou and Ray McGovern. All the best, my dear friend.
LARRY JOHNSON: All right, we’ll see you then.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Thank you. And as just alluded to, coming up at the end of today at 4 o’clock, our intelligence community roundtable of Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, and John Kiriakou. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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