Read the full transcript of American economist and public policy analyst Prof. Jeffrey Sachs in conversation with Judge Napolitano of Judging Freedom Podcast on “Is the US Subordinated to Israel?”, June 23, 2025.
Opening Discussion on Trump’s Iran Strike
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, June 23, 2025. Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us now. Professor Sachs, always a pleasure, my dear friend. A little glitch in scheduling this, but delighted that you are here.
What is the real reason, in your understanding, why Donald Trump bombed and attempted to destroy a lawful, inspected, approved uranium enrichment program in a sovereign country?
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Well, because Benjamin Netanyahu told him to. So the president followed his orders.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Is the United States subordinate to the demands, commands and purported needs of Israel?
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Yes, it’s now unambiguous. There was a small question mark before, but now it’s absolutely clear this was not in America’s interest. We were actually in the process of negotiating a settlement. There was supposed to be the sixth round of negotiations, but Israel said, no, you do it our way. And the president of the United States said, yes, sir.
Intelligence Community vs. Netanyahu’s Influence
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: When Director of National Intelligence Gabbard said under oath before Congress back in March, not her personal opinion, but her professional reading of the consensus of the intelligence community, which is, according to Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern, five of the 16 intelligence communities that look at this, that Iran was not developing a nuclear weapon, didn’t have one, hadn’t been developing one since 2002 when the Ayatollah, whoever it was at the time, prohibited it.
And President Trump said, I don’t care what she said. I think otherwise. Where did he get the otherwise from?
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: From Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Wow.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: This is clear. This is not American policy. This is Netanyahu’s policy and has been Netanyahu’s policy for a long time. It is, as I say all the time. The main job of the president of the United States is to keep the foot on the brake. I mean that for any president of the United States, you lift the foot off the brake in our country, you go to war, because we have a war machine always revving.
And lots of people want to use it. They want to use it in Ukraine, they want to use it in Israel. They want to use it for whatever purpose. They want to make money off of it, whatever it is. They have grandiose ideas, whatever it is. It’s the job of the president of the United States to keep the foot on the brake. Donald Trump took his foot off the brake because Bibi Netanyahu told him to.
The Donor Class and Congressional Control
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: And I guess that your analysis of this is consistent with John Mearsheimer, is that the donor class, which has an ironclad grip on an overwhelming majority of both houses of the United States Congress also has an ironclad grip on the White House.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Yes. And it’s so deeply embedded in the CIA and in the security agencies. You know, Tulsi Gabbard basically, in the end, folded her hand. But I think from deep down, there are parts of the US Government that always say yes to Israel, period. CIA and Mossad work hand in hand.
This is a high aspiration of the Israelis. They’re completely out of control, by the way, and they’re. The bravado is so reckless and dangerous. One of the ministers of the Israeli government apparently posted today next year in Tehran, very clever regime change. What they want to show is that they can be as brazenly violent, brazenly illegal, as imaginable, and no one will say boo about it.
You know, here Israel launches absolutely unprovoked war, and all the countries in Europe and the United States direct their warning to Iran not to escalate.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Iran is the victim of two unprovoked wars, one by Israel, one by the United States.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: That’s the point. And, and if it sounds a little bit odd, you know that one kid punches the other in the face and everyone yells at the one punched in the face. Don’t retaliate if you think it’s a little ridiculous. It’s meant to be ridiculous. It’s meant to be a show of brazenness. We got all of this under control. Don’t worry about it.
Of course, they never have anything under control. Everything brings us closer and closer to complete disaster. Everything Netanyahu touches turns to rubble. Honest to God. And it’s happening in his own country also. But he’s already brought to rubble six countries and now is aiming for the seventh country. And we take the orders. It’s incredible how this is happening.
International Law and the United Nations
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: I want to talk about the economy, which of course is one of your fields, but before we get there, let’s talk about the law. Iran, Israel and the United States are all members of the United Nations. The United States and Iran have signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. If I recall correct, LBJ himself personally signed it, and big fanfare in the late 60s. Israel has not signed the Non Proliferation Treaty.
The IAEA, which examines Israel, turns out to be a conduit to Mossad, but yet belatedly said, they’re not making a nuclear weapon. What role can the United nations, if any, play in this? Or is the answer none, because the US can veto whatever the UN says.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: The main role that the UN actually plays is to show the overwhelming weight of public opinion. The United nations cannot act in general because of the veto by any one of the permanent five members. But the veto is used these days by the United States.
But what the UN remains, no matter what the US vetoes, is the place where 193 governments meet.
And typically around 180 of them say, what the hell are you doing? Continuing this violence in the Middle east, continuing to block the state of Palestine, not obeying international law, of course.
Israel then jumps up and down in its impunity saying how dare you? And attacks the UN and the United States duly vetoes any resolution that might actually get something done. So the UN does not have power in the sense of actually being able to determine the outcome. What it is, is a reflection of the world that counts for most of the world, it doesn’t count if you believe you’re all powerful or you act with impunity.
The United States dreams that it does. Israel dreams that it can do anything it wants. Attack other countries, occupy other countries, commit genocide. No one says a word that is in a position to block Israel. And most of all, they know they have the United States at their back. One day they’ll wake up and they won’t have the United States because the American people are sick of this, frankly. Donald Trump’s own base is sick of this.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Yeah.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: This is so disgusting. This is happening, by the way, while Israel continues to starve nearly 2 million people. And again, the Europeans, who are more pathetic than I ever could have imagined, but they show their ability to grovel to an extent I wouldn’t have imagined. Don’t say anything. The US Congress, of course, is, as we know, fully bought up by the Israel lobby. But what the UN shows is normal. People from all over the world are aghast as I am, as you.
America as a Rogue State
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Were the United States. I doubt that this affects Trump, but it will affect the United States in the future, becoming the rogue nation that Israel has become.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: I do a statistical analysis with my colleagues of looking at the extent to which countries are aligned with the UN Charter. Now, you know, maybe in America, many people don’t care about that. I do, because I think it’s the way that we can survive is if the world actually behaves according to a common standard.
The United states, of the 193 UN member states, is the least aligned with the UN charter, the least of all countries in the world. Israel is next, I think, or close to the bottom. What does that mean? Well, the US doesn’t vote with the rest of the world. It votes against the large majorities of the rest of the world, by the way, that’s not because the rest of the world hates the US Quite the contrary. They have their kids going to school here. The Trump administration won’t block foreign students. They come for tourism. They like the American people.
But the United States will not cooperate or abide by international law because it thinks it can do anything it wants and it sides with this absolute destructiveness of these extremists in Israel. So the US Votes against the world majority. The US participates least in UN treaties. Donald Trump has said. Now, you know, some viewers may disagree, but I will tell you, climate change is real, very serious, getting worse fast, very dangerous for the world. But who cares? We walked out of it. We walk out of other UN agencies, who cares?
We don’t pay the bills to the UN which are tiny, by the way. Tiny. But however small, if you don’t pay, you add insult to injury. That’s the approach. So the US actually comes out in the very bottom of the world on this.
Sustainable Development Goals and International Cooperation
There’s something which Americans haven’t heard of because of the way our government behaves, but the Sustainable Development Goals, these were objectives for people to have health care and to have children in school and have decent nutrition. Not bad, actually, that the whole world subscribed to in 2015. And countries governments were supposed to say to other governments, look, here’s what we’re doing. It’s not a heavy homework assignment. It’s called a voluntary national review.
You know what? Of the 193 countries, 190 have done it. The United States, Haiti, maybe South Sudan still hasn’t done it, but the US never did it because, you know, why do we care? So it’s a kind of putting a finger to the rest of the world.
So you asked me, are we a rogue country? Well, in the statistical sense of actually measuring, do we abide by any of the principles of international law, of UN processes, of votes in the UN Security Council, of votes in the UN General assembly, of paying our bills? Yeah, we’re a rogue state and some are proud of it.
There’s a conference next week, which I’ll be going to in Spain, on how to help mobilize financing for poor countries so that their kids can be in school and they can have electricity and roads and other things. Okay, many, I’m sure Donald Trump is not shedding a tear about this, but the United States formally pulled out of the conference. All the rest of the world’s going, but the United States Said, eh, what do we care? Poor countries, shitholes, they were once called by the President.
Yeah, we’re a rogue state. We don’t want to be nice. What we want is everyone to be afraid. We’ll send our bunker busters if another country that we happen to support breaks the law. So what? We won’t say a word about it. This is not a good thing for us. This is not the way that any country should behave.
Nuclear War: The Only Real Threat to America
But most of all, and this is a point that I think is very important and not understood, we are the most secure people in the history of the world, except for one thing, and that’s nuclear war. And yet the fact that we have complete security of two oceans and a powerful military and everything else, we keep taking steps that bring us closer to nuclear war. The only thing that conceivably threatens the United States.
We’re not going to be invaded by China, we’re not going to be invaded by Russia. But if there’s nuclear war, believe me, all bets are off. And yet we are pushing recklessly everywhere. Donald Trump says, oh, we need to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Of course, Iranians said so, too. That’s what the negotiations are about. That’s why you sit and negotiate and reach an agreement not to go bomb another country. That’s why this isn’t even complicated. That’s why you have an agreement.
And incidentally, for people that may not recall, we had an agreement in 2015 with Iran so that they said, we don’t want a nuclear weapon. We want you to take the sanctions off of us so we can breathe and live as normal people. And when Donald Trump came in, the whole Zionist lobby jumped up and down, dumped the treaty, forget it. Because they thought, in their fantasy world, we’ll just kill them, we’ll just attack them, we’ll just bomb them. You don’t have to negotiate. This is the approach.
It’s bringing us to the only single risk our country faces, which is a world that is completely lawless, with nuclear weapons galore. And by the way, you know, there’s been an exchange with the former Russian President Medvedev and President Trump on the social media. And President Medvedev made an absolutely correct point that there are many ways that a country can get nuclear weapons, and it’s not only by one’s own effort.
This world is unstable, and Iran has friends that are nuclear powers. And the idea of these Israelis jumping up and down these leaders, I’m talking about cabinet ministers jumping up and down and talking about regime change and killing Iranian leaders and of course, Mossad is an assassination machine and thinking that this is going to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon. Are they so stupid?
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: I know you’ve seen this, but it’s very telling and I’m sure you remember it.
The Seven-Country War Plan
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: He said, I just got this down from upstairs meeting the Secretary of Defense office today. And he said, this is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off Iran.
I said, is it classified? He said, yes, sir. I said, well, don’t show it to me. If you were Iran, you’d probably believe that you were mostly already at war with the United States anyway, since we’ve asserted that their government needs regime change. So. And we’ve asked Congress to appropriate $75 million to do it.
And we are supporting terrorist groups apparently, who are infiltrating and blowing up things inside Iraq, Iran. And if we’re not doing it, let’s put it this way, we’re probably cognizant of it and encouraging it. So it’s not surprising that we’re moving to a point of confrontation crisis with Iran. Amazing.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: We’re not surprised at all.
25 Years of Failed Interventions
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: This is 25 years now. This is. He’s talking about seeing this page after 9/11, 2001. And that was seven wars. And now all of them, all of them that BB envisioned, he’s dragged the United States into and he’s created a 4,000km SWAT running from Libya to Iran of devastation because he’s, he’s absolutely, from the beginning, so wrong in his core idea.
The core idea, you assassinate a few people, you take out a leader, you bring everyone to cheer you. This has been his idea all along. It’s a, actually a document called clean break in 1996 laid this out. Bibi and his neocon friends in the United States. And then after 9/11 they went to implement it.
And look at the list. Lebanon, okay? The United States has backed Israel to invade Lebanon. Syria. The Obama team Obama and Hillary Clinton tasked the CIA to overthrow Bashar Al Assad. It took 14 years and hundreds of thousands of dead. Okay? And now we have a jihadist as a head of Syria, Iraq. People will remember that one was on the list.
The genius is breaking Sudan, okay? The US Supported the South Sudanese. We made a rebellion to break Sudan in two. And what did we do? These geniuses in Washington, we created two civil wars, one in Sudan and one in South Sudan, Libya, okay? Not 2011. We’re going to take out Muammar Gaddafi. It’s 14 years later and the place is in chaos.
Somalia, not even a government. Well, there is a flag, but there’s no government. And the US has backed Ethiopia, among others, to intervene. Every one of these on the list we’ve gotten around to, everyone has been a failure.
Now, Donald Trump just fell right in line. Yeah. This is the job of American president. Listen to, listen to Israel and fall into line. What does it get us? It doesn’t get us anything but insecurity. It’s building our insecurity. It’s trillions of dollars down the drain. It’s our mountain of public debt. Thank you, Mr. Netanyahu. Thank you, President Trump.
Closing Remarks
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Professor Sachs, thank you. I wish we could keep going on and on, but I have another show in a couple of, in a couple of minutes. Maybe we’ll resume this again this week because I need to ask you, and we don’t have time now because I know it’s a long answer of the world economic consequences of the United States attacking Iran and perhaps we can get to that before the week is out. Thank you very much for your time. Great. Thank you for your articulate passion, Jeff. Love every minute of it. And we’ll see you again soon.
PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Great. See you soon. Thanks.
JUDGE NAPOLITANO: Of course. And coming up at 4:00 today, Scott Ritter. And at 4:30 from Moscow, Pepe Escobar. Judge Napolitano for judging Freedom.
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