Transcript of Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: If Trump Says No to War and Netanyahu Says Yes

Here is the full transcript of a conversation between Judge Andrew Napolitano, and economist and public policy analyst Prof. Jeffrey Sachs on Judging Freedom Podcast titled “If Trump Says No to War and Netanyahu Says Yes…” premiered April 21, 2025.

The interview starts here:

Introduction

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Hi everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, April 21, 2025. Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins us from Rome. Professor Sachs, I know it’s very late in the day or late in the evening and thank you very much for your time. You are in Rome when it was announced that the Pope died. You are a world expert in geopolitics. So let me ask you right off the top here, what is the geopolitical significance of the passing of Francis and what is the pulse of Rome when a Pope dies?

PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Well, this is a very sad day for the whole world. Pope Francis was a great moral leader who reached across all religions. He was heard and revered around the world. He had very strong personal bonds with religious leaders of other faiths. I got to see him interact with Muslim leaders, with leaders of other Christian faiths and denominations. And he was loved and respected by all of them.

And I think most importantly, he followed Jesus’ Beatitude, that blessed are the peacemakers. He was the great peacemaker of our time, always calling for dialogue, for negotiation, for an end to bloodshed and suffering. And he is going to be dearly missed.

The Pope’s Role as Peacemaker

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: You are longtime personal friends with Cardinal Parolin, who is the Secretary of State. I know this personally, that you are personal friends since I was with you when Cardinal Parolin stopped a procession to recognize you, not me, you, after a mass that he had celebrated for 1500 people.

Cardinal Parolin is the Secretary of State. Could the Pope have sent Cardinal Parolin to Tel Aviv to stand in front of Netanyahu and say stop? Or to Gaza to stand in front of the IDF and say no more?

PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: It’s interesting. You know, one of the Pope’s major messages to the world is his encyclical Fratelli Tutti, all people are brothers. And he recounts in Fratelli Tutti. By the way, it’s an encyclical that he dedicates to the Grand Imam of Al Azhar, one of the great leaders of the Sunni Islamic faith. And the Pope dedicates the encyclical to this Grand Imam and he recounts there an event in the Fifth Crusade in 1219, when Francis of Assisi goes on a pilgrimage in the middle of the war between the Christians and the Muslims battling in the holy land.

And St. Francis goes to the tent of the leader of the Islamic army to have an all night discussion with him about the cause of peace. It didn’t succeed actually in ending the crusade. But it was memorialized and remembered 700-800 years later as one of these events of dialogue across civilizations that can keep the world alive. And that’s really what Pope Francis called for.

Now, he was rebuffed time and again, as peacemakers are so often. He offered the good offices of the Holy See repeatedly for trying to end the war in Ukraine, for trying to end many other conflicts. He traveled even in his last years to war racked countries like South Sudan to appeal for peace. So he was indefatigable in that cause.

Netanyahu and Iran

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Getting to Iran, which is the subject matter, will Netanyahu attack Iran? If Donald Trump says we’re not doing it and we’re not going to back you militarily?

PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: You know, the hold of the Israel lobby on American politics is so frightening, so terrifying, that anything is possible to drag the United States into yet another war. Our politicians have sold themselves to the Israel lobby. They’re on the take. They get big bucks, by the way, not only from Jewish Zionists, but from Christian Zionists. So just to understand, this is a lobby that wants to turn American policy over to Israel, and it has effectively done that for 30 years.

The US has gotten dragged into one war after another because Israel has said so. And by Israel, I mean the Netanyahu era, because Netanyahu has dominated Israeli politics basically since 1996, and he’s pulled the US into one war after another. Now, in the last week, it was made explicit by President Trump and others that Netanyahu is trying to pull the US into an attack on Iran, the kind of attack that could start World War 3.

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We should always remember Iran has a strategic alliance with Russia, for example, and Iran itself is, despite the rhetoric, a powerful country with a powerful ability to respond to an attack. And so Israel under Netanyahu is an extremist rogue nation, but it has so much power in Washington because of how corrupt Washington is, that the answer to your question is he may yet succeed in pulling the US into war.

I think Trump is trying to resist it. This is the good news. There have actually been now meetings, negotiations between the US and Iran that by the announcement of both sides are making some progress. Netanyahu is having a fit over this. No doubt. The Israel lobby is working overtime to try to destroy these negotiations.

So this is a perilous time because Israel’s on a rampage. It is, of course, committing mass murder in Gaza. It is trying to engage in ethnic cleansing in both Gaza and the West Bank. It is expropriating violently lands also in the West Bank. It has invaded Lebanon. It has invaded Syria and it’s aiming for war with Iran. So given that recklessness, and given Netanyahu’s out of control recklessness within Israel, firing the head of intelligence, absolutely dividing his own country, but controlling our politicians, this is an extraordinarily dangerous moment.

The Israel Lobby’s Influence

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: The Israel Lobby in Washington is apparently working in overdrive. The White House announced just about an hour ago the appointment of someone I’ve never heard of. Her name is Merav Ceren, first name M-E-R-A-V, surname C-E-R-E-N to head the Iran Israel desk on the National Security Council. Now you might say, well, who is she? She’s a joint United States and Israeli citizen and a former official of the IDF. Why would Donald Trump authorize Michael Waltz to hire a former official of the…IDF to purport of the Israeli Ministry of Defense? Right? Yes, right to purport to advise…the President of the United States on Iran and Israel relations. What kind of advice does he think he’s going to get from her?

PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: You see, it’s not even remotely subtle how the Israel Lobby works. Why not just put Israelis into the National Security Council? We can cut out all of the middlemen, as it were. Now, who is she? She is Israeli born, apparently dual citizenship, as you say. Apparently I don’t know that fact. She worked for the Israeli Ministry of Defense, no less. And then she showed up on Ted Cruz’s staff.

And this is how it works. Ted Cruz receives a fortune from the Israel lobby. A fortune according to OpenSecrets.org which records these things in the most recent campaign cycle, if I recall the data correctly, more than a million dollars from pro-Israel lobby groups. So basically this is a scam operation. Our politicians have sold themselves out to the Israel Lobby. They hire people who have… Well, I don’t know what she has, except that she apparently is an Israeli citizen who has worked for the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Shocking enough, completely unacceptable for also for a president who says that his aim is America first.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: She had a national security clearance. Can she see state secrets in her job at the National Security Council? She, who must still enjoy some loyalty to the Israeli Defense Ministry.

PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: No doubt in Washington, everything’s for sale, including American foreign policy. And Israel has controlled it. And it has dragged us into one war after another. And today’s news with this is unbelievable. How are we going to extricate ourselves from this? Where is America first? Where is foreign policy for the United States interest?

Potential for Peace

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: So I want to talk to you about Rome, because over the weekend in Rome, Steve Witkoff, the President’s emissary, the almost de facto Secretary of State, met with the Iranian Foreign Minister. The Iranian Foreign Minister came out of the meeting and said, we are very close to an agreement. We’re going to have our technical people get together and agree on the numbers and the process for enrichment.

Now, this is not the deal that Netanyahu wanted. Netanyahu wanted zero enrichment. But obviously much of enriched uranium is used for peaceful purposes, like hospitals use it for certain nuclear tests that are taken of the human heart. Will a JCPOA like agreement championed by Donald Trump temper the bellicosity of Netanyahu? Or is he going to start a war with Iran no matter what? Because no war, no premiership. No premiership, very little freedom for Bibi.

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PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: The situation in Ukraine and in Iran or with US Policy is comparable. We have in both cases abandoned US Interests in recent years. And Trump, in the case of Ukraine, is doing the right thing absolutely to extricate us from a war that he accurately calls Biden’s war. And so if Trump follows the same logic with regard to Iran, yes, he can do it, because Israel and Ukraine cannot do anything of all of their big talk about fighting Russia or fighting Iran without the United States.

The whole game has been that US Foreign policy has been profoundly misused. If Trump says it’s in the US and by the way, global interest to make an agreement with Iran that ends Iran’s nuclear program, and that, according to the technical experts that we’ll meet next, protects against any kind of breakout on that. And that’s what the Iranians are putting on offer if Trump does that. No, Netanyahu cannot go to war with Iran as long as the President of the United States asserts American foreign policy, not Israeli foreign policy.

This is the job of the President of the United States. Maybe Trump’s going to get it right on these two huge issues. If he does, I would just suggest make it three out of three, because the same applies for Palestine, what we need for peace. And the whole world is saying it, except for Netanyahu and the Israel lobby is we need a state of Palestine living alongside a state of Israel. This is the whole story for peace in the Middle East.

The Two-State Solution

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Is that a pipe dream, Jeff, or is it potentially realistic?

PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Not only is it realistic, there’s one vote only that separates us today from peace, and that is the US veto in the UN Security Council that blocked Palestine becoming the 194th UN member state.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Because of the iron grip that the Israel lobby has on American Foreign policy.

PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: You’ve just explained that precisely. It’s one vote. It’s our vote. Israel has no veto over a state of Palestine. The International Court of Justice ruled last year that Israel’s boundaries are the boundaries of the 4 June 1967 period. The United Nations, by an overwhelming, overwhelming majority, 95% of the world’s population has called for there to be a state of Palestine.

There is a high level meeting at the UN June 17 to June 20 to implement the two state solution. More than 180 countries support this. In fact, Israel does not. Okay, that’s Israel’s or Zionism’s. This extreme Zionism’s radicalism, it’s reckless, it’s illegal, it has led Israel into making horrific war crimes to try to defend an indefensible position.

But the point is that the world other than Israel and other than the US veto are essentially unanimous on the way forward. So the United States blocked it by itself. Last year when this issue came up in the UN Security Council, there were 12 votes for Palestine to become the 194th UN member state. There were two abstentions and there was one veto, the United States. We blocked the peace. All President Trump needs to do is change one vote.

And then what he does is recognize that the whole world other than the Israel lobby, has called for two states. The International Court of Justice, the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly. And this is very important for everybody to understand. So too has the Arab League, all the countries, the Arab countries of the Middle East. So too have the 57 Islamic majority countries in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the OIC.

In other words, this is not some pipe dream. We’re the only blockade of this. Now you have someone from the US, from the Israel Defense Ministry inside the White House in charge of policy. And my God, are we going to get peace that way or are we going to get perpetual war? Whose foreign policy interest are we going to get? Because the United States could satisfy American security and could align with the whole world by changing one vote.

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JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Is this woman that’s now on the National Security Council more likely than not a Mossad asset? Well, I mean, we really have a foreign agent in the White House who happens to have American citizenship.

The Consequences of U.S. Foreign Policy Decisions

PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: It is profoundly irresponsible of a president of the United States to mortgage American foreign policy this way. But of course, it’s extraordinarily reckless of our country to allow a lobby to buy the American military to buy American foreign policy. And since what they are buying is extremist and radical and perpetual war and has already led America into repeated wars and is against the will of nearly all the countries of the world other than Israel and a handful of tiny countries that align with the United States for whatever reason, some because they have to under their contact of association.

Other than that, the whole world is calling for something sensible. So what is Washington doing with this kind of approach? It’s just terrible. Now we elected Donald Trump. Our country elected Donald Trump under the idea that he was going to represent American interests, while America’s interest is for peace, for Israel’s security alongside Palestine’s security, and for the United States to have good relations with the other 180 countries of the world, including all of the Arab countries, all of the Islamic countries that have said for years, we’re ready for peace, but there must be peace on the basis of international law, basic justice. That means the two state solution.

U.S.-China Trade Relations

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I have to ask you about one other topic which is second nature to you. Do you think that China will come calling begging Donald Trump to reduce the tariffs or do you think China will stay economically independent of the United States?

PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Look, the United States may back down because we see every day the incredible self harm that the United States has caused itself by this tariff fiasco. We see in the financial markets day after day a bloodbath. We see in the interest rates going up, we see in the fall of the dollar that what Trump and his tiny and economically illiterate tactics team have done is incredible self harm.

Why is China going to come begging? Of course it’s not going to do so. The United States government may find, you know, Trump has an ability to do this, to say, “Oh well, something’s come up. And so we put this on hold because they caved” or he can make up anything he wants, but China is watching this in amazement, it’s true.

President Xi Jinping was all across Southeast Asia in recent days firming up relations, hearing from other countries. Yes, we stand together. You’re our major trading partner, we invest together and so forth. No, the rest of the world’s not going to fall into this kind of self destructive behavior. This is an American specialty, not something that the rest of the world is going to succumb to.

Closing Remarks

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Professor Sachs, thank you very much. Thanks for staying up so late. Thank you for your touching comments about the late Pope and thank you for all the time that you give us. We’ll look forward to seeing you again. I believe you’re in the very same room where you and I were making the presentations of our papers with the folks that were with us. The Pope wasn’t with us in that room, but that looks like the same room at the Pontifical Academy. Thank you, Jeff.

PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Thanks, wonderful to be with you.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: We’ll see you next week. All the best. Thank you. Bye.

PROF. JEFFREY SACHS: Bye.

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Bye. And coming up tomorrow, Tuesday at 8 in the morning, Ambassador Charles Freeman at 2 in the afternoon, Aaron Mate at 3 in the afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwakowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.