Endgame with Gita Wirjawan - We’re Not in World War III Yet, Realist John Mearsheimer Explains

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

In his third appearance at Endgame, John Mearsheimer talks about the latest development on the global politics on the brink of another world war. The conversation spans from the Iran Conflict, the Ukraine War, East Asia, and the possibility of a nuclear war—soon.More on this episode:0:00:00 - Intro0:01:57 - Monroe Doctrine: History & Future0:09:14 - East Asia: “High priority item"0:12:34 - “Bond between Iran and China will grow”0:13:20 - Why the Ukraine War is a miscalculation0:15:33 - Board of Peace0:27:41 - The price you pay for a US alliance0:32:16 - Israel’s end goal for Iran0:39:42 - US-Iran, another miscalculation?0:46:33 - How long will the US/Israel-Iran War last0:54:27 - Ground troops0:59:45 - Nuclear war possibility1:02:48 - Are we in World War III already?1:06:10 - Nuclear proliferation in a multipolar world1:13:38 - Will the Shia and Sunnis come together?1:19:16 - Economic repercussions1:25:27 - Foreseeing US politics1:44:27 - Frozen conflict in Ukraine1:53:27 - Messages for aspiring diplomatsRecorded on March 5, 2026.------------------About the guest:John Joseph Mearsheimer is an international relations theorist (a realist) who served as the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982.About the host:Gita Wirjawan is an Indonesian entrepreneur and educator. He is the founding partner of Ikhlas Capital and the chairman of Ancora Group. Currently, he is teaching at Stanford as a visiting scholar with Stanford's Precourt Institute for Energy.------------------Get your copy of Gita Wirjawan’s book, “What It Takes: Southeast Asia”, NOW:https://sgpp.me/what-it-takes-ytAnd leave your review here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/241922036-what-it-takes

You want to remember in the 12-day war, it was not the Iranians who wanted to quit. It was the Israelis and the Americans. So fast forward to the present. The Iranians are not going to quit. This is an existential threat. The question is, will the Americans and the Israelis quit? Ah, that's a very interesting question. To the extent that conventional warfare is not likely to help the Israelis and Americans achieve their objectives,

is it likely to get non-conventional? I think that, you know, my favorite saying, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, right? If it's good for Israel and the United States to have nuclear weapons, why is it not good for Iran and Turkey? The idea that we're going to go in there, we're going to do social engineering, then we're going to be able to leave,

and we're going to leave behind this pro-American, pro-Israel government, the dances to our tune? Good luck. Hi, friends. It's a pleasure to tell you that my book, What It Takes Southeast Asia, has been released in English and Bahasa Indonesia. You can buy it through books.ngame.ID or at any of these stores. Now back to the show. Hi, friends. Today, we're again honored to be raised by Professor John Mearsheimer. John, thank you so much.

My pleasure, as always, to be here. It's the third time that we're meeting. The first time would have been on the Ukraine war. Second would have been on the Israel lobby. This time, I want to ask you a few broad questions. The first one relates to the Trump corollary, which is alluded to in the recently issued national security document, November, December, 2025.

It sort of makes reference to the Monroe Doctrine. And when I see that, I think of you. What's your explanation of the recently published National Security document? Well, the Monroe Doctrine was originally promulgated in 1823 by President James Monroe. And it said in effect that no distant great power was allowed to put military forces in the Western Hemisphere and form a military alliance with any country. in the Western Hemisphere. Of course, at that point in time, there were European countries that were physically located in the Western Hemisphere.

But the idea was that we would eventually push them out of the Western Hemisphere and they would not be welcomed back from a military point of view. Then the United States becomes a regional hegemon in around 1900. We've become the most powerful state in the Western Hemisphere. We dominate the Western Hemisphere, starting around 1910. And in 1904, we get the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. And that basically says that we can intervene in the politics of countries in our neighborhood, in the Western Hemisphere, for other than these purely military reasons that were laid out

in the original Monroe Doctrine. And what that really means is that we can intervene. for ideological or economic reasons. And I believe that throughout the course of the 20th century and now into the 21st century, we have been deeply concerned about left-leaning governments in the Western Hemisphere. And from 1900 forward, anytime the United States saw a left-leaning government in the Western Hemisphere, it went to great lengths to overthrow it. The list of countries that we've gone after is quite extensive.

And two of the most prominent examples are Guatemala in 1954 in Chile in 1973. And I think if you look at what's happening with regard to Venezuela, this is just another case. Once Hugo Chavez takes over in Venezuela, you know, it's only a matter of time before the United States puts its gun sights on Venezuela. And of course, Cuba is probably the most prominent example of this whole phenomenon. After Castro took power in 1959, we quickly put our gun sights on Cuba, and we still have our gunsites on Cuba. And Trump is now talking about regime change in Cuba in the wake of removing the president

in Venezuela. So if you look at Cuba, you look at Venezuela, you look at Nicaragua, what you see going on today is our interest in getting rid of left-wing governments in the hemisphere. Now, what is Trump talking about with the Donro Doctrine? The Don Roe Doctrine, in my opinion, is basically the Roosevelt Corollary plus the original Monroe Doctrine. And if you look at what recently happened in Venezuela and is about to happen in Cuba, this is not related to great power politics. The Chinese and the Russians, two other great powers on the planet, don't have military forces in the Western Hemisphere, and they don't have a military alliance with Cuba or Venezuela. What this is really about is ideological and to some extent economic considerations. And of course,

an overlap between the ideology and the economics. You've alluded to in the past that Trump is not interested in social reengineering nor nation building. And to the extent that there is a regime change without the necessary follow-up as it relates to social re-engineering and nation building, intuitively one would think that it's probably about economic sovereignty it's not just about sovereignty right is that the right line of thinking when one hears trump talking about greenland canada all the way to punta arenas in chile it's it's about the ability to control critical minerals all throughout the western hemisphere for america's interest Well, it appears that that is the case.

I mean, what's really going on here in the case of Venezuela is an example of old-fashioned imperialism or colonialism. It's really quite remarkable. You want to remember that Trump said, first of all, with regard to Venezuela, that I, Donald Trump, am going to run Venezuela. Just think about those words. He's going to run Venezuela. In the modern world, hardly anybody would even contemplate saying that. That's old-fashioned imperialism. And then there's the whole issue of Venezuela's oil.

He basically says, in fact, that Venezuela doesn't own that oil. It's our oil, meaning America's oil, to exploit as we see fit. And the profits we make will, of course, plow some of those profits back to Venezuela itself. But it's not Venezuela's oil. This is old-fashioned imperialism of the sort that went away in the middle of the 20th century and we thought was gone forever. And then you get to cases like Cuba and now Iran, and of course Iran is not in the Western Hemisphere. And here he's beginning to move into the realm of social engineering. He's beginning to do regime change.

right and then you have to add on to that um Canada and uh Greenland I mean he's said on a number of occasions that he's going to make Canada the 51st state he used to refer to Justin Trudeau as Governor Trudeau and he's done the same thing with Mark Carney who he calls Governor Carney on occasion and then there's the whole business on Greenland I think I think almost everybody believes that we're not done with that one and that at some point in his remaining three years he'll be talking again about conquering Greenland. Now, again, just intuitively I'm thinking, if the United States were to focus on a Western hemisphere, one would think that China has sort of anticipated this.

And China has quite consciously been focusing a lot more on the global south, right, including of Southeast Asia, Africa, and all the other developing economies on the world. One would think that that bifurcation would entail greater peace. Is that also the right line of thinking by the way of the Trump corollary and China's focus on the global south? So that they're not going to mind each other's business as much as we might have seen in the past. You want to remember China has close relations with Brazil, both Brazil and China are key. players in bricks. And furthermore, the Chinese Belt and Road program extends into South and Central America. And all the evidence is that that will increase with the passage of time.

So I don't think the Chinese have said we're not going to intervene in the Western Hemisphere economically. It's very important to understand that economic intercourse between China and countries in the Western Hemisphere is very different. been a military alliance or the placement of Chinese military forces in the Western Hemisphere. And the Chinese have been very smart, as have the Russians over time, not put military forces in the Western Hemisphere, not to form a military alliance. So I think one of the really big questions here is whether or not Trump is interested in driving the Chinese out of the Western Hemisphere, from an economic point of view.

In other words, going well beyond the Monroe Doctrine. And some people argued that that's what he was doing in Venezuela. He was trying to begin to push the Chinese out. But I don't think this is possible for a variety of reasons. And one thing that we saw happen in the wake of Venezuela and the fiasco over Greenland is that Mark Carney, who is the Prime Minister of Canada, immediately thereafter went to China and began talking about forming a trade relationship

or an improved trade relationship with China. So they're just real limits to what Trump can do in that regard. But I would make a more important point on this whole issue. The real conflict between China and the United States is in East Asia. It's in your backyard. That's where the real competition is. And a lot of people seem to think that the United States is going to focus on the Western

Hemisphere at the expense of East Asia. That may happen in fact. But in theory, if you look at the National Security Strategy document, for example, we are fully committed to containing China in East Asia. So East Asia remains, I believe, the principal, full, yeah, high priority item for the United States. The other thing I would point out, which we do none want to underestimate, especially moving forward,

is that China is building a blue border navy. The main purpose of that Blue Water Navy, at least in the short term, is to project power into the Persian Gulf. The Chinese are basically allied with Iran at this point in time, as are the Russians. And if you think about the war in Iran now with the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other, China and Russia are with Iran, not in any meaningful way at this point.

But as China gets more powerful, develops more power projection capability into the Middle East, I believe that bond between Iran and China will grow. And that will really complicate matters for the United States in the Middle East and for Israel as well. I'm going to come back to Iran. But the last bit on the national security document, it also makes specific mention of reestablishing strategic stability with Russia. How does that imply for the ongoing war in Ukraine? The ongoing war in Ukraine is a disaster for the United States when it comes to dealing with China. When it comes to the United States containing China, Iran, I mean, Ukraine, excuse me, is a disaster for two reasons.

First of all, it drives the Russians into the arms of the Chinese. And from an American point of view, it makes eminently good sense to be allied with Russia, or at least to have Russia neutral and not have Russia allied with China. But the Ukraine war has pushed the Russians and the Chinese together. And this is one of the reasons that Trump, I believe, smartly wanted to end the Ukraine war as quickly as he could. The second way that the Ukraine war hurts the American effort to contain China is that we're sending huge amounts of military equipment to Ukraine. We're deeply involved in that conflict. And that makes it difficult for us to fully pivot to East Asia. So it's a disaster in that sense. And I think Trump's instincts, again, were correct when he came into office that he wanted to show. shut that war down so that he could pivot to Asia. But the fact is, he's been unable to shut the war

down. The war goes on. And American armaments continue to flow to Ukraine. And when you marry that with the fact that we're expending huge amounts of armaments in this recent war that we helped start in the Middle East, you can see how that war against Iran and the war in Ukraine is, in a very important way damaging our ability to contain China. Yeah. I'm holding back from asking you questions on Iran, but the second broad question is, is with respect to a recently happening phenomena of the Board of Peace,

which took place about a month ago. What's your take on this idea of privatizing peace? Well, the Board of Peace was a real. originally set up for the purposes of settling the conflict in Gaza. I think Trump's idea was that this Board of Peace would create peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But what happened is that Trump began to think about the Board of Peace as a universal institution. I think he effectively sees it as a replacement for the United Nations.

Okay. Now, what's going on here? Very important to understand that Trump is a unilateralist like we have never seen before in the United States. He hates institutions and their rules, and he hates international law. And it's because Institutions by definition are multilateral, right? Numerous countries belong to institutions. And for a unilateralist, institutions and international law get in the way. Those are the places where the Lilliputians tie down Gulliver. And Gulliver, in this case, we're talking about Donald Trump,

he does not want to be tied down. He wants to act unilaterally. And by the way, this is why he treats allies with contempt. He does not like the idea that allies have any leverage over the United States. He wants to be free. He wants to be independent to do whatever he wants. Okay. So an institution like the United Nations, NATO, the European Union, he has no use for these institutions.

So what he wants to do with the Board of Peace is create an institution that he runs. It's his personal institution. This is no international institution in any meaningful way. It's an institution that he created out a whole cloth, and he decides who can be a member. He's the head of this institution forever and ever, and people have to pay money if they want lifetime membership, or countries have to pay money if they want lifetime membership.

and it fits very neatly with his unilateralist mentality. Now, a couple further points that I think are very important. Every one of his predecessors has understood the importance of multilateral institutions and the importance of international law for America running the world or America running a particular alliance like the Western alliance. during the Cold War. Every one of his predecessors placed a high premium on institutions

and international law. And in fact, we created most of those institutions. We created most of those international laws. And we wrote the rules in the institutions and we wrote the laws so they suited America's interests. And that's why all of Trump's predecessors

privileged institutions and international law, which is not to say that we did not on occasion violate the rules or violate international law. We did. But by and large, we followed the rules. We followed the laws because we wrote them and it was in our national interest. We have a man who's now the president of the United States was a fundamentally different view of institutions and laws. And you should see the Board of Peace in this context. This is not a serious international institution. It's a vehicle for Donald Trump to act independently on the world stage and to get it. And to others to, you know, ante up some money so that it looks like it's a legitimate institution,

which it's not. To a common person like me, how do you explain how the fact that he gets to be chair for life? Number two, Israel is a member, but Palestine is not a member. and number three, if you don't pay a billion dollars, you get rotated out every three years. You don't get to be a permanent member. And the chair has absolute veto power. It's basically the singularization of the Security Council of the UN. How do you think that's going to vote well for?

It's a security council with one member. I mean, what, what? does it mean for the prospect of peace, much less a two-state solution? Okay, but your question, which is a very important question, takes us back to the original purpose of the Board of Peace. Remember, I said originally it was set up to deal with the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is what you're now focusing on. But as I said, that's what it was originally set up to do.

and then it became a broader enterprise, more of replacement for the UN. But let's go back to what it was originally set up to do. The idea that this is going to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a joke, right? The Board of Peace has Benjamin Netanyahu on it. It's filled with Zionists who have a permanent attachment to Israel or a profound. attachment to Israel. It has no Palestinians on it. And it's just not going to work. The idea that this is going to end up bringing peace to the Middle East is just not a serious enterprise. Look, there's no way the Board of Peace can work. And you can get a meaningful settlement involving the

Palestinians until they have a political horizon, which is another way of saying, until the Palestinian sovereignty is respected until there is some self-determination for the Palestinians. And all of that is completely absent from the scheme that Trump has come up with. And the question you want to ask yourself, is this surprising? The answer is absolutely no, because Trump is basically controlled by the Israel lobby. He takes his marching orders from B.B. Netanyahu. And Bibi Netanyahu is not interested in peace in Gaza. Bibi Netanyahu is interested in ethically cleansing the Palestinians.

And in fact, the genocide that has been taking place since October 7th, that genocide is mainly designed to drive the Palestinians out of Gaza, to make Gaza a Palestinian free zone. And of course, they want to do the same thing in the West Bank. And that's what explains all these pogroms, over the past few years. This is what the Israelis do. And the Americans go along with it, right?

I mean, both President Joe Biden and President Trump are complicitous in the genocide. I mean, it's quite clear that Netanyahu himself is executing the genocide or the Israelis themselves are executing the genocide. But we're clearly complicitous in this. To the extent that this is not likely to succeed in replacing diplomacy and multilateral institutions, could this be interpreted as a potential reawakening of diplomacy and multilateralization? Well, Trump has three more years in the White House, and I would not place a lot of money on the belief that he's going to do a 180-degree turn and abandon his unilateralism and become a multilateralist.

It would be very interesting to see how this plays out. And by the way, we've talked about his attitude towards institutions and his attitude towards international law. There's the whole question of how he deals with allies, almost all. Virtually all of his predecessors, Trump's predecessors, treated allies, generally speaking, very well. We understood the importance of having allies. If you're going to try to contain China in East Asia, you need allies.

They have to be loyal allies. You have to have close relations with them. But Trump slaps around allies, just like he slaps around adversaries. And one could probably make the argument that Trump treats allies worse than he treats adversaries because he knows those allies depend on the United States. He then realizes he has a lot of leverage over those allies. so he feels quite free to slap them around. And I think for purposes of containing China

and trying to deal with problems in the Middle East and problems in Europe and problems in the Western Hemisphere, we have a very broad agenda here. You need allies. The idea that you can run the world by yourself, that you can create some sort of border peace and think you have a one-man security or a one-country security council,

in my opinion, is delusional. it's going to get you into a whole heck of a lot of trouble. Last question on the Board of Peace. What would be your advice to countries that are contemplating or that made a commitment to send peacekeeping troops to Gaza? Well, I know the Indonesians have agreed to send up to 8,000 troops. I believe that if the Board of Peace was actually set up so that it could potentially cause real peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

We could disarm Hamas and the Palestinians had a political horizon. They were going to get a state of their own. And then what you needed to do was send in peacekeepers for just a transition period. I think countries around the world, including Indonesia, should send those troops in because you would be doing good. You would be helping to facilitate a peace process in Gaza. And again, there would have to be some sort of blueprint, some sort of plan in place that any country that was thinking about sending peacekeepers in felt confident would lead to peace. It might fail, but you would at least think there was a good chance. And if you're Indonesia or

any other country, Pakistan, you name it, you would be making a noble effort, okay? The problem is there is zero evidence at this point in time that the United States has a viable plan for shutting down the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And as I said before, it is due in large part to the fact that the United States is unwilling to pressure Israel to agree to give the Palestinians sovereignty, to agree to give the Palestinians a state of their own. And until that happens, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is going to go on, and the Israelis are going to continue to try to drive all of the Palestinians out of Gaza and out of the West Bank. One would think that on that basis, and also in addition to that, the fact or the prospect that,

whatever is going on right now with the war with Iran is only likely to radicalize a number of regions in the Middle East, including those in Hamas, in Gaza. That would pose an additional risk to anybody that's, you know, thinking about becoming a peacekeeper. Is that the right line of thinking? I believe that before the war started, the Iran war started on February 28th this past Saturday, the countries in the Middle East, including countries in the Gulf states, in the Gulf, were beginning to distance themselves from the United States. I think you saw this with the Saudis who had formed the military alliance with Pakistan, And the Turks were also very nervous.

We're talking about joining that alliance so that it would be a Turkish-Paki-Saudi alliance. And by the way, the Saudis were saying that the Pakistani nuclear umbrella would be put over their head. And I've talked to a number of Saudis who say that what's going on here is that the Saudis are no longer fully confident that they can depend on the United States. they have to look for alternative sources of protection. And you were beginning to see this all over the Middle East. Now, the question you want to ask yourself is, why is this the case? Because since October 7th, the United States and Israel have been joined at the hip. I like to refer to them as a tag team.

And they have been running around the Middle East attacking countries, wrecking countries like Syria, trying to wreck countries like Lebanon. And when the Israelis attacked Qatar, this really sent a powerful signal to countries in the region that Israel is a rogue state. And because the United States and Israel are joined at the hip, the two of them represent a rogue tag team. So even before February 28th, when the conflict in Iran started, states in the region were very nervous about being. closely allied with the United States. They were worried about the reliability of the United States. Now the war breaks out, and it's more than just reliability of the United States

that's on the table for these countries. It's also the fact that they're like a magnet for Iranian attacks because the Americans have military bases on their territory, and they are aligned with the Americans, right? So the Saudis, the UAE, you name it, those countries are all being attacked by Iran. And the Iranians haven't finished with them yet. And the Iranians might do really catastrophic damage to those countries down the road. And this is because those countries are allied with the United States.

So it's not only that the United States is not protecting them, which is true. The United States is not doing much to protect them now. And of course, the United States will protect Israel before it protects them, and they fully understand that. But the United States, and their close alliance with the United States, has made them a magnet for Iranian missiles and drones. And this is a disaster. I mean, I don't use the word catastrophic here, but this is potentially catastrophic. Okay, now let's deep dive on Iran. We've seen in the last 20-something years narratives that have evolved from creating democracy, weapons of mass destruction, imminent nuclearization, and then regime change, thereafter regime alteration.

Why did the invasion take place on the 20th of February? Well, the fact is that the Israelis have wanted the United States to join them in an attack on Iran for a long, long time. And the Israelis have had two goals in mind. One is regime change. But the more ambitious goal that they still seek is to break Iran apart into constituent. states, remnant states, just like what happened with Syria. And of course, what happened with the former Soviet Union in December of 1991 when it disintegrated. They want either regime change. That's the lesser ambition, or they want to break Iran apart. That's the ideal situation.

Now, it's very important to understand that you need to. regime change if you're going to get the government of Iran to abandon its ballistic missiles, to abandon its nuclear enrichment program, and abandon its support of the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Just think about those three goals. Abandoned missiles, ballistic missiles, abandoned the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas, and abandoned nuclear enrichment. The Israelis want that to happen. But to achieve those three particular goals, you need regime change. And you have to believe, number one, that you can topple the existing regime. And number two, you can put in its place a regime that will be subservient to Israeli and American interests and will agree to those

three particular goals. Right. So that's the sort of big picture in terms of what the Israelis want, okay? Now, they have been trying very hard to get the United States to go to war against Iran and either destroy the regime, get regime change, or destroy the country, okay? And this has been a long-term goal of Benjamin Netanyahu who has been in office, who has been in office since the mid-1990s. He's been around for a long time. Okay? In 2024, this is when Joe Biden was in the White House, 2024, the Israelis twice in April of 2024, when they bombed the Iranian consulate or the Iranian- Damascus.

Yeah, in Damascus. And I think it was the Iranian embassy in Damascus, not the consulate. They bombed the Iranian embassy in Damascus. That was in April 2024. And then a conflict started between Iran and Israel. They were firing missiles at each other. Biden was smart enough not to take debate and enter that fight. We did help defend Israel against the incoming ballistic missiles from Iran.

This is in April 2024. But we did not go on the offensive. Biden did not take debate. The same thing happens in October 24 when the Israelis actually attack inside of Tehran and kill a Palestinian, a very prominent Palestinian leader in Tehran. You then have a missile exchange again. We again help defend Israel, but Biden does not take debate. Okay, then comes Trump. And last June, this is probably about five months after Trump moves. into the White House, we have the 12-day war. And the United States, for the first time, bombs Iran, right? The 12-day war goes from June 13th to June 25th, okay? On June 22nd, one day, we bomb Iran. We bomb the four, I guess it's three nuclear sites, Isfahan, the tons, and four now.

We bomb those three nuclear sites. One day, one and done. That's it. But this is the first time we're sucked in. right Trump took debate and he went in then we come to recent events and again natuahu has who has been trying to suck the Americans in and partially succeeded with Trump in the June war of last year this time gets Trump to jump in full force and here we are so we are so What happened is Trump not only is now in a situation where he's defending Israel, which Biden did,

but he's on the offensive. And this is not one and done. He might have thought it was going to be one and done, you know, one day, two days of bombing, and then it's all over with. We're now in a war that looks like it's going to be a protracted war. So Netanyahu has succeeded in getting the United States to enter this war. And I believe the principal reason that Donald Trump did this is basically because Benjamin Netanyahu owns him. Well, on the basis that Trump is more presupposed to the Israeli lobby than Biden would have been.

But what's difficult to explain is after the 12th day war last year, how would the Americans or Trump think that it's still going to be a limited military? option. Could that have been a miscalculation or the conviction that he was going to do it again, that he would do it again, that it's going to be a limited military option in addition to the Israel lobby? There's a miscalculation. But before I directly describe why I think that was a miscalculation, let's just talk about the run-up to the war. Before February 28th, when the war starts, President Trump puts a huge armada, a huge military force in the Middle East. And he does this for coercive purposes. He thinks that the threat that that armada represents to Iran will cause the Iranians to throw up their hands and agree to U.S. Israeli demands.

And Steve Whitkoff says right before the first the first of the first of the United States, and agree to U. February 28th war starts, right? Steve Whitkov says that President Trump is actually surprised that the Iranians have not caved in in the face of the threat from all those American military forces in the region. So there's a miscalculation there. Then the war starts, February 28th, the war starts. And we start that war. When I say we, I mean the tag team, the United States and Israel. We start that war with a decapitation strategy, right? And what we do is we kill Ayatollah Khomeini and a number of other important Iranian leaders.

And it's quite clear from Trump's rhetoric in what's reported in the media here in the West that Trump thinks that once you decapitate the regime, that will be the end of the fight, that the Iranians will not double down and continue the fight. Now, what's remarkable about this is we decapitated, was actually the Israelis, decapitated the regime

back in the 12-day war. You remember, the Israelis caught the Iranians with their pants down, and they killed a huge number of people in the Iranian elite. And it didn't work then. And it didn't work this time either on February 28th. It didn't work.

And furthermore, if you look at the scholarly literature on decapitation, right, and there's an extensive literature on this, it makes it clear that it never works. And it didn't work in the June war. So why did Trump think that it was going to work here? It was a miscalculation. So there are two big miscalculations here. One is that he thought that he could coerce the Iranians, and anybody who knows the Iranians and the situation they're in surely must have understood, he would think, that coercion

was not going to work. And then they should have understood that decapitation was not going to work. But nevertheless, we pursued that strategy. It failed. And now we're in a war that looks like it's going to be a long war. And this is something the United States does not want. So in a very important way, Benjamin Netanyahu has led us down the Primrose path. I'm curious about the miscalculation after the fact that the decapitation last year did not work.

After it's obvious to a commoner like me that there is a properly functioning constitutional mechanism for succession in Iran. And third, Hamini was known to be actually an advocate against Iran's going nuclear. The principal advocate. And now it's, it just seems to be further galvanizing,

you know, Iran for going nuclear. So how was the miscalculation taking place? I mean, did somebody not get the memo? Clearly not. I would make a couple points. I think it's quite clear that the Israelis have been arguing for a long, long time,

and most American policymakers have been following suit in saying that the regime was very fragile. There was huge resistance down below, and all you had to do was decapitate, and you would have this popular uprising from below, and the regime would be toppled. In other words, it was easy to bring that regime down because it didn't have deep roots in the society. Well, the fact is it did have deep roots in the society. This is not to deny that there weren't lots of people in Iran

who would like to see the regime go. But it had deep roots, number one. And number two, the regime was fully aware that the Americans and the Israelis were trying to undermine it, to destroy it, and the decapitation was a viable strategy. And they saw decapitation last June in the 12-day war.

So they were aware that this is what would happen this time. So, in fact, you're not, dealing with a target that is well suited for regime change, right? If you look at how deep the roots are, if you look at the fact that the regime is prepared for this contingency, you see that decapitation is not going to work. There's one other very important point that needs to be made is if you decapitate and you do get regime change, the question then becomes, what's the new regime look like? Well, two days ago, President Trump had really his first back and forth with the press since the war started this past

Saturday. And in that back and forth, President Trump made it unequivocally clear that we have no replacement regime. And he said to the extent that there was a replacement regime, we killed all those people on February 28th. And he has no idea who is going to replace the existing regime if we are able to topple it. And he admits that you could get, they ask him, somebody from the media asked him, what's the worst case scenario? And he says the worst case scenario, which he admits is possible, is that if we topple the regime and get a new regime, that new regime will be as bad the regime that we toppled. So the point is the Trump administration and the Israelis have no idea what they're going to do once the regime is toppled. But to go back to where we started,

it is highly unlikely that they will topple the regime because the regime has deep roots, number one, and number two, they've planned for that contingency. And then the third point that I would make is once you murder, and this is a case of murder, once you murder, once you murder the Ayatollah, And then you begin to kill large numbers of civilians. You hit schools with children in them. You hit hospitals. You hit police stations. Once you begin to do that, you begin to punish the population as well as kill the Ayatollah.

What's going to happen is that people, Iranians, even those who were opposed to the regime, are going to rally around the flag and make regime change even harder. But then I just want to remind you, even if you get regime change, we have no plan for a new regime. So this is a cockamamie strategy. Right. This makes no sense at all. And I think the only hope we have is a miracle. And as you and I both know, miracles rarely ever happen. It just seems paradoxical, given the fact that the mantra would have been to save the people from a tyrant.

But at the same time, they're actually bombing 167 schoolgirls, innocent, 167 innocent schoolgirls. and other civilians, right? Now, my question is, to what extent is this likely to get protracted? We just saw and heard that Iran is attacking, you know, Azerbaijan with a view that it might be for purposes of decapitating the pipeline. That's going to deliver gas from Baku through Tbilisi all the way to Jahan and Turkey for Israel. Israel's purposes. And we've seen how Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia would have been attacked, you know, the military bases, the consulate embassies. This is just seemingly likely to get way protracted. In contrast to the earlier estimates that this would take days, maximum

three or four weeks, to what extent is this going to get protracted? First, let's talk about the politics and talk about the military capabilities because there are two dimensions to your question. Regarding the politics, let's start with the Iranians. From the Iranian point of view, this is an existential threat. I mean, there's just no question about it. This is the same situation that Ukraine is in. From Ukraine's perspective, what the Russians are doing is an existential threat. So if you are the Iranians, right, you cannot quit, right? You have to fight to the last person, in my opinion. Quitting is not an option because, as I said before, the ultimate goal of the Israelis is not just regime change. It's to wreck the country. So this is an existential threat. So you'll

fight for as long as you can. And the really interesting question is, when did the Americans and the Israelis say enough is enough. I just want to go back to the 12-day war last year, because this is very important. The 12-day war ended because the Israelis and the Americans decided to quit, not the Iranians. I said at the time, I thought it was foolish of the Iranians to quit, because the Iranians were gaining the upper hand vis-a-vis Israel. That's why Israel wanted to quit after 12 days. Israel was running out of defensive missiles that could shoot down the incoming ballistic missiles,

number one. And number two, the Iranians were getting more sophisticated at penetrating Israeli defenses. And that's because states learn when they fight wars. And the Israelis, I'm assuming the Iranians were kind of flying blind in the beginning. But they were learning as the war wore on. And at the end of 12 days,

they had gotten pretty sophisticated at blowing through Israeli defenses. And the Israelis, again, were running out of missiles, right? So you want to remember in the 12-day war, it was not the Iranians who wanted to quit. It was the Israelis and the Americans. And by the way, the reason the Americans were interested in quitting was not only because they were getting pressure from the Israelis to say, who were saying, let's quit. It's because the Americans got whiff of the fact that the Iranians were talking about shutting down the Straits of Hormuz, and we did not want that to happen. Okay, so fast forward to the present.

As I said to you, the Iranians are not going to quit. This is an existential threat. The question is, will the Americans and the Israelis quit? It's a very interesting question. You know, how long can we go on fighting like this? I think the Iranians can go on for a long time, and I think there are limits to how long the Americans and even the Israelis can continue this fight.

right? So I think the key issue is when do we, the tag team, the United States and Israel, when do we decide enough is enough? That is very hard to say. You know, this war could go on for months. It could go on for more than a year. So that's the political level. Then there's the military level, right? And the argument that some people in the West, we're talking about the United States and Israel are making, is that the Iranians are running out of missiles, right? And I would just say, I don't think that's true. Very importantly, the Iranians have drones, short-range missiles, and long-range missiles. This is a rather simplistic classification, but it captures the essence of what's going on.

The long-range missiles are used against Israel, and some of them are hypersonic, by the way. The short-range missiles and the drones are, by and large, used against the Arab states in the region, places like Azerbaijan, and so forth and so on. The Iranians, by all accounts, have a huge inventory of short-range ballistic missiles, and they have lots of drones. As we all know from watching the Ukraine War, all states have big invent, all states that are fighting wars these days

have big inventories of drones. And you want to remember it, it was Iranian drones that were sent to Russia that really mattered for the Russians in the early stage of the war, Ukraine war. So there are plenty of Iranian drones, plenty of short-range missiles. you only have a handful of critical targets in countries like Saudi Arabia that you have to hit

to basically wreck those countries, right? You know, hit oil facilities, desalinization plants, and so forth and so on. You devastate those countries. It doesn't take many missiles, many drones. And the Iranians have many of them in plenty of time to hit those targets. So the Iranians can play the long game with their adverse. among the Gulf states, the Azerbaijani's of the world, and so forth and so on. And again, it's an existential threat.

It's an existential threat for Iran. With regard to Israel, there's no question that the number of missiles that the Iranians are launching at Israel have gone down since the first day of the fight. If you go back to the 28th, 29th, they've gone down. They've been going down. But you want to remember in the 12-day war, they went down as well. Because what happened is they got more sophisticated in penetrating Israel's defenses, and Israel's defensive missiles began to run out. So the fact that the number of missiles going into Iranian ballistic missiles going into Israel is going down,

doesn't tell you very much about their inventory. This is not evidence that they're running out of missiles. And then the argument is, well, John, the Israelis and the Americans are destroying all of these missiles. They may have destroyed some missiles, but not many. First of all, many of these missiles are underground and tunnels. Furthermore, some of them, many of them are mobile missiles, very hard to destroy. and I think therefore the Iranians have the ability to fight over the long term. And whether or not the Israelis and the Americans want to continue that fight is not clear to me.

Are there likely to be boots on the ground? I think that what we are now doing is trying to cause an insurrection using the Kurds. there's all sorts of reports to this effect in the media. We're arming the Kurds. And with your specific question about boots on the ground, I believe we have small contingents of CIA, special forces, which are boots on the ground in Iran already. And I believe the small CIA and special forces teams,

and I'm sure Mossad is in there as well. I wouldn't be surprised if MI6 is in there. I'm sure they're all working with the Kurds to help them foment an insurrection, all for the purposes of either overthrowing the regime or breaking Iran into its constituent parts. But I do think we have some boots on the ground, and I think we'll try to rely on others,

meaning the Kurds, to serve the Kurds, that purpose. Now, the big question, which really is the one you're asking, is will we put in a significant number? Yeah, will we go full force? Sort of like we did in Iraq. I find that hard to imagine. I mean, Iran is a much bigger nut to crack than Iraq. This is a country that's the size of Western Europe. 93 million. Yes, 93 million people. people, yeah.

It's not flat. Yes, terrible terrain. And these people, the Iranians, will fight like wild dogs against us. You know, this is nationalism come to the fore. This will not be the Iraqis. And we will have our hands full. And then, you know, just as was the case in Iraq, was the case in Vietnam, was the case in Afghanistan. Even if you get in there, right, and you establish a presence, right, you eventually

generate resistance and get thrown out. Just think about Afghanistan. We went in there, we drove the Taliban out, and everything looked hunky-dory. It looked wonderful for the first few years. Then the Taliban came back from the dead, and after 20 years, we left. We left, defeated. We left Vietnam in 1975, defeated. And Iraq has been a disaster. So the idea that we're going to to go in there. We're going to do social engineering. Good luck. And then we're going to be able to leave and we're going to leave behind this pro-American, pro-Israel government that dances to our tune. This is delusional in the extreme. The historical record is very clear on how these escapades work out. They're disasters. And I think that Trump understands that, by the way. Trump has made much of the

fact that he's not going to do social engineering. He's not going to put boots on the ground. But to get to the question you're asking, right, if we get desperate enough, will we put boots on the ground? This is the question. You see, I think Trump didn't know what he was getting into, going back to our earlier discussion. He thought that we could coerce the Iranians into surrendering. Then he thought we could decapitate. They'd surrender. That didn't work. and now the war is evolving into a war of attrition. This is a disaster. So what do we do?

Do we double down? That's your boots on the ground. Do we double down boots on the ground or do we back off? This is what, by the way, this is what Trump did with the Houthis. Think about his war against the Houthis. Last March, he takes office January 2025. In March 2025, he says, I'm going to war against the Houthis. I'm going to finish them off.

Joe Biden should have done it, but Joe Biden is a pussycat. I'm not. I, Donald Trump, are going to finish the Houthis off. So he turns the American military loose on the Houthis. This is in March. In May, he quits. He said, those Houthis are really tough hombres. I could not defeat them. I'm quitting, right? And they work out some half-baked deal that makes it look like we reached a peace agreement. But the fact is, the Houthis beat us. And Trump, to his credit, understood that continuing the war with the Houthis made no sense because we couldn't win. So he backed off. So the question you have to ask yourself vis-à-vis Iran, is he going to do with Iran as we

move forward what he did with the Houthis? Is he going to say that I see no way to win this war, therefore I'm going to back off, or is he going to double down? And then the question is, what does doubling down mean? And the question on everybody's lips, which is the question you asked is, are we going to send in ground forces? I've got a follow-up question to that, which is concerning. To the extent that conventional warfare is not likely to help Israelis and Americans achieve their objectives, is it likely to get non-conventional?

It's an interesting question. I've often said to people in recent... Very proposition, by the way. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it doesn't get much worse than that. And the question really here is, will Israel use nuclear weapons? That is the issue, right?

I think that the best scenario that one can spin out, the best nightmare scenario, let's call it that, doesn't have to do with what's happening in this conflict now, but what happens after this, conflict has ended. I think that Iran has a tremendous incentive to get nuclear weapons, right? First of all, they have assassinated Ayatollah Khomeini, who was the principal opponent of Iran going nuclear. There are all sorts of people in Iran who thought Iran should acquire nuclear weapons. And I've often said that if I had been the national security advisor in Iran, they'd

already have nuclear weapons, right? I think the Iranians were foolish not to get nuclear weapons. The North Koreans figured this out, right? So I think the incentives for Iran to get nuclear weapons once this war is over with will be very great. If Israel and the United States cannot defeat Iran, right, and you have a regime in place that wants nuclear weapons, that means there's a war. That means there's no conventional option, in effect, there's no conventional option for preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons. How are you going to do that? I think then the Israelis will think about using nuclear weapons against any incipient Iranian nuclear capability. I think this is a remarkably dangerous situation. If the Israelis lose in Iran, they will be fully aware that they lost,

They will be fully aware that they will have enraged the Iranian body populace, right? They will be fully aware that in Iran with nuclear weapons will be very, very dangerous from Israel's perspective. And they will go to Great Lakes to prevent that. And if they can't prevent it through conventional means, then we get to a scenario where they think about using nuclear weapons. And as we know, there's no state on the planet that is more ruthless, more murderous than the Israelis. So the idea that they would use nuclear weapons is certainly plausible. And I really worry about this scenario. Are we in World War III already?

No. I think to be in World War III, China and the United. United States would have to be at war and probably China, Russia, and the United States, you could argue that Russia, the United States are almost at war. I mean, the United States is waging a proxy war, or let me put it differently, the United States has been waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine that is much more forceful, much more intense than the proxy wars that were waged in the Cold War. You want to remember the Soviets waged a proxy war against us in Vietnam. We waged a proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. But the intensity of those proxy

wars pales in comparison to the proxy war we, the United States, are waging in Ukraine against Russia. Now you say, John, what exactly do you mean? I'd make two points. One, Ukraine with support from the United States and Britain invaded Mother Russia in 2024. You want to think about that. Ukraine with support from the United States and Britain invaded Mother Russia. That was unthinkable during the Cold War. Point number two. In 2025, Ukraine hit one leg of the strategic nuclear triad

of Russia. Their nuclear triad, their strategic nuclear weapons have three components. They have a bomber component, a submarine component, and a land-based ballistic missile component. The Ukrainians, with support from us, hit the bomber leg of their strategic nuclear triad. This was unthinkable during the Cold War. The idea that you would hit the strategic nuclear triad of the Soviet Union, you'd be learning with the possibility of causing World War III with nuclear weapons. In fact, you could argue that that would make it likely. We wouldn't do that. We did that in Ukraine.

So you do not want to underestimate the extent to which we tried to undermine the Russian effort in Ukraine by waging this proxy war. So we've already seen the Russians and the Americans dancing up. to a possible great power war directly involving both sides. And then there are the Chinese, right? The Chinese, you can tell all sorts of plausible stories about how China and the United States get into a shooting war over the South China Sea, the East China Sea, or Taiwan. You know, it's very, very worrisome.

It's quiet in East Asia today because the United States is pinned down in Ukraine, pinned down in the Middle East, and now pin down in the Western Hemisphere. So the last thing the United States wants is trouble in East Asia. But at some point, you know, in the distant, not too distant future, I think the Americans will be more active in East Asia. How is this whole thing likely to change or up in the way people think about nuclear proliferation? I mean, you mentioned the North Korea.

right they probably thought about all this and looking at how the iranians are exposed to that undesired or unintended consequence of things going nuclear yeah i often think of an article that was written a number of years ago in international security it's a brilliant article by eliza george and her basic argument was that uh in bipolarity and unipolarity Nuclear proliferation was not very likely, but it was most likely in a multipolar world where you had intense security competition. And I think she's basically correct that we're now in a multipolar world. There's intense security competition.

There are wars taking place in ways that we have not seen. We did not see during the unipolar moment. And the incentives for proliferation have, have increased greatly in a variety of regions of the world. I've been in East Asia recently in both Japan and South Korea, and people don't talk much about it in public, but in private, all sorts of people in South Korea, and in Japan are talking about getting nuclear weapons,

and it's doing good part to the fact that they don't think they can rely on the United States to provide nuclear deterrence. If you look at the Middle East, we're talking about Iran. The Turks will tell you that they believe that they are the other principal target of Israel, and they need nuclear weapons. Erdogan has been hinting at this for quite a while now. And by the way, if Iran gets nuclear weapons, and we talked about that serious possibility a few minutes ago,

Turks will surely get nuclear weapons. And the Saudis have said, MBS has said explicitly, if Iran gets nuclear weapons, we get nuclear weapons, right? And then what are the Iraqis going to do? What are the Egyptians going to do? So you can tell a story in the Middle East, in the greater Middle East, where you have a domino effect if Iran gets nuclear weapons. But even if Iran doesn't get nuclear weapons, if I'm playing Turkey's hand and I'm looking at what's happening in the Middle East,

And I hear Naftali Bennett, the former Israeli prime minister, say that Turkey is... The next target. The next target. That's in effect what he's saying. I Erdogan begin to say, I got to get nuclear weapons. The Americans may protest, but so what? My survival is at stake here. See, that's what's very important to understand, just when you think about the Iran war.

Iran's survival is at stake. this is an existential threat. And the same thing is true with Turkey. And by the way, we were talking about the Kurds before, right? It's quite clear that what the United States now wants to do is arm the Kurds so that the Kurds can cause trouble in Iran. Well, as you well know, there's a huge Kurdish population in Iran, in Iraq, in Syria, and in Turkey. And the last thing that the Turks want is what we're doing with the Kurds in Iran. This is a disaster from their perspective.

And it's just more evidence of how unreliable the United States is to countries like Turkey. And when you live in an international system where there's no higher authority that can protect you, And you're in what's basically a self-help system, whether you're Indonesia, the United States, Turkey, or Iran, the incentives to do everything you can to maximize your survival are just very great. And in this world, getting nuclear weapons is getting the ultimate deterrent. It is the ultimate deterrent. Countries like Israel and the United States have nuclear weapons for a good reason. It's the ultimate deterrent. I don't blame the Israelis for having nuclear weapons. I don't blame the Americans for having nuclear weapons. It makes eminently good sense for both of those countries.

And that's why you see no evidence that they want to give up those weapons. But you know, my favorite saying, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If it's good for Israel and the United States to have nuclear weapons, why is it not good for Iran and Turkey? It's obviously not in our interest. I want to make that clear. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, that's, there you are. And by the way, the Ukrainians wish they had nuclear weapons.

And you remember, in 1993, there was only one person in the West who said that Ukraine should not give up its nuclear weapons. One person, he wrote a very famous article in Foreign Affairs. It was the same issue that Sam Huntington's clash of civilizations was in. And that one person was yours truly. And everybody at the time said, I was a fool. They said, there's never going to be a war between Ukraine and Russia. And my view is, you would have a nuclear deterrent for a rainy day. You never know, right?

You can't tell, just take Indonesia. Indonesia has a particular security environment, a particular threat environment today, right? March 2025. But what is March 26, excuse me, what is Indonesia's threat environment going to look like five years from now, 10 years from now? Who knows? Now, I'm not arguing that Indonesia should go get nuclear weapons, but I'm just saying that when you can't know what your threat environment will look like

and there's no higher authority that can pull your chestnuts out of the fire, the incentives to have nuclear weapons are very great. You know, one of my favorite quotes is from Ahud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister. This is what he said about Iran. He said, the reason that I believe Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons is because it makes so much sense. Just think about those words. It makes so much sense for Iran to have nuclear weapons. Of course, Barack is a very smart man.

And he understands full well that the same logic that compelled Israel to get nuclear weapons works for Iran. He's basically saying that if I had been the Iranian Minister of Defense or the Iranian president, prime minister, or what have you, I would have gotten nuclear weapons because it makes so much sense. So in this multipolar world, again going back to the Eliza George article, in this multipolar world with all these shifting alliances and all these conflicts here, there, and everywhere, the incentives for states, to get nuclear weapons goes up. John, there's more than 200 million Shia Muslims around the world. Most of whom are in the Middle East. About 80 million of them are in Iran. More than 60% of the population of Bahrain are Shia.

And a few other countries are Shia Muslims. The killing of Hamini, who is deemed as the ultimate spiritual, leadership for the Shia Muslims is hurting them. And this has galvanized the Shia Muslims. My curious question to you is, to what extent will this galvanization affect the shaping of the Middle East? And to what extent will this actually help unite or unify the Muslims around the world, including the Sunni Muslims in the Middle East? Well, you already see trouble in Bahrain.

As you pointed out, more than 60% of the population in Bahrain, Shia, and its Sunnis who run the country. And the Saudis have been sending forces into Bahrain to help strengthen the government. Because these attacks on Bahrain by the Iranians have been applauded by the Shia population. and furthermore, the Shia population has been enraged by what's happening in Iran. And as you know, in Karachi, a large number of Shia moved against the American consulate there. People were killed and was a sign of big trouble in Pakistan. So this is, you know, just talking about the Shia in different regions, this is a big problem. But let's talk about Shia and Sunnis together.

When Sam Huntington wrote Clash of Civilizations, he basically posited a world where it was sort of Islam versus the West. It was China versus the West and Islam versus the West. And I have never believed this argument about civilizations. I think when you look at the Islamic world, it's divided, like all parts of the world, are into nation states. And sometimes Sunni nation states fight against other Sunni nation states. Iraq invades Kuwait. Okay.

And you'll see Catholic states go against Catholic states and so forth and so on, or Christian states against Christian states. So I never brought the civilizational argument. But it is clear that what's happening in the Middle East, as Israel and the United States come together and develop this highly aggressive policy aimed at almost all of the states in the region, whether there's Sunni or Shia. and you get a situation where Sunni states as well as Shia states like Iran see the United States and Israel as the enemy, right, as an enemy of Islamic states, whether they're Shia or Sunni, as a threat to Islamic states, whether they're Sunni or Shia, what you're going to see is them coming together, right? the Saudis, I'm sure now, want to play nice with Iran. They do not want Iran to destroy their oil installations. They do not want Iran to destroy their desalienization installations, period.

Right. So they want to play nice. And they understand that, you know, the more you think about it, the United States is more of a liability than it's an asset here. This is why I said to you before, the Saudis have been talking to the Pakistanis, the Turks want to get in with the Pakistanis and the Saudis. People are beginning to understand that getting too close to the United States is a mistake. So I think in a very important way, given where things are headed at the moment, if anything, you're going to drive the Saudis and the Iranians closer together over time, right?

because they see a mutual threat. And it could be that what you get here over time is some sort of civilizational conflict in a very loose way. Because again, I think nationalism is the most powerful political ideology on the planet. And we live in a world of nation states and Iran will always be a Shia nation state

and Saudi will always be a Sunni nation state. But that Shia-Saudi distinction will become, I think, less important over time. It's hard to say for sure, because it's hard to say how this war is going to play out. But given the way it's played out so far, I think that Sunni states, there's no question about Shia states,

but even Sunni states are going to view the United States and Israel as a dangerous tag team. And anything that's done to weaken American influence in the Middle East and to weaken Israel will be seen as a great. good thing. The economic repercussions, not only to the Gulf states, but to the world, cannot be underestimated. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is definitely going to have repercussions, meaningfully. The bombing of oil fields in some parts of the Gulf is definitely very costly. If you don't have oil gas, you can still walk. But if you don't have water,

you can't live. It's pretty existential for some Gulf states, right? And in some countries or some cities in the Gulf have been positioning themselves as safe havens. But it just seems to me that that safe haven premium has been obliterated by what we're witnessing. How do you see this picture going forward, economically?

Well, economically, this could be catastrophic. And I'm choosing my words carefully here. Sometimes, you know, we all use words like catastrophic and disasters too loosely. And I'm guilty of that on occasion, hopefully not often, but occasionally I use that word too loosely. I think in this case, we are flirting with the possibility of catastrophic damage. both in the short term and in the long term for countries like the UAE, Carter, Saudi Arabia. I mean, there's two issues here.

Number one, how does the war play out? And then once the war is over with, what does the peace look like? I mean, if it's a cold peace and there's the threat of the war starting up again, This would be even further trouble for the Gulf states. But just to start at square one, you can imagine a situation in the war where the Iranians get so desperate that they destroy the oil facilities and the desalinization plants in all of these Gulf states and do catastrophic damage. And as I said before, it's not that difficult. to do. There's no shortage of drones and short-range ballistic missiles on the Iranian side. We're not talking about a lot of targets here. Those targets are not particularly well defended,

right? So the Iranians can, they can wreck Saudi Arabia. They can wreck the Emirates and so forth and so on. And that could happen in the course of the war. Let's assume it doesn't happen, but the war ends, but you have this real deep-seated hostility that remains between the Israelis and the Americans on one side and the Iranians on the other. And everybody's saying, when do we get the next war? Remember, this is what happened after the June 12th war. After the June 12th war, all sorts of people saying, this is just a law. We're going to have another round. Well, let's assume this war ends and everybody's saying, we're going to have another round. there's not been catastrophic damage on Saudi, Qatar, the UAE, you name it.

There has not been a lot of damage, but nothing approximating catastrophic damage. But you have this cold peace where there's always the possibility a new war will start. What's that going to do for the Gulf states? I believe it's going to have disastrous consequences, right? People are not going to want to go there. They're going to leave. People are not going to invest there. It's going to cause all sorts of problems.

And of course, you understand that the Iranians, you know, when you fight these wars, no matter what country you are, you learn what your strong suits are, what your weak suits are, where the levers are, where the levers are not. And I believe the Iranians will come out of this, as they did out of the 12-day war, understanding full well that the key is to have lots of ballistic missiles, to have lots of cruise missiles, to have lots of drones. Maybe you don't even need nuclear weapons. And you make it clear to the other side, right, that if they start this up again, you have a huge inventory of ballistic missiles and drones. And by the way, we've dug tunnels very deep in the ground and we have the

ability to keep the missiles in there to the last moment, maybe even fire those missiles from underground, and we will get you. And then you remind those Gulf states that it doesn't take many missiles or drones to finish off countries like Saudi Arabia, to really wreck them economically. Because, you know, you're not, just if we think about it here, we're not talking about, if you talk about Iran going after Saudi Arabia, this is not a military conflict. in the sense that you have two armies crashing into each other, or you have air-to-air battles or anything like that. You're talking about the Iranians hitting economic targets,

basically economic targets. I don't know if desalinization fits under economic. It does. And furthermore, as you said, hitting the desalinization targets is almost worse than hitting the oil refineries. Because if you don't have water, that's worse than not. having oil or gas. But anyway, the point is it's an easy set of targets, right? And then there's the Persian Gulf, right? You know, President Trump is now saying that he's going to send the U.S.

Navy into the Persian Gulf. I don't think that's going to work out very well. John, some have argued that this provocation of war would have been without congressional approval, which it wasn't. And to the extent that you laid it out earlier, that there could be boots on the ground on a more full-fledged basis, how do you think all these will affect the political scenario in the U.S., particularly in the context of the upcoming midterm elections? And to what extent do you think this could lead up to some sort of a constitutional awakening in the U.S.? Let me just say first of all that I made the point before that President Trump is a unilateralist, and he doesn't respect international law, doesn't respect international institutions. He also doesn't respect domestic law or domestic institutions.

As far as him, Congress is a minor irritant. The idea that he would ask permission from Congress to go to war against Iran is unthinkable. As I said before, he's a unilateralist. He's a unilateralist like we've never seen before. And his unilateralism applies at the international level and the domestic level. And you also want to remember he has three more years in office. and the question is, what's he going to do over those three years? Now, a lot of people argue that as a result of the Iran war, the fact that it's not going well,

and that he had very low poll ratings, remarkably low poll ratings even before the Iran war. If the Iran War continues to go south, as most people think that it will, it looks like the Democrats will capture both the House and the Senate in the fall. We don't know that for sure. I mean, predicting who wins elections is a really tricky business. I think most people think it's highly likely, maybe extremely likely, that the Democrats will take the House. The Senate's more iffy. One could argue if things get really bad that what will happen is that the Democrats will take

both the Senate and the House. And then he will be impeached, and this will cause huge problems. The question you want to ask yourself in that scenario is what is Trump likely to do? He's not even, come the time of the November elections, he's not even two years. He's not even really close to two years into his four-year term. and he's wounded, right? And he's a unilateralist, and he has little respect for the Constitution. How does this play itself out?

Do the Republicans who understand he's a lame duck and don't want to be associated join with the Democrats to check him, or do they continue to work with him? What do the courts do? What does he do if the courts make rulings against him? it's almost impossible to say. But we do know that he is not someone who respects our precious institutions. Liberal democracy means little to him. He wants to be an autocrat.

He doesn't care about preserving the Constitution. So I think if he gets into trouble, as I think most people expect will be the case, that doesn't mean he'll be corralled or boxed in. He could respond by doubling down on his misbehavior. But if that doesn't happen, let's say he escapes. Let's say he has some sort of miraculous solution to the situation in Iran and the economy isn't that bad by November and he does okay and the only the Democrats only take the house. then he's not boxed in. And I think he'll be as dismissive of liberal democracy as ever.

And where we end up as a country at the end of his four-year term is a scary thought. I think all sorts of people who worry about the future of liberal democracy have good reason to do so. How will that impact the blob going forward? Well, in any country, at any period in time, the policymaking process is dominated by elites. There's no question about it. Whether you're talking about Indonesia, you're talking about the United States. And whether you're talking about the United States over time, whether Franklin D. Roosevelt or Andrew Jackson is the president, you know, you have elites who play the central role in running the country. It can't be any other way.

You can't have a vote with the entire country, a plebiscite every time a big issue comes up. So the elites have a great deal of power. We all know that. But what I think most people believe is that the elites, they take care of themselves, but they also pay a lot of attention to the needs of the by. body politic of the entire society. These are not completely selfish elites. They care about the welfare of the nation. And the reason that the nation, the body populace, tolerates an elite and sometimes as enthusiastic about having an elite is because they think the elite is going to take care of them.

and before the Epstein files were revealed, there was a growing belief that the elites in the United States, and elites all around the world, didn't care very much about what was going on inside the United States. And that they were getting rich, the elites were getting rich at the expense of the body populace, right? And the elites were,

acting according to a set of laws that were different than the laws that the average person had to obey. And in a very important way, people were beginning to think that the laws, the rules, don't apply to the elites. And furthermore, we were beginning to get the sense, this is again before the Epstein files, that this elite was transnational in nature. right. It was what Sam Huntington called Davos Man, right? You had these elites who were more closely allied with elites in other countries than they were with their own people. And we didn't have a lot of evidence of that, but people had a powerful intuition that that was the case. Then come the Epstein files. And all you have to do is space.

And an hour or two looking at the Epstein files and the average person understands very quickly that his or her worst nightmares are true. That if you look at the governing elite in the United States, it operates according to its own roles. It's a very tight-knit network. And these people are constantly backscratching each other. They're taking care of each other. They're incredibly wealthy. And they really don't care that much about the average American. And furthermore, you see that it is a transnational elite.

I mean, Jeffrey Epstein was not somebody whose influence was confined to the United States. You see this with Prince Andrew. Right. Peter Mandelson, Gislane Maxwell. These are three Brits. who are very close to Jeffrey Epstein. In fact, Maxwell was his right-hand partner in this whole enterprise. And so what this does is it robs the American political system,

and I believe not only the American political system, other political systems as well, especially in Europe, of legitimacy. It's very important for these systems to work, for people down below to believe that your leaders, the elites, care about you, and they're doing everything they can to promote your interests and protect the welfare of the entire country. And for the vast majority of Americans, they believe beforehand that this wasn't the case. They didn't have a lot of evidence, but they now have the evidence. And then just to take this one step further, there is the pedophilia, right?

I mean, for most people, this is an unpardonable crime. I mean, the idea that these men were effectively raping underage girls, it's just unthinkable. And we don't have the full story here, right? And this is another part of the whole story. We only get half the documents. And you know the half that we got, which was heavily redacted, the half that we got only contains the least, or it contains the least damaging information on the elite. The other half surely has much more damning evidence in it, which is why they won't give it to us. Right.

And what we've seen is absolutely horrible. So you could imagine what it will look like if everything is put out in the public. domain, right? And people understand this. So you have this situation, just to go back to the pedophilia issue, where lots of people are involved in that. We don't know exactly who, because they're trying to hide that as much as they can. But it's quite clear that it was not just Jeffrey Epstein and one or two friends who were involved in this heinous crime. There are lots of people involved. And furthermore, there were lots of other people. And furthermore, there were lots of other who were not directly involved, who surely knew about it. But they kept quiet, and they kept quiet

because it served their own selfish interests. They were not concerned with the collective good. And when you begin to go down that road, you erode the legitimacy of the entire system. So you marry the Epstein business with Trump's contempt for the Constitution, Trump's contempt for the rule of law, Trump's contempt for the courts, Trump's contempt for Congress, and you see we're in big trouble. His political ascension would have been on the back of the mega base

or mega narrative. One could assume that the mega base now is pretty disillusioned with the fact that there has been a misallocation of resource. resources being allocated more for the interest of those outside America. What's likely to happen to the Maga Base and how are they likely to shape or reshape the political narrative in the U.S. going forward? Well, it's very clear that there has been a significant split in the Maga Base. At a more general level, it has to do with the fact that he promised that he was going to not get involved in forever wars, that he was not going to be. be worried that much about foreign policy and he was going to concentrate on America and rebuilding

America. This is the America first agenda. And furthermore, with regard to Israel, there was an understanding that, you know, he would be pursuing a foreign policy that was independent of Israel, be an America first policy, not an Israel first policy. And what's happened is, he's pursued in Israel First policy and he has also been more willing to use military force abroad than any of his predecessors. Previous to the Iran, he had used it with a light touch. As I said about the 12-day war against Iran last year, it was a one-day attack and we referred to it as won and done. And with regard to Venezuela, he just swooped in, kidnapped Maduro, and that was the end of the use of military force. So he's been careful up to Iran not to get involved in a protracted

military conflict. But nevertheless, he has used military force quite liberally, number one, and number two, it is manifestly clear to almost everybody that the United States, is joined at the hip with Israel, and it's Israel that's in the driver's seat. And that it's not an America first foreign policy he is pursuing, but in Israel-first foreign policy. And that has caused huge problems in his base. And the most prominent example of this today is Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson is a huge supporter of President Trump. He continues to be.

But Tucker Carlson makes it unequivocally clear that he's had enough of this Israel-first foreign policy, and that he, Tucker Carlson, believes Israel is forcing us to pursue policies that are not in the American national interest. And this is causing a fracture. This is causing a fracture in the Maga-Base. And you want to remember, in addition to Tucker Carlson before he was assassinated, Charlie Kirk was moving in exactly that direction. and Charlie Kirk had huge influence, obviously, with the MAGA Base. So when you think about Charlie Kirk, you think about Tucker Carlson.

And then you think about people like Nick Fuentes as well. These people all have huge followings. This is a big problem for Trump and for the Republicans. And this fracturing of the MAGA Base accounts in part for Trump's continuing slide in the polls. right the democrats were opposed to trump all along it's nothing that's going to change there but it's independence number one and number two people in the magabase who are abandoning him that cause him big problems moving forward uh so he has real problems here and if you hypothesize a situation which is what we were effectively doing where this iran war it just gets worse and worse for the

United States, that means that it's a bigger and bigger problem for Donald Trump, and it causes him more and more problems with his magabase. To what extent would it be more difficult for the elite class to transnationalize any particular narrative in a much more multipolar world? Intuitively, one would think that it would have been much more possible in a much more unipolar world. to transnationalize a narrative. Intuitively, it just seems that it's going to be a bit more difficult in a much more multipolar world. Is that the right line of thinking? Yeah, I never thought of that, but I think you're exactly right.

I think that's exactly right. In a unipolar world where the United States is obviously the unipole, and we're trying to basically dominate the world, spread our own ideology, and a la Frank Fukuyam, the end of history, we think we have the wind at our back, that liberal democracy is spreading all over the planet. To then talk about a transnational elite is easy to do, right? Because you want to understand, when you're talking about a transnational elite, you're countering you're in odds with good old-fashioned nationalism, right? Because nationalism is a particularistic ideology.

transnational is universal. And we were purveying this universal liberal ideology during the Cold War. And as you say, I again, never thought about this. I think during unipolarity, you could get away with Davos Man. But once you go to multipolarity, you've got two other great powers, two other nation states, right? Nationalism is back in fashion. liberalism is out of fashion by the way right the number of liberal states has been going down since i think roughly 2006 right liberalism as a global phenomenon is in trouble today there's no question about that

so liberalism is on its back foot right and nationalism has come racing to the floor and again nationalism is particularistic you're in this multipolar world it's a russian nation state it's a Chinese nation state and just to go to Iran right Iranian nationalism when you kill the Ayatollah and you begin to punish the people there's a rally around the flag effect that's nationalism right so I think in a multipolar world to have a transnational elite is much more difficult I think there's no question about that and by the way I think you see that happening in Europe with people like Victor Orban and others who don't like that transnational element of the European Union.

Orban, these guys are nationalist par excellence. And they do not like the idea that you have this transnational elite in Brussels. And I think the power of the nationalists will only grow with time in Europe. John, you've been kind with time. I want to end the discussion on Ukraine. Is there still likely to be a frozen conflict? Yes. I think there's no way you can get a meaningful peace agreement

because Russia has a series of unalterable demands that Ukraine and Europe categorically reject. So there's no bargaining space in between to cut a deal that represents a negotiated peace settlement. Now, what exactly am I saying? The Russians have three main goals. One is Ukraine cannot be a NATO. That's to be a genuinely neutral state, genuinely neutral state. So that means it can't be a NATO.

But it also means it can't have a security guarantee, an article, what we call an Article 5 security guarantee from the United States or any European countries, right? So it has to be neutral. Number two, it has to disarm. It has to disarm to the point where it's not a military threat to Russia, which means it really can't protect itself. And number three, Ukraine has to recognize, Europe has to recognize, the United States has to recognize Russia's annexation, not only of Crimea, but those four or Oblos in eastern Ukraine that the Russians have now formally annexed. If you're a Ukrainian, you're not going to accept the annexation of about 25% of your territory.

You're not going to do that. Are you going to accept disarmament to the point where you have very little military capability? At the same time, you're going to issue a security guarantee. So you're going to have no security guarantee from the United States. And you're going to have no military capability of your own to defend yourself. You're going to accept that. And at the same time, you're going to give up 20, 25% of your territory to the Russians. They're not going to do that.

They've made it unequivocally clear that they're not going to do that. So they won't compromise. The Russians won't compromise. Because from the Russian point of view, what happened in Ukraine is an existential threat. These demands, you know, are frozen, right? There's no way we're changing. And they've been making these demands for years, right? No movement whatsoever.

And there's been no movement on the Ukrainian-slash-European side. So the end result will be that this war will be settled on the battlefield. And at some point, you'll get an armistice like he did in Korea in 1953. You'll get some sort of frozen conflict. And as we were talking about, in the Iranian case, when you get these frozen conflicts, there's always the danger that they'll flare up again. So I think the situation in Ukraine looks very grim. What would incentivize the Europeans and the Americans to accept a frozen conflict? Nothing will incentivize them.

You'll just get a frozen conflict because it at some point the Ukrainians will. won't be capable of continuing the war. Or we will reach the point where we say both the Europeans and the Americans that it doesn't make sense to continue this war. You could have an election in France or Britain that puts in power someone who doesn't want to support the Ukrainians anymore. Could be that Donald Trump, who's pressed in Iran, pressed in East Asia, says, you know, enough is enough, we just can't keep giving them ornaments.

So that could happen. I think the more likely scenario is that over the course of this coming year, 2026, once the winter ends, that the Russians will go on the offensive, and they will score some stunning victories against Ukrainians. And at some point, there'll be a frozen conflict. But the problem is that you're not going to get any kind of genuine peace agreement. That's what you really need here. I think that if you think about it, the April 8th,

excuse me, the April 2008 decision to bring Ukraine into NATO and then to double down at every point along the way up to now, in large part, was one of the most disastrous mistakes the United States has ever made. This was in Bucharest. This is right. It was the NATO summit, the annual NATO summit in April 2008. It was in Bucharest. And at the end of that summit, NATO issued a statement that said both Georgia and Ukraine would become part of NATO. And by the way, a war then broke out in Georgia in August of 2008 on this very issue.

But anyway, back to Ukraine, Putin made it unequivocally clear in April 2008 after he heard the decision. that this was categorically unacceptable to the Russians and that they would destroy Ukraine before they would let this happen, right? This is in April 2008. We refused to back off. The conflict breaks out. There's no conflict until February of 2014, February 2014. That's when the conflict breaks out. You have this coup in Ukraine that's supported by the United States, right? That's when the Russians take Crimea and the civil war breaks out in eastern Ukraine. That's 2014. So we, the United States, see trouble. It's the Obama administration. Do we back off? Do we try to accommodate the Russians? Do we take into account their interests? No, we double down. And the end result is eight years later.

Remember, 2014 is when the crisis breaks out. 2008's the decision. 2014 is when the crisis breaks out. And then 2022, eight years later, February 2020, is when the war breaks out. And what we're doing, the United States, under different presidents, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, to Donald Trump, to Joe Biden, is doubling down. And the end result is that we're in this disastrous war. And it all goes back to 2008. If we had not decided to do this, Ukraine, I believe, would be intact today inside, inside its original borders. The borders that were created after the Soviet Union fell apart.

This is a remarkably foolish decision. And by the way, this cannot be emphasized enough. At Bucharest, go back to April 2008, Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy, right, said, this is remarkably foolish. They were there. Sarkozy was the French leader. Merkel was the German leader. They were there at the NATO summit in April 2008 in Bucharest. They said, don't do this. It's a red line. Yeah. And Merkel later said that the reason I so strongly opposed NATO expansion into Ukraine was because I understood, these are her words. I understood that Putin would interpret it as a declaration. of war. Just think about that. But of course, the problem that Merkel and Sarkozy faced is that they were up against the United States of America. And the United States of America is incredibly powerful. And when push comes to shove, the Europeans almost always cave into the United States.

They serve as our lap dogs. This is a huge mistake on their part. Merkel and Sarkozy understood. And by the way, in the 1990s, many people in the United States understood that NATO expansion would be a disaster, including George Kennan, Bill Perry, who was Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton when the decision was made. Lots of people understood this would lead to disaster, and everybody understood that Ukraine would be a bridge too far in terms of, I'm talking, everybody in the opposition. But they were rolled over, and we just kept doubling down. And then in 2022, we got a war. And we thought we were going to win that war. You know, talk about Iran. We thought we'd go in there.

We'd win a quick and decisive victory. Bring the Russians to their knees with economic sanctions. Dot, dot, dot. And that one did not work out very well. Final question. What would be your advice for somebody studying at the university who's trying to be a diplomat? I think that it's very important to be intellectually curious in the extreme. You want to focus on lots of.

of different subjects. You want a lot of, we want to know a lot about religion, you want to know a lot about politics, you want to know a lot about economics. Because in the final analysis, everything fits together. You know, when I was young, even now, I never was very religious. I was not religious at all. Religion just bored me. I could never get interested in religion. It wasn't a conscious decision. I just hardwired that way. But I really wish that I could go to the divinity school and get a PhD in religion and learn all about religion, right? Not so I can become practicing X or a practicing Y, just because it's so important to understand, you know, she is versus Sunnis, Catholics versus Protestants, the various Protestant sex, how Judaism breaks down into various

constituencies and so forth and so on, how they all relate to each other, what the similarities are, what the differences are. So I think that you, want to be intellectually curious in the extreme. Second, you want to form your own opinions. You want to listen carefully to other people. A lot of young people are not good listeners because they think they're geniuses. And certainly a lot of people my age fit in that category as well. They think they have truth. You always want to listen to what other people say, especially those people who you disagree with. If somebody thinks you're wrong, you want to hear why they think you're wrong, and you want to have a civil conversation. So I think you want to be intellectually curious,

and you want to listen to what other people have to say. But of course, you want to be an independent variable. You want to come up with your own views on how the world works. It's very important to do that. It's also very important to train yourself to be a truth teller. I think if you're a diplomat you're going to be called on to give your opinion on particular issues. And in some cases, there's going to be a powerful set of incentives for you to tell the person who's asking you the question what he or she wants to hear. And if you disagree, I think you want to respectfully tell that person that you disagree. You think the person's wrong. And I think if you're here at the University of Chicago and you're getting an education and you take a class from me and I say

something about China that you think is dead wrong, you want to let me know, again, in a respectful way, that you think I'm dead wrong. You want to be independent. You want to form your own opinions and you want to let people know exactly what your opinions are. Some times you have to do it in a more diplomatic way than others, but you want to be what I call a truth teller. And then my final point is that it's very important to understand that theory is God. And we have to have theories in our head about how the world works. That's how you make sense of the world, whether you're focusing on economics or the religious aspect of international politics or the military aspect or how they all fit together.

You need theories in your head. And you want to be self-conscious about that fact. You want to understand we live in a remarkably complicated world. It's very hard to make sense of that world. You know, we're blind a lot of the time. And the way we make sense of that world is with theories, right? And, you know, in IR, you can be a realist theorist. You can be a liberal theorist, and you can be of this kind of liberal theorist or that kind of liberal theorist or what have you.

But you just want to have theories. in your head that explain how the world works. And again, you know, I said at the start, you want to be intellectually curious. You want to constantly be thinking about all sorts of subjects. But what you want to be doing is forming theories in your head that help you think intelligently about those issues that you're studying. But those would be my words of advice. Words of wisdom.

Words of wisdom. And I only wish I was 24 or 18 starting all over again. I'm catching up with you. And knew what I now know. John, as always. Thank you so much. Thank you, Gita, for having me. It's a pleasure talking to you.

I could have gone on for another two hours. I know, it's been two hours. Friends, that was Professor John McIracher. Thank you.