Judging Freedom - PROF. John Mearsheimer : Can Trump Bluff Iran Into Surrender?

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

PROF. John Mearsheimer : Can Trump Bluff Iran Into Surrender?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? Jefferson was right? What if that government is best which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish

fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Tuesday, October 13, 2006. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. I want to talk to you about whether you think Donald Trump can bluff his way into causing Iran to surrender. But before we get there, a few questions about the so-called deal between Russia and the United States, which according to Trump has two parts. to it. Nothing in writing, of course, and no acknowledgement by the Kremlin, but according to President Trump, it is a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine for attacking the other side's energy storage

or refinement facilities. And it is a lifting, a partial lifting of sanctions whereby American big oil can buy diesel fuel from Russia, Russian. big oil. We'll start with however you want to look at it. Is this a real deal, or is this just another one of Trump's confabulations? Well, let's talk first about the ceasefire and then talk about the deal that involves diesel fuel. There's no ceasefire.

Trump announced that there was a ceasefire. Zelensky made it clear that he hadn't heard about the ceasefire, and he wasn't going to adhere to it anyway. And the Russians, of course, would be fools to agree to the ceasefire. One of their real ace cards is the ability to destroy Ukrainian energy facilities. And they'll go to great lengths to do that over the course of this coming winter. So neither the Russians nor the Ukrainians have any interest in this purported ceasefire. With regard to the diesel, I mean, first of all, Trump likes to argue that the problem regarding the lack of diesel fuel in the international economy is due to Ukrainian attacks on Russian

energy installations. But this is not true. The principal cause of the diesel problem is the Iran war. And Trump is just looking for an excuse to blame. Zelensky and the Ukrainians because he doesn't want to take responsibility for the diesel crisis because he started the Iran War. Now, there's no question that there's going to be more diesel fuel out on global markets. But as almost every analyst says, this is not going to affect the price of diesel fuel in any meaningful way. It's not going to solve the underlying problem,

which is related to the Iran War, not to the Ukraine War. And furthermore, there's no question that Putin will benefit somewhat economically from selling diesel fuel in global markets. But the fact is that the Russian economy was not in trouble anyway. It's not like Putin was desperate and he's finally being rescued by his good friend Donald Trump. Putin was doing quite well and economically, and Russia would have continued to do well with or without this deal. So I think it just doesn't matter in the final analysis. Didn't Trump just sign into law the Lindsay Graham Act, which prohibits the United, which makes sanctions against Russia the law of the land that only Congress can undo? Didn't he just sign this into law about two weeks ago?

But the implication of your question is he takes the law seriously. And as we both know, the law doesn't mean anything to him. It's really quite remarkable, the extent to which he just ignores the law when he thinks it's in his interest. And how about his rather startling demand that Zelensky stepped down? Do you think that was part of the so-called deal? deal for diesel with Vladimir Putin? I mean, Vladimir Putin's got to be laughing all the way to the bank. Yeah, I think that that's true.

I have not seen any evidence since this war started that the Russians were interested in getting rid of Zelensky. They've made no attempts to assassinate him. And I would think from a Russian point of view, you would want to keep Zelensky in power because Zelensky is a disaster when it comes to waging this war in a way that is in Ukraine's interest. So I don't think that the Russians demanded that Zelensky be pushed off the throne as part of the deal.

And I think with regard to Trump, as you well know, Trump has had a contentious relationship with Zelensky from the beginning. He really loz Zelensky. And I think at this point in time, he's convinced him, that Zelensky is causing him all sorts of political problems because it is these Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure that is damaging the international economy and making it so difficult for the Republicans to do well in the upcoming midterm elections. We know this is all nonsense, but I believe that Trump thinks that's true. And I think that he therefore lashed out at Zelensky and said that Ukraine,

needed a new leader just because he's so frustrated with Zelensky. But isn't the CIA and MI6 helping Ukraine aim, fire, locate targets and hit targets in Russia? And couldn't Trump, if he controls the CIA, maybe that's a big if, stop that with a phone call? Well, I think he could stop it and he has not stopped it. When you and I were in Russia together, it seemed to me when you talk to the Russians about how they think about the United States as an adversary, they have two different views. One is how they think about Trump and number two, how they think about the deep state. I think that they understand, and here I'm talking about the Russians, that the deep state is a mortal enemy, that the CIA and the U.S. military is doing everything it can to help. the Ukrainians wage war against Russia. But Trump is a different matter. I think the Russians

understand that Trump wants to have good relations with Russia, and Trump wants to have good relations with Putin. I think it's quite clear that Trump actually likes Putin. So the Russians view Trump very differently than they view the deep state, but they're aware, the Russians were aware that Trump is a stumble bomb. not only can he not wage diplomacy in an effective way, but he also can't control the CIA. He can't control the deep state. So the Russians are well aware that the deep state marches on in its conflict against Russia, that the deep state remains committed to wrecking Russia as much as it can, even though Trump is heading in a different direction.

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promo code Freedom at the checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to join deleteme.com slash freedom and enter code freedom at checkout. That's join delete me.com slash freedom. Code freedom. I wonder if Trump understands that, what the deep state is doing. Theoretically, everybody in the deep state, except for the ones in the Federal Reserve, work for him. But it's almost as if he's powerless to stop them.

Well, my guess is that Trump understands in a certain sense what's going on. But it seems to me that Trump is a person who thinks he is all powerful. Trump is not somebody who believes that others can really thwart what he wants to do. He is the supreme leader. And therefore, I don't think he really takes the threat from the deep state that seriously. He certainly did in his first term. He understood certainly as a result of Russia gate what the deep state could do to him. But I think he believes that this time around, in his second term, he's in

control, he can deal with the deep state. And therefore, I don't think he fully understands just how much the deep state is thwarting his efforts to shut down the Ukraine war. Is the Israel lobby in America part of the deep state? Yeah, I think there's no question about that. There's all sorts of people who are inside the administration, who are inside our institutions, who are deeply committed to Israel. If you just sort of look around at the various institutions inside our government and their government, you'll see people who fit squarely in the Israel lobby in positions of power. This is why we have this disjuncture between the public discourse in the United States

about Israel and our policy toward Israel. no question that in the public discourse, there is a huge amount of criticism of Israel and all sorts of people want the United States to get tough with the Israelis. But our policy is exactly the opposite. We continue to support Israel unconditionally. And I would argue that President Trump clearly fits in that category. One could argue that he, even more so than Joe Biden, supports Israel unconditionally. So we have this policy that, uh, that, is in a fundamental way, at odds with public opinion. Did you see this piece? I'm going to guess you did in the Wall Street Journal about this gentleman David Milstein, the senior advisor to Mike Huckabee,

who apparently has been whitewashing reports making their way back to Washington so that the State Department does not have a true picture of what's going on in the West Bank. Yeah, I read the story, and I listened to Max Blumenthal's excellent discussion of Bill Steen and what's going on with him on your show last week. And all I can say is this is absolutely disgraceful. The idea that we have people in positions of power who have, in some cases, a dual loyalty, but in other case, our Israel firsters, and this is certainly the case with Milstein, should be unacceptable to any president. It should be unacceptable to the members of Congress. This is a

disgraceful situation. People in positions of power in the United States government who deal with foreign policy should be American firsters, period. End of story. They should not have a dual loyalty. No state in its right mind would want people in positions of power who have loyalty of any sort to a foreign country, especially a foreign country like Israel that is so important for our foreign policy. This is not like Botswana or some country that is of little significance for U.S. foreign policy. Israel matters enormously. And given that Israel matters enormously, you want people making. decisions in the United States who only care about the American national interest. This is not to say that they have to be hostile to Israel. When Israel does things that are in the American national interest,

the United States should support Israel. But the point is, you don't want people who work as Israel's lawyers in important positions. Because in certain cases, when the United States' interests clash with Israel's interest, there's a good chance that they are going to side with Israel, not with the United States. What country would want policymakers who think like that in positions of power? Well, you and I have joked that Mike Huckabee is the Israeli ambassador to the United States, but it is no joke because what you are bemoaning, senior American officials with divided loyalty, and they tip the scales in favor of the other country, is actually happening right under our noses, according to this piece on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

And Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump and Marco Rubio have done nothing about it. Yes, but this is nothing new. This sort of thing has happened in the past. If you go back to the Clinton administration, Aaron David Miller and Dennis Ross were close advisors to Bill Clinton, inside the government in the negotiations with the Palestinians on trying to come up with some sort of settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, hopefully get a two-state solution. And Aaron David Miller very famously said that we tended to serve as Israel's lawyers. This is what he said.

Just think about this. You had two very prominent and very influential individuals working with Bill Clinton, who were effectively Israel's lawyers. You would think that they would have been America's lawyers, period. End of the story. But they were not. And this is a process that you see it play time after time. I remember Anthony Blinken arriving in Tel Aviv shortly after October 7, 2023.

He didn't say, I come to you as the chief diplomat. out of the United States and said, I come to you as a Jew, a wounded, sorrowful Jew. Yeah, I mean, this kind of behavior makes no sense at all. And by the way, in the end, people like Blinken are going to cause anti-Semitism, not serve as an antidote to anti-Semitism. This makes no sense at all to have people in positions of power who have a dual. loyalty. And the problem here is just to go back to the public discourse, what's happening here is more and more people understand exactly what's going on. They're watching what Huckabee is doing.

They read the New York Times story and they read what Milstein is doing. And for the average American, this is unacceptable. And therefore, you have this situation taking place inside the broader public that creates a deeply hostile attitude toward Israel. And of course, it's at odds with what our actual policy is. Just to go back to so-called the ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, which obviously doesn't exist and would never have been accepted by the Russians, no matter what Trump has said this morning, our time, Ukraine strikes Yandex.

Yandex is like Russia's Google. This is its huge, huge tech giant. No one was injured in a center east of the capital, but many of its services. There it is. Wow. Wow. Many of its services are unavailable to users.

I don't know if this happened on your phone, but on my phone when we were there, a lot of my communications were transferred to and carried by Yandex, which as I said, is Russia's Google. This is not that far from Moscow, and you can see the tremendous plumes of smoke and fires caused on this totally civilian site.

I don't think this is going to go well in the Kremlin for the last. Vladimir Zelensky. Yeah, I agree completely. I was going to say that before you just stated those comments. The question you want to ask yourself is, what are the Russians going to do in response to these attacks, which are being stepped up and which are effective? There's just no question about it.

All you have to do is look at that picture. Zelensky and company are having significant success at targeting important sites inside of Russia. And the fact is that we are helping the Ukrainians, we meaning the United States and the West, improve their drone capability and improve their ability to hit targets inside of Russia. So what will the Russians do? What the Russians are going to do here is they're going to increase the scope and the intensity of their attacks as well. and this war is just going to escalate. And the end result is that Ukraine is going to be devastated.

The Russians are being incentivized to do more and more to destroy Ukraine. And the more damage the Russians, the Ukrainians do to the Russians, the more damage the Russians will do to the Ukrainians. And the Russians have a much greater ability to damage Ukraine than the Ukrainians have to damage Russia. So this story is not going to end up well for the Ukrainians. What people in the West have not understood from the beginning is that you cannot defeat Russia in this war. You cannot back Russia into a corner and get Russia to surrender. This is an existential threat from the Russians' point of view. And the Russians will end up doing anything they have to do, anything they can do to win this war.

And this is why you have people like Sergei Karagunov who are saying at some point we're probably going to have to use nuclear weapons against targets in the West. We're going to have to go that far to bring an end to all of this. So all I would say to people who feel good about watching this video who think that this is wonderful that the Ukrainians are able to hit the Russians in such effective ways, you want to ask yourself, what is the end game here? How does this all end happily for the Ukrainians? And I find it hard to tell a happy story. I think that the worst the Ukrainian attacks become, the worst the Russian attacks will become. And Ukraine is going to end up being devastated. I want to get to Ansarala and Saudi Arabia in a minute.

But Chris, can you put that B-roll up again of the smoke and the flames at Yandex? were the missiles that and drones that hit Yandex guided by the United States of America. Central Intelligence Agency, Professor Mirosheimer. We don't know, but it's probable. Oh, I think it's almost for certain. The Ukrainians would be lost without Western intelligence. And when you talk about Western intelligence, you're talking about MI6 and the CIA. And it's hard to believe that the CIA and the United States are not involved in the United States.

this. All the evidence is that we've been deeply involved from the very beginning. The Ukrainians, again, couldn't do this without help from the CIA and from MI6. This gets back to my earlier point that the Russians fully understand that the deep state inside of the United States is a mortal enemy, different than Donald Trump. But again, Donald Trump can't control the CIA. So the Russians fully understand that they are at war with the West to include the United States as well as the Ukrainians. How badly is Ansarala damaging Saudi Arabia? And why, in your view, Professor Mir Shamir is the United States not coming to the aid of its so-called ally? Well, you want to think about where Saudi Arabia is today. Up until the

the war with the Houthis began in a serious way, it looked like Saudi Arabia's only mortal enemy was Iran. Now, the Iranian threat has not gone away, but it's quite clear that the Iranian threat, at this point in time anyway, pales in comparison to the threat from the Houthis. Furthermore, as Alastair Crook and Chas Freeman have made clear on your show, MBS, who heads up Saudi Arabia, of course, faces a serious internal threat. There is a danger that he might be overthrown. So if you think about Saudi Arabia's situation today, they face a triple threat, a threat from Iran, a threat from Iran, a threat from the Houthis and an internal threat. This is really a truly dangerous situation for MBS and his lieutenants inside of Saudi Arabia. Then we have to ask the question, who's going to help the Saudis deal with all these threats, especially the Houthis at this point in time.

Well, Donald Trump has refused to help the Houthis fight against He refused to help the Saudis fight against the Houthis. He did a terrible job of helping the Saudis defend themselves against the Iranians. And therefore, one has to ask the question, who can the Saudis turn to for help in the face of this triple threat? Now you might say this Mecca Alliance for Defense that was signed on August 7th, this was the alliance between Pakistan, Turkey, and the Saudis. And the alliance was actually invoked on October 5th, just a few days ago. The Pakistanis and the Turks said that they would help

the Saudis against the Houthis. But if you look at what the Pakistanis and the Turks are doing, they're doing very little to help the Saudis. There are 8,000 troops from Pakistan inside of Saudi Arabia, but they are helping with air defense and advising and so forth and so on. But the Saudis are not going to get any help in the ground war or in the air war against the Houthis. the Pakistanis and the Turks have made it clear they are not committing ground forces to the fight, and they've made it clear that they're not going to use their air forces for offensive purposes. So if you think about it, the Saudis are getting remarkably little help from the Mecca alliance, and they're getting remarkably little help from the United States.

And the situation has gotten so bad for the Saudis that the Israelis, have now said that they'd like to help the Saudis. And the Saudis, of course, have said no. So the Saudis are pretty much out there by themselves, fighting against the Houthis, worrying about another dust-up with Iran, and having to deal with significant internal problems. So the Saudis are deeply screwed.

And what are they doing in response? They're escalating. I don't understand what they're thinking here. They believe that they can up the ante against the Houthis and beat the Houthis. There is no evidence of this. Remember, they fought a war between 2015 and 2022. And the Saudis then, in this seven-year war with significant assistance from the United States, could not beat the Houthis.

They started things up again this time on July 13th when they attacked the airport, it in Sana. And this has all gone south since that date. There's no evidence that the Saudis are defeating the Houthis. In fact, all the evidence is that the Houthis are defeating the Saudis. And what are the Saudis doing? They're up in the Ante. And they have no assistance of any significance from the United States, from the Pakistanis, from the Turks. Again, this is a disastrous situation. I don't know what the Saudis are thinking. What is Trump's strategy for bringing the war in Iran to an end? Do you know?

Well, as I've argued, throughout the month of September, I think they were trying to create, they meaning the Trump people, were trying to create the impression that the Iranians were on the ropes, that we were doing devastating damage to their economy. We were going to push them off the cliff. And at the same time, we were getting so much oil through the Strait of Hormuz that we were basically back to the situation that existed on February 27th. And in addition to the fact that the Iranians were in so much trouble economically, and we were not, we were moving more military forces to the Gulf or to the Gulf region. And when the election was over in early November, we were then going to hammer the Iranians with all this additional military force that we had moved into the region. And, of course, it would be that additional military force on top of the military force that was already there.

This campaign, which was being trumpeted in places like the Wall Street Journal and other outlets, that support the administration's policy on Iran, hookline, and sinker, looked at a rhetorical level like it was going to be quite effective. But if you looked carefully at what was going on, and if you look carefully at what's going on now, you see that this was just a rhetorical campaign. Let's just talk about the economy for a second. It's quite clear that over the past week, because of what the Houthis are doing to the Saudis and because of what the Iranians are doing in terms of launching attacks inside the Persian Gulf, inside the Strait of Hormuz,

and inside the Gulf of Haman, that if anything, we have significantly slowed down the flow of oil that's coming out of the Persian Gulf. And furthermore, in terms of inflicting damage on the Iranian economy, There's no question we are inflicting serious damage on the Iranian economy. But there's no evidence whatsoever that the Iranians are about to throw up their hands. And let me read you the lead headline in my Wall Street Journal this morning. It says Iran preps for more war amid Trump's threats.

It doesn't sound to me like the Iranians are throwing up their hands. And then with regard to bringing more military forces into the region, if you look carefully at the numbers, the idea that we're going to now have three carriers in the region because we're bringing in the USS Teddy Roosevelt on top of the USS George Washington and the USS George H.W. Bush, those two carriers are reportedly already in the Gulf. We're bringing in the Teddy Roosevelt. We're therefore going to have three carriers there. there are not going to be three carriers there. If you look carefully, what's happening is the Teddy Roosevelt's being brought in to replace the Washington. And furthermore, the U.S. says George H.W. Bush has left the Gulf region and is in Thailand. So it's only going to be one carrier.

And in terms of ground troops, we're not going to have sufficient ground troops, not even close, to launch a ground attack into Iran. Just one final point on this. week, President Trump was talking about moving up the bombing campaign that he's been threatening from after the midterms to right now. This is what he was talking about last week. But if you read the fine print carefully in the various news stories talking about this air offensive, he was talking about a three-day bombing campaign. It was going to be an intense bombing campaign, but it was going to be a three-day campaign. You want to remember that we launched a 40-day bombing campaign at the start of this war between February 28th and August 8th,

and we had plentiful numbers of weapons back then. Today, we don't have plentiful numbers of weapons. And of course, this is why they're talking about a three-day war. But then you say to yourself, what are they going to do in a three-day war that they were unable to do in a 40-day war that's going to bring the Iranians to their knees. And unsurprisingly, President Trump decided not to launch this intense three-day bombing campaign because he and his advisors surely understood it wasn't going to work. So all of this is to say, if you look at the military dimension of what's going on here and you look at the economic dimension, we're basically screwed.

Here's President Trump on October 9th, which is last Friday. they demonstrating clearly he doesn't know what he's talking about. Cut number one, Chris. On your call with President Putin today, do you think the war in Iran ends first or the war in Ukraine? Well, we talked about more about the war in Ukraine, but he would like to be of help. I said, before you help me, I want to end your war. So we had a good talk. I've known him a long time. I think he was ready to make a deal a while ago. I think some people made it difficult for him to make a deal. but we talk more about Ukraine. But which war do you think ends first?

That's an interesting question. You know, coming from you, that's very interesting. Which war would end first? I don't know. Maybe they're on a similar timetable. I think Ukraine, militarily, they're defeated. You wouldn't know that by reading the fake news, but militarily, look there, Navy.

So they had 159 ships. Every ship is right now underwater. Typically, that's pretty good. What do you think, Jared, I mean? Was he talking about Ukraine or Iran? I think his brain accidentally switched from talking about Iran when he meant to be talking about Ukraine. He was talking about the Iranian Navy being at the bottom of the Jolly Roger when the subject was really Ukraine. Right.

All right. Thank you, Professor Mirosheimer. conversation, as always, I don't know that we move the ball. This is so deeply frustrating. What is he going to do? Start a war again for three days after election day, because if he resumes it now, the Republicans will lose even worse than he thinks they're going to lose if he doesn't. This is no way to run a railroad. He's out of options. That's the basic problem here. I mean, he has no solution to dealing with the Houthis, as he well knows. He has. no solution to shutting down the Iran war in a way where he can look like he won. He has no way of

shutting down the Ukraine war. He's failed in Gaza, this Board of Peace that he created is a joke. I mean, if you look at his foreign policy, it has been one loss after another. Well, and in the meantime, Americans are paying a fortune for food and fuel, and they care far more about that than his foreign policy machinations. Professor Mirosheimer, thank you, my dear friend. Always a pleasure. Look forward to seeing you again next week. You're welcome, Judge, and I, of course, look forward to being back next week. Thank you. Coming up, sure, if you're watching us live in 25 minutes at 10 o'clock this morning, Aaron Mote, at 2 this afternoon, Matthew Ho, at 3 this afternoon, she steamed over the proposed public execution in the military. Colonel Karen

Koukowski, Justice of Paul Tano for Judging Freedom.