Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : Iran’s Patient Strategy Undermines Trump

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Iran’s Patient Strategy Undermines TrumpSee 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, March 17th, 2006, St. Patrick's Day here in the West, and particularly in the U.S., and especially here in New York City. Professor John Mears Sharmer will be with us in just a moment on how the Iranian patience is undermining President Trump's impatience. But first, this. Don't you just cringe when people say, I told you so. Sorry, I told you, gold and silver would reap the benefits due to excessive money printing, inflation, and global uncertainty. It's here. It's happened. Gold and silver have reached all-time highs. Did you call Lear Capital and buy some?

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Silver. Call 800, 511, 4620, or go to Learjudsonap.com. Professor Mearshamer, welcome here, my dear friend. Before we get to your analysis of Iranian impatience, Iranian patience and Trump impatience, I want to note that this is the 20th anniversary of one of the most groundbreaking books in the post-World War II era, your book that you're wrote with Professor Stephen Walt, the Israel lobby and U.S. foreign policy, which really opened up the eyes to the entire world of the influence that the lobby has on American foreign policy. Today, it seems like a vice, doesn't it? Yes, it certainly does. I think that the lobby is as strong as ever today.

Even stronger than when you wrote this book and did all this research 25 years ago. Yeah, I think that it's important to emphasize that the lobby operates at two levels. One is that it goes to enormous lengths to influence public discourse about Israel and the U.S. Israeli relationship. And furthermore, it goes to great lengths to influence policy, actual government policy. In terms of actual government policy, it's clearly, as strong as ever. Where it's really lost out is in terms of the discourse. The discourse is fundamentally changed. Criticism of Israel, criticism of the U.S. relationship with Israel has become abundant. It was almost unimaginable that we would be where we are today in terms of the public discourse when

Steve and I wrote the article and then the book. So the discourse has changed. So the discourse has changed. And the big question that you have to ask yourself is how long can the policy of supporting Israel no matter what remain in place in a world where the discourse and public opinion has changed so drastically? Can overwhelming public opinion overcome the extraordinary wealth that the lobby has and the manner in which it has used that wealth, funding the political campaigns of two-thirds of the members of Congress. Well, we're going to see moving forward because there's been a sea change inside the Democratic Party, and exactly how it plays out remains to be seen.

I think it's hard to imagine someone like Rahm Emanuel or Josh Shapiro, who are both joined at the hip with Israel, becoming presidential or even vice-prose-exam. presidential candidates inside the Democratic Party. And you already see Gavin Newsom distancing himself from Israel and from APEC. And I think that will be the trend in the Democratic Party moving forward. And then if you look at what's happening in the Republican Party, I think that Tucker Carlson is the wave of the future in the Republican Party. So I think that in terms of actual policymakers that you're likely at some point in the future, hard to say where you're going to get a change.

I usually wouldn't run a clip of Marjorie Taylor Green with John Mearsheimer, but she does crystallize the problems in the Republican Party very nicely. This is from yesterday at Chris number 12. Why would an American president lead his political party? into the midterms, waging a full-scale major war, completely unprovoked on Iran, on behalf of Israel, and that's the way most Americans see it. They see this is for Israel, not for America. Why would an American president do that, which is forcing gas prices to hike right here going into spring break

where families are going to be driving out of town, going into summer, declaring and waging a major full-scale war that seems to have no end of the... site that is not de-escalating. It's escalating every single day. And it just doesn't make sense. We said on every single rally stage, no more foreign wars, no more regime change. It's time to put America first. And this is a complete betrayal of those campaign promises. To get into domestic politics with you, but she hits the nail on the head, doesn't she? Yeah, there's no question about it. I agree with everything she says. It's quite remarkable, but I often find myself in agreement with Marjorie these days when she's talking about American foreign policy.

And I would just note to you going back to what I said earlier, the fact that Marjorie Taylor Green is making those comments publicly today is really quite remarkable, given the context that existed when Steve and I wrote the article and the book back in the day. Right. Public discourse has just changed in fundamental ways. And by the way, your show is a clear reflection of that. The lobby can't be very happy with the way the war is going, can it? No, this is a disaster, and they surely know that. These are basically very smart people who are in charge of the major organizations,

and even the individuals who wield influence pretty much on their own, are very smart. And they have to know that we and the Israelis have gotten ourselves into a real whole and all we're really doing is digging here. And what's becoming clear is that this is a war for Israel, that we had no interest, no national interest in going to war against Iran. And there's just a ton of evidence that President Trump was dragged into this war by Israel and Israeli supporters inside the United States. And that's one part of the story. But the other part of the story is that the war is going very badly, and hardly anyone I know can see how we come out of this, winning. So if Israel is seen to be responsible for pulling us into a losing war, this will be, I think, disastrous for the

lobby. How would you even define winning a war like this? Winning the war, as I always say, is largely a function of whether or not you achieve the objectives that you set out before. the war started. People like to focus on battles and the assassination of this person or that person. But the key question is, what are your objectives? And are you likely to achieve those objectives? And almost everybody agrees it's almost impossible to see how we're going to get regime change, how we're going to get Iran to give up its nuclear enrichment capability, its ballistic missiles and its support for the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah. How do we do that?

Nobody could tell a story how we achieve those particular ends. And if you can't tell a story like that, you don't win the war. I just wonder what kind of advice the president got, if he's surrounded by yes men. There was that article. We talked about this in the Washington Post, very lengthy, very detailed, the classic venue for the CIA and military people to leak information, claiming that General Kane warned the president about these very things that are happening now, and the president wrote that, you know, it's not true, it's not true, it's not true, nobody believes him when he

says these things. But they obviously, the people around the president, grossly miscalculated the resilience of the Iranian people, the strength of the Iranian government, and the asymmetrical nature of the Iranian military response. I think you have to be very careful when you talk about the people around him. I actually think in this case, the deep state, for lack of a better phrase, told him what was going to happen. It's now quite clear from press reports that he was told, told that the Iranians would shut the Strait of Hormuz. He was told that. And he just ignored it because he thought we would win a quick and easy victory or a quick and decisive victory. So that would never become an issue. That meaning the shutting down of the strait. So he was getting, I believe,

good advice from General Kane. General Kane was telling him that we did not have a serious military option here, the National Intelligence Council was telling him the same. The problem is that Benjamin Netanyahu and a handful of people who are profoundly tied to Israel, and this would include Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff, had enormous influence on President Trump. And he listened to Netanyahu, he listened to Kushner, he listened to Whitkoff, and he ignored the deep state here. And we went into this war without clear objectives, without a clear plan. And when you do that, and you're dealing with an adversary that has a rich history of fighting against Israel and its ally, the United States, and has learned a lot over time about how to wage that war, you're

asking for serious trouble. And that's the situation we're in now. How is this war view in the Kremlin in your view, Professor Mirosheimer. Oh, I think this is wonderful news for the Kremlin. They're the big winner in this one. First of all, let's just talk about gas and oil prices. Because of this war, it's very important to understand that the administration has a vested interest in allowing as much oil as possible

to get out into the market. Most people don't understand this, but Iranian oil is being exported around the world in the same amounts that it was being exported around the world before the war started. You just want to understand that. Iranian oil is flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. It's the Gulf states that can't get the oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran can. And why is the administration allowing Iran to sell its oil around the world, send its oil to China and to India?

Because we need as much oil as possible out on the international market so that the price of oil doesn't go too high. Right. Same basic logic applies with regard to Russia. President Trump basically took most of the sanctions off of Russian oil because he wants Russian oil to flow. out into the international market so that prices stay as low as possible. So Russia is a huge winner in this regard. And Iran, as I pointed out, is in an excellent position to continue the war because it's not being economically throttled. Okay, back to Russia. Not only did they get relief from these sanctions, what this also means is that we don't have weaponry that we can give to Ukraine,

because we're using it up in the Middle East. So what's happening here is that the prospects that Ukraine will lose on the battlefield and that Russia will come out of this smelling like a rose is going up because of the Ukraine war. It's really quite remarkable what's happening here. And just one other point that I believe I've made before on the show is that you want to understand that we consider our principal goal to be containing China in East Asia. But what we're doing is weakening our forces in East Asia to deal with this war against Iran. We are not pivoting to Asia.

We are pivoting away from Asia because of this crazy war against Iran. Wow. I'm going to ask you about China in a minute. But basically what you have just described is economics 101. Now, wouldn't Scott Bessent or Secretary of the Treasury, or someone in Trump's orbit have explained this to him. You realize what's going to happen. You're going to add a lot of cash to Putin's treasury

because he's going to be selling more oil and he's going to be selling it at a higher price. And all your blue-collar mega guys, when they go to Philip, they were pickup trucks. I'm going to say, why am I paying $4 and $5 a gallon for gas? I didn't fight this war. That's nothing to do with me. The key point here,

that's essential to keep in mind is that President Trump thought that he was going to win a quick and decisive victory. He did not think that we would end up in a long war. And therefore, he didn't pay any attention to these problems. Remember what I said a few minutes ago about closing the Strait of Hormuz. He was told that the Iranians were likely to close the street. He ignored that warning because he thought we would finish them off. It would either be a decapitation strategy that brought Iran to its knees, or it would be shock and awe, or it would be a rapid punishment campaign. But this war in President Trump's mind and in Prime Minister Netanyahu's mind was not going to go on and on. It was going to be a quick and decisive victory. So all these issues that you're now raising were ignored or not even addressed.

Wow. How is the, well, the Financial Times reports that Russian oil companies are collecting $150 billion a day over what they had been collecting during the sanctions period as a result of the increase in the price of oil. That is extraordinary. I don't, I'm not, familiar with the Russian tax scheme, but somehow that has to be contributing marvelously to the Kremlin's treasury. I think that's 150 million. I'm not absolutely sure. Sounds more reasonable that it will be 150 million. It's still a lot of money, $150 million a day. There's absolutely no question about this. This war is a real boom for the Russians. It's really quite remarkable. I mean, if you begin to assess what's happened here. This war is catastrophic on so many dimensions. Just take the Europeans.

Our relations with the Europeans were terrible before the war, but now they're worse than ever. President Trump wanted the Europeans to send naval forces to help the Americans crash through the Strait of Hormuz, and they refused. And if you look at how the Germans have reacted, it's really quite remarkable how hard knows that they have been with us. The Minister of Defense said, this is not our war. Friedrich Mears, who is the German chancellor and usually dances to President Trump's tune, said that NATO is a defensive alliance. It's not an interventionist alliance. And as such, NATO has no role whatsoever to play in this war. Really, quite remarkable.

And it's true of countries all over the world who are our allies. They have refused to come into the fight, the Japanese, the South Koreans, the French, the British, and so forth and so on. And by the way, that's in large part because they understand this is a lost cause. They don't want to enter a war that is going to be lost by. us. Here's a very recent clip from President Trump, first lamenting that the United Kingdom won't help and then saying, ah, we don't need them.

It's typical Trumpian, Chris. If we haven't needed help, they won't be there for us. I've just known that for a long period of time. We have some that are really enthusiastic. They're coming already. This is a need. Need would be one of the big boys. If we need, they're might.

mine boats or if we need anything, any piece of apparatus that they may have because of a situation that they have, they should be jumping to help us. We want them to come and help us with the straight. My attitude is we don't need anybody. We're the strongest nation in the world. We have the strongest military by far in the world. We don't need them. Where is he on this? I guess maybe he's lamenting the inevitable that here, Stormer has basically said to him, this is Israel's war. It's not ours. Well, the problem is he's desperate here, right? He knows he has to open the strait and that he has to get oil from the Gulf states flowing back into the international oil market. He just knows he has to do that,

but he has no way of opening the straight. You want to remember, the United States Navy is by far, and I'm choosing my words carefully here. It is by far the most powerful Navy in the world. And we have a huge chunk of that Navy in the Middle East, two carrier battle groups, for example. But we can't force our way through the strait of Hormuz with that incredibly powerful Navy. So he goes out and he asks these other countries to send naval forces to help us. They don't have significant naval forces. None of these countries do.

And even if they take what they have and they send those naval forces to the Middle East and we launch a joint operation on the Strait of Hormuz, it's going to fail. It's not going to work. And that's why we alone have not tried to force our way through the Strait of Hormuz. You just can't do it. And the truth is, even if you can't force your way through the Strait of Hormuz, it doesn't solve the problem. because once you're in the Persian Gulf, it's a rich target environment for Iranian cruise missiles, Iranian drones, and Iranian ballistic missiles that can target any ships that are in the Persian Gulf. And furthermore, the Iranians always have the option of just destroying the oil refineries,

the oil installations of the Gulf states. So even if the straits are open, there's no oil to go through them. So the Iranians hold almost all the cards here, and it's hard to see how we can solve this problem, how President Trump, who's got himself into this war and got us into the war in the process, can figure out how to get out of it. There's just no way that anyone can see at this point in time to fix this problem. How is this war viewed in Beijing? Well, I think that the Chinese are glad to see the United States shooting itself in the foot.

This is going to increase Chinese influence not only in the Gulf in significant ways, but all around the world. If you ask yourself which country on the planet among the three great powers, the Chinese, the Russians, and the United States, looks like the responsible stakeholder in the system. and who looks like they are the least responsible. It's clearly the Americans who look the least responsible. States all over the world look at us and scratch their head and think we have lost their mind. And it's easy to understand why that's the case. The Chinese look like they're responsible stakeholders. And indeed, the Russians look the same.

So we have done enormous damage to our diplomatic position around the world, which is to China's interest. We've done damage to our situation or our position in Europe and with the Gulf states, and this is going to work to China's advantage. So this war is just terrible news. Did the Chinese cancel Trump's trip, or did he cancel it? I think it's quite clear that he canceled it. And I think he at first looked like he was going to use the threat of canceling the trip to get the Chinese. to send naval forces or even ground troops to the Gulf to help the United States. This was a laughable proposition. But then I think he came to realize quite correctly that given that there's a war going on

and that he is losing that war, the last thing he can be seen to do is go to China, which in effect would be taking his eye off the ball. And furthermore, it would be a rather nice and jovial meeting between the two leaders where there would be lots of handshakes and lots of smiling. And that would not look good, given how events in the Middle East are going. Going back to Israel, is there a danger if the Israeli government's back is to the wall, that they'll use nuclear weapons on Tehran? I think that possibility only arises if there's evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. which is not the case at the moment.

I think that once this war is over with, the incentives for Iran to get nuclear weapons would be very great. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if they went down that road. And if the Israelis even suspect that that's the case and they don't have the IAEA inside of Iran inspecting what the Iranians are doing, I would imagine the Israelis will come up some worst-case scenarios regarding the development of an Iranian bomb.

And I think in that circumstance, they may think about using nuclear weapons in a very serious way. I mean, it's quite clear that the Israelis have convinced themselves that Iran is an existential threat. I think for many Israelis, Iran is not much different than Nazi Germany, and they believe that if Iran has an opportunity, it will implement a – the Second Holocaust. I think this is ridiculous, but what I think doesn't matter. It's what they think that matters. And these are paranoid people, and if they lose this war, that'll just exacerbate their paranoia. And again, if they think Iran is developing a nuclear weapon,

which it will use against Israel, they'll use, I believe, nuclear weapons to excise the problem. From the Iranian perspective, as Ambassador Freeman just pointed out here about an hour ago, when you don't have the law to protect you, when public, heads of states fully recognize that treaties don't bind them, their own constitutions don't bind them, international law doesn't bind them, maybe a nuclear weapon would scare them away. The craziest person in the world, that has a nuclear weapon doesn't get attacked, that character in North Korea. Absolutely. I agree with Chas completely. And I would make another point just about, you know, international law and what the Israelis and the Americans have done to destroy it. And not only to destroy international law and international institutions, but to do great damage to diplomacy,

You know, diplomacy has been used as a cover twice now to attack Iran. What kind of faith can the Iranians have in diplomacy, much less international law? Now, the reason this really matters that you want to pay attention to is it's related to the question of how do we shut down this war. It's quite clear that there's going to have to be sanctions, relief, and maybe some reparations, but at least significant sanction relief to get the Iranians to end the war. But also the Iranians are not going to end the war unless they can get some sort of guarantee that the United States and Israel won't pay a return visit.

They won't come back and attack them. Remember, there was a war last June, and here we are in March, and there's another war, right, in less than a year's time. Who's to say if the war ends now that in less than a year's time, the Israelis and the Americans won't attack Iran again? So the Iranians are going to want some sort of guarantee that that won't happen. And in a world where international law has gone out the window and diplomacy has gone out the window and you can't trust the Israelis or the Americans as far as you can throw them, please tell me how you work out a diplomatic solution to this war.

How do you convince the Iranians that you won't pay them a return visit? So all of this behavior on the part of the Israelis and the Americans is just making it incredibly difficult to figure out how you shut this war down in the end. Wow. Here's President Trump using decidedly unpronouncedly undiplomatic language, referring. to aspects of the war as fun. Chris? Together with our Israeli partners, we're crushing the enemy

and an overwhelming display of technical skill and military force. Iran's drone and missile capability is being utterly demolished. The Navy is gone. It's all lying at the bottom of the ocean. 46 ships, can you believe it? In fact, I get a little upset with our people.

I said, what quality of ship? Excellent, sir. Top of the line. I said, why did we just capture the ship? We're going to use it. Why did we sink him? He said, it's more fun to sink him. He said, that's a... They like sinking him better. They say it's safer to sink him. I guess it's probably true. That's just one comment he's made using the word fun. He's made another comment where he said regarding the bombing of Karg Island, after he said that he had basically destroyed all the military installations on Carg Island, he would bomb it again just for the fun of it. These are the sorts of

reprehensible statements that no leader of a civilized country should make. I mean, war is a deadly serious business. Huge numbers of people are killed and wounded in these enterprises. You have to enter a war, you know, after trying every way possible to avoid it. And then, when you go to war, you have to be very careful not to kill civilians and not to talk the way President Trump does. But he talks in the most cavalier way about war, as if this were just fun, that bombing and killing Iranians is fun. I can't imagine any other president we have ever had making statements like that. Can you imagine Abraham Lincoln saying something like that or FDR, you know, Dick Nixon, George W. Bush. I can't even imagine George W. Bush making statements like that. These are all people who understood what a deadly serious business war is and how cavalier statements of this sort are just totally irresponsible.

So you have cavalier statements like this. You have rules of engagement are stupid. out of the mouth of the Secretary of Defense who calls himself the Secretary of War. Is it any wonder we bombed a girls' school and incinerated 170 little girls on their teachers? No. And, you know, it's very important to understand that militaries are giant killing machines. They're giant killing machines.

And when you take a military to war, you send a military to fight a war, there's a very powerful tendency in that military, military to use every means possible to annihilate the adversary, to inflict massive pain on the adversary. It's just, it's sort of a built-in impulse. And what you have to do is you have to go to great lengths to curb that impulse in particular situations. If you're talking about two armies crashing into each other on the battlefield, there's obviously no limits to killing soldiers on each side. It's the name of the game. We all understand that. But then there's the whole

issue of collateral damage and the whole issue of whether you directly attack civilians. And what you try to do when you go to war, if you're a civilized nation, is you try to go to Great Lace to kill as few civilians as possible. And you don't want to have a lot of collateral damage if you can avoid it. And furthermore, you definitely don't want to directly target, civilians and murder large numbers of civilians. And that's why you have international law. And that's why people in the American military actually pay a lot of attention to the whole concept of just war theory. They think long and hard about what you can and can't do when you engage in combat. And that's all for the good. This is not to deny for one second that there are

significant limits on a country's ability to curb the killing of civilians or the killing of innocence once a war starts. It's a really difficult task to put limits on these giant killing machines. But still work very hard to do that. It's the right thing to do. But if you listen to somebody like Pete Hexeth talk, I mean, it's like he's thrilled at the fact that we're just going to go in there and, you know, kill anybody that gets in her way and smash things and not pay attention to the laws of war. The laws of war are just a giant encumbrance. They prevent us from winning. What we have to do is just do whatever we think is necessary. And if that involves killing massive numbers of civilians, so be it. Well, Professor Mir Shamir, thank you very much. As always, your time and

analysis is invaluable to us. And congratulations again on that ground. breaking book, the Israel Lobby and U.S. foreign policy on its 20th anniversary. All the best, Professor. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. I look forward to being back on the show, Judge. Thank you. Coming up, if you're watching us live in 25 minutes, at 10 o'clock this morning, Scott Ritter, at 1 this afternoon, Aaron Mote, at 2 this afternoon, Matthew Ho, at 3 this afternoon, and Colonel Karen Kowdkowski, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.