Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : Making Sense of Iran’s Victory

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

Prof. John Mearsheimer : Making Sense of Iran’s VictorySee 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? the government. What if 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, June 30th, 2006. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. Professor Mearsheimer always a pleasure, my dear friend. I want to talk to you about making sense of Iran's victory over Israel in the United States. But before we get there, a little bit about Ukraine and Russia, if I may, the Ukrainians have been dispatching drones in large numbers to Moscow and elsewhere. Do the Russians have any red lines over which the Ukrainians, over which they won't let the Ukrainians cross? Are these drone strikes substantive or just performative?

Well, I think there's no question that they're doing quite a bit of damage, especially in Crimea. Nobody disputes that. Will it affect events on the battlefield and therefore the outcome of the way? war? No. I mean, basically what the West working with Ukraine is trying to do here is to punish the Russian homeland and therefore improve Ukraine's position at the bargaining table. That's the idea here. Nobody's really talking about winning the war with these attacks, just getting a better deal. Now, you asked, the question, where is the red line or where are the red lines? It's not clear, but it does seem quite apparent when you listen to the Russians talk that if this continues and that indeed,

if it accelerates, that the Russians will retaliate at some point. And it seems likely that they will retaliate by striking into Europe. But again, where that red line is is very hard to tell. I want to emphasize that if you look at the recent G7 meeting that took place in French, remember President Trump was there. Right. It's quite clear that President Trump showed that he was quite enthusiastic about these attacks, and he thought that the Ukrainians were doing the right thing. And then when the summit was over with, a declaration.

was issued, which said that the G7 countries would continue to support and accelerate. I underline the word accelerate the development of long-range capabilities for hitting Ukraine. This is really quite remarkable. And we also read in that same declaration that was issued after the summit, again on June 17th, that we were going to increase our efforts to damage the Russian economy. And as you would expect, the Russians basically see this as evidence that not only the Europeans are upping the ante in this war against Russia, but so is the United States. Wow. So what are the pros and cons of Russia striking munitions plants in Western Europe and in Great Britain? It would be a coercive strategy, and the idea would be you'd scare the living bejesus

out of the Europeans in the United States. You'd show them how serious the Russians were, and we would then back off from supporting Ukraine. And this is the same argument that is used when people talk about Russia using nuclear weapons if the conventional weapons don't work. The idea is you just have to convince people in the West, that what is going on is unacceptable. This drone war, and especially an acceleration of this drone war, is not going to be allowed. And we're going to stop it. This is the Russian speaking, of course, and we'll do what's ever necessary. And obviously, if you strike at targets inside of Europe,

even with just conventional weapons, you are really escalating the crisis. And what the Russians would be doing in that instance would be showing how deadly serious, you're going. And what the Russians would be showing how deadly serious they are about putting an end to those strikes. So according the media reports in the West, earlier today in Russia, the Russian military shot down 60 drones over Moscow in the area around Red Square. I mean, this targeting that area serves no military purpose whatsoever, as far as I can understand, it just, as you say, aggravates, irritates to some extent, terrifies. Do they really think this is going to bring Putin to the negotiating table?

I don't know what the answer is to that. Maybe they do. I mean, they've been telling this story, they meaning the Ukrainians and the Western elites, have been telling this story over the past month or so that Ukraine has basically turned the tide, that the Russian economy is in great trouble. These drone attacks are having a great effect. There's tremendous resistance to Putin. And furthermore, on the battlefield, the Ukrainians have stymied the Russians and may even be turning the tide. And when you put all these pieces together, this is really good news for the Ukrainians and good news for the West.

So what we ought to do is just double down, get even tougher with the Russians, increase the size and scrans. increase the size and scope of the drone attacks on the Russian homeland. It's that mentality that, you know, we are in a position where we can really get a good deal out of the Russians once we go to the negotiating table. And that's what this is all about. I think it's crazy. This is just a propaganda campaign. If you look at what's actually happening on the battlefield, you look at the state of the Russian economy,

You look at Putin's position inside of Russia. There's no reason to think that the Russians are on the ropes, and you're going to get them to the bargaining table and exact a good deal out of them. I think this is delusional. But Western leaders seem to believe this. The other thing that happened this morning was an offhanded comment by President Putin that nothing was really agreed to in Anchorage, something you and I and the other guests on the show,

been talking about for a long time. I don't know if the Americans came away with a sense that something was agreed to or the Russians came away. But President Putin said today, almost a year after it, that nothing was agreed to. Yeah, I don't know what to make of that comment. There are a lot of people who argue that there was an agreement. But even if you don't think there was an agreement or there was an agreement, let's just put that. But that. aside, the Russians and others talk about the spirit of Anchorage. And when people talk about the spirit of Anchorage, and again, we're putting aside whether there were any concrete agreements, the spirit of Anchorage was all about the fact that Trump wanted to improve relations with

Putin. And what happened at Anchorage was seen as a major step in that direction. And I think all the evidence is that Putin bought into this. And Putin was willing to work with Trump, up until recently, to try and work out some sort of deal that would put an end to the war in Ukraine. I think what's happening now is that the Russians understand that Trump is no friend, that Trump is an adversary, and that Trump is basically joined at the hip with the Europeans and with the Ukrainians, and those three actors are doing everything they can to bring Russia down as a great power. So I think the Russians are mad as hornets now. And this is why I say if you have a situation where we accelerate these drone attacks on Russia, you are playing with fire.

Yes. I mean, you could add, if I can be presumptuous to your list there, that Trump is waging war. Trump is a co-belligerent against Russia with the military arms we're supplying and the intelligence. that we are providing for aiming them? Absolutely. I mean, there's talk that the United States as a mediator is nonsense. We often talk as if we are sort of a third party, not directly involved in the war and therefore ideally suited to act as a mediator.

Anybody who goes back to the start of this war and then ramps forward to the present sees an abundance of evidence that we played a key role in causing the war, number one, And number two, in terms of how the war has been waged, the Ukrainians could have never waged this war without an abundance of support from the United States of America, from the start of the war right up to now. Indeed, from before the war started, going back to when the crisis broke out in 2014, up to when the war started in 2022. Take those eight years, we played a key role in arming and training the Ukrainian army. Then the war started, and we did even more of that. And the end result is that we have been an enemy of the Russians. And I actually think that Putin, to some extent, has been bamboozled by Trump into thinking that, you know, we had the spirit of anchorage and that he was going to work with Trump to get a good deal and so forth and so on.

What do you make of the speech President Putin gave last week to all of the new military and law enforcement recruit? So this would be, and you've been there because you're a graduate of West Point. This would be like graduates of West Point, Annapolis, the Air Force Academy, the FBI Academy, the Secret Service Academy, all of them brand new together in one room. He walks down into the middle of them and says, we're ready to take on Europe. Yeah, well, he believes that the Europeans want a war with Russia and are preparing for a war with Russia. He does not want a war with the West. He has made that unequivocally clear from the beginning. What he was concerned with was making sure that Ukraine did not join NATO.

That's what was the principal cause of this war. and it's been the principal Russian concern since the war started. The Russians are not interested in conquering territory in Europe, but the Europeans have convinced themselves that Putin is the second coming of Hitler, that he's bent on conquering territory, at least in Eastern Europe, if not in Central and Western Europe, and that he has to be stopped. And these Western elites are constantly talking about preparing for war with Russia. So Putin has said at this point, okay, if they think that war is inevitable, we certainly have to prepare for war.

And there's just manifest evidence that that's exactly what the Russians are doing. In effect, what Putin is doing is he's throwing down the gauntlet. Switching topics, isn't the memorandum of understanding signed by President Trump and Possesgian, essentially a U.S. capitulation? Yeah, there's no question about that. Basically, the memorandum of understanding that was signed on June 17th reflects the coercive balance of power at the time. And there is no question that by June 17th, the coercive balance of power decisively favored the Iranians over the United States, which is why Trump signed this deal, which was basically a surrender document. Anybody who's looked at all of the points, the 14 points in the document, understands clearly that the Iranians have won on virtually every

issue. And the reason this is the case is because we lost the war. Here's of all people, Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor to President Biden for the four years that President Biden was in the White House, basically saying the Iranians outsmarted Trump's real estate agents, cut number three. If you just look at how they work the wording of the agreements they do, they are highly detail-oriented, not just because they're lawyerly, but because they want to extract benefits from those details. Just one example from the MOU. The provision that says the U.S. would waive sanctions, refers to oil, and then there's this little clause that says, and derivatives. What are derivatives? The petrochemical sector. That is the second largest sector in Iran.

Now, do I think the U.S. really even understood what it was signing with that? Maybe not, but Iran knew it would get billions and billions of dollars just by inserting that word. And that's why you bring a very large delegation, because you're looking for every advantage in this highly complex detailed negotiation. And I think as long as they're bringing that expertise and we're only bringing a couple guys, it will be advantage or on. They're bringing expertise. He's being charitable and we're bringing to New York City real estate agents. I actually think this is all nonsense. I think that basically he's arguing that we were fleeced, that it was inexperienced that produced this document, this

surrender document. It wasn't the fact that we were fleeced. It reflected the balance of course of power. Look, those documents that were floated around before we reached an agreement on the final memorandum of understanding on June 17th. And the final is almost the same as the initial that they proposed. Yes, it is. But you know, we proposed a counter document, right? There were a number of documents floating around. There were endless negotiations on these documents. I find it hard to believe that we didn't look over every word. And the reason that we had to swallow all of these provisions that were to Iran's advantage and our disadvantage was because the balance of coercive power decisively favored the Iranians.

So how did Iran defeat the United States and Israel? How do you make sense out of Iran's military victory? Well, first of all, it had the military capability to shut down the strait and, in effect, threatened to take the international economy off a cliff. President Trump likes to talk about how he destroyed the Iranian Navy and the Iranian Air Force. He may have destroyed a big chunk of each of those institutions, but the fact is that the Iranians were left with enough military power that they could shut the straight and keep the shut and keep the straight shut down. So that's the first major point. The second point is they have

a significant missile capability, mainly ballistic missiles, but also cruise missiles, as well as drones. And they have the ability to do enormous damage to our bases in the region and to the infrastructure in the six Gulf states. In addition, they have the ability to pound Israel with those ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. So if you get into a shooting match with them, which we did, we could only go 40 days and we had to quit. It is very important to understand that. We quit after 40 days without a victory. This is the air war because we were running out of precious munitions. And furthermore, we were running out of targets to hit. We had hit so many targets. The fact is that the Iranians could absorb an enormous amount of punishment. We didn't find

ourselves in a position where we could dish out more punishment because, again, we were running out of munitions. This is what I say when the balance of course of power favored the Iranians. This is what happened. Here's why I think Trump will dismiss Heggseth. Why didn't the Pentagon plan for that? Why didn't they warn Trump about it? How could they not have foreseen these events? Did they fall?

Did the Pentagon fall as Trump fell, hook, line, and sinker for what Mossad and Netanyahu said to Trump? Well, I distinguish between Hegsteth and General Kane, who's the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, And my memory tells me very clearly that before February 28th, when we were talking about attacking Iran, General Kane made it clear that we had a serious problem in terms of the amount of munitions that we had for a war against Iran. So I think that Kane was not enthusiastic at all about this war, all the evidence is that Hegsseth was. So I think that there were voices in the Pentagon for sure who said that this was not a good idea. And you want to remember from that famous New York Times article that detailed what the negotiating process between the Israelis and the Americans looked like in the run-up to the war. It seems clear from that article that almost all of Trump's advisors except for Hegsseth thought that going to war against Iran the way we did on.

February 28th was not going to work out. It appears that it was Netanyahu and David Barnaya, who was the Adam Assad, plus Hegsseth, who were the real hawks here and played the key role in convincing Trump that this was a good idea. How about the Gulf states, aren't they re-evaluating their relationship to the United States? We couldn't protect them from Iran and most of our bases in their countries have been destroyed. Exactly. I mean, what kind of security umbrella does the United States provide for these countries? It's quite remarkable, Judge. If you think about the situation on February 27th, vis-a-vis our alliance structure in the Gulf and our basing structure in the Gulf, we had all these bases that looked like they provided significant capabilities.

for projecting power against Iran. And we had close relations with all six of the Gulf states. It looked like we had a quite formidable alliance in place. It was on the 27th. And I don't think many people anticipated what would happen to that alliance structure and to that basing structure once the war started. But in fact, what happened is that virtually all the bases were either badly damaged or destroyed. And we proved very clearly that we could not provide security for the Gulf states,

that our security umbrella was inadequate. This is unequivocally clear. And the question is, where do we go moving forward? And it's hard to believe that the Gulf states are going to rely on any, rely in any meaningful way on the United States to provide security for them. They're going to have to choose an alternative path moving forward. Here's Jake Sullivan again, and this time I think you'll agree with them. Cut number four. I think that they are now questioning the basic model upon which they've built their security,

which has been essentially a deep partnership, security partnership with the United States, including forward-deployed American bases in their countries. I think now they're asking themselves, what are we getting for that? And do we need basically a more diversified approach that involves a degree of hedging with other powers, maybe including China, and definitely includes quiet diplomacy with Iran to try to make sure that they're de-escalating with their neighbor across the strait. Hard to disagree. I mean, I think he's rarely right, but this is a case where he is correct that I think the Gulf states have a vested interest in developing a more diversified foreign policy for the reasons we talked about before. What is Netanyahu doing to draw the United States back into war? Well, he's not doing much to draw us back into war because we are not going back into war.

I mean, what are we talking about here? Restarting the bombing campaign? As I said to you before, that is a non-starter. It's not going to happen. We're not going to restart the bombing campaign, in my opinion. It would be lunacy, right? where Netanyahu is causing us trouble is by his behavior in Lebanon. What the Iranians want to make this deal between us and them work is for Israel to get out of

southern Lebanon and stop bombing South Beirut. It appears that the Israelis have stopped bombing South Beirut for the time being, but they're not getting out of southern Lebanon. And this is a real problem in terms of U.S.-Iranian relations. So I think what Nanyahu is doing here, he's not dragging us back into the war. What he's doing is he's complicating our efforts to put the memorandum of understanding on a firmer footing. Here he is two days ago. Listen to the very end of what he says about from the river to the city. much more.

I think there are many principles. I'll give you another example. Another principle of the government I intend. The broad national government I intend to lead. There is no place for two states. What? From the seat of the Jordan, there is no room for two states. From the sea to the Jordan, there is no room for two states.

In his own mind, the Greater Israel Project is going well? I think he's sophisticated enough to know the greater Israel project is not going well. He surely understands he's lost in Iran. He's in deep trouble in southern Lebanon. Hesbullah is inflicting significant casualties on the IDF. The IDF is basically worn out. Despite what has happened in Gaza regarding the genocide, the fact is that Hamas is still intact,

And it's still a formidable fighting force. So the idea that Israel has accomplished great goals and greater Israel is looking like it's working out swimmingly is an argument that's almost impossible to make these days. And I think that Nanyahu understands this. But the question is, what does he then do when he sees himself and his country in trouble? And the answer is he doubles down. This is why when you think about Israel moving forward, it's going to be just more war, more horror, more genocide. They really have no choice if they want to continue to pursue this goal of the greater Israel.

Wow. Professor Mearsheimer, thank you very much, my dear friend. I'll be off for a few weeks, but we'll look forward to seeing you in the middle of July. Have a wonderful vacation, Judge, and I look forward to seeing you in a couple of couple weeks. Thank you, my dear friend. All the best to you. Coming up later today at 1.15 this afternoon, Scott Ritter at 2 o'clock, Matthew Ho. At 3 o'clock, Colonel Karen Kwekowski. Judge the Palatano for judging freedom.