Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer: Trump, Netanyahu, and Iran.

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Prof. John Mearsheimer: Trump, Netanyahu, and Iran.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Whatever your stage, businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash listen. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, April 10th, 2025. Professor John Mearsheimer joins us now. What a week, Professor Mearsheimer, with the roiling markets over the tariffs. Of course, it began with a lunch meeting between President Trump, at least the week from our perspective began with a lunch meeting between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu. At the end of that meeting, I'm going to play a clip in a few minutes. It was reported by the BBC and by The Economist magazine that Netanyahu was bitterly disappointed. at the time when Trump had imposed the tariffs.

He wanted an exception for Israel. And Trump said no. He wanted Trump publicly to admonish President Erdogan of Turkey. And Trump said, he's my friend. Why would I admonish him? And most importantly, he wanted Trump to commit to a war in Iran and instead Trump announced that the United States would be negotiating directly face to face with the Iranians. Some of our colleagues have commented this was a head fake, that is this was a concocted between Trump and Netanyahu to give the Iranians a false sense of security. Some believe that he actually stood up to Netanyahu. What is your thought on this scenario

as I've described it, Professor? Well, I thought that Trump was saying nothing new. He's long argued that he wants to negotiate a settlement to this conflict. That's his preference. It's obviously never been the Israelis' preference, but it's been his preference from the beginning. It was Biden's preference. And Trump has said that if he can't get a negotiated settlement, that he'll attack Iran. And I don't think that changed. One could argue that he was a little bit more enthusiastic about negotiating on Monday than he had been beforehand, but I really didn't see much difference.

So I think we're basically at the same point we were before the Monday meeting. basically at the same point we were before the Monday meeting. Before we get to a run, here's President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu in the Oval Office after their three-hour lunch meeting. I'd like your thoughts on how fundamentally ignorant one of them is and how fundamentally deceptive the other is Chris cut number ten Do you think blocking humanitarian aid is also an effective pressure? Well, you know how I feel about the Gaza Strip I think it's an incredible piece of

important real estate the level of death on the Gaza Strip is just Incredible and I've said it. I I understand. I don't understand why Israel ever gave it up. Israel owned it. It wasn't this man, so I can say it. He wouldn't have given it up. I know him very well. There's no way. They took oceanfront property, and they gave it to people for peace.

How did that work out? Not good. They gave it away for good intention, and it didn't work out that way. And I think what the President talked about is first of all to give people a choice. Gaza, Gazans were closed in. Any other place including in arenas of battle, I mean whether it's Ukraine or Syria or any other place, people could leave. Gaza was the only place where they locked them in. We didn't lock them in. They were locked in.

And what is wrong with giving people a choice? Now we've been talking, including over lunch, about some countries, I won't go into them right now, that are saying, you know, if Gazans want to leave, we want to take them in. And I think this is the right thing to do. If you give it, you know, it's going to take years to rebuild Gaza. In the meantime, people can have an option. The president has a vision. Countries are responding to that vision. We're working on it. I hope we'll have good news for you. So Gaza belonged to the Israelis and they gave it to the Palestinians. The first time I've ever heard that. And the Palestinians were locked in by somebody other than the Israelis and the IDF. It's the first time I've heard that

Your thoughts Well, I think with regard to Netanyahu's comments to start with then I'll go to Trump I think it's just a series of bold-faced lies. I mean the Palestinians live in a concentration camp. And who put them in that concentration camp? There's just simply no question. It's the Israelis who put them in that concentration camp. And before October 7th, the Israelis would occasionally go in there

and do what they call mowing the lawn, where they'd go in and murder a significant number of Palestinians to send them a message as to who is the boss. In fact, in at least two of those mowing the lawn operations, they killed more Palestinians than Israelis were killed on October 7th. And then of course, since October 7th, what's been happening is Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza. This is the story. The idea that Ariel Sharon pulled the forces, or pulled the Israeli forces and the Israeli settlers

out of Gaza and that he was hoping to turn it into the land of peace is a joke, right? His advisor at the time said that our aim is to put the Palestinians in formaldehyde. That was exactly the word that he used. This idea that the Israelis have benign intentions towards the Palestinians is ludicrous. What the Israelis are interested in doing

is getting rid of every last Palestinian, driving them out of greater Israel, which of course includes Gaza So what Netanyahu said is just basically a pack of lies What I find quite amazing is that the media doesn't expose this the mainstream media He's allowed to get away with this nonsense anybody with a you know, a college education to get away with this nonsense. Anybody with a college education should know that this story or set of stories that Netanyahu is telling are a bunch of bold-faced lies. But no, he gets away with it. Nobody calls him on the carpet. This is the way we operate when it comes to it. Trump is getting away with ignorance of such a magnitude that if this were a basic course on the geopolitical history of the Middle East,

you'd probably flunk him. There's no question. The problem with Trump, let me make two points about Trump. The problem with Trump is he makes misstatements or false statements or tells lies at such a rapid pace, you can't keep up with them, right? He makes one false statement, you try to correct it, and he's on to another one.

But the more important point, in my opinion, about Trump is that he has no moral compass. No can anybody who has watched what's happened in Gaza, whether you wanna call it genocide or mass murder, just watching what's happened in Gaza whether you want to call it genocide or mass murder just? Watching what has happened and you listen to him describe the destruction. He's fully aware of what's happened there Treat it in such a cavalier way. How is it that he doesn't have any basic sympathy for the Palestinians? I just find this hard to understand on a purely human level.

It's really quite remarkable. And I think it says a great deal about him as a human being. Here he is again, talking about turning Gaza into a freedom zone owned and occupied by the United States. Cut number one. Well, you know how I feel about the Gaza Strip. I think it's an incredible piece of important real estate.

And I think it's something that we would be involved in, but having a peace force like the United States there controlling and owning the Gaza Strip would be a good thing. Because right now, all it is is for years and years, all I hear about is killing and Hamas and problems. And if you take the people, the Palestinians, and move them around to different countries, and you have plenty of countries that will do that, and you really have a freedom, a freedom zone, you call it the freedom zone,

a free zone, a zone where people aren't going to be killed every day. That's a hell of a place. One thing he didn't say is that, and then my son-in-law can develop the real estate. Yeah. The question you want to ask yourself is who's doing the killing here? The Palestinians have done some killing for sure, but the amount of killing they've done compared to the killing that the Israelis have done there's a gross disparity there.

It's an open and shut case. He wants to turn the Gaza Strip into a giant zone of peace. The biggest problem he faces or the biggest obstacle he faces is not the Palestinians, it's the Israelis. But he, of course, is not going to admit that. Here's Prime Minister Netanyahu a few hours after he left the Oval Office addressing the Israeli people from the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C.

Well, you'll hear what he says. Cut number two. embassy in Washington DC. Well, you'll you'll hear what he says. Cut number two. We agree that Iran will not have nuclear weapons. This can be done by agreement. But only if this agreement is Libyan style. They go in, blow up the installations, dismantle all of the equipment under American supervision and carried out by America. This would be good.

The second possibility that will not be is that they drag out the talks. And then there is the military option. Everyone understands this. We spoke about it at length. He starts out by saying, we agree. So the implication is president Trump agrees. Trump agrees to emasculate Iran so that it would become like Libya. Remember how Libya ended? Remember how Colonel Gaddafi was publicly butchered after Hillary Clinton and

Barack Obama bombed the most prosperous country in Africa? I'll let you take it from there. Well, North Korea, which developed nuclear weapons, unlike Colonel Qaddafi, has done very well with a nuclear deterrent. And the truth is, from an Iranian point of view, they would have been much smarter to have developed nuclear weapons a long time ago. But look, here's the big issue with regard to Iran. It's not a question of whether they're now developing

a bomb or not. I know a lot of people focus on that. The problem from the Israeli point of view is that Iran has the capability to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium. The JCPOA, the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, did not take away either one of those capabilities. That means that Iran has the capability to make a bomb. And what the Israelis are deeply interested in is taking that capability away. Now Trump walked away from the JCPOA in 2018. He said it was an unsatisfactory agreement. That's because it left in place the reprocessing and enrichment capabilities.

So the question you want to ask yourself, when these two sides start talking in Oman on Saturday, sides start talking in Oman on Saturday, what is a possible deal they can work out? And the fact is the Iranians have made it manifestly clear they are not giving up their enrichment and reprocessing capability. That is the brightest of red lines for them. So they're not giving that up. So what is Trump going to do then? Is he going to sign an agreement where they get to keep those capabilities? He's back to the JCPOA, which he said was an unacceptable agreement. So I don't see that there is a potential deal where you look at the substance of what that

deal would look like. And that leaves Trump with no alternative given what he's been saying other than to bomb Iran. But the problem there is lots of people are talking about today is given the state of the world economy bombing Iran, which would be a major league undertaking. It's not like you go in there, there are two pinprick attacks, and that's the end of the story. We're talking about a massive air campaign that would cause a lot of destruction in Iran. And then the Iranians of course would retaliate and what would be the consequences on the world economy. One can't say for sure, but one can tell plausible stories where this

turns into a real nightmare. Yeah. How about $10 a gallon for gasoline in New York City and Chicago? Exactly. On top of all the turmoil, you know, in the economy that is a result of these tariffs, this is not the time to bomb Iran. And of course, Trump understands that. But again, I asked you and I asked others, what is the deal that he's going to cut that's going to get us out of this mess?

Oh, maybe he'll get the Israelis to surrender the nuclear capability that they stole from us. The Israelis are not getting rid of their nuclear weapons for the same reason we're not getting rid of our nuclear weapons and for the same reason that the Iranians are not getting rid of their enrichment. So morally speaking, how can he sit next to Netanyahu and say the Iranians are not allowed to have a nuclear weapon when the gentleman, and I use the word loosely, sitting next to him has them, stole them, doesn't acknowledge them, and has signed no treaty regulating them.

Because morality doesn't mean anything to Donald Trump. This is what I said about Gaza. This is a man who has watched what has happened in Gaza. He knows full well what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians. And his attitude towards the Palestinians is displayed in that clip you played earlier is Disgraceful, what else can I say? I don't think he has a moral compass So I don't think it bothered him that he was sitting next to Netanyahu has who has control over a nuclear arsenal and

Pushing the Iranians away from one Here's what Trump's first State Department said about the special relationship with the Israelis. So this is from 2018, cut number 16, Chris. How can you maintain both things at the same time that you have a special relationship with Israel and you want to be the mediator between Israel and the Palestinians? Well, we've covered this numerous times before. This administration looks back at the many – numerous decades of inability to bring

peace to the Middle East. So the administration is determined that it wants to look at things perhaps a little differently. And that may confound some people – let me finish – and that may confound some people and that's fine. But the administration is still saying that we are willing to sit down and have peace talks and both sides are going to have to give a little. And that's something that they've not – we've not backed away from in terms of our standpoint.

I'm not saying that you're unique in this respect. Yeah. Multiple administrations have said, we have a special relationship with Israel and we're going to be the mediator. And it hasn't worked out well. So aren't you actually doing the same thing that past administrations have? No.

I think the administration is handling this differently. And there are a lot of examples that I could think of. Things change the more they stay the same. I mean, we have a special relationship with Israel. We've had one for a long time. There's no evidence it's going to change. And the idea that we can serve as a mediator between the Palestinians and the Israelis is laughable. And you see this in the case of Steve Witkoff.

Steve Witkoff, who is Donald Trump's principal mediator when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, he is a hardcore Zionist. So when the United States takes a hardcore Zionist and inserts him as the mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, how can you possibly argue that he is a neutral force, that he is someone who is well positioned not to take sides and to be fair-minded?

You can't argue that. He is committed to the Zionist enterprise and he's going to be hostile to the Palestinians when push comes to shove do you accept the Accuracy of the reports that it was the Russians who? Arranged for the direct communications and negotiations between the Iranians in the United States. I Do not find that hard to believe I think that one of the reasons that Trump wanted to improve relations with the Russians is that he wants to not only peel the Russians away from the Iranians, but he wants the Russians to help him with the Iranians. He wants to isolate the Iranians as much as possible

so that he can pressure them to cut a deal that's acceptable to the Israelis and to the Americans. I don't think he's gonna be successful. I mean, I think Lavrov will help set up the negotiations. I don't think Lavrov wants war, but I think the Russians just watching Trump operate over the past few months understand full well that he's a loose cannon and that you really can't trust him and therefore you want to stay very close to China, you want to stay very close to Iran, and you want to stay very

close to North Korea. I think all four of those countries understand that. Here's the Iranian president saying yesterday, you want to examine us? You can come a thousand times and look for nuclear weapons that are not here. Cut number 17. They keep trying to push the narrative that Iran wants to make a nuclear bomb. What kind of assurance are they looking for? You verified us a hundred times. Verify us another thousand if you want. Not only that, but the United States intelligence community says, I understand what you said about the preparation of the fissionable material. But the intelligence community says there's no nuclear weapon.

That means the Mossad has told Netanyahu there's no nuclear weapon. That means Netanyahu's lying. Netanyahu said 20 years ago to the United Nations, Iran will have a nuclear weapon in two weeks. And then he said 10 years ago, Iran will have a nuclear weapon in a week. Well, now it's 20 years later and they still don't have a nuclear weapon. Well, there's no question that they do not have a nuclear weapon. And I would assume that the Mossad is telling Netanyahu the same thing that the CIA is telling Trump. But again, I do not

think that is the issue. The issue is the reprocessing and enriching capability. That's what spooks the Israelis. There's another dimension to this as well, and that is that in the final analysis, what the Israelis would really like us to do is wreck Iran the way we have helped wreck Syria and other countries in the greater Middle East. The Israelis would like all of their neighbors to be basically wrecked. And what they want us to do is not simply eliminate Iran's nuclear capability, but to make it look like Syria. And a major attack on Syria that then escalated

and would be one where we did massive damage to the entire country, they hope would turn Iran into Syria. Wow. What happens if the United States and Israel attack Iran? What do Beijing and Moscow do? Well, I don't think they'll come to their aid militarily. I think that the alliance among those three countries will tighten up in significant ways, and they will go to great lengths, the Russians and the Chinese, to defend the Iranians diplomatically,

to help them economically. And I think in the Russian case, they will give them military wherewithal to protect themselves down the road. The interesting question to me is what the Russians, and to a lesser extent, the Chinese will do. If we were to attack Iran and Iran says that it's gonna develop nuclear weapons.

It's important to understand that the Russians and the Chinese have been adamantly opposed to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. And they were key players in fashioning the 2015 JCPOA. But one could argue that the Russians and the Chinese will change their tune on that issue if we were to attack Iran and look the other way when Iran then develops nuclear weapons of its own. Fascinating stuff, Professor. No question about it, but you know China Acquires 90% of its oil from Iran if Trump listens to his golfing buddy

Lindsey Graham and destroys the Iranian oil Facilities you think China's gonna sit by and let that happen Look if Israel destroys, or the United States or both of them destroy, Iran's oil facilities, the Iranians will destroy oil facilities all across the Middle East. And this will have catastrophic consequences for the world economy. And what China does after that will pale in comparison to what everybody else on the planet is doing when we have this catastrophic outcome that results from Israel and the United States,

or one of them attacking Iran's oil facilities. Switching gears before we go, has ICE been showing up out of uniform and with masks on and the ability to do that. And that's one of the main capabilities. Switching gears before we go has ice been showing up out of uniform and with masks on and picking up people off the streets in Chicago

the way they have in Boston and New York. No, they've basically focused on the East Coast and campuses in the Midwest have basically been spared up to now with one exception, and that is that yesterday they put their crosshairs on Northwestern, but not on the University of Chicago. So it's mainly schools on the East Coast and Northwestern.

And in fact, it's mainly Ivy League schools. I saw when they put Northwestern on the hit list, they also put Cornell on the hit list, which of course is another Ivy League school. But I believe that if they are successful and they're able to get away with this, more schools will be added to that list, both on the East Coast, in the Midwest,

and on the West Coast. This is why I've long argued that it's imperative for universities to stand up to this and to forcefully fight back against what the Trump administration is doing. But as we've seen, that has not happened. Universities have by and large caved in, just like all of our institutions have caved in.

Just like the large and formerly, formerly great law firms have. Tell me if this terrifies you. Chris, cut number nine. The president there said he would be willing to take American citizens in the federal prison population. Is that one of the ideas you're gonna be discussing? Well, I love that. If we could take some of our 20-time wise guys

that push people into subways and that hit people over the back of the head and that purposely run people over in cars, if you would take them, I'd be honored to give them. I don't know what the law says on that, but I can't imagine the law would say anything different. If they can house these horrible criminals for a lot less money than it costs us, I'm all for it. But I have suggested that, you know, why should it stop just at people that cross the border illegally?

We have some horrible criminals, American-grown and born, and if we have somebody that bops an old woman over the head, if we have somebody that is in jail 20 times and goes back, has a bad judge or a bad Prosecutor that do nothing about him all they worry about is politics. They don't worry about that. I think if we could get El Salvador or somebody but to take them might be very happy with it Can you imagine that no he thinks that he can ship people convicted of crimes to foreign countries where

federal courts can't reach them. When George W. Bush tried that in Guantanamo Bay, he lost five out of five Supreme Court opinions on that very issue. Yeah, it's hard to believe that Trump would be saying those things. It shows what a radical president he is, what a radical agenda he has. And I would note that the problem is he'll eventually, if he were able to get away with that, come for people like us, right? He would cook up some charge against us that we were damaging American foreign policy because we were criticizing it, and then ship us off to El Salvador. That's what would happen here. This is why he has to be stopped sooner rather than later.

This is why universities should have stood up to him. Law firms should have stood up to him. Media should have stood up to him. Hardly anybody stands up to the guy. There are no checks stood up to him. Hardly anybody stands up to the guy. Yeah, there are no checks and balances on him. No, it comes to tariffs. If you as you have pointed out on

numerous occasions, he has to go through Congress to institute a policy of tariffs, right? Did he go through Congress? No, he said it's an extreme emergency and he's therefore free to act on his own. So he alone put into place these tariffs which almost pulled down the entire international economy the other day before he reversed course. And he only reversed course because bonds were softening and the government

can't exist without bonds. It's got 37 trillion in bonds out there That's correct. What you're saying is he was not listening to anybody else because we hardly ever listens to anybody else He thinks he's a genius and he thinks he knows what's right And this is a frightening situation and the emergency he cited is need situation. And the emergency he cited is the trade imbalance and in his own executive order he acknowledged that the trade imbalance has existed since 1934. The definition of an emergency and the statute on which he's relying for this authority, a sudden and unexpected event that adversely affects national security or economic prosperity. How can you claim that a state of affairs that has existed since 1934 is a sudden and unexpected event?

You can't. And what I find even more frightening is that he was asked yesterday on what basis would he decide to reimpose tariffs or change tariffs on particular countries and He said I will rely on instinct He said you can't put pen to paper and figure out how to do these things I just rely on my instinct. This is a positively frightening I guess he forgot about or doesn't know about or doesn't care about or never heard of something called equal protection under the Fifth Amendment where similarly situated entities must be treated by the government

in a similar way. Professor Mirsham, thank you for your intellect and thank you for your personal courage. It's a joy to be able to have these conversations with you. We'll see you again next week. Thank you, Judge. I look forward to it. to have these conversations with you. We'll see you again next week. Thank you, Judge. I look forward to it. Thank you, my dear friend. Coming up tomorrow, Friday, at the end of the day, for the end of the week at 4 in the afternoon,

with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern, the Intelligence Community Roundtable. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. you