Judging Freedom - Prof. John Mearsheimer : What Comes Next in Iran?

Episode Date: August 11, 2026

Prof. John Mearsheimer : What Comes Next in Iran?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? 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, August 11, in the 2006, Professor John Mears Sharmer will be with us now. Two questions, well, among others. Where do we stand in Iran right now? And why does the U.S. keep losing wars? But first this. Today's headlines aren't just bleak. They're an indictment of a government that has abandoned the Constitution. You are witnessing the direct result of the Federal Reserve's relentless war on the value of your dollar. For centuries, gold and silver have been the ultimate shield against the

state's favorite tools. Monetary expansion and runaway inflation. To protect your wealth is to protect your liberty. And you can do that with gold and silver. I own both and continue to buy. Because J.P. Morgan is now lying gold at over $6,300 an ounce. And Bank of America is suggesting silver could reach $300. That's great news for precious metal investors. Don't wait for Washington to fix a mess they created. Secure your freedom today. Take possession of your precious metals or diversify your IRA by adding gold and silver. Call 800, 5114620 to see if you qualify for up to $20,000 in bonus medals. That's 800,5114620 or go to Learjudgeonnapp.com. Tom. Mr. Meersheimer, welcome here. Before we get to Iran, what is the current state of United States-Russia relations?

Well, I think that relations today are not good. If you go back into June to the G7 meeting that took place in France, President Trump made it quite clear that he was. enthusiastic about the so-called progress the Ukrainians were making, and he encouraged the Ukrainians to keep up the long-range drone attacks on Russia. And furthermore, he was committed, he said, to increasing economic pressure on the Russians. And basically, you saw the same thing happen in early July at the annual NATO meeting in Ankara. So the end result of all this is, that if anything, President Trump is siding more with the Ukrainians in an overt way than he had been before June of this year. And at the same time, I think the Russians have definitely come to the conclusion that you can't deal with President Trump from a diplomatic point of view. There's no way they can negotiate a settlement to this war through him.

So they've kind of given up hope on that front. And what they're doing is concentrating on the battlefield. I spoke with a retired Russian major general yesterday, who was now a member of the Duma, their legislature, who told me that essentially what you just did, the Russians can't trust Trump. Nothing came of Anchorage. They believe that the United States is a co-believe. with Ukraine than much of NATO against them. And it's inconceivable that negotiators, not even serious negotiators from a co-belligerent

could serve as mediators in the special military operation between Russia and Ukraine. Hard to disagree with that. Right. I don't know what you say. The United States, I think Trump genuinely wanted to shut down the Ukraine war, but he was incapable of doing that. What is the status now? I mean, does American industry even have the weaponry that Zelensky wants the Europeans to pay for and the U.S. to deliver to him?

No, I think the most important weapon that is at play here is obviously the Patriot missiles. The Ukrainians effectively have no air defense. is today. And as a result, the Russians are pounding Ukraine. It's really quite amazing what an intense and extensive air campaign they're presently waging against Ukraine, and Ukraine can do nothing to stop it. And it needs patriot missiles, but Trump has no patriot missiles to give them. So this is a huge problem. I think the thing that we give the Ukrainians that matters the most, and this has been pretty much true from the beginning, is intelligence. We give them excellent intelligence, and I believe we've helped them plan many of their

operations employing that intelligence. And that's been a huge force multiplier for the Ukrainians. But in terms of weaponry, yes, we've given them lots of artillery tubes and artillery shells and so forth and so on. But you remember, there've been all these promises of magic weapons along the way, If we just give them F-16s, if we just give them high Mars and so forth and so on, remember the M-1 tank, give them the M-1 tank, this will turn the tide, it will allow the Ukrainians to defeat the Iranians on the battlefield. None of that proved to be the case. The Russians figured out quite quickly had to negate all those weapons.

So I don't think even when we were given the Ukrainians' weaponry, it mattered that much. And I think, by the way, if we gave them patriots now, it would not matter very much. All you have to do is look at what's happening in the Gulf since February 28th. There were lots of Patriot missiles in the Gulf, and in the process, we burned through those Patriots, but at the same time, those Patriots were not very effective. The Iranians were allowed or were able to do huge amounts of damage with their ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones, despite all those patriots that were being fired at the Iranian incoming weapons.

You made reference to U.S. Intel doing an excellent job of helping the Ukrainians target sites in Russia. I would imagine that among those sites was President Putin's summer home last year. There's a lot of circumstantial evidence that points in that direction. And then there are two other cases that are very important in this regard. One was the August 24 Ukrainian invasion of the Russian homeland. And then in 2025, the following year, the Ukrainians launched an attack on one leg of the Russian's nuclear triad. And that was the bomber leg of that triad. Those were the case that you mentioned and the two that I just mentioned were three attacks that would have been.

never happened in the Cold War. They're actually quite shocking to me. And I think the United States, if it wasn't involved in all three, certainly approved of all three. Is there any meaningful relationship between the two governments now, other than an occasional phone call between Sergei Lavrov and Marco Rubio, mentioned to Ambassador Freeman, the enormous size of the U.S. Embassy in my. Moscow, houses a thousand people, maybe more. It's empty. It's not clear that it would matter even if it was filled with people because President Trump

basically runs American foreign policy out of his back pocket. His approach to foreign policy reminds me a lot of that very famous saying by Louis the 14th, who was a king in France back in the day. And his famous phrase was, lay top. I am the state. And I think that's basically where we are with President Trump. He runs foreign policy pretty much by himself. There's no planning process of any consequence in the White House. And he's not going to rely, he's not going to rely on ambassadors or people who are staffing embassies. It's just not the way he operates or the way the United States operates today.

Yeah. I don't know if it was Louis the 14th or Louis the 5th. I guess his son, who said, Apremois, la deluge, after me the deluge, predicting the French Revolution, which of course resulted in the execution of the 14th grandson, Louis XVIth. Okay, but I stray. Why does the US keep losing wars?

It's a very interesting question. I often reflect on that, because as you've heard me say many times, you know, I came in to the American military during the Vietnam War, which was a catastrophic defeat for the United States. And I think that since then, we've had only one successful war, and that was the first Gulf War in 1991. And I think what distinguishes that war from almost all the other wars we fought is that it was a war with limited aims. We simply went in for the purpose of throwing the Iraqi army out of Kuwait.

Remember, we did not go into Iraq and engage in social engineering. We waited to do that until 2003, and we all know how that worked out. But in 1991, George H.W. Bush had the good sense to pursue a limited aim strategy. Just get the Iraqis out of Kuwait. And furthermore, it was a conventional war. And if you take the U.S. military, which is at its best when it's fighting, conventional wars, and you use it in pursuit of limited aims, you're likely, you're highly likely to get a success. But almost all the other wars that we pursued involved regime change,

social engineering on a large scale. And in many of those cases, we were able to win the actual battles. You know, the military side often played to our advantage. If you look at Iraq, every time there was a battle between Saddam Hussein's forces and American forces. This isn't the 2003 war. We clearly won. And as many people like to say, we won every battle in Vietnam and we lost the war. And I think what's going on in all of these conflicts, and you want to throw Afghanistan in as well, is that we get involved in social engineering on a large scale. In countries we're doing social engineering is extremely, difficult. As you well know, Judge, we have difficulty doing social engineering in our own country. We have difficulty making the United States of America work smoothly. The idea that you can take a bunch of Americans and send them into a place like Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq and that you can do social engineering and that you'll have a happy outcome is, in my opinion, delusional. Now, of course, if you look at the military balance between the United States and all of these countries that

we're talking about, it's overwhelmingly in our favor. And this, of course, is why in one-on-one battles we will prevail. But war is an extension of politics by other means. And the political side matters enormously. And we don't seem to pay attention to that when we get into these wars, because we think we can use our massive military advantage to achieve almost any outcome we desire. But sadly, from our point of view, the world doesn't work that way. I mean, what did we learn from the catastrophe, the standoff in Korea, the catastrophe in Vietnam, the disaster of Afghanistan? What the heck did we learn from these? Well, I think what I learned from the Vietnam War, which took place when I was very young,

was stay out of places like Vietnam and don't get involved in social engineering. And this is why I was adamantly opposed to the Iraq war, both publicly and privately. And it's why I said with regard to Afghanistan that once we got in and over through the Taliban, we should have gotten out immediately and not stayed and gotten involved in social engineering. I think that you're invariably going to lose a war if it looks anything like Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. But we don't seem to have learned that lesson. I think one could argue if you look at the Clinton administration in the 1990s, they were well aware of the lessons of Vietnam. Remember Somalia, President George H.W. Bush, right before he left office, put troops into Somalia.

And then we began to do social engineering, and it blew up in our face. What did Bill Clinton do? He got out immediately because Bill Clinton remembered Vietnam. Bill Clinton understood that the last thing you wanted to go into was another war like Vietnam, to end up in a place like Somalia trying to do social engineering. And by the way, the year after Somalia, I think it was 1994, I think Somalia was 93, 1994 was the genocide in Rwanda. And the United States was remarkably reluctant to go in and shut down the genocide in Gaza or to try and shut it down.

Because I think the Clinton administration was scared stiff that we would end up in Rwanda much the way we ended up in Vietnam. So I think throughout the 1990s, the United States is actually remarkably cautious about getting involved in social engineering. And just one more point on this, go back to 1991 to the Gulf War. Remember, I said that was the one successful war we have fought since we first went into Vietnam. And in that war, we were not doing social engineering. That's the point that I made to you before. We got involved in a good old-fashioned conventional war where we had an overwhelming advantage over the Iraqis. And the ground war, it actually lasted a mere four days from February 24th to February 28th. four days because we were so powerful. And then we did not go into Iraq. And again, after that, President Clinton got out of Somalia, as soon as he smelled trouble, did not go into Rwanda. And it's not until after 9-11 that we begin to switch gears and go back in the other direction and get involved in Afghanistan first, then in Iraq. A headline in this morning's New York Times says that Donald Trump is bored and tired of the war in Iran and wishes that we're out of the headlines, but the Iranians won't allow it.

I mean, what options does he have remaining? Where are we in Iran today? It's a big question. And I think that he's not just bored. In fact, I don't think he's bored at all. I think he is deeply frustrated by his inability to shut down the Iran war. And I think that he worries greatly what it means for his political future and what it means for his reputation moving forward. What's happened here is that we had a memorandum of understanding

which we've talked about many times on the show that was signed on June 17th. And the name of the game underneath the Memorandum of Understanding was to stop the fighting, to get a ceasefire, number one, and then number two, to open the straight. And then what we were going to do is we were going to negotiate over a whole slew of important issues, the nuclear issue being most prominent, but also things like sanctions, reparations, frozen assets, the question of who controlled the straight moving forward, would the Iranians be allowed to exact tolls or fees? There were just all sorts of issues that were going to be negotiated once we got the ceasefire in place

and once the strait was opened. But of course, the Trump administration, President Trump himself, foolishly walked away from the MOU. And the MOU has basically been relegated to the garbage can. And now what has happened this past weekend on 8 August, the Iranians put out a new series of demands. And they have basically said that every one of those issues that we were going to negotiate in the MOU or under the MOU. Every one of those issues has to be settled up front so that the United States has to pay reparations,

right? The United States has to unfreeze the assets. The United States has to lift all sanctions even before the Iranians open the Strait of Hormuz. Just think about this. There's not going to be any negotiation at all on any of these many issues that are on the table. The Iranians are demanding that we concede on every single issue before they'll be willing to open the tolls. I mean, excuse me, willing to open the straight. This is really quite remarkable.

I don't understand how President Trump can Trump can accept these demands. The other point that I would make to you that I don't think most people who are talking about, this sea, is that the nuclear issue has basically been taken off the table. And President Trump has even talked about getting a deal to open the straight and walking away from the nuclear issue. You want to remember that for a long, long time, going back to the JCPOA, the nuclear issue, vis-à-vis Iran has been the focus of our attention. If you look at the discourse now, Now, if you look at the discourse surrounding the August 8th demands, the recent demands of the Iranian government, there's no discussion that I see of the nuclear issue. It's got pushed into the background. And you want to remember, we're now in a situation, given everything that's happened since February 28th, where you have real hardliners in charge in Iran.

and the Iranians have a greater incentive than ever to acquire nuclear weapons. So we have a situation here where the nuclear issue has, in a very subtle way, been pushed aside in the various negotiations about what kind of deal will we reach to end this war. And at the same time, the incentives for Iran to get nuclear weapons are greater than ever. And at the same time, you have people who are running Iran now who are much more likely to want nuclear weapons than the people who are running that country on February 27th. So it's really quite striking where we are. And just one final point, the Iranians said yesterday, they basically believe they're going to have to wait until President Trump leaves office because he will not accept all of their new demand. which is that they cave on every issue before the strait be opened. The United States is not expected to cave by the Iranians.

So they say the strait will be closed until the president leaves in January of 2029. This is a disastrous situation for the United States. Here's what he said yesterday about the strait. This is remarkable. Our friend and colleague, Ambassador Chaz Freeman, says not only is none of this accurate, it's an indication of a serious defect in thinking that he would even say this. Chris, cut number one. Well, it's open now.

We're taking a lot of shit. It's open now. Look, the only one that has control of the Strait of Hamos right now is the United States Navy. We have a blockade that's been infallible. It's a steel wall. And we let people in that we want to let in. And those people come in and they've been coming in and they're going out. So it's actually open now.

We do not let them go into Iran to not admit it into the straight to go to Iran. President Trump never admits defeat. He just doesn't admit defeat. He always wins. We're always in charge. And facts just don't matter. And the truth is that what he's saying is just dead wrong. And he fully recognizes that he or the United States does not control the street.

that the Iranians control the strait, and he's been desperate for months now to figure out a way to open the straight. And huge amounts of attention have been paid to that issue. He's talked about it. His people talk about it. The problem is, as I just said, they can't open the strait. And now the Iranians have put a series of demands on the Americans that have to be met before the strait will be opened. And I don't see how President Trump can accept those demands. At the same time, I don't see how he can reject them because he's got to open the straight at some point in the not too distant future.

But to do that will be extremely difficult, given those demands that the Iranians have placed on him. I mean, are there any of his goals realistically within reach? The goals that he set forth when he started the war, whether he articulated them or Rubio did? No, it's unequivocally clear that he has not achieved any of the four goals. Remember, there were four goals on the table. One was that we were going to eliminate their nuclear enrichment capability. Number two, we were going to put an end to their long-range missile capability.

Number three, we were going to reduce their support or eliminate their support of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. And then fourth, and I think most importantly, because I think the first three, goals depended on achieving the fourth goal, we were going to get regime change. Well, we did not get regime change. If anything, what we got there were people in power who are now, the people who power are now more hardline than the people who were in power on February 27th. With regard to the nuclear enrichment issue, as I said, what's happened here is if anything, the nuclear issue has been pushed into the background.

And I don't see any chance in the foreseeable future that we're going to get a nuclear deal. So we lost, in my opinion, big time on that issue. And then there are all these other issues that have nothing to do with those four demands on which we've lost on. Our basing structure in the region has basically been wrecked. Our alliance structure in the region has been badly damaged. We've done great damage to the international economy, not as bad as most people expected, but nevertheless, so far it's been quite bad. The Chinese have benefited greatly at our expense from this crisis or this war in the Gulf. By the way, just to take this a step further, it's very important to emphasize that the United States is now putting out a new nuclear doctrine that

that emphasizes the employment of tactical nuclear weapons. You sort of scratch your head and you say, what's going on here? Why are we going back to emphasizing the use of tactical nuclear weapons? Well, the answer is actually quite clear. We're now emphasizing the use of tactical nuclear weapons because we have so severely run down our conventional forces between the Ukraine war and especially the Iran War that if you think about ever fighting a war with China, we don't have the conventional assets

to stay in the fight for very long at all. So unsurprisingly, what are we talking about doing, employing nuclear weapons? Do you really want to do that? Wouldn't you much rather rely on conventional deterrence and keep nuclear deterrence in the background? Of course you would. But you can't do that because you've so thoroughly depleted your arsenal of conventional weapons. So unsurprisingly, we're now talking about relying more heavily in the future on nuclear weapons and in particular tactical nuclear weapons. This just shows you how much trouble we are now in as a result of this war in Iran, which we are going to lose. And by the way, we're going to lose the war in Ukraine as well. We are going to have two big losses on our record in short time.

Right. Add to all of that, we've lost the trust of the entire world. The entire world. There's no question about that. Were you surprised last question when Prime Minister Netanyahu publicly could have done it in a phone call? publicly repudiated Trump's so-called disarmament agreement between Hamas and IDF? No, not at all. I mean, the fact is that Prime Minister Netanyahu and virtually everybody in his government

is deeply committed to creating a greater Israel that is basically comprised of Jewish citizens, Israeli Jews. And the last thing they want is a greater Israel that's populated with, with large numbers of Palestinians. So what they have been doing in Gaza, as we've discussed many, many times on this show, is executing a genocide that is all designed to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Gaza, to drive them out of Gaza. And if you look at all the pogroms that they're launching on the West Bank, it's very clear

that they're trying to ethnically cleanse the West Bank as well. So the idea that the Israelis would agree to a deal that called for them to leave Gaza and, in effect, turn Gaza back over to the Palestinians, it's just unthinkable from an Israeli point of view, not going to happen. There was no way that Netanyahu would ever accept that deal. And he fully understands that he had to make it clear to the Israeli public, because remember, this election coming up, I think it's in October of this year inside of Israel, and Prime Minister Nanjahou is in political trouble. He had to make it clear to all Israelis that he was adamantly

opposed to the deal that the Board of Peace and ultimately President Trump were pushing forward. So I think that's why he's been so public about it. But regardless of how public or private he's been in terms of dealing with this issue. The fact is he's not. No Israeli as leader that I could think of is going to accept a deal that involves giving up Gaza or the West Bank. One wonders why Trump even offered that and why his advisors didn't caution him against the futility of making such an offer. Another subject for another time. Professor Mearsheimer, another great conversation.

Thank you very much. my dear friend. We're all across the board, but you went very deep, and I know it was deeply appreciated. We'll see you again soon. Definitely. I look forward to our next talk. Thank you, Professor. All the best. Coming up later today, if you're watching us live in 30 minutes at 10 o'clock this morning, Aaron Motei, at 11 this morning, Scott Ritter, at 2 this afternoon, Matthew Ho, at 3 this afternoon, Colonel Karen Quodkowski. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.