The Duran Podcast - "Israel Has Walked Off a Cliff" - John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

"Israel Has Walked Off a Cliff" - John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Hi everyone, and welcome today we are joined by Professor John Meersheimer and Alexander Mercuris to discuss what is happening in Iran. So it appears that this was a decapitation strike, a surprise attack. They were able to bring down the Iranian missile defense. They delivered some real heavy damage to the Iranians, killing many of their military leaders, destroying much of their military capabilities. But instead of collapse and regime change, which appears to be the objective, we see that Iran regrouped. And I think this could be defined as now a war of attrition. That is, how many missiles can you send and how much punishment can you absorb? Where exactly is this going? Is there a clear strategy here or has the Israelis now been?

caught by surprise, by the Iranians' ability to fight back? I'll take a quick step at it. I think, first of all, we have to establish what the Israeli goals are, and then we have to ask ourselves whether or not we think they can achieve those goals. And I think there are three possible goals, and they're somewhat overlapping that the Israelis have in this operation. The first is to eliminate once and for all Iran's ability to enrich uranium and, I would argue, reprocess plutonium as well. In other words, take away Iran's ability to ever acquire nuclear weapons. I think that's the first goal. The second goal is regime change.

And the idea here is that if you get a new regime, you get rid of the Ayatollah and his lieutenants, that the new regime will be much more accommodating to Israel and the United States. And then the third goal is surrender. You want to remember that Donald Trump recently said that what we need here is unconditional surrender. In other words, the Iranians completely get. up. And if they do that, of course, it solves the first two problems, which is the nuclear problem and the regime change problem. So I think those are the three possible goals. And I think the two first two are really sort of the key. Now, you have to ask yourself, and I'm sure we're going to

talk a lot about this, where the Israelis can achieve those goals, to put it in my favorite rhetoric, do they have a theory of victory here? And I think the answer is no. And Glenn and I were talking before the show started, and I think we both basically agreed that the Israelis jumped off a cliff here, which is another way of saying they don't have a theory of victory. And I'll just briefly say, I don't think they're going to be able to eliminate, even with help from us, the enrichment capability that now exists, and if they do, the Iranians will just rebuild it. And with regard to regime change, I find it hard to believe that they're going to get regime change. They may be somewhat effective in terms of decapitating the leadership, but that will be replaced.

And furthermore, even if Thomas Jefferson comes back from the dead and takes over in Iran, And Thomas Jefferson is going to want nuclear weapons, probably more so than the Ayatollah. And with regard to total surrender or unconditional surrender, it's hard to believe that anybody would even make that argument. Doesn't Donald Trump remember that there was this conflict called the Iran-Iraq War that lasted eight years? Countries like Iran, virtually all countries just don't surrender when they're attacked, if anything, they fight back.

And then the question is, does Iran have the ability to fight back? And as I'm sure we're going to talk about in great detail, they almost certainly do. So I think these goals are unachievable. I think Israel has no theory of victory. And I believe that's why they're desperate to get the United States involved in the fight. And I believe, and this is my final point, that's why Trump is now beginning to backtrack because he doesn't want to jump off the cliff either. I agree with all of this.

I think this is exactly where we are. I mean, I think what happened was that the Israelis greatly overestimated their ability to shape events in Iran. I think they thought that they could strike at Iran. They could strike suddenly. They could throw the leadership into disarray. They assumed that the political system in Iran was much more fragile than it really is.

and now they've discovered that it isn't like that. And I think that the point about the Israelis now finding themselves in a war of attrition that they are not ready for or capable of winning against a country which is many times bigger than themselves is absolutely true. Now, can they achieve regime change? Can they force nuclear enrichment? Can they compel Iran to surrender? How can you prevent a big country like Iran with a developed industrial base, a large scientific and technological capability,

from enriching uranium, if that is what it is determined to do? How can you force a political change upon Iran, if you're a much smaller country than Iran itself is, And what does surrender exactly mean in this context? I mean, what exactly is Iran supposed to surrender? What is that form of surrender going to be? Is it like what happened in Germany and Japan in 1945? Are they going to capitulate entirely?

Allow the United States and Israel to occupy their countries, reshape their political systems, do those things? I do you think any of that is achievable, certainly not by Israel, by itself. So I think that the Israelis do find themselves in a war of attrition. I think that they did miscalculate with the big proviso, of course, that maybe the objective was to get the United States involved from the outset. And that that really was their goal. that their goal was not to win by themselves, but to bring about a war between the United States and Iran.

Because without such a war, how can they win? Well, I wanted to ask, though, in terms of the assumption that Trump is backtracking now, is that sure, is that certain because he could also simply be buying some time because the Americans didn't seem to be quite properly prepared for how the, Iranians were fighting back either because a lot of the assets that the United States is bringing in, it has to be shipped away from the United States. It does appear that some of this caught them by surprise as well.

So it could just be buying some time and shifting some assets around until they're ready to do this strike. Of course, it is possible. Trump is having a lot of pushback both from his own team, his own, his own, his own base. But the reason I ask is, what is the alternative now to, I guess, looking to defeat Iran? Is it possible for Israel to sign a peace with Iran?

Because at this point, it would be a very humiliating loss for the Israelis. The whole myth of Israeli invincibility, the Iron Dome, their ability to impose their will and never to make a compromise. This has been really shattered. If they walk away from this, Iran would be more powerful than when they went into this war. And it's not unlikely that they would, as John suggested, that they would pursue a nuclear weapon. I think the nuclear weapon was something they didn't want because they feared that if they got it, the Saudis would get it, maybe the Turks would get it.

It would just lead to a lot of proliferation in which their own security would be diminished. but now after this attack, this determination to destroy them, you know, they might change their mind. So I guess my question is, to what extent is it possible for Israel to actually accept peace now, even if, you know, victory is not a possibility? Well, I think they're between a rock and a hard place. I mean, I think your logic, Glenn, about the position that they're in is correct. It's almost impossible to imagine them accepting defeat.

But at the same time, it's impossible to imagine how they win this war. This is why they effectively jumped off a cliff. Just to talk a bit more about that, excuse me, about that. It's very important to understand that Iranian ballistic missiles are pounding Tel Aviv and Haifa. And Israel is running out of missiles to defend those cities. and there's no sign that Iran can't continue this war over the long term. And then when you begin to look at the economic consequences of this for Israel, they're disastrous. I mean, there are all sorts of stories in the newspaper to that effect.

People say that if the Israelis have to continue for one or two months, their economy is going to be wrecked and all sorts of terrible things are going to happen. Well, the last time Iran fought a war like this, it went from basically 1980 to 1988. And according to my calculations, that's at least eight years. I mean, if this war goes on for even one year, what shape is Israel going to be in? I don't think they can fight a war like this because they're being pounded. Then there's the whole question of what the Israelis are doing to Iran. You know, I'm not sure the Israelis are doing anywhere near as much damage as a lot of people argue. There's all this talk that the Israelis have taken out the Iranian air defenses.

I'm not sure about that. I think the Israelis are mainly using standoff weapons and drones. I don't think they've knocked out the Iranian air defenses. You know, all sorts of people are saying, what happens? to the Iranian air defenses. I can't believe that we've heard nothing about them. It's as if the Israelis swooped in there on the first day or two and just eliminated them completely without those air defenses firing any missiles at Israeli aircraft. This is not the way wars usually play out. Maybe the Israelis have some magic formula. And this gets back to last October when the

Israelis attacked Iran. And the Israelis said that they tore apart Iranian defenses. They penetrated into Iran and did all sorts of damage inside of Iran with these aircraft that were flying over Iran. A number of people said at the time that the Israelis had a well of a time dealing with those defenses. They backed off. And what they did was they fired missiles into Iran from countries like Iraq. They couldn't get in there. And I think basically that's what's happening today. It's very hard to get your head around this whole issue because the reporting in the mainstream media is so terrible. But I don't think the Israelis have taken out those air defenses. And then this brings this to the Americans. You know, there's all this talk that we're going to take a one B2 bomb or

fly over Fordow, you know, drop a 30,000. bomb on Fordow and that's going to solve the problem. I think there are going to be air defenses around Fordow that we're going to have to deal with. They're going to be GPS jammers around Fordow that we're going to have to deal with. And even if we get up over Fordow and we can drop one bomb, that's not going to be enough. And I think the possibility that we can wreck Fordow is questionable at best. And I think, by the way, this is one of the reasons that Trump is getting cold feet. They're now all sorts of articles appearing about what Ford Al looks like, just how deep the enrichment capability is buried in that mountain and how far down into the mountain these 30,000 pound bombs can go.

And it doesn't look like we have the capability with these 30,000 pound bombs to get down, far enough into the mountain to destroy the enrichment capability. So, and again, that assumes that we get over the target and we have pretty much a free shot. And I'm not sure that's true because, again, I think the air defenses are there. I think the GPS jammers are there. And it's going to make it a devil of a task for us just to get up over that target. And then, as I'm saying, even if we're over the target, I don't think we're going to going to be able to take out the enrichment capability. And then to take it a step further,

even if we do take out the enrichment capability, even if I'm wrong, they can easily rebuild it because they have so much nuclear know-how and so much experience with building enrichment capabilities and so forth and so on, then it doesn't matter over the long term. At most, you can buy yourself a year or so. So if you look at this, if you look at what's happening, to Israel, the pounding that it's taking. And by the way, it is taking a pounding, right? The Israeli sensors are going to great lengths to make sure the mainstream media does not report on what's happening inside Israel. They do not want cameras in there. They do not want the mainstream media in the West telling people what is happening to Israel for good reason. It's getting pounded.

And these air defenses, these wanted air defenses that the Israelis, have are really not so wanted. We could go into that in some detail. Air defenses against ballistic missiles are never very effective. I can tell you from my experience in the Air Force about that issue. So the Israelis are getting pounded. They're not prepared for a long war with Iran, and they can't knock Iran out. And again, this is why they're begging the Americans to get in. But we can't solve their problems because as I just described, we can't take out the ability of the Iranians to enrich it for now. It's just not going to work.

There's no long-term solution there. And what are we going to do? Get in the business of turning Iran into Gaza? Is that what we're going to do? The United States and the Israelis are going to go on a massive punishment campaign? This is going to be like Japan and World War II, and we're going to level Iran? I mean, this is not a serious argument.

Anyway, leveled Iran, a huge country of 92 million people. It is not Gaza. It has an enormous territory. It has significant military and industrial capabilities. It would overstretch, I mean, put aside the morality. and the strategic wisdom of trying to do such a thing, but neither of which are there,

it would be probably a task beyond even the resources I would have thought of the United States. I mean, that kind of enormous kind of strategic bombing campaign, it's not been hugely successful in the past, if one looks at history. And to try it against a country like Iran, I would have thought incredibly difficult anyway, given the resources that the United States has, which are enormous, but nonetheless very overstretched.

And coming back to the attack on Fordow, one of the fundamental problems with the whole operation is, of course, we have been reading about it every day for the last week in the newspapers. So, of course, the Iranians must be reading about it too. they are expecting this attack, they will be doing everything they can, presumably, in advance to make that attack as difficult and as dangerous as possible. If they have air defences, they will have probably positioned them in the most effective way that they can around fall down. It looks an incredibly high-risk operation, or so it seems to me. This comes back to the point that was made at the very beginning by both of you, which is that the only way that this can succeed is if the Iranians agree to make it successful.

If, in other words, they suddenly turn around and say, look, we agree to all of your demands. We are going to change our political system. We are going to dismantle our entire enrichment capabilities. We are going to establish a government that is sympathetic and favorable and aligned to yourselves. If the Iranians refuse to do those things, and so far they show no sign of being interested in doing any of those things, on the contrary, all of the information that seems to be coming out of Iran, is that the country has pulled together, as countries often do, mostly do when they're attacked,

that the political system there has survived the blow and has reorganised and is determined to see this through. Well, as I said, unless there's a sudden dramatic change, unless there's a sudden collapse and a reversal of Iranian policy, I would say we're on the high road to disaster. And yes, one can ask questions about the capabilities of Iran's air defenses. And maybe they are more effective than we are being told. And that wouldn't surprise me at all. But going back to what John was saying, it is the failure of Israel's air defenses,

which perhaps is the more burden of issue. because if Israel's air defenses cannot withstand the Iranian ballistic missiles, what are the chances that America's air defenses with American military forces scattered across the Middle East can be any more successful than Israel's are, given all that we have been hearing over the last 10 years, about how successful Israel's air defenses were and how, effective they were and how supposedly they were the best in the world. Now, bear in mind that what is already hearing reports, many, many reports for several years now, that there is a general

shortage of air defense interceptors any way across the West. So if the Iranians are able to keep launching ballistic missiles and hitting targets in Israel and are able to go on doing it, month after month, day after day, week after week, then it seems to me that whether the United States becomes involved or not, we have a major strategic crisis ahead of us. If I can just quick jump in before we go to you, Glenn, you want to remember that we launched the campaign against the Houthis not too long ago, and Donald Trump promised a quick and decisive victory against the Houthis. And after 30 days, Trump quit.

He abandoned the war. He basically admitted that the Houthis were tough, And he could not win. And I would make two points regarding this experience. One, if we couldn't beat the Houthis, are we going to beat Iran? The second point is one of the main reasons that we stopped the war with the Houthis is that we were expending huge amounts of precious ammunition, much of which we need in East Asia

to contain China. And the idea that we're going to get in, you know, a months-long or a years-long war with Iran where we're expending precious resources is a non-starter. You want to remember the Americans are expert at building small numbers of high-quality weapons, and that means we're not configured for fighting long wars of attrition. And there's no way we win a quick and decisive victory against Iran. It's just not going to happen. This is going to be a protracted war.

And the last thing we need is a protracted war. And by the way, the last thing that Donald Trump, Trump needs politically in the United States as another forever war in the Middle East. This seems to be a massive miscalculation here, both in terms of the means and the ends. Obviously, the means with, yes, both of you have argued the ability to knock out Iran and also the ability to absorb what Iran's sending back. But also, as John began to speak of, the objectives which are put forward. That is regime change, destroying the nuclear facilities.

It's very hard to do either of those things. But in terms of the regime change, it seems to have been this assumption that if we just bomb Iran heavy enough, then somehow millions of people would rise up against their own government and more or less side with the countries who are attacking them. and there would be this regime change and a favorable government would come in. I don't know where these assumptions are coming from. We didn't get this in Afghanistan.

We didn't get it in Libya. We didn't get it in Iraq. We didn't get it in Syria. I mean, it's just how it's kind of shocking how long we're going to play with this same playbook. And this is also something that concerned me about Trump. That is the great negotiator. He's supposed to come in, put max pressure. But what happens when it doesn't get his deal?

When it doesn't get his deal in Ukraine, when it doesn't get his deal with Iran, because he can only do this max pressure so many times before you end up in, well, in this situation, in a war. And it's just hard to see how he's going to walk this back as well. I mean, no matter what he does now, he's going to be in deep, deep trouble. If he allows the Israelis to be defeated, well, that would be a huge stain on his presidency. On the other hand, if it tries to go in and allows America to get pulled in, and America takes a lot of the punishment because I agree with both of you. I think the U.S. is vulnerable to maybe even more so than Israel in the region,

given that a lot of its assets might be more exposed. So it does mean the US can't bring a lot of pain to Iran. It just means that the United States is also very exposed. So it's just surprising to me that there's been such a huge miscalculation. Is this just regular hubris, that this is just a bit like we do with the Russians. There is this gas station masquerading as a country. the Iranians are just this backwards Ayatollahs who, you know, hate the Jews and, you know, do not have the capabilities of fighting back. How do we end up in this situation?

Because the fact that we, not we, well, the fact that Israel, with the support of the United States, actually went to war with Iran, everyone knew from war games and all what a unmitigated disaster this could be. Was it only to bring in the United States? So it's just hard for me to see the calculation behind this. Right, can I just say a few things here? I mean, first of all, I think we must make a distinction here between Israel and the United States. Now, going back to many points which John has said many times, in many places, going back many years, Israel has for some time, and I think visibly so, since October.

over 23, found itself in a strategic crisis. It cannot bring itself to negotiate its way out of that crisis, because that would call into question many things about itself that it doesn't want to confront. So it has consistently escalated, and it has consistently gambled, and it has been doing so on an ever more extreme and, frankly, appalling way for some years now, but especially since October 2023. If you look at that, if you look at this latest attack in Iran in context,

you could see that this is an example of Israel, again, simply raising the stakes, increasing its gamble, as that strategic crisis that it is facing all around itself is deepening. the United States is in a different position because they are not as connected to this situation in the Middle East and as Israel is. But what is extraordinary, and again it goes back, I think, to the point that many people, including John had made, this is my own interpretation. John is here. You can correct me if I'm wrong, is that the United States repeatedly seems to be intending to make Israel's strategic problems, its own. It doesn't have to, but it has now chosen to do so.

A wise U.S. administration, one which had the geopolitical interests of the United States at the center of its policy, would absolutely not want to conflict with Iran, would want to. a stable situation in the Middle East. It would want to transfer his military assets to China to the Pacific, because that's what it says is the zone of ultimate destiny as to who would be the future great power. Instead of which the United States doesn't seem able, or doesn't seem to want even to distance itself from these increasingly reckless gambols of its Israeli ally. And we can see how that is now leading the United States also into a strategic crisis and one which it too may find it cannot

walk away from. The United States has enough detachment from Ukraine and the crisis there to be able to walk away. It doesn't have that. same degree of detachment from what it seems to be going on between Israel and Iran. Just to pick up on this, I think, Glenn, there's no question that the Israelis want us in the fight. What they're now saying, Netanyahu said this yesterday, is that Israel is on the verge of a great victory, and what the American should want to do is jump on the bandwagon so that we can participate in the great victory. This, of course, is the exact opposite with coming on here. They're in deep trouble, and they're trying to suck us in for that reason. And I think they understood

from the beginning that they would need us to come in at some point. But I think what happened here is that initially Trump paid attention to what the mainstream media was saying and what the Israelis were saying, which is that they launched the shock and awe campaign. They caught the Iranians with their pants down. They destroyed their air defenses. They were pummeling the country. Israel's Iron Dome was going to protect Israel. This was going to be another great victory for the Israelis. Iran was going to end up looking like Syria. And I think that Trump was, he bought on to that rhetoric. But as we all know, wars usually don't play out so simply. And the shock and a campaign, which was effective. I mean, there's no question the Israelis, I mean, the Iranians got caught

with their pants down. But it was not a decisive defeat by any means. The Iranians were covered, and then they began to retaliate. And as the war is now unfolding, and we're beginning to think about what would be involved in attacking Iran. We're talking about the Americans attacking Iran. It does not look like a pretty picture. And I think every day, Trump and his principal advisors understand that. They understand that people like Lindsey Graham and other people who are basically owned by Israel can stand up in the public square and say, we should do this, we should do that. we have the magic formula. The Americans and the Israelis together will produce this great victory and so forth and so on. But the fact is, if you're the president of the United States, you're

principally responsible for the security of your country. You're the person who makes these hard decisions. You have to think long and hard about whether you want to do this. And I think the information that's now percolating up from inside the establishment is telling Trump that you You better be really careful here. It's very hard to see how we can win this. And you're beginning to see this appear in the mainstream media. Even the Wall Street Journal, which is basically the main propaganda arm of the Israeli government in the United States, is running articles talking about the problems that Israel is having,

the fact that it's running out of air defense missiles, the fact that its economy is in deep trouble if this war goes on. The Wall Street Journal is even beginning to talk about the damage that's being done inside Israel. And of course, you see this in newspapers like The Guardian, the New York Times as well. This tells me that people are beginning to think long and hard about what American involvement means. Shock and awe is now in the rearview mirror. Shockin'aw, you know, looked good for a while. But we're beyond shock and awe. And I think for that reason that Trump is beginning to hesitate. But as you were saying, Alexander, the fact is that the United States almost always does

Israel's bidding. And when Israel is in real trouble, it's almost axiomatic that the United States comes to Israel's defense. So the question we have to ask ourselves is whether or not. The United States will actually come in knowing that this isn't extremely risky or maybe even just plain losing strategy. Will we come in anyway? I don't think we will. And this all leads me to think that the great danger moving forward here is that the Israelis will use nuclear weapons.

The Israelis are getting desperate, in my opinion, and they will get increasingly desperate with the passage of time, especially if Uncle Sam does not come to their rescue. And then the question is, what are they going to do? And I think nuclear weapons is one option. Another option is a false flag operation in the Persian Gulf, where the Israelis actually attack an American military asset and blame it on the Iranians for the purposes of dragging us into the fight. But one does not want to underestimate how ruthless the Israelis might be if they are up against the wall.

And I think what we're saying here is, if you look at the course of the war, they are, if not already, but soon going to be up against the wall. I don't see this as a war of attrition becoming another Ukraine proxy war, simply because it's too much devastation happening too quickly. It's, you know, they can't go on. This has been less than a week. They can't continue going on like this. So it's, wait, it's been a week.

Sorry. But where would they go from here if the United States actually would join? Because one of the, again, one of the mistakes in the Ukraine war as well was the assumption, as long as we get the Americans on our side, they have unlimited resources. Then it's only a matter of time before the Russians would break. But as we learned, you know, there are some, the Russians, they had benefit with, you know, geography with logistics, proximity, industrial base. We see similar issues in Iran.

That is, they do have a huge stockpile of weapons. They do have it well defended. The country itself, with the mountains and the seas are more or less a fortress. They might be supplied by or replenished to some extent by allies in the, you know, be it Russia or China. Well, how much can actually the United States bring if it joins in on the fight? Because even if it does join, it depleted a lot of its resources in Ukraine. Indeed, I keep reading about the United States have to redirect a lot of air defense systems

and interceptive missiles from Ukraine and send it to Israel instead. So there aren't this unlimited stockpiles of weapons, and there's not that much, well, there's not that industrial capacity anymore to just revamp production and start to, you know, make pump these missiles out like some sausage factory. So if this isn't going to happen,

what actually can the United States do here? Because they would, again, be very exposed in the region and they have limited ability to either, you know, supply Israel over time or even if they join the fight to be able to land at least a decisive blow on Israel. I don't doubt that the US can't bring a lot of destruction on Iran. I'm just in terms of winning and ending the missiles raining over Israel, it's very hard to see that this is even an option at this point.

I just think that the idea that if the Israelis can bring the Americans into this, then somehow the problem will be solved. It wasn't in Ukraine, and I'm doubtful that it would be able to land this decisive blow on the Iranians as well. I agree with that. I mean, this is why the United States should be extremely careful not to become involved, because if the United States does commit itself to this war, if it joins the war, then the implications of an Israeli defeat become the implications of an American defeat, in this absolutely critical region.

And that would be very, very humiliating, difficult for the United States. The United States cannot afford a long war for all of the reasons that we've just been hearing on this program. It needs to husband its resources and to consider where the real important point, the real region of importance for the United States actually is. It is not in the Middle East. It's not even in Europe anymore. That's not where the main challenge to the United States is coming from. So this is a massive diversion of resources which the United States cannot afford.

That ought to be the major understanding of American leaders at this particular point in time. And what they ought to be doing is not making threats about joining this war and demanding unconditional surrender from Iran and doing all of these kind of things which could lead the United States into this war itself. What the Americans ought to be trying to do for their own benefit, and incidentally for Israel's too, is to try to end the war as soon as possible before more damage is done. in order to release those resources and to prevent the catastrophe that we are, you know, that we are risky. And that means negotiating with the Iranians, talking with them, perhaps getting other

parties to do so. The Iranians are today speaking with the Europeans, but they're not very impressed by the Europeans at all, for all the many reasons we've discussed on these programs. perhaps getting the Russians also involved. The Russians do not want to see a deeper crisis in the Middle East. They've offered to mediate. The United States ought to be working with all of these parties to try to find a way to end this conflict and to get the negotiations between itself and Iran back on track.

And that's going to be very, very difficult because, of course, trust between Iran and the United States has now been shattered, and it's going to be a hermeric operation to try to restore it to any sort of level where an agreement between the United States and Iran is possible. I think that's right, that the best option here would be to get some sort of negotiations going between Iranians and the Israelis with the Americans in between and maybe get help from other parties as well, but see if you can reach some sort of ceasefire.

And one could argue that the Israelis and the Iranians would both be open to this in principle after a few more weeks of this back and forth because both will then understand that they can't win and it's best to shut the war down. But what the deal looks like is another matter. And whether or not, as Alexander was saying, you can get the Iranians to trust any deal is another matter. But if that happened, I think the best outcome would be some sort of JCPOA too.

I think if you're going to shut this war down and keep it shut down, you have to reach some sort of meaningful agreement that both sides buy onto. And the only deal I think that's possible is a JCPOA 2. But I don't think the Israelis will buy onto that. That's the problem. That's why we're having this war. We wouldn't have this war if the Israelis were willing to agree to JCPOA 2. But just as they undermine JCPOA 1, they're not likely to want JCPOA too. And then that raises the question, you know, what kind of meaningful agreement you get to keep this war shut down?

I mean, to shut the war down and then keep it shut down. And very hard to see how we do that. Yeah, that... Well, if you're sitting in Tel Aviv, I guess the concern would be, you know, if you see that consider Iran to be the head of the snake as they refer to it, that this is, there seems like they're only or last chance after all of these years to finally knock out Iran.

They've been talking about this for decades now, so it might be hard to accept a humiliating peace as well. But if you're sitting in Tehran, your main concern will be what would prevent, you know, the United States and Israel from simply, you know, we're replenishing Israel with missiles, some more interceptive missiles, and then have another go at it a few months or a year down the road. And I think obviously diplomacy itself was quite hurt with the attack as it happened during

the negotiations. It's going to be very hard to trust anyone anymore. But I wanted to just shift on to. related topic, which is that what do we make sense of the, because we talk about escalation, we talk about possibility of nuclear weapons, as John said, or the United States joining in. But this limits the escalation to either pulling in the US or escalation between the Israelis and Iranians. But how about pulling in other regional powers?

We see some reports that China might have delivered arms. It wouldn't surprise me, or I would expect that both Russia and China would at least supply Iran with some good intelligence, as neither of them can afford to see Iran being defeated. They could also supply weapons. Again, I know some Chinese planes have been to Iran. It's not clear if they're there to evacuate or deliver weaponry or both. Again, it's very hard to trust anything you see in the media these days. But what is the risk here of pulling in other powers? because I know the Russians have nuclear scientists now in Iran. I can't imagine that the Russians would want to send any weapons or soldiers, that is,

to start fighting Israel and redirecting it away from Ukraine. This seems impossible to me, but there's different forms of involvement. So what are possible pathways in terms of pulling in the great powers? Well, I think the longer the war continues, the more that possibility increases. I mean, the Russians have an interest in keeping Iran, holding Iran together, because from their point of view, Iran is a critical ally in Western and Central Asia. If Iran were to collapse and to collapse into chaos, it would cause problems for Russia. And the Russians anyway, I mean, I think are fundamentally averse to see regime change operations

like this one succeed. So if they sense that Iran is, is able to hold, then over time they will be increasingly tempted to support it. People overlooked the comments that Putin made on Wednesday. He actually said that before the war, Russia offered Iran a defense agreement. So, I mean, that gives you a sense that, you know, how important for the Russians, Iran is. With China, I think it's a different calculus in the sense that I think the Chinese at the moment would probably support efforts to end the war. But if the war is prolonged and it looks like Iran is fighting, then of course China will start eventually to see potential benefits in keeping

the war going, or at least enabling Iran to continue to involve itself, to continue to fight. because it achieves two things. It gives China leverage over the United States, just as Chinese support for Vietnam gave China leverage over the United States. And the second thing it does is it bogs down the United States in the Middle East, which is strategically beneficial to China. Better have the aircraft carriers, the Nimitz and the Carl Vinson, and all of those in the Middle East, in the Persian Gulf and in the Arabian Sea,

then off the coast of China and close to Taiwan. So from the Chinese point of view, you can see that if the war continues, the benefits to them of committing themselves to supporting Iran begin to increase. And given the way in which China has used these consequences, conflicts in the past, I think American policymakers would be most unwise to think that the Chinese won't use this conflict in the same way again. And you spoke before about Tehran and what the outlook might be in Tehran. This is the other thing, is that, of course, the Iranians have been attacked at the very time

when they were involved in negotiations. They have seen how hostile to them Israel is. they've also been given a lesson that at best the United States cannot control Israel. So they may say to themselves, and there are people in Iran who are already saying it. If you follow the Iranian media closely, obviously they use coded language, but they have already been talking about this. There will be people in Iran who say, well, look, if we are going to be hung for a sheet, as well as for, you know, as if, you know,

I've forgotten the expression. But if we're going to be attacked, simply in this kind of way, we might as well do that which we are always being accused of doing, which is acquiring nuclear weapons capability, because in the end, that is our only dependent, deterrent, our only reliable deterrent.

And we don't want to be reliant upon outside powers like China and Russia for our security, because those powers ultimately might have their own interests, which are not identical to our own. So I think this is a disaster, because you can see that both the Russians and the Chinese might, for different reasons, decide that they want to support Iran. And Iran might have incentives now to go ahead and push for nuclear weapons.

Yeah, I, I, I, I think you're absolutely right, Alexander. I mean, isn't the lesson of what's happened that Iran should have had nuclear weapons and they were foolish not to acquire them? Don't the Ukrainians feel they were fools for giving up their nuclear weapons? Doesn't everybody understand that the North Koreans are sitting pretty because they got nuclear weapons and Iraq and Libya were invaded in large. part because they didn't have nuclear weapons. It would seem to me that the lesson here for Iran is you better get nuclear weapons to protect yourself. And moreover, it's not just Iran. What about other countries in the Middle East? Isn't it quite clear that Israel is a complete rogue state that has a pension for attacking countries all over the region? Doesn't that tell you having a nuclear deterrent is a smart thing, I think it does. So I think the consequences for nuclear

proliferation here are potentially disastrous. I mean, we'll see what happens. But the incentives that the Iranians and others have to get nuclear weapons now. I mean, who would take the NPT seriously? Iran has signed the NPT. It's not violating the NPT. It has been. It has been a inspectors, IAEA inspectors all over Iran. There's no country that's ever had such extensive inspections on their nuclear program as Iran. It was negotiating in good faith with the United States when Israel attacked it in kahoots with the United States, I would add. Just, you know, how can you take this nonproliferation regime seriously? Certainly the Israelis and the Americans don't take it seriously.

So I think the potential for more proliferation as a result of this is very great. I'd also add just to elevate the conversation a bit and talk about Putin and even Xi Jinping, but mainly Putin. What does this all tell Putin? I mean, Putin is trying to work out some sort of modus the Vendai with the Trump administration. And he watches what the United States is doing in the Middle East. And he watches what Trump says and then contrasts it with what Trump does. And how can Putin trust the United States in any meaningful way?

How could you believe that if you work out a deal with the United States, especially with President Trump, that he's going to stick to the deal? If anything, you have to be more suspicious than ever. And then this just feeds back into the line of argument that Alexander was laying out a minute ago, which is the Russians have a deep-seated interest in being closely linked with Iran because Iran's fate matters greatly to them. The Iranians, the North Koreans, the Chinese and the Russians are all in bed together because of the United States and Israel.

They have no choice but to cooperate. It's in their vested interest. So here we are having this conversation about picking a fight with Iran, but one wants to understand, as we will of course do, that Iran is now being pushed closer to the Russians, closer to the Chinese, and indeed closer to the North Koreans. These countries are all going to cooperate with each other because they're all scared stiff, as they should be, of the United States and Israel. Just very quickly on the non-proliferation treaty, because it has another layer to it, that is not only has it been violated by Israel, of course, not being a signatory by also having nuclear weapons and also not being inspected, but one of the benefits of signing the non-proliferation treaty and thus giving up the right to develop nuclear weapons is that it guarantees the right to a civilian nuclear program. So by Trump arguing they're not even allowed to have this. And so now we have to bomb and attack them in a surprise attack. It really put a very big nail into the whole non-proliferation treaty,

which is scary given that this is the main deal we have to prevent nuclear proliferation. Just very quickly on this, yeah, the Trump deception, what it means for Russia. I think, yeah, certainly some trust has been lost. But also the way the surprise attack was carried out against Iran. There's some striking similarities, though, to the attack on Russia's nuclear deterrent, only two weeks earlier, which was smuggling in drones over a long period of time in advance, assembling them and then having this massive coordinated attack. Again, and also within a barely two weeks span of attacking Russia's nuclear deterrent

and then attacking Iranian nuclear reactors. And when Trump said, yeah, I didn't have anything to do with it, I'm inclined to think that, yeah, perhaps the intelligence agencies don't necessarily inform him of everything they know or do. But now, certainly someone must sit in Moscow and wonder to what extent he's deceiving them. Because this, well, again, as you both have suggested, the trust in Trump, must have collapsed now. And again, no one in Moscow is telling me how they look at Trump now,

but this seems to be a logical conclusion to reach. Absolutely. I mean, the point of the truth about Russia is that there are many, many people in Russia who are deeply skeptical of any attempt to reach any kind of rapprochement with the United States. They say the Americans cannot be trusted, that the Americans, are always going to take advantage of any agreement in order to heighten their attack on Russia in some fall. And of course, what's just happened is going to make the arguments of those people even stronger. I was in Russia a few weeks ago. I attended a conference of lawyers.

These are civil society people. These are not people drawn from the military. and the usual places where you would hear those hardline opinions being expressed. And I was very surprised that even in some of the open discussions that took place on international law, which is why I went to that conference where I was invited to go. There were discussions about international law. Some of these Russian lawyers, people who are some of the practitioners in law, were saying that the government in Russia is not tough enough.

They were criticizing the Russian government for being too soft. And that's, you know, that kind of person. I mean, heavens knows what they're saying in the military and in the security services and in those sort of places. The danger is that, you know, eventually the feeling in Moscow about this is going to become so strong. that even someone with the authority that Putin has is not going to be able to disregard it.

And that's putting aside what he himself personally makes of all of this. If you look at the Russian readouts of his conversations with Trump, I get the sense that he was absolutely furious about what happened. And as we both know, Putin is self-critical for having trusted the Americans before the war started in February of 2022. He made some good faith efforts to avoid the war. And it's quite clear that he realizes that he was bamboozled by the West, which he was, and that he was too trustworthy.

So even going back to February 22, Putin didn't trust the West much anymore. At this point in time, it's hard to believe he trusts us at all. In fact, it's hard to believe anybody trusts us at all, because there's certainly no good reason to trust us. Well, before we start wrapping things up, where do you guys think this war is heading now? Because we all seem to agree that any escalation would be a disaster. we all seem to agree that there's no good pathway to a peace,

given that it would be too humiliating for the Israelis. How can this possibly play out? Because I was pretty certain that an American attack would come by this weekend, but now I'm becoming less certain, I guess, with the pressures mounting on Trump and also recognizing that, yeah, America's own assets could be really devastated in the region if they would take this dramatic steps of engaging directly with Iran. So what are the possible, what can we expect in the following week or month, I guess?

As we always hear say, I tend to joke that every time we meet every once a month, the world is completely different. But it is become a reality. It is, the world doesn't look the same for months to month. So what is the possible direction here, though? I think that there is one factor, which we haven't talked about, which I think does weigh very heavily towards some kind of negotiated end to this, rather than the United States becoming directly involved. And that is that there's clearly an enormous amount of opposition

within American society to the United States becoming involved in this war directly. The opinion polls on this apparently are very clear and many of the most vocal opponents are the sort of people that Donald Trump sees as his core supporters in the United States. So he must know that if he gets involved in a long-duration conflict,

he already starts from a position where that would be extremely unpopular with his own supporters and that over time that opposition would intensify and it could very well see ultimately a big collapse in his own support. So I cannot imagine that Donald Trump, who whatever else he is, he is a politician, is going to ignore that. And I think that might, in the end,

be the single most important, factor in pulling him back, even going beyond all of these strategic and logistical and technical problems that we've been talking about. Having said that, it's also been acknowledged that a huge amount of damage has already been done. And the United States has forfeited a lot of the remaining, diminishing trust it has, people have in it around the world. And it's going to be a huge task to pull it, put it together again. And maybe that's what Donald Trump needs to think about. He needs to be thinking about how he's going to rebuild his relationship with Putin.

Forget about all these talk of ceased fires and freezes of the conflict in Ukraine now. How he's going to rebuild confidence in him. and in the United States with the Russians, with key players in the Middle East, including the Gulf states, with China, obviously, with all of these parties. And I think that really goes beyond this crisis that we have now. So even on the most optimistic assumptions that he pulls back, the United States pulls back, it's going to have an awful. lot of work to do. And it needs to start having finally that internal dialogue with itself,

which is asking itself, how is it that it repeatedly gets itself into these situations? Because until it stops doing so, then its problems around the world are simply going to go on multiplying. Yeah, just very quickly on Alexander's very important point about domestic, opinion here in the United States, it is clear that the overwhelming majority of Americans do not want to get involved in this war. I think there are only 16% of the surveyed Americans who said they favor us intervening in the war. I think the number was 60% who were opposed and 24% who didn't know. This tells me that, Trump would be remarkably foolish from a domestic political point of view to get involved.

And by the way, a lot of those people who oppose the war are part of his political base. A lot of the MAGA people think this is a crazy idea. Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Green, being two prominent examples. But to answer your question, Glenn, which I consider the most frightful question before I go on shows like this, is the one of how this is likely to play out. moving forward because it's incredibly difficult to answer that question and none of us want egg all over our face. But I'll give you my take on how I think about it. I think there are basically three possibilities here. One is you get an ugly ceasefire, you know, over the next couple weeks, the war shut down,

mainly with the Americans in the driver's seat pushing both sides to some sort of seized by her. The second is you get some form of escalation. The war escalates. The Israelis use nuclear weapons. There's a conflict in the Persian Gulf, and the Americans are dragged in that way, or the Americans go on a bombing rampage and go after all the nuclear facilities. But that's the escalation option. And then the third option is that the war just goes on the way it's now being waged for the foreseeable future. My sense is it just can't go on the way it's being fought, mainly because of the Israelis. I think the Iranians could fight a long war, and I think they prepared for a long war.

I think they have experience doing that. I think the Israelis cannot continue the way things are going for weeks or months. I may be wrong, but I think maintenance of the status quo, so to speak, is not likely. I think you're likely to either get some sort of ugly ceasefire or you'll get escalation. I don't think the Americans are going to come in, and I do think if the Americans come in, And they may attack Fordow and then say we've done our duty, we've been successful, and that's the end of our intervention. I find it hard to imagine us getting involved in a protracted war, although it is possible that we could get dragged in if something happens in the Gulf. I also find it hard to believe the Israelis would use nuclear weapons.

I think if we caught wind that they were thinking about using nuclear weapons, we would put a new. enormous pressure on them not to use nuclear weapons. So I think the escalation is not that likely. It is possible. But I think the most likely outcome here is that at some point in the not too distant future, the Israelis will quietly tell us they'd like us to shut this down and do it in a way that they can blame us for shutting it down. And I think the Iranians would be willing to shut it down as well, because I think the Iranians would see it as a victory.

And the Israelis, of course, will spin it as a victory for them, a minor victory. But they had to obey the United States and shut the war down, and that's why it was shut down. So my guess, and I do want to emphasize that it's my guess, is that I think an ugly ceasefire is probably the most likely option. And the least likely option is maintenance of the status quo into the distant future. And then in between the escalation option where there are real concerns. But I'm hoping, and maybe this is wishful thinking on my part, but I'm hoping we don't get escalation.

Just a quick comment on the Iranian position. I think they're in a very strong position in this sense, because if they go continue, fighting, as you said, they can fight on for still a good more time. They are able to absorb more hits and there have a lot of missiles that they can launch back at Israel. Israel's position is weakening seemingly quite quickly. So I think they can continue fighting, but I think it's also correct what you said. If they were offered a piece now to end this, I think it would also be very favorable because they can walk away with what's seen as a victory. That is the, you know, the mighty Israeli war machine, they were essentially able to defeat it, and they also

restored their deterrent. I think other countries will think hard and long before they attack Iran again in the future, and they could recover many of their losses. So I think Iran would see itself coming out much stronger if it would reach a peace now. And also, even though it can continue to defeat or bring punishment to Israel, To what extent would this be sensible? I mean, I spoke yesterday with Professor Marandi, who was a former negotiator on the Iranian nuclear team.

And I was kind of trying to push the point to him that, you know, if you're too successful here, you don't want to push Israel too far into a corner because, you know, you don't want to make country fear for their existence if they sit with nuclear weapons. So again, it's hard to sell this point. point after what Israel is down to their country, but suggesting you should go easy on them. But it is, I do think that even though they can bring more pain to the Israelis, it's not,

it's not necessarily something they would want to do. I think, yeah, they would take a piece if they were offered it now. Again, if the United States willing to put some pressure on Israel, because I think this is going to be very hard for them to walk away from this. But, yeah, it remains to be seen. So, Alexander, any final thought? I think you've summed up what the Iranians need to think about. I think the Iranians actually are very sophisticated. This is my own sense.

And I think that they do understand that the secret of success is to know when to stop. And I think they know when to stop, actually. With the Israelis, I think it's much, much more difficult. They've shown no ability to stop when they're ahead. They haven't done so. They haven't done so at any point that I'm. can think of in the last few years of the conflict. So there we are. Anyway, anyway, that's all I think I can add to what you've just said. I mean, it's another bleak picture in some ways. And what we've seen

has been a catastrophic mismanagement of a situation, which just two weeks ago seemed under control. Yeah, just two quick points. One, just on the survival issue, I agree completely with You said, Glenn, the last thing you want to do is back any country into a corner. This gets back to my initial comments about Trump demanding unconditional surrender. If you demand unconditional surrender, you're basically threatening the survival of a state. You're saying that we're going to come in and run your state. You have to dance to our tune. This will cause the Iranians to fight to the death. And of course, the same basic logic applies to the Israelis. You don't want to put the Israelis in a situation where they think that their country is going to collapse because they will then do something extremely risky.

And given that they have nuclear weapons, we want to be super careful here. Just one other point that I had meant to make earlier that I'd like to emphasize is that there's no example in the historical record of using. air power alone to affect regime change and to win a war. And you mentioned a number of examples, Glenn, and from the post-Cold War period. But I would note to you that during World War II, we pounded the living daylights out of both Germany and Japan. We were in the process of leveling Japan when the war ended. And the Japanese did not rise up and overthrow the emperor or overthrow the regime, nor did the Germans. The Soviets had to go into the furor bunker and actually caused Adolf Hitler to commit suicide. And this points out that if you're really interested

in regime change, you have to invade a country. And, you know, just to go to Iraq, remember, we were not able to use shock and awe to get regime change in Iraq. We had to invade Iraq. So you then have to ask yourself the question, are we going to invade Iran? Of course not. Nobody's even talking about that. So the idea here is that we're going to defy history or the Israelis are going to defy the historical record. And they're going to use air power alone to get regime change.

not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. And furthermore, as we've talked about, even if the Americans come in, they're not going to use, not going to be able to use air power, the Americans and the Israelis together, to put an end to the nuclear program. So again, we just want to emphasize to the viewers that if you look at Israel's three goals, they have no theory of victory for achieving those goals. They have an effect. jumped off a cliff, and they're now asking us to jump off the cliff with them. And let's just hope that President Trump has the good sense not to do that, and instead understands that the only way out of this is to come up with some sort of ugly ceasefire.

Well, my comment on Israel is similar as what I argue with Russia. That is, you know, if you make, like Russia as a great power of fear for its existence, is going to do some very aggressive things, which was seen due to Ukraine. And that's essentially that was my warning to Professor Miranda as well about the Israelis, and irrespective of who began this. So anyways, thank you both for your time. Yeah, I always look forward to this talk.

So, yeah, until next time. Thanks again. Thank you. Thank you, Glenn. Thank you.