John Mearsheimer DESTROYS Neocons On Iran War Disaster

Very excited now to be joined by our great friend, Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago.Sir, it's great to see you.Thanks for joining us again.

I'm glad to be here.

Thank you for inviting me. your reaction.

No, absolutely not.

Absolutely not.Oh no.No, no, no.They weren't firing those missiles until Israel and the United States attacked Iran.We do understand.

Welcome to 1979 when the revolutionary regime began to kill Europeans.

You do know that we overthrew the democratically elected government in 1954.Just for the record, you were talking about this.You don't think Iran has, you think Iran's forgotten about that?

No, I suspect they've not.

You don't think Iran remembers that we supported Saddam Hussein in the Iran -Iraq war?I know this.You think they've forgotten about this?

I know this.Other countries have history.Do you think Iran is a monster?No.OK.

OK. I don't think I don't think there's I'm glad I don't live there.I think many countries do many bad things, including my own.And I wouldn't call the United States a monster.

But Stephen, do you also remember that we wouldn't have had October 7th if we hadn't had Iranian support for Hamas?

I agree, we wouldn't have had October 7th if we'd gotten peace in the Middle East and that's a much longer story.

It is and every single US president has tried and will continue to.

Not very hard.But it is very important to emphasize there's no evidence that Iran even knew about October 7th.

Oh my goodness.I'm sure it is.There's no evidence in the public record of that.Oh my goodness.

Wow.The smirk, sir, from Victoria Newland.Whenever you bring up the genuine fact that there is literally no evidence of all of that.What's your broad takeaway here?We haven't gotten to talk to you since that debate aired.

I think that in terms of facts and logic, that we beat them at almost every turn.And I think that's reflected in their response to my point that there was no evidence that Iran was involved in the events of October 7th.I mean, they didn't say, here are the facts that show you're wrong, or here is the report that you should read that explains why you're wrong.They just laughed at me and made fun of me.And that tells you, I believe, that they didn't have the the facts.again in good faith, and we, not them, started a war.

We attacked them.We tried to decapitate and succeeded at decapitating the regime.So the idea that the Iranians are thesesort of mindless aggressors who are constantly starting wars and doing all these evil things against the good guys, Israel and the United States, is, as both of you know, a laughable argument.

Yeah.I was watching the full debate this morning.I haven't quite gotten all the way through it, but one of the things that I thought was really noteworthy is, you know, your two neocon opponents.Victoria Nuland doesn't even support the war with Iran.So clearly, Clearly, she thinks this is not going well.And Pompeo does support it, but he believes that we're, right now, in a very poor position.

Of course, his answer is, we just need to do more war, and then that will work it all out.But to me, that was very telling, that neither of them could really defend the current status quo and the level of disaster that the Iran war has created for the United States.

Yeah, I would also point out to you that Victoria Nuland made it clear that she disagreed with Pompeo when he, as Secretary of State, helped President Trump pull us out of the JCPOA.She said that we should have stayed in the JCPOA.She said it had flaws, but those flaws could have been fixed and we should have used it as a foundation to build a better agreement.And that is actually a fundamental disagreement between the two of them.So I think it was quite clear that although they both agree on a lot of issues, they disagree on a number of important issues.With regard to the subject of Iran, there's no question that it's a disaster.

We have no sort of theory of victory at this point.There's no strategy that anybody can point to that will allow us to pull our chestnuts out of the fire.And although Pompeo was a huge supporter of the Iran war, he wrote this op -ed for FoxNews on February 28th that talks in very glowing terms about how the war is going to evolve and what a wonderful move it is by President Trump to start this war.Nevertheless, given how it's gone south, he has no way of fixing the problem.He has no solution.

Yeah, that was just the real, all they had was, well, that's why we have to do more.That's what it ultimately came down to.It was really ironic, I think, actually, to see them put in that position where ultimately neither could defend how disastrous the current status quo is.Obviously, Israel was something that was also hovering over the entire discussion, its own influence on the United States.Well, here we have a very recent comment from Ben Gavir of Israel.Can we put C2 up here, just to get your reaction, sir?

Here, Ben Gavir says, Israel will not allow Trump to make a deal with Iran.And this here, you have a member of the literally Israeli government, of the security cabinet, saying that they will not allow the United States to pursue this deal with Iran in the midst of all of these negotiations and firing and alleged ceasefires.What do you make of that comment?

Well, it's very important to understand that the deal that will be cut assuming we get a deal, will be a disastrous deal for Israel.Israel started this war with a number of goals.None of them have been achieved.And furthermore, Iran is going to end up controlling the Strait of Hormuz.And furthermore, it looks like if the deal is cut, that Iran's economic future looks much brighter than its economic past.This is disastrous for Israel.

and Israel wants to do everything it can to undermine the deal.This is why the Israelis are bombing away in Lebanon.principle way they have of undermining any deal.And what Ben Gavir is basically saying is, we don't like the deal at all.It's disastrous from our point of view, and we will make sure there is no deal.And I think he is, in effect, saying that, you know, we control the United States and we'll make it impossible for Trump to strike a deal.

Do you think that they will succeed in that?Not only do you have escalated bombing in Lebanon — we can actually put this New York Times tear sheet up on the screen — that the Lebanese are resigned to a long war, even if the U .S.and Iran do make a deal.This is something that the Iranians have said from the beginning is unacceptable to them, that they want the war to end on all fronts.You also have Trump making some wild statements, starting to blow up the Omanis.

If they do anything to have control or share control of You have an entire neocon freakout here in the U .S.of all sorts of influencers, people who have, you know, had the ear of the White House saying, no, no, no, you can't stop now.This would be too disastrous, etc.So do you think that we are close to some sort of, you know, true conclusion to this war?

We're talking first about getting a ceasefire in place and opening the straits.That's the first step in the process.And then once that's done, you'll have negotiations on the nuclear issue, on the Strait of Hormuz, on sanctions, on reparations, on missiles.They're just all sorts of issues floating around in here that have to be dealt with.A lot of moving parts, to put it in slightly different language.But up front, what we're talking about

now is just create a meaningful ceasefire.And that means, again, shutting down the war to include Lebanon and opening the strait.And the problem is that the Israelis do not want us to stop the war in Lebanon.And they don't want us to stop the war in Lebanon because they want to conquer territory in Lebanon.They want to defeat Hezbollah.But also because they see that as the ideal means for undermining any kind of agreement.

And they don't want an agreement.The Israelis want to go back to the bombing campaign.They want the war to restart again in a meaningful way.And of course, President Trump doesn't want this at all.Trump wants to cut a deal.He understands that he has no theory of victory here, and he's got to cut a deal to put an end to this.

But the Israelis want to prevent him from doing that.And Lebanon is the key lever that they have over him.And of course, they have the lobby and the war hawks in the United States who will back up Israel at every turn.

Yeah, Professor, one of the things that we were really shocked by this morning was this comment from Trump saying that he was threatening to blow up Oman if they do not abide by U .S.demands of opening the Straits of Hormuz.Let's take a listen.We'll get your reaction.

No, the strait's going to be open to everybody.It's international waters.Nobody's going to control it.We're going to watch over it.We'll watch over it.But nobody's going to control it.

That's part of the negotiation that we have.They would like to control it.Nobody's going to control it.It's international waters.And Oman will behave just like everybody else.So we'll have to blow them up.

They understand that.They'll be fine.

We'll have to blow them up.I mean, how is this going to affect our regional alliances?

We've done so much.much damage to our regional alliances already, number one.And number two, Trump just talks like this all the time so that it's not as shocking as one would find it to be if, you know, someone like President Biden or President Bush had said this.I mean, this is sort of par for the course for President Trump.So I think in the final analysis, it doesn't matter.The Omanis probably just rolled their eyes just like everybody else in the United States and in the Gulf did.

The fact is that we're in deep trouble in the Gulf.Before the war on February 27th, it looked like we had a formidable alliance structure.We had bases all over the region and our allies, our Gulf allies, all thought that we would provide security for them.security umbrella that was over their heads was a reliable one.But the events since February 28th have shown that that was not the case, that the United States could not protect them, that those US bases in the region were vulnerable, and that moving forward, they have to think seriously about how to provide for their own security and not rely on the United States in any meaningful way, because they have now seen what happened when they relied on the United States.They got clobbered.

And there is always a threat these days that they'll be eliminated as functioning countries if the war really heats up and the Iranians go after their desalination plants and their energy infrastructure.

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