Professor John Mearsheimer critiques Donald Trump's failed war against Iran, arguing that U.S. preemptive aggression and Israeli pressure forced a flawed air-only strategy while neglecting diplomatic leverage. He highlights how Iranian-Russian alliances, bolstered by Moscow's technology transfers, have strengthened Tehran's resolve to demand ceasefire guarantees and Strait of Hormuz control before nuclear talks. Mearsheimer warns that Secretary Marco Rubio's avoidance of negotiations due to lobby influence, combined with depleted missile stocks needed for China, creates a dangerous pivot risking nuclear escalation involving Russia, Israel, and Iran's proxies. Ultimately, the episode suggests that abandoning free society principles for state illegitimacy has precipitated an existential geopolitical crisis. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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High Stakes Diplomacy00:05:54
Undeclared wars are commonplace.
Tragically, 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?
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, April 28th, 2026.
Professor John Mearshamer will be with us in just a moment.
Just how did Donald Trump lose his war of choosing?
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Professor Mearshammer, welcome here, my dear friend.
As always, thank you for accommodating the schedule.
How significant is it?
In your view, is the trip by Iranian Foreign Minister Arachi to Moscow, where he was personally and rather ostentatiously greeted by President Putin himself?
Well, I think it has implications beyond the Iran war, and it has implications for U.S. Russian relations and for what's going on with regard to Ukraine.
I think if you listen carefully to what the Russians are saying these days, and especially a speech that Lavrov gave on April 24th, You see that the Russians have basically given up on the Americans.
They understand that they're at war with the West.
Nothing has changed, despite all President Trump's promises of settling the Ukraine war and improving relations between the United States and Russia.
That really hasn't happened.
And we still have our gun sights on the Russians.
And that's driven the Russians and the Iranians close together.
And I think what you see when Arachi goes to St. Petersburg to talk to Putin.
And they have this long discussion, is evidence of that tight relationship that has developed between the two sides.
And I would note very importantly that there's all sorts of evidence that the Russians are helping the Iranians with their use of drones and ballistic missiles against U.S., Israeli, and Gulf state forces.
It's quite clear that the Russians are providing satellite data and they're also providing computer chips for the drones.
And the missiles that work with that satellite data to make Iran's drones and missiles deadly accurate.
So we are up against a very formidable fighting force in the Gulf, in good part because the Russians are supporting the Iranians.
And again, the Iranians and the Russians have been driven together.
There's hardly any daylight between them these days because of our policies vis a vis not only the Russians, but the Iranians as well.
So, these photos that we're watching, or the videos that we're watching, there's Foreign Ministers Aradji and Lavrov, and recognized President Putin.
I mean, is this performative or substantive that Putin himself would get involved?
No, it's definitely substantive.
I mean, this is high stakes diplomacy.
I mean, this really involves issues that matter enormously.
What I find very interesting in addition to the substance is just how optimistic or cheerful the Russians and the Iranians appear.
I think in both cases, they understand that they have the Americans on their back heels, that we're in deep trouble in the Middle East and we're in deep trouble in Ukraine, and that they are in many ways in the driver's seat.
Shock and Awe Strategy00:15:07
So, you don't see any evidence of deep concern, of pessimism on the part of either one of those two leaders in the video that you're showing.
Right.
Right.
The Iranians have reiterated to the Americans, apparently in whatever the most recent communication was, whether it was direct or through the Pakistanis, I don't know, their steadfast and consistent position that they will not voluntarily.
Give up on the right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes.
Does the U.S. take this seriously?
Do they recognize that other countries have red lines just like we do?
Well, the United States is not very good at accepting the idea that other countries have red lines.
We think it's our way or the highway.
That's certainly been the case on the nuclear enrichment issue.
We were forced to compromise somewhat on that issue with the JCPOA.
The Israelis didn't like that, and they, I think, convinced Trump that the JCPOA was therefore a bad agreement, and he, of course, pulled out of it in 2018.
But I think what's most interesting here is that what the Americans want to do is they want to start by negotiating on the nuclear issue, the nuclear enrichment issue, as you put it.
But with the latest proposal that's come out of Iran, they've moved.
The nuclear enrichment table to number three on the list of issues that have to be dealt with.
They say that, first of all, what we have to do is we have to have a meaningful peace.
We have to shut down this conflict, and there has to be some guarantee that the United States and Israel are not going to attack Iran again.
That's the first demand.
The second demand is that they'll then talk about the Strait of Hormuz.
And of course, it's very clear that they are going to maintain.
Control of the Strait of Hormuz for as far as the eye can see.
So they're not going to make any concessions to us on that one.
And then, number three, they'll be able, they'll be willing to talk about the nuclear issue.
So, in other words, you have to basically shut down the conflict, then deal with the issue of the Strait, and then we can talk about the nuclear issue.
This is not what the Americans want.
The Americans want that nuclear issue front and center.
But all of this shows you that as time goes by, The Iranians feel more and more confident about their position.
This gets back to my earlier point about the smiling faces in St. Petersburg.
And as I've said many times on this show, time is on Iran's side.
There's no rush, in my opinion, for Iran to cut a deal.
Just let time go by and let the economic consequences of this war take effect.
And that will put greater and greater pressure on the Americans to settle.
And that'll give the Iranians more leverage.
So, what you see happening here is with this new three point plan, the Iranians are actually driving a harder bargain.
And of course, President Trump is deeply dissatisfied with this new three point proposal that the Iranians have put forward because, as I said, he wants to get the nuclear issue settled first.
Here's Foreign Minister Arachi yesterday thanking the Russians.
Cut number 12.
As you noted, the entire world, it was proven to the entire world that the Iranian people, with their courage, with their resistance against the American. onslaught against the American aggression will withstand these trials this period of time.
And also it was proven to everybody that Iran has friends and allies such as Russia that in the times of need are standing next to Iran and we are grateful to you for your support and of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Well, a decent statement, and one that you would expect he would make publicly towards the end of their meeting.
On Sunday, Foreign Minister, forgive me, Secretary of State Rubio made some comments that I thought were irrational.
It was odd for him to be talking about negotiations with Iran.
He's totally out of the picture, he hasn't been in Islamabad.
As far as we know, he doesn't participate in any of the negotiations, unlike all of his predecessors who'd be front and center because the president has chosen his two allies and his son in law and his former business partner.
But tell me what you think of this.
Vice President Rubio, about the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, cut number 10.
On Saturday, the president canceled the talks in Islamabad, Pakistan, keeping special envoys Kushner and Witkoff here in the United States.
He said just 10 minutes later the Iranians made a new offer on paper, and it was better.
If what they mean by opening the straits is, yes, the straits are opened as long as you coordinate with Iran, get our permission, or we'll blow you up and you pay us, that's not opening the straits.
Those are international waterways.
They cannot normalize, nor can we tolerate them trying to normalize a system in which the Iranians decide who gets to use an international waterway and how much you have to pay them to use it.
I think I inadvertently called him Vice President Rubio.
He, of course, is the Secretary of State.
What is he forgetting that the United States is trying to block the Strait of Hormuz as well?
Of course.
But I just want to point out that he talked about this new offer that's supposed to be better than previous offers.
As I described it a few minutes ago, the new offer is not better.
It's a worse offer.
And what he doesn't understand, and the president doesn't understand, is that the Iranians are not going to give up control of the Strait.
They'd be crazy to give up.
Control of the strait, not only in the midst of this conflict, but for as far as the eye can see.
It is where their leverage comes from.
The control of the Strait, all those missiles, both cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and of course drones that they have.
They're not going to give those things up.
That's their leverage.
And by the way, with regard to Secretary of State Rubio and his absence from the negotiating process, you want to understand that there are two members of the administration who desperately want to become president in 2028.
One is Marco Rubio, and the other is JD Vance.
And both of them understand that if you get involved in these negotiations, You're in the end are going to end up making significant concessions to the Iranians because the Iranians are in the driver's seat here.
We've basically lost this war.
And if you make those concessions, if you're the point person for making those concessions, you're going to take a lot of heat from the Israel lobby.
You're going to be in trouble with the lobby, and that's going to make it hard to become president.
So you can rest assured that JD Vance has no interest in going to Islamabad and being the point man.
In the negotiations with the Iranians.
I don't know if he can wash that stain off his hands.
I agree with you, but he might be indelibly damaged already.
I think that may be true for sure.
But I would just say to you Rubio has done a brilliant job, given the fact that he's Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, at staying out of these negotiations because he fully understands, I am sure, that he just doesn't want to get involved.
Because in the end, we're going to lose the lobby and Israel itself are going to be outraged by any compromises that we make.
And whoever actually makes those compromises is going to pay a significant political price.
From the Iranian perspective, surely they know that they're negotiating with Netanyahu's puppets.
Oh, absolutely.
They've made that clear.
That's why they want Vance to come to the negotiations.
They know that Kushner is basically an Israeli cutout.
And not only is Witkoff a Zionist, but he's demonstrated quite clearly, both in his negotiations with the Iranians and the Russians, that he's massively incompetent.
So they don't want to deal with those two.
They want to deal with Vance.
And they did deal with Vance over the weekend of April 11th, 12th.
That did not work out very well.
I mean, what has to happen here is that the United States has to feel more pain, and the world has to feel more pain and put pressure on the United States to end this.
Quickly as possible before we're going to get any kind of meaningful negotiations.
How did Trump lose his war of choosing?
Poor preparation, no articulation of achievable military goals, going too quickly, his hand forced by Netanyahu.
What do you think?
He had a strategy that was guaranteed to fail.
I mean, the Israelis convinced President Trump that if we and they attacked Iran with a shock and awe campaign, and sitting at the center of that shock and awe campaign was a decapitation strategy, that that would cause the regime to collapse and put in place a new regime that would dance to our tune.
And this would be very easy to do.
We would win a quick and decisive victory.
And you want to remember, That virtually all of President Trump's advisors told him that this was ridiculous.
The only possible exception is Pete Hegseth.
But as I've said before, Pete Hegseth is not a serious strategist.
And I don't believe even Trump takes him that seriously.
But General Kane, John Radcliffe, the head of the CIA, Vance himself, and Rubio all said that the strategy that the Israelis had put forward was not likely to work.
It's a very interesting case because the deep state and The president's principal American advisors warned him against executing the strategy that the Israelis had come up with.
But Trump decided, for one reason or another, that he was going to go along with the Israelis.
And they executed a strategy.
And I want to be clear here that was guaranteed to fail.
We have no instance in recorded history of an air campaign alone toppling a regime.
And that leading to a favorable outcome.
It just doesn't work.
You can't use air power alone to create regime change and win a war in a couple days or a week's time.
It just doesn't happen.
And I think all of his advisors understood that.
But the president allowed himself to be bamboozled by Bibi Netanyahu and the head of Mossad as well, David Barnea, who was a key player.
He is paying the price for that.
I should say we are paying the price for that.
Yes, we are.
Do you think that his advisors, because of his volcanic personality, extraordinary view of himself, intellectual vapidity, refusal to read, all these things taken together, do you think his advisors are afraid to contradict him to his face or afraid to contradict Netanyahu?
Sure.
There's just no question about that.
And again, you want to remember that two of the principal advisors of the That I mentioned are Marco Rubio and JD Vance, and they both want to be president of the United States.
And therefore, they want to remain in the good graces of Donald Trump and in the good graces of Israel.
They are in many ways in a straitjacket.
They're just limits to what they can do.
And when President Trump decides he wants to do something, and Netanyahu is in favor of that same strategy, they're just real limits to what somebody like Rubio.
Or Vance can do to fight with the president to tell him that this is a really bad idea.
And I think, by the way, General Kane, who many people badmouth, has, in my opinion, behaved admirably here, as best I can tell from what's in the public record.
Kane, who was Trump's hand picked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has told Trump at numerous points along the way that we did not have the capability to achieve the goals that he was pursuing, he meaning Donald Trump.
And furthermore, Kane has told them that.
If we got into a war with Iran, we would run down our inventory of boutique weapons to a very dangerous point.
And of course, that's where we are now.
And that's one of the principal reasons we don't want to restart the war.
We don't have the weaponry to wage it.
How dangerous is that point as we speak, Professor Mearsheimer?
Do we know?
No, we don't know the details, but we do know that lots and lots of Tomahawk missiles have been used, lots and lots of Patriot missiles.
THAAD missiles have been used, all sorts of smart bombs have been used.
And this has serious consequences for containing China in East Asia.
As you've heard me say on the show before, we were supposed to pivot to Asia to contain China.
But what we're doing is we're pivoting away from China.
We're bringing all sorts of military forces out of East Asia into the Gulf region because we need all the weapons we can get to fight against Iran.
And the problem that you face is when you expend these weapons, you just can't replace them in a month's time or a year's time.
It takes years to produce all the weapons that we've already used up.
And we don't want to be in a position where we use up more of them.
But the point I'm making to you about General Kane is.
Bleak Future Ahead00:05:41
Unsurprisingly, he recognized this a long time ago and he's advised the president accordingly.
But Trump didn't listen to him because Trump thought he could win a quick and decisive victory.
But once he doesn't win a quick and decisive victory, he's in the deep soup.
And that's where we are today.
And of course, this is why the military is now telling Trump, don't start this war.
Let me put it differently don't start this bombing campaign up again because it's not going to work.
And of course, if you don't do the bombing campaign and you have no ground forces option, which we don't have, You're reduced to relying on a naval blockade.
And then the question is do you think that this naval blockade is going to bring the Iranians to their knees?
All I can say is good luck on that one.
That's not going to happen either.
You can inflict huge amounts of punishment on the Iranians, and they will not throw their hands up.
They are facing an existential threat.
And when you're facing an existential threat, you fight to the last person.
What will happen if the United States enters into some sort of a long term?
Peaceful agreement with Iran that excludes Israel.
You know, I've thought about this, and I think the connective issue that makes it hard to separate those two dimensions of the problem is Iranian support for Hezbollah and Hamas.
The Israelis are going to continue to pound Hezbollah, just to pick on that example.
And we see that happening right now.
There's supposed to be a ceasefire, but in fact, there's no ceasefire.
Hezbollah.
The IDF are firing away at each other, and that's going to continue for as far as the eye can see.
But the Iranians support Hezbollah, they support Hamas, and they support the Houthis.
And the Iranians, under no circumstances, are going to give up the support for those three groups.
That is going to make it very hard for the United States to reach a meaningful peace agreement with Iran, because Israel is inextricably linked with Iran.
Vis a vis those three groups.
And the United States is, of course, linked with Israel.
So I think all of this tells you you're not going to get a meaningful peace agreement here.
You may get some Rube Goldberg type agreement that puts out the fire for a while, but there's no real hope of a meaningful peace agreement.
And this is in large part because of Israel.
As I've argued for a long time, actually, with Steve Walt, You have to understand that Israel is a giant albatross around their neck.
I think more and more Americans are coming to realize that.
But we are in deep trouble in the Middle East because of Israel, and we have no way of fixing the problem.
The lobby is so powerful here in the United States when it comes to influencing policymakers that it's just hard to make any progress in solving this problem.
And by the way, the principal reason we're not moving towards some sort of ceasefire now, some sort of Even a half baked agreement is in large part because of Israel and the lobby.
They just will not let Trump cut any kind of meaningful deal with the Iranians.
They want the war to go on.
So, where will we be, in your view, in six months or eight months?
Well, we may have some sort of Rube Goldberg agreement that allows commerce to flow through the strait.
There may be no blockade.
The Iranians will be controlling the strait.
I find it hard to believe that we'll have a nuclear agreement.
I hope we're wrong.
But if we do have a nuclear agreement, it's going to look something like the JCPOA, which Iran is going to maintain the right and the ability to enrich uranium.
And Israel is never going to accept that.
The lobby is never going to accept that.
And the neoconservatives, more generally in this country, who are very powerful in policy circles, are never going to accept that.
So, you know, we're just going to go on and on arguing with the Iranians about.
Their nuclear capability threatening them and so forth and so on.
And by the way, if you don't get a meaningful agreement on the nuclear issue, then we're going to run into the possibility that the Israelis may use nuclear weapons against Iran to deal with that problem.
So the future here is bleak.
And by the way, the future is bleak in Europe as well.
The future in East Asia is bleak as well.
We have made a complete hash of things.
Of course, it's not only The result of the Trump administration's policies, although this Iran war has contributed greatly to that.
But the whole disaster in Ukraine just goes on and on and on.
And that is going to have serious negative strategic consequences for as far as the eye can see, that, as I pointed out before, are inextricably bound up with what's going on in the Gulf.
And then this leaves aside the whole question of East Asia, which is in many ways the most dangerous area of all, because that's where the United States faces a Peer competitor.
I shudder to think what would happen if we had a crisis in East Asia.
Nuclear Threat Looms00:06:16
I hope Trump can work with Xi Jinping to make sure that that doesn't happen.
But you want to remember, we have two major wars taking place, one in the Gulf and the other in Europe.
And we don't have a war in East Asia.
But if we did, we would be in the really deep kimchi.
And thankfully, we don't have that problem.
And hopefully, President Trump can work something out with.
Gee, so that that doesn't happen.
What can President Trump work out with President Putin?
I mean, and does Putin have his own issues?
Do you sense impatience on the part of Russian elites, Kremlin officials, and average Russians with a four year war now?
Yeah, there's no question about that.
I've been thinking about the possibility that the Russians themselves might use nuclear weapons at some point.
It's quite clear that the Europeans are doing everything they can to help the Ukrainians.
And the Ukrainians are getting quite effective at hitting targets inside of Russia.
And the end result is Russian foreign policy elites and even the public are getting antsy about settling this war.
They're putting great pressure on President Putin to put an end to it.
And it's not easy to do that.
I mean, even as the Russians capture more and more territory, the fact is that the Ukrainians, with all these drones and all the help they're getting from Europe and even the United States, are able to attack targets in Russia.
And the question is, what will the Russians do in response?
And there's this very prominent strategist who I actually know reasonably well, Sergei Karaganov, who has been making the argument for a long time that the Russians have to put an end to this.
And the only way you can do that it is to use nuclear weapons, not start a general thermonuclear war, but use nuclear weapons against the West in a demonstrative way to signal to the West that enough is enough.
And if they continue to support Ukraine and allow Ukraine to destroy Russian infrastructure, then what the Russians will do is they'll go up the nuclear escalation ladder.
And Karaganov argues that once you use a few nuclear weapons against the West, they will get the message loudly and clearly.
And they will cease and desist from supporting Ukraine.
But the key point here is you don't want to put the Russians in a desperate situation.
And of course, that's exactly what Europe is trying to do.
As I was saying before, Sergei Lavrov gave a very important speech on April 24th, and it would be well worth people's while to go back and look at that speech.
But Lavrov makes it very clear that he believes, and of course, he's reflecting Russian.
A Russian perspective on this that the West has declared war against Russia.
He believes that Russia is at war with the West.
And he believes that, you know, Russia's just not fighting Ukraine inside of Ukraine.
Russia is also fighting against Europe.
And he says very clearly that he believes that the Europeans are out to achieve a strategic victory against Russia.
And what he basically is saying is that.
The Europeans, and of course, this means the West in general, and he uses the term the West, wants to knock the Russians out of the ranks of the great powers.
And when you are pursuing a goal like that, and you're inflicting significant damage on Russian infrastructure, you're going to give the Russians significant incentives to get tough and maybe even use nuclear weapons.
I didn't think we'd be at this point.
I'm actually quite surprised that I'm saying what I'm saying.
But I think one does not want to underestimate what's going on in Ukraine and how dangerous that situation is.
And again, getting back to the Middle East, I was talking about the possibility that Israel might use nuclear weapons.
I'm not saying that's likely any more than I'm saying that it's likely the Russians will use nuclear weapons.
But you do not want to underestimate the radical steps that states will take if they feel desperate.
And you can.
Hypothesize plausible situations where both the Israelis and the Russians feel desperate and think about using nuclear weapons.
And by the way, you want to understand that if Israel were to use nuclear weapons against Iran, Iran does not have the capability to retaliate.
And if Russia were to use nuclear weapons inside of Ukraine, the Ukrainians can't retaliate.
So this is a very dangerous situation that we're in.
And if you think about our discussion on this show and your discussion with, our colleagues and other shows that you have during the week.
I think everybody is very pessimistic about where all these conflicts are headed.
Nobody among us can tell a happy story about how any of these conflicts end.
And this, I think, should make all of us extremely worried.
And worried we are.
Professor Mearshammer, thank you very much.
Thanks for that extraordinary analysis on both counts, on both Iran and Ukraine.
We'll look forward to seeing you next week, my dear friend.
I look forward to it as well, Judge.
Thank you.
Coming up later today at 1 o'clock, on all of this, the Golden Boy, Max Blumenthal.
At 2 o'clock, Matt Ho.
Are American troops willing to kill innocents knowingly?
And at 3 o'clock, Colonel Karen Kodkastik, who has a fascinating piece up at Judge Knapp.