Professor John Mearsheimer argues that the U.S. and Israel seek to destroy Iran's sovereignty, citing historical regime changes in 1953, 1954, and 1973 as proof of a "crusader state" ideology. He condemns plans to assassinate Iranian negotiators and warns that military actions in the Strait of Hormuz could trigger attacks on Saudi ports and close the Bab el Mandeb Strait, crippling global oil exports. Mearsheimer asserts that the U.S. Navy is overextended against missile threats and urges President Trump to prioritize avoiding a crisis with China over continuing this futile war. Ultimately, he concludes that further aggression will only strengthen Iran while undermining any potential diplomatic resolution. [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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Normalizing Assassination as Policy00:06:46
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, May 5th, 2026.
Professor John Mearshammer will be with us in just a moment.
Just what will more war accomplish?
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Professor Mearshammer, welcome here, my dear friend.
Thank you very much, as always, for accommodating my schedule.
Steve Witkoff, Has a new assistant.
Mr. Witkoff, who is demonstrably ignorant of Iran, deferential to Israel, and from outward observations is somewhat of a profiteer, has hired a guy named Nick Stewart, a lobbyist for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Zionist front who doesn't believe in negotiations.
So, where are we going with this?
Well, first of all, it should not be called the foundation for the defense of democracy.
It's the foundation for the defense of Israel.
It's very important to understand that.
And of course, he's a hardcore Zionist, and he is part of a team that has one basic goal in mind, which is to destroy Iran.
That's what the Israelis want to do.
That's what the lobby wants to do.
And in effect, that's what the Trump administration is trying to do.
They're trying to wreck Iran.
And of course, the Iranians understand this full well.
They understand that they're up against two genocidal states, one being Israel, the other being the United States.
All they have to do is listen to President Trump talking about blowing Iranian civilization to kingdom come and making it impossible for Iran to ever come back to life and so forth and so on, for them to understand exactly what they're dealing with.
And therefore, they're going to fight to the last person, and the sanctions are not going to work.
And bombing is not going to work.
So that's really where we are today.
A reporter or a columnist for the Washington Post, whom I know because he was at Fox News when I was there, by the name of Mark Thiesen, wrote in his column that the United States should assassinate Iranian negotiators who refuse to bend to the American will at the negotiating table.
Okay, he's way out there.
President Trump reposted that Washington Post piece on his Truth Social.
Is the United States about to start mimicking Israel?
Well, it's very important to understand that what we're doing here is that we're normalizing the whole idea that assassination is a legitimate instrument that individuals and states can use.
And I would remind people that there have been a number of assassination attempts on President Trump.
And we think that assassination in the context of the United States is absolutely abhorrent.
And the idea that somebody would assassinate a president is just categorically unacceptable.
But if you think about what's going on here, we're basically saying if you don't like the leader of a particular country, assassinating that leader is perfectly okay.
Well, that logic.
Can blow back into the United States and reinforce the belief of some people that it's okay to assassinate the president of the United States.
So, if anything, the president of the United States and his assistants and people who support him should say that assassination is abhorrent, whether you're talking about assassinating foreign leaders or you're talking about assassinating a sitting president of the United States.
This is just a road we don't want to go down.
But it is the road we're going down.
And what a lot of people seem to forget when it comes to this whole subject of assassination is that there is a powerful blowback effect.
But negotiation has some premises.
The Strait of Hormuz Blockade00:15:41
One is you respect and understand the sovereignty of the other country with which you're negotiating.
The other is this is right up the or out of the Mearsheimer textbook.
You respect the legitimate security needs and concerns that the other country has.
That is not the case in these negotiations.
Iran wants to be left alone and wants sanctions removed.
Israel wants Iran dismembered.
The United States wants whatever Israel wants.
So, where are these negotiations going to go?
What commonality is there?
Well, just on the business of sovereignty, it's very important to emphasize Israel aside, the United States for a long time now.
For well over a century, has not respected the concept of sovereignty.
The greatest violator of the sovereignty of other states on the planet, and this is a long standing argument, is the United States of America.
Just think about Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, what we just did in Venezuela, what we're talking about doing in Cuba.
If you think about our policy, foreign policy of liberal hegemony during the unipolar moment, this is the period from roughly 1992.
To 2017, the United States was deeply committed to spreading liberal democracy all around the world.
What that meant is that we were going to interfere in the politics of every country on the planet.
Just think about the concept of color revolutions in Eastern Europe, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Rose Revolution in Georgia, and so forth and so on.
What we were trying to do there was spread democracy.
We were interfering in the politics.
Of other countries.
And by the way, both the Russians and the Chinese during the unipolar moment lived in fear that we would try to topple the regimes in those countries.
So, sovereignty is a concept that we think applies to us, but basically nobody else.
In terms of respecting the fact that other countries worry about their own security and that we should take that into account when we formulate our foreign policy, in other words, that we should be able to put ourselves in the shoes of other countries, this is something that's almost impossible for American policymakers to do.
Just so difficult for them to believe, for example, that Russia would not want Ukraine to be in NATO.
That's just unacceptable, right?
We have decided, we, the United States, the benign hegemon, we've decided that Ukraine and NATO is perfectly fine, and the Russians have to accept that.
And we refuse to accept that the Russians see things very differently.
And the same thing is true with the Iranians.
You know, as I've said before, it's our way or the highway.
And of course, once you get to negotiations with a country like Iran and you have this mentality, and furthermore, as I said at the top of the show, you have to understand that we're interested in wrecking Ukraine.
We want, excuse me, we're interested in wrecking Iran.
We want to destroy it.
And they understand that.
So the question you have to ask yourself is how can you negotiate with the Iranians when that is your goal and they fully understand that?
What country has disrupted more governments of other countries?
In the modern history of the world, I guess it's the United States.
This is not even close.
Who's the competition here?
Maybe the Soviet Union, but they're pigers compared to us.
No, there's no country on the planet.
And a lot of this has to do with the fact that the United States has a liberal ideology at its core.
And we, as a result of that liberal ideology, have become a crusader state.
We believe that we should spread liberalism all over the planet.
And that mentality leads the United States to interfere in the politics of countries here, there, and everywhere.
And then when you look at Latin America, you look at the Western Hemisphere, we've long held the belief that any country that's left leaning in any way, the regime has to be toppled in that country.
So we have interfered in the politics of countries in the Western Hemisphere time after time.
And then if you look around the world, and this Somewhat runs against my first point.
We've actually overthrown liberal democracies, or let's put it this way we've overthrown democratically elected governments.
Again, to go back to Iran in 53, Guatemala in 54, you could point to all sorts of other cases.
But the United States has been in the business of regime change for a really long time.
And again, I don't think any country comes close to us.
Has anybody calculated how many people the U.S. has killed?
Oh, I think that you could.
Quite easily put that together, those numbers together.
I have not done that, and I probably should do that.
But if you think about some of the bombing campaigns, the effects of sanctions, the wars that we have started just in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq, now Iran, and the fallout from Iran is not finished, it would be many, many millions of people have been killed by the United States.
What is the status of the Strait of Hormuz as you understand it?
Well, I think the Iranians control the Strait of Hormuz and they have a blockade on it that's very effective.
And now President Trump, of course, has put another blockade on it.
So it's very difficult for ships to get through the Strait of Hormuz.
But basically, the Iranians control it.
And all the evidence is that they plan to maintain control of the Strait of Hormuz and to keep a toll booth in it for the foreseeable future.
Now, President Trump is very unhappy about this situation.
And as we saw yesterday, he's trying to change the status quo in the strait.
But the operation yesterday failed, and we're back to square one.
The Iranians still control the strait, and there's no way we can open it up with military force.
The Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, just said Soon we will hand over control of Hormuz to our allies.
For them to accomplish what they need.
He didn't answer any questions about it.
We don't know what allies he was talking about or even what he was trying to say.
But I think maybe he's recognizing, correct me if I'm wrong, Professor Mearsheimer, the United States has no viable military options with respect to Hormuz.
We have no viable military option with respect to Hormuz.
We have no viable military option when it comes to bombing Iran.
And what we've Ended up doing is putting this sea blockade on Iran and hoping that that will work.
But if you read what President Trump is saying and his supporters are saying, I think they understand that the blockade will take a long time to work if it will ever work, and time is not on our side.
And I think what you saw happen yesterday is a recognition that the blockade is not working.
Not the way they want it to work, and they have to do something to speed up the process.
You see this, for example, in a number of news outlets like the Wall Street Journal, which, of course, is remarkably pro Israel and deeply committed to the war against Iran.
The Wall Street Journal makes it clear that it may be the case that the blockade, because it takes so long to work, will require us to return to the air war.
The bombing campaign sooner rather than later.
And what the Wall Street Journal is saying, and of course the Trump people are thinking the same thing, is that we have got to find an additional way to the blockade to bring the Iranians to their knees.
You know, the blockade alone is just not going to do it.
So again, yesterday we tried to force the Straits, that didn't work.
And maybe we'll try a bombing campaign again, and that will backfire big time, just as yesterday's events backfired.
Big time.
So there is no solution here with military force.
What you're going to have to do is work out a deal with the Iranians.
And we, of course, can't bring ourselves to do that because the Iranians have won.
They've won a victory here.
And if we sit down and negotiate a deal, it will become manifestly clear to anybody with a triple digit IQ that the Iranians won because Trump will be forced to make huge concessions in negotiating that deal.
You've referred several times to events of yesterday which did not turn out the way the U.S. wanted.
To what precisely are you referring, Professor Mearsheimer?
Well, we were unable to force our way through the straits and open the straits up.
That's what we were trying to do.
It's very hard to tell how many Iranian boats or aircraft or whatever were destroyed or how many American ships were hit because there's so much spinning or deception or lying on both sides that you can't figure out exactly what the balance of lost assets is.
But it's quite clear that neither side won a major victory.
So we didn't open the strait.
But from my point of view, the more important point is that they hit the port in the United Arab Emirates, the UAE, Fujairah.
That's where the UAE is able to get oil out into global markets.
It enables the UAE to avoid sending oil through the Strait of Hormuz, which they, of course, can't do.
What the UAE did was build a pipeline to this port, Fujairah, which is on the Gulf of Oman.
And that's how they were getting oil out.
And my guess is they were getting about 2 million barrels a day out through Fujairah.
And what happened yesterday is that the Iranians blew up the port at Fujairah.
And the Iranians also made it clear that they're not going to let any more oil come out of Fujairah.
And this is going to significantly decrease the amount of oil that's in global markets.
Wow.
I think you were getting about 2 million barrels.
And furthermore, it's going to damage the UAE's economy in significant ways because obviously the UAE depends heavily on oil.
So I think, in a very important way, one could argue that the Iranians won yesterday.
And by the way, this all shows you that if we go back to using military force, which we did yesterday in a very light handed way, mind you.
But if you go back to using military force, the Iranians can retaliate.
And the two ways that significant amounts of oil are coming out of the Gulf now are number one, through the UAE, through Fujairah, as I just described it.
And the other way is through Saudi Arabia, across Saudi Arabia into the Red Sea.
There's a port called Yanbu that is on the Red Sea, it's a Saudi Arabian port, and that's where a lot of oil is coming out.
And if we up the ante by bombing Iran once again, I wouldn't be surprised if they go after.
After Yanbu, as well, and then work with the Houthis to shut down Bab el Mandub Strait down at the bottom of the Red Sea.
And that'll prevent Saudi oil from coming out.
And that will be on top of what we've now done to prevent UAE oil from coming out.
So you see, the Iranians have a second strike capability.
This is the problem we face.
You know, people can talk about bombing Iran and inflicting punishment on them.
But the problem is that the Iranians will, number one, absorb the punishment.
They're not going to quit.
They know they're up against two genocidal states.
And number two, they have the ability to retaliate and do great damage, further damage, I should say, to the international economy.
Here is the Washington Post's lead paragraph by the reporters that were in the press conference with Secretary Hegseth.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. mission to protect commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz would be temporary.
And other nations would soon have to take responsibility, emphasizing that the fragile ceasefire with Iran remained in place despite attacks on U.S. ships on Monday.
I wonder if he's actually recognizing that this is a futile effort and that's why he's calling it temporary.
Well, you would think that that would be the case.
He did go to Princeton, didn't he?
He did.
In your experience at Princeton, everybody had a triple digit IQ.
Isn't that the case?
Theoretically, yeah.
He's a generation behind me at Princeton.
That could explain a lot.
Maybe he's an affirmative action appointment.
Let me ask you about.
You really wonder about these people, seriously.
Yeah.
When you read President Trump's truth social posts, you just have to shake your head and say, what are these people thinking?
Well, the president went to the University of Pennsylvania, also an Ivy League school.
Here's an interesting question to Secretary Hagseth from my longtime friend and colleague, James Rosen.
Chris?
A central default that has occurred here, and I would like you both to address it.
On the first day of this conflict, President Trump addressed the Iranian people directly and said, When we're finished, take over your government.
It'll be yours to take.
And then on the seventh day of the conflict, in a Truth Social Post, the president said, There will be no deal with Iran except all caps, exclamation mark, unconditional surrender.
What happens to that pledge to the Iranians?
And when did the president decide to capitulate on his demand for unconditional surrender?
Naval Power and Strategic Bombing00:08:02
Well, James, I wouldn't.
You started out nicely, but you ended exactly where we knew you would end.
The president hasn't capitulated on anything.
He holds the cards.
We maintain the upper hand, and Project Freedom only strengthens that hand.
And so he will ensure that whatever deal is made or whatever end state is reached creates ensuring that Iran never has a nuclear weapon, which is A number one, and he's been focused on that, and the deal and discussions are centered on that.
And what the Iranian people take advantage of after the fact is up to them, and he's been very clear about that.
And maybe you do it now, maybe it happens later, but ultimately he's also been clear we're not going to entangle this into some nation-building project.
Our objectives are clear.
They've been pursued from day one.
Hopefully, the Iranian people take advantage of that because they're being taken advantage of by this regime.
As you know, 45,000 Iranians, innocent Iranians, killed before the outset of this.
That's what this government does kills their own innocent civilians.
Does the United States hold the cards?
No, there's no question about that.
I mean, if we held the cards, the Iranians would have been brought to their knees already, or there would be lots of evidence that they're.
Heading in that direction.
And there's no evidence of that.
And again, what happened yesterday is just evidence that the administration is getting antsy, that they're looking for a way to shut this one down.
One could interpret his remarks, by the way, as the administration lowering its ambitions.
In other words, he just emphasized that all we want to do is make sure Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon.
The fact is that Iran has not been pursuing nuclear weapons.
This is not really the key issue.
The key issue has been number one, the nuclear enrichment issue.
And number two, getting the enriched uranium out of Iran and sending it to another country.
Those are the sort of two key issues here.
And I think that they can work out a deal and improve JCPOA to deal with the nuclear enrichment problem.
But that would be humiliating to Trump if he ended up with something anywhere close to the JCPOA, which he famously ripped up in his first term.
Yeah, but let me just say that there are also just a host of other issues that have to be resolved.
Like, what's the future of American military bases in the Gulf?
Number one.
Number two, what happens with regard to Iran's support for the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas?
Number three, what happens with sanctions relief?
Number four, what happens with reparations?
What happens with the toll booth and the whole question of Iranian control of the Straits?
I mean, they're just a whole slew of big issues floating around here.
And you want to remember that this is not just a two player game.
This is not just the United States and Iran.
If it was just the United States and Iran, I think we could actually work out a deal.
But there's a third player involved called Israel.
And Israel is going to be beside itself when it becomes 100% clear that we have lost this war and that Iran has won.
And the Iranians are going to continue, excuse me, the Israelis are going to continue to put enormous pressure on us.
To wreck Iran, and they will work overtime to undermine any deal that we work out with Iran.
So you just say to yourself, How does this one ever end?
How does the U.S. Navy look in all of this?
How would you evaluate its strength, agility, and skills?
Well, I'd make a couple points.
First of all, we are wearing out the United States Navy.
Even before the Iran war, there was all sorts of talk about the fact that we were.
Asking the U.S. Navy to do too much.
And now that problem has been magnified for sure.
And you see it with the problems that certain aircraft carriers are having and destroyers and so forth and so on.
So the U.S. Navy is really being pushed to the limit, maybe beyond the limit.
The second thing is that you're beginning to see quite clearly that navies, naval forces, especially aircraft carrier battle groups, Can't get near the coast of an adversary because the cruise missiles and ballistic missiles that those adversaries have can be used to sink those ships.
So we have a blockade for sure, but that blockade is a distant blockade.
You just can't get near Iran.
And this, by the way, has all sorts of implications for the U.S. containment policy against China in East Asia.
Exactly where I was going to go.
The Chinese, I'm sure, are taking note of all of the U.S. Navy's weaknesses.
I would think that any large naval ship that's on the surface in a war between the United States and China is going to sink to the bottom of the Jolly Roger or be sunk to the bottom of the Jolly Roger quite quickly by cruise missiles or ballistic missiles.
Surface ships are just so vulnerable.
I mean, we live in an era now where ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones are numerous.
And deadly accurate.
And this has an effect on what navies can do.
But one final point on this that's very important.
If you think about using military power, as I've said before on the show, you can use land power, air power, or naval power to bring the adversary to heel.
And it's very important to remember that when you use naval power or you use strategic air power, there's a strategic bombing campaign of the sort people are talking about starting up against Iran, those campaigns take a long time to work.
If you're going to put a blockade, a naval blockade on any country, it's not going to work overnight.
It's going to take a long time to work.
And the same is true with a strategic bombing campaign.
Land power is where you can win a quick and decisive victory.
You send in the ground forces and you can defeat the other country quite quickly.
Just think about Iraq in 2003.
It did not take us long to go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein.
We couldn't do that with a blockade or with air power.
So navies.
Are an important instrument of statecraft.
I don't want to diminish the importance of having a powerful navy, especially for controlling the seas.
But the idea that you can use your navy via a blockade to bring an adversary to its knees reasonably quickly is not, I think, a good argument.
It's not an argument that you can make.
And this is the problem that we see with regard to using the U.S. Navy against Iran.
I have to follow up with a question on China, and this comes to mind because of your comments that if we were in a war over Taiwan, the Chinese wouldn't have had to deal with our Navy.
Were you surprised when the Chinese announced that they just won't recognize or comply with U.S. sanctions?
Not at all.
I mean, this war has been a big victory for the Chinese.
China's Role in Regional Conflict00:04:50
The Americans are in real trouble.
The Chinese know that.
The Chinese look like responsible stakeholders.
They've grown very powerful over time, both economically and militarily.
And as the weeks go by, they challenge the United States more and more.
And I think if President Trump goes to China later this month and he meets with Xi Jinping, I think you'll see a very confident Xi Jinping dealing with a President Trump who is not very confident because President Trump.
Will be in deep trouble in Iran.
He will be in a weaker position in East Asia.
You want to understand that President Trump has a deep seated interest in not picking a fight with China.
The last thing he needs is a crisis in East Asia.
I mean, we're already in really deep trouble in the Persian Gulf.
And of course, we are involved in what's going on in Ukraine.
And given those two theaters, the last thing we want to do is have a big crisis in.
East Asia.
So I think that what you will see is that President Trump will go out of his way to be nice to Xi Jinping to make sure that there is no trouble.
He can't go there if he resumes the war, if he's bombing Iran, can he?
I think the answer is he cannot.
And I think he would make the argument that he has a responsibility as the commander in chief to stay at home if that were the case.
It would be the second time he canceled on President Xi if that happens.
I want to play another clip for you.
Liam Cosgrove of Zero Hedge.
Who was a friend of ours trying to tie President Trump to Prime Minister Netanyahu?
Watch the reaction of the Secretary of Defense.
Last question.
Thank you.
Liam Cosgrove with Zero Hedge.
In recent weeks, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel's head of Mossad have stated their intent not to cease combat with the Iranians.
Netanyahu put this on Twitter Israel's head of Mossad said Israel's goals are not finished until the Iranian government collapses.
And so they're referring to the government that President Trump has brokered a ceasefire with and is working on a lasting peace in the region with.
And so that's something many Americans, especially American farmers, are hoping.
He does get to a lasting peace.
And so, if President Trump is successful in that and the Israelis are explicitly stating their intent to continue fighting at a later date, how can you ensure America doesn't get roped back into a war if that comes?
And secondly, with Netanyahu comfortable tweeting something like that out, and also Netanyahu has continued bombing Lebanon despite President Trump explicitly tweeting it out.
I'm just saying the question is based on the false premise that somehow President Trump is being pulled in by Prime Minister Netanyahu to any of these actions.
And that's where you're going, just to be clear.
President Trump has led at every step of this based on his view of American interest and America first.
And we're grateful that Israelis have been very capable partners at many steps of this.
And they may have some objectives at times that are slightly different than ours.
But there's only one hand on the wheel ultimately directing this, whether it's Project Freedom or previously Operation Epic Fury, and it's President Trump.
So we're grateful for their input, their insights, the existential nature of the threat they face from an Iranian bomb, the capabilities that they can bring to that.
But ultimately, the coordination will happen.
With the leadership of President Trump.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
It's really hogwash, isn't it?
Well, he didn't answer the question.
The question's an excellent question.
As I said before, there are three players in the game.
And even if the United States and Iran come to some sort of agreement, which we want to do at this point in time, the Israelis will undermine it.
This is what Mr. Cosgrove said.
And Hagsith didn't answer the question.
What will we do?
If Israel starts bombing Iran again after we work out some sort of deal, we will do what Mrs. Adelson wants the president to do.
Well, as somebody who has written an article in a book on the Israel lobby, I don't find that hard to believe.
Wow.
Professor Mearshammer, great conversation.
As always, I know I took a little bit more of your time than usual, but thank you very much.
You're so generous.
Deeply appreciate it.
We'll look forward to seeing you again soon.
Likewise, Judge.
Have a good week.
You as well, Professor.
Thank you.
Coming up on all of this at 10 o'clock this morning, if you're watching us live at 26 minutes, Aaron Mate, and at 2 this afternoon, Matthew Ho.