Mearsheimer Warns: Trump's Iran Mistake Will Cost America

[00:00:00]Take a look at this poll from the Washington Post. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Trump is handling Iran? Approve 29%, disapprove 69%.

[00:00:13]Those are extraordinary numbers, are they not as we are 4 months shy of the midterms?

[00:00:21]>> I'm surprised the numbers are not higher. You want to remember that there was no enthusiasm for this war before it started. And then uh uh what's happened since February 28th is that uh we have failed to defeat the Iranians. Uh we have failed to get them to cave to any of our of any of our demands. And furthermore, uh they've won on a number of other issues uh that were not apparent before February 28th. For example, the strait was open on February 27th. They now control the strait. We had a huge basing structure in the Middle East or in the Persian Gulf on February 27th. That basing structure has basically gone away. Uh we had a formidable alliance structure involving the Gulf states on February 27th. That alliance structure has been badly fractured. We're much worse off today than we were on February 27th. And many Americans fully understand that. I'm just surprised that more don't.

[00:01:34]>> I don't understand the American uh the Trump administration attitude about the strait. It's roughly 25 mi long.

[00:01:42]Uh international law and custom uh gives the the government of the land adjacent to the water control of 12 and 1/2 mi. The US claims this is all American um land.

[00:02:00]12 and 1/2 mi to the Iranians, 12 and 1/2 mi to Oman. Well, where's the United States come in here?

[00:02:07]>> Well, the fact is that the United States has basically forced the Omanis to let us use the channel uh that in effect belongs to them given uh the limits that you just described.

[00:02:21]But, I don't think you want to talk about international law here.

[00:02:26]question is what is said in Article 5 of the memorandum of understanding. Article 5 was written to directly address the question of who would control the Strait of Hormuz during the 60 days of negotiation, and then who would control it afterward. And if you look at the memorandum, it makes it clear, at least to me, that Iran would be responsible for controlling the strait, the flow of traffic through the strait, during the 60-day negotiating period. And once an agreement was reached, the final settlement on who controlled uh the Strait of Hormuz would be between Oman on one side and Iran on the other side. There is no mention of the United States in that article. And what happened is after it was signed, the United States decided it could work with the Omanis to send ships through the Omani channel that basically the United States controlled or the United States monitored. And of course, the Iranians found this unacceptable, and as ships began to go through that channel, the Iranians started firing at them. And then, the United States retaliated with air strikes, and now we're in this tit-for-tat campaign.

[00:03:46]>> And who controls the strait as we speak?

[00:03:50]>> No, there's no question that the United States does not control the Strait, despite the fact that President Trump and some of his lieutenants say that we do. The fact is the Iranians control the Strait, and we don't have the military capability to change that situation.

[00:04:07]There are a good number of people, mainly on the right hand side of the political spectrum, who think that we do have that capability and we should go out and open the Strait and take it over ourselves, but we just don't have that kind of military capability.