Prof. John Mearsheimer: U.S. Attacks Iranian Warships - “The Neocons Want War to Continue”

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Did the United States just resume attacking Iranian uh military assets, in this case uh speedboats? Yes, they did.

[00:00:09]Uh it's really hard to figure out what's going on here. If you think about it, when we got together last Tuesday, the 19th, I thought we were going to talk about the war restarting, the air campaign beginning again, because that's what Trump had promised on the 18th, last Monday.

[00:00:28]Uh but instead, uh he said on the 19th, when we got together, uh that peace negotiations had started again, and he had been convinced not to start the bombing campaign. Then, on Friday, uh he announced that he wasn't going to his son's wedding, and it looked like the bombing campaign was going to start over this past weekend, over Memorial Day weekend. Uh but then on Saturday and Sunday, word came out that they were close to an agreement, and you started saying to yourself, "Oh, here we go.

[00:01:00]We're going to get an agreement now." Uh and then yesterday, Monday, uh we're bombing targets in Iran again. It's hard to make sense of where we're going on this roller coaster ride. The um Iranian negotiators are apparently in Doha uh trying to work out some kind of a deal there, and within hours of their arrival, is when the US attacked these speedboats, supposedly it said for self-defense. Is there a ceasefire or isn't there? Are there negotiations or aren't there? This is truly unorthodox.

[00:01:35]In fact, calling it unorthodox is being charitable. It's it's crazy.

[00:01:39]Well, the whole just talk about the negotiating process. First of all, it appears that on our side, we have one person and one person only who's involved in this process, and that person is President Trump, who constantly is talking about uh this aspect of the deal or that aspect of the deal, uh, and he's sort of making things up as he goes along. He's changing his mind from day to day.

[00:02:05]Just no way to conduct a negotiation.

[00:02:07]This is something that should be done in private. There should be professional teams on both sides instead of on just one side, uh, and they ought to try to work out the differences so that we can shut this war down. But if you listen to what a lot of what President Trump says and then what the Iranians follow up with, uh, it's quite clear that many of the points that President Trump, uh, are is making, many of the points he's making are at odds with what is the Iranian position. And there is no way they would accept Trump's various demands. It's a rather bizarre process and it's hard to see, uh, how it leads to a meaningful deal.

[00:02:45]Well, um, also over the weekend was a massive attack on governmental buildings in Kyiv.

[00:02:54]And a Rashnik was used, although according to Alister, the Rashnik was not used on those buildings, uh, so that it wouldn't kill, uh, civilians. It was used on other assets on the outskirts of Kyiv. But all of this taken together, is Putin taking the gloves off? What is the significance of an attack of this magnitude?

[00:03:12]Well, it's quite significant, it's quite significant because it does appear he's taking the gloves off. And, uh, the Russians have made it clear that the United States and other countries should get their diplomats out of Kyiv because that was just the first of what will be a string of attacks on Kyiv. It looks like he's going to really pound the infrastructure in Kyiv, uh, in serious ways that, uh, have not been done before.

[00:03:39]Uh, and I think this does reflect the fact he's taking the gloves off.

[00:03:43]And do you expect a European response? I don't mean verbally, I mean militarily.

[00:03:52]No, I think what the Europeans will do is they will try to increase the number and the quality of the drones that they give to Ukraine and go to considerable lengths to facilitate more Ukrainian attacks on Russia with those drones. I mean I think what is in good part prompted this attack by the Russians on Kyiv and the threat of more attacks on Kyiv is the fact that the Ukrainians have been launching more and more drone attacks on the Russians and the Russians are reaching a point where they believe they've just had enough and it's time to retaliate and do everything they can to put an end to this.

[00:04:31]So are is the possession of nuclear weapons a deterrent? Because it doesn't seem seem to scare the Ukrainians at all.

[00:04:41]No, it doesn't. I mean the fact is that for a long time now the Ukrainians have felt free to attack the Russian homeland with missiles and with drones.

[00:04:55]And you want to remember that in August of 2024 Ukraine actually invaded Mother Russia.

[00:05:02]This is quite remarkable and that invasion was done with help from the British and from the Americans.

[00:05:10]>> Is that when they took that little landlocked uh province Kaliningrad? Is that what you're talking about?

[00:05:18]>> Oh, he's talking about Kursk. Kursk.

[00:05:20]This was the Kursk offensive.

[00:05:21]>> Right, and it took the Russians a while to get them out. It did. It took them a good couple months to to push them out, which they eventually did. But the mere fact that Ukraine invaded Russian territory is quite remarkable and the fact that they did it with assistance from the British and the Americans is even more remarkable. As I've said on numerous occasions, we would have never thought about doing this during the Cold War. And then furthermore, the Ukrainians actually attacked again with British and American help, one leg of the strategic nuclear triad of the Russian inventory. They went after the bomber leg of the triad and uh this was again unthinkable during the Cold War and it just went to show that the Russian nuclear deterrent wasn't really deterring Ukraine from attacking Russian assets on Russian soil to include invading Russia. And there's been tremendous pressure on Trump, not on Trump, on Putin to do something about this for a long time now. But uh Putin has been very reluctant to up the ante, but it appears that he's now decided that something has to be done and I think the bombing of Kyiv is the first step in that direction.

[00:06:33]Well, this is asking you to uh predict what might have happened, but what might have happened if Iran did have a nuclear weapon? Would the United States and Israel have attacked as boldly and and viciously as they did in June and February?

[00:06:51]I think the answer is categorically no.

[00:06:54]Uh and uh I think all you have to do is look at North Korea uh to realize just how uh important it is to have a nuclear weapon when you're dealing with a country like the United States or country like Israel that might attack you.

[00:07:09]Uh the United States would not attack North Korea for fear that North Korea would launch its nuclear weapons at South Korea and at Japan and at American military forces that are stationed in those two countries. So uh from North Korea's point of view, they have the ultimate deterrent. Uh Iran, of course, does not and uh before February 28th, I don't think many people thought that uh Iran could shut the strait down or would shut the strait down and that uh would be a formidable deterrent in itself. But now we know that even though Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, it can shut down the strait. And one could argue that moving forward, the Iranians will have less of an incentive to get nuclear weapons than they otherwise would have because they can shut the strait down. But nevertheless, if I were an Iranian policymaker, I'd eat grass if that was necessary to acquire a nuclear weapon because once you have a nuclear weapon, it is extremely unlikely that the Israelis or the Americans will attack you again for fear of ending up in a nuclear war.

[00:08:15]But the Ukrainians don't fear Putin using a nuclear weapon.

[00:08:22]Uh they don't, which is I think quite remarkable. And I think even the Europeans, as we all know, there's lots of talk inside of Russia these days about attacking targets in Europe. In other words, attacking NATO states that are aiding the Ukrainian offensive against Russia. Again, because the Russians are fed up and because the Europeans are supporting the Ukrainians, there are powerful incentives for the Russians to attack European states. And these are European states that are in NATO and therefore have an Article 5 guarantee, which means the United States could be dragged into the war. Now, most of the rhetoric that you hear coming out of Russia talks about using conventional weapons to attack into Europe. Uh but a number of commentators inside of Russia, and these are prominent commentators, say that if the conventional weapons don't do the trick, Russia should thinking about should think about using small numbers of nuclear weapons to send a clear message to the West that we live in a nuclear era or in the nuclear era and that Russia is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and it will use those weapons if it thinks its survival's at stake.

[00:09:38]Does the West fear Russia?

[00:09:40]Does Western Europe fear Russia?

[00:09:43]Well, there's no question the Western elites or the European elites fear Russia.

[00:09:49]Whether the public does is another matter.

[00:09:53]I think the elites in Europe, especially in Western Europe, uh uh have convinced themselves that uh the Russians are coming and uh that something has to be done to create a deterrent to prevent that. In Eastern Europe, there's always been a fear of the Russians. So, there's no need to create uh a boogeyman there. The boogeyman has been there from the beginning. But now in Western Europe, there is this sense that the Russians are coming uh and something has to be done uh to contain the Russians. I think this is a fallacious argument. I think the Russians are not even interested in conquering all of Ukraine, much less Eastern Europe. Uh and the idea that they're going to conquer any territory in Western Europe is laughable. Uh I don't know what these elites are thinking about when they look at how much difficulty the Russians have had conquering the Western, excuse me, the Eastern 1/5 of Ukraine over the past 4-plus years. Uh this doesn't look like the Wehrmacht. This doesn't look like an army uh that's poised to overrun Eastern Europe, much less all of Europe. Uh and I think it's not even going to conquer all of Ukraine. I think there's virtually no chance of that happening.

[00:11:06]But nevertheless, the European elites have convinced themselves uh that they're facing a truly serious threat from Russia, not altogether unlike the Soviet threat during the Cold War. And they're now going to set out to deal with this threat. But the big problem they face is the Americans are pulling out of Europe uh in certain ways.

[00:11:25]Uh and this means that NATO is no longer the formidable instrument it was during the Cold War. And furthermore, the manufacturing capabilities of these European countries are such that they don't have the ability to produce large numbers of weapons to contain the Russians.

[00:11:43]Well, um let's talk about the neocons with whom you had an encounter in uh in Canada recently when you and Professor Walt debated [clears throat] former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo and uh the cookie lady.

[00:12:03]I don't want to demean her, but I think very little of her, my fellow Princetonian, um Victoria Nuland, cookie lady because she supposedly passed out cookies during one of these coups in in Maidan. I don't know if it's true or not. But what what is their thing? What is their argument? What is the core of their belief uh which is inconsistent with reality?

[00:12:25]>> [snorts] >> Well, their basic worldview is that the United States should be prepared to go around the world and slay monsters. Now, you say to yourself, what do they mean by monsters? Uh there's no clear definition of what a monster is. A monster is a country that has interests that are at odds with the United States uh that might be a non-democracy uh that they don't like. And they believe that American military force uh provides a magic instrument for transforming these monster states into friendly states. And they believe that if the United States uh is smart, what it will do is it will try to do social engineering all across the globe. It will try to change regimes that are not friendly to the United States in the regimes that are friendly to the United States. And of course, once you end up making the world uh a place that's filled with countries that look like the United States, uh we will end up living happily ever after.

[00:13:29]Uh Uh, and this explains in good part why, you know, people like, uh, Pompeo and Nuland are are deeply committed to a interventionist foreign policy, uh, and they're deeply committed to attacking countries like Iran, uh, Iraq, Cuba, and so forth and so on.

[00:13:50]Uh, and the argument that Steve and I made, of course, was that the costs of this strategy are just enormous, especially when you look at the number of people who end up getting killed. And furthermore, when you look at the consequences, we fail almost every time.

[00:14:04]Uh, Do they acknowledge that failure? Do they acknowledge that, uh, Trump's a disastrous war in Iran has been a failure even from Trump's perspective?

[00:14:14]Well, they don't directly acknowledge that. They, in other words, when I when I point out how many failures there have been and how few successes, hardly any successes, they don't say, "You are correct." Uh, they deal with the issue in an oblique way, and, uh, they, you know, say in very loose terms that we did good here and there, and we have the potential to do much more good. And of course, with regard to the Iran war, they're not going to admit that this is a catastrophic failure at this point, and they're going to play on the fact that there's some hope that this will work out to our advantage. That's the kind of rhetoric you get. But, uh, for people who operate inside the bubble, it's almost impossible to face up to the fact that our foreign policy has just been one failure after another. It's really quite remarkable when you sort of think about Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Iran. Go back to the Bush doctrine. You remember the Bush doctrine in 2003, uh, which was formulated, uh, before we went into Iraq. We were supposed to not only knock off the regime in Iraq and democratize Iraq, but what we were going to do is democratize the entire Middle East. We were going to turn it into a sea of democracies. And of course, that would lead to a pacified Middle East because once you create democracies in all those countries, uh we live happily ever after. It was that kind of logic. But of course, Iraq was a disaster. The Bush doctrine disappeared. Although it then got resurrected when we did uh the attack on Iran because that was supposed to happen as part of the uh Bush doctrine back in 2003, but it didn't happen then, but it happened this year. And look at where we are. Uh one of the great disasters in American foreign policy. I argue it'll be the seen in time as the greatest foreign policy disaster uh the United States has ever engaged in.