With its military options exhausted and China, Russia and key regional powers refusing to isolate Tehran, Washington is flailing in a war it cannot win. The Iran War Is the Greatest Strategic Blunder in U.S. History
Joshua Scheer
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has branded the Trump administration’s new campaign to strangle Iran “economic D-Day.” John Mearsheimer calls it what it really is: a desperate Hail Mary from an empire that has run out of military options.
Speaking with Chris Hedges, the University of Chicago political scientist argues that Washington’s effort to cut Iran off from global trade is almost certain to fail. China and Russia will not cooperate, Iran’s regional partners have little incentive to comply, and even close U.S. allies such as the United Arab Emirates face devastating consequences if they join the campaign. Meanwhile, soaring energy prices, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and mounting damage to U.S. military assets are turning Trump’s promised quick victory into an economic and strategic catastrophe.
“The fact is, Chris, they’re desperate,” Mearsheimer says. “They’ve run out of military options.” Far from breaking Iran, the war has shifted the balance of coercive power in Tehran’s favor—and exposed the limits of American power in the Persian Gulf.
Chris Hedges and John J. Mearsheimer
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John Mearsheimer: The Iran War Is the Greatest Strategic Blunder in U.S. History
Editor’s note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Obvious transcription errors have been corrected, and some filler words have been removed without changing the substance of the conversation.
Chris Hedges: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has announced an economic pressure campaign against Iran. The goal is to target Tehran’s financial interests around the globe. The U.S. intends to cut off Iran’s sources of revenue, including oil, and prevent other countries and companies from doing business with Tehran. The Trump administration has warned countries that they must choose between the U.S. and Iran. Those who continue to trade with Iran, the U.S. says, will face secondary penalties.
The campaign dubbed Operation Economic Outcast, Bessent has also called it economic D-Day, comes nearly 6 months into the war with Iran begun after the U.S. and Israel launched unprovoked air strikes on Iran. The U.S. Treasury has imposed sanctions on 60 entities, vessels, and individuals across the globe, including in the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, China, Singapore, and Switzerland, accusing them of enabling the quote Iranian regime’s recklessness. The Trump campaign, however, has run into two huge obstacles. China and Russia, which have a vested interest in seeing Iran humiliate the US, said they will not cease trade with Iran. China imports about 90% of Iran’s oil, and it is highly unlikely the U.S. will impose sanctions on Chinese firms and banks given the ability of China to retaliate and inflict severe economic pain on the United States.
Trump has at the same time alienated and angered allies who he now appeals to to back his sanctions. Iran has also faced significant U.S. sanctions since nearly the beginning of the Islamic Republic in 1979 and over the decades has set up numerous shell companies and third-party networks to subvert them. The latest move represents the mounting frustration within the Trump administration which has exhausted its military options. What the U.S. expects to achieve with these sanctions remains unanswered. Iran has largely shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a major artery for global energy.
Oil and gas prices have soared. The cost to the U.S. economy, including for food and gasoline are steadily mounting. At the same time, the U.S. has blockaded Iran and certainly cut back the shipment of oil. It’s also carrying out escort missions to get some of those tankers through the strait. It’s unclear how many tankers are getting out or how much oil is getting out.
Certainly not the 10 million barrels a day the U.S. says. Like it or not, the war has clearly solidified Iran’s control of the state. Joining me to discuss the Iranian debate is Professor John Mearsheimer. He is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. He’s also a graduate of West Point and was a captain in the Air Force.
He’s the author of numerous books including Conventional Deterrence, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities and How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy along with The Tragedy of Great Power Politics The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy and Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics. John, you have cautioned from the beginning that there’s no good way out for the United States, but this is clearly something Hegseth and Trump have not yet accepted and they’re really playing with dynamite. I’ll let you take it from there.
John Mearsheimer: Well, I think that President Trump has accepted that there is no good way out. And what’s happening here with the Bessent strategy or the policy designed to strangle Iran economically is that they’re throwing a hail Mary pass. And that’s not a good way out. You’re desperate and you just take your chances with a hail mary and that’s what this is really all about. I mean, if this were a good strategy, they would have done it a long time ago.
Obviously, the reason that they’re finally getting around to this strategy is that it’s a lousy strategy and there’s hardly any chance it’s going to work. And they surely understand that. If you just look at the commentary, in the media, and this includes the mainstream media, almost everybody understands that this isn’t going to work. Now you pointed out quite correctly of course that the fact that China and Russia won’t play ball with us is almost certain to undermine this strategy. But there are other reasons that make it clear that this won’t work.
First of all, it is very important to never lose sight of the fact that we represent an existential threat to Iran. We meaning the United States and Israel. And given that we’re an existential threat, they’ll fight to the death against us. The bar here is so high for getting them to surrender that it’s almost unimaginable that we’ll be able to get over that bar because again, we present them with an existential threat. to take this a step further for this to work is going to take time.
Almost everybody agrees that economic blockades of this sort take a lot of time to work and we don’t have time on our side. The president certainly doesn’t given the midterm elections are coming up in November. But also, it’s very clear that the international economy is in real trouble. And if this war or crisis goes on and on, it could end up leaving President Trump as President Hoover, which he doesn’t want to do. To take this a step further, I think the UAE is a very important country here.
If you look at Iran’s most important trading partners, you can make a good case that the two most important trading partners are China and the UAE. And you’ve already taken care of China. Let’s talk about the UAE. The UAE is closely aligned with the United States and with Israel. in fact it is the one country in the Gulf that has signed I think it’s one of the two countries in the Gulf that has signed the Abraham Accords.
and you would expect the UAE to operate according to Bessent’s strategy to cooperate with the Trump administration with regard to these sanctions. But the problem is that the Iranians have told the UAE that if the UAE cooperates with Bessent and cuts off all economic intercourse with Iran, what Iran will do is it will attack the UAE. And we all know that Iran has the capability to basically wreck the UAE as a functioning state. So the UAE is in a real bind here. The UAE understands full well that it has powerful incentives to go along with the United States.
Yet, it also has powerful incentives not to go along with the United States. So, it’s unsurprising that the Wall Street Journal has just had an article that says, the headline says that they have not seen any evidence that the UAE is playing ball with the United States. Again, this is unsurprising. So if you look at the UAE, you look at Russia and China as you described them, you can add Turkey, Pakistan, and Iran’s other trading partners to the mix and none of them have any incentive to work with the United States to strangle Iran economically. So it’s just very hard to see how this succeeds when you take all these factors into consideration.
Chris Hedges: But do you think that the Trump administration realizes the weakness of their position? I mean, my fear is they’re completely clueless.
John Mearsheimer: I don’t think they’re completely clueless. I think a man like Bessent who has spent his entire life operating in financial markets has to understand basically what’s going on here. I think that when he talks to the public, he does sound like he’s living in a dream world, but I think behind closed doors, he understands that this is a Hail Mary. The fact is, Chris, they’re desperate. They’ve run out of military options.
It’s really quite interesting what’s happened here. When we started this war, it was the United States that was talking tough. It was the United States that launched this massive air war along with Israel against Iran. And we looked like we were in the driver’s seat when it came to the employment of military power. And it looked very much like the Iranians, who did have a military option, were nevertheless on the defensive.
But if you look at where we’re at today, it’s the Iranians who are explicitly talking about using military force and in an offensive way. And it’s the Americans who have basically said we’re not interested in using military force anymore. We’ve put the military option aside. So, you’ve had a complete flip-flop here in terms of who has the most coercive military leverage, and it’s the Iranians who do. so we have no military option.
We tried the blockade. We’ve tried a blockade two times now. We tried a blockade after the first air war, which ended with the June 17th memorandum of understanding. The blockade went away. That’s our blockade.
and then in mid-July we put the blockade back on. This is on July 14th and that blockade is still on. But the blockade was not working. That’s why the Bessent strategy has been added to the mix because the blockade wouldn’t work. So the question you have to ask yourself is this u Bessent strategy likely to work?
And to get back to your question about Bessent himself or Trump, if it was a good strategy, as I said before, we would have used it much earlier. They surely understand that we’re desperate. We’re flailing around and this is this is a Hail Mary. and the people who are inside the administration at lower or middle levels who deal with this issue surely are thinking about it or at least most of them are surely thinking about it the way most people on the outside are. There are many people on the outside who are sympathetic to the administration, who are desperate to see the United States win this war against Iran, but they understand that the likelihood that this strategy is going to produce victory is almost nil.
Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about the bases. one of the reasons that conditions on the Abraham Lincoln were so dire is because they couldn’t get resupplied and they apparently reports now indicate that the port facilities in Bahrain were devastated by Iran. And what were they getting? Their supply network was apparently going back to Diego Garcia, although the details were obscured. But the damage that Iran has been able to inflict on U.S. assets has been quite severe.
John Mearsheimer: Yeah. And I think the word that you use, assets, is appropriate here because it’s not just the bases. It’s all the really sophisticated radars that we had in the region that we depended very heavily on that the Iranians almost completely destroyed. And of course the bases are no longer functioning for the most part. What happened is that we began to move significant numbers of military assets especially aircraft out of the Gulf region and we moved them to Jordan because Jordan is not in the Gulf itself.
it’s quite far away. And then the Iranians took their missiles and started targeting Jordan. and then we began moving assets out of Jordan into Israel and back to Europe. so the idea that we can maintain bases and radars and a significant military presence in the Gulf is a pipe dream. the fact is Chris that ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones have reached the point where it’s almost impossible for the United States to build a network of bases and radar stations in the Persian Gulf.
We just can’t do it. And just to add to what I’m saying, you want to remember that from now forward, the Iranians are going to refine and improve the capability of their ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. So, the threat for ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones is only going to grow greater with the passage of time. And you might say, “Well, John, won’t the Americans and the Israelis and others build up a defensive capability, a ballistic a shield that can knock down those incoming ballistic missiles and cruise missiles? You can try to do that, but it just doesn’t work very well.
First of all, the ballistic missiles, the incoming ballistic missiles have a great advantage over the defending missiles. and many of the missiles will get through. But the other thing is that the cost exchange ratio greatly favors the incoming ballistic missiles over the defensive missiles. And therefore, it’s only a matter of time before you overwhelm those defensive missile systems. And the ballistic missiles win the missile war.
And just to go back to last year’s war, remember there was this war between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other side last June. This is the famous 12-day war which went from June 13th to June 25th. We ended that war in good part because the Americans and the Israelis were running out of defensive missiles and the Iranians were not running out of offensive ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. That’s why we ended it. And when we went into this war on February 28th, you want to remember that General Kaine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made it very clear to President Trump that we had a munitions problem.
And he was telling him in good part that we didn’t have a sufficient number of defensive missiles to deal with all of the offensive missiles that the Iranians would be throwing at us and Israel. and we would eventually run out of defensive missiles much the way we were doing during the June 2025 war. But of course, Trump thought he was going to win a quick and easy victory. He didn’t win a quick and easy victory. It turned into a protracted war.
And once again, we were running out of defensive missiles. And that’s why we ended the air war after 40 days. So what I’m saying to you, Chris, is that just moving forward, the Iranian ballistic missile, cruise missile, and drone force is going to become increasingly formidable, and our ability to deal with it is not going to keep up with those improvements. So the idea that you’re going to put bases back in the region and then defend those bases makes no sense at all. So, we have no meaningful military presence in the Persian Gulf, which is actually quite shocking when you think about how we thought about our military presence in that region on February 27th.
On February 27th, hardly anyone, including me, imagined that those bases, those radars, would be so thoroughly destroyed and that we would not be able to go into the Gulf. I think almost everybody with a triple-digit IQ understood that the Strait of Hormuz was likely to be shut down and that Trump was foolish for ignoring that. This is before the war started. But with regard to the bases, I don’t think most people, and again, I put myself in this category, anticipated the extent to which the Iranians would be able to just basically wreck all those bases and radar sites and forces to abandon the region.
Chris Hedges: Just to point out, another problem is that those interceptors take a long time to produce.
John Mearsheimer: Yeah. And as I said, I mean, you’re absolutely right. And the cost exchange ratio definitely favors the incoming ballistic missiles. You know, just to give you some numbers here, it’s usually estimated that an incoming Iranian ballistic missile costs somewhere between $500,000 and a million dollars. let’s say that that’s true.
and it’s usually said that a defensive missile costs about $4 million. So that means that given the fact you have to fire two defensive missiles, these are these are PAC-3 missiles. You have to fire two PAC-3 missiles at every incoming ballistic missile to stand a good chance of knocking it down. that means that the cost exchange ratio is not 4:1—$4 million versus $1 million. It’s 8:1 because you’re firing two PAC-3s, two Patriot missiles at each incoming ballistic missile.
So you see that the cost exchange ratio is about 8:1. Now that assumes that an incoming ballistic missile from Iran costs a million dollars. But what if it costs only $500,000, which is the low end of the estimate. The $1 million is the high end of the estimate, which is what I was using to give you the 16:1 ratio. I mean the 8:1 ratio if it’s $500,000 for an Iranian ballistic missile $500,000 then the cost exchange ratio is 16:1 and then you marry that to the point that you’re making that it takes forever in a day to build these things and we see that this is one of the principal problems that the United States faces with the depletion of its inventory of precious weapons we just don’t build weapons that you can pump out on a routine basis.
It takes a long time to pump out those weapons because they are boutique weapons for the most part. so your point just you know compounds the problem that we face
Chris Hedges: and they’ve raided stockpiles around the globe.
John Mearsheimer: Oh absolutely. I mean, you know, if you begin to think about what the balance of power looks like in East Asia now, it’s for good reason that our East Asian allies are really nervous about what’s happened. you know, we’ve pulled Patriot missiles, which we were just talking about the PAC 3s. We’ve pulled Patriot missiles and THAAD defensive missiles out of Japan and South Korea. We’ve moved troops out of East Asia, right, to the Gulf.
This is that marine expeditionary force. We moved out. We just recently when we got rid of the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf region. We replaced it with the USS George Washington. It’s a big aircraft carrier.
So, we replaced the Lincoln with the Washington. The George Washington was the only aircraft carrier we have in East Asia. It’s stationed in Japan, permanently stationed in Japan. So, we have no aircraft carriers in East Asia. Now, furthermore, the Japanese wanted to buy a lot of Tomahawk missiles.
The Tomahawk missiles are these offensive missiles, these cruise missiles that we used against Iran in large numbers. Well, we told the Japanese they would just have to wait a long time before we could deliver those Tomahawk missiles because we’ve used up so many of them in in the Middle East or in the Persian Gulf. So, you see that expending all those boutique weapons in the Gulf has had a significant effect on our ability to contain China. number one. And number two, we haven’t talked about yet the Ukraine war.
The fact is that Ukraine is desperate for Patriot missiles. Well, just think about what you and I were talking about regarding the state of Patriot missiles in the Middle East. We don’t have Patriot missiles to give to the Ukrainians. and so you see that what’s happening here in the case of East Asia is we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul. And with regard to Ukraine, we just have significantly eliminated reduced our ability to provide them with weaponry that they need.
so the the situation in in the Gulf clearly has global consequences for us.
Chris Hedges: I want to talk about the if this continues the potential consequences especially economic consequences but where would you rank this in our history as kind of you know a strategic failure how serious do you think it is?
John Mearsheimer: I think there’s no question even though it has not fully played itself out yet that this is the greatest strategic blunder that the United States has ever made. it’s really quite remarkable and I think there just lots of people who believe that the council on foreign relations the prestigious institution in New York City a few years ago did a study where they surveyed American historians prominent mainstream American historians of U.S. foreign policy and asked them to consider all of the disastrous mistakes that the United States ma has made over the course of its history. This is since it got its independence in 1783. And they asked them to rank order those disasters. And what the council discovered from surveying these historians is that they considered by a pretty wide margin the Iraq war in 2003 to be the biggest strategic blunder that the United States made.
and I think as you and I both remember very well, that was a strategic blunder of the First Order, but I think the Iran war is a much greater blunder than the Iraq war. it’s really quite remarkable how foolish President Trump was to start this war. And just think about it, Chris. He he went in thinking that Iran was close to getting a nuclear weapon. Right?
This is one of the principal reasons he went in. Bibi Netanyahu had convinced him that Iran was on the threshold of becoming a nuclear weapons state. That was simply not true. There was a huge amount of evidence that made it manifestly clear that that was not true. and Rafael Grossi, who is the highly competent head of the IAEA, was telling everybody that Iran did not have a nuclear weapon and was not moving to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Furthermore, he was told by Bibi Netanyahu and David Barnea who was the head of Mossad that air power alone, a shock-and-awe campaign could produce regime change in Iran. The historical record makes it manifestly clear that this is not possible. it has never happened before. And not surprisingly, all sorts of President Trump’s closest advisors, including the vice president, the head of the CIA, the Secretary of State, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were telling him that this was not going to work, that this was a cockamamie idea and he did it nevertheless. Then there’s the whole question of the closing of the Strait of Hormuz.
he ignored any discussion that said this might be a serious threat. This is quite remarkable when you go back to the 12-day war of June 2025 that President Trump was in part responsible for he and the Israelis. The reason he ended that war was twofold or the reasons that he ended that war were twofold. One, as I said before, we were running out of defensive missiles, we and the Israelis. That’s one reason.
The other reason, which was talked about at the time, was that President Trump had gotten wind that the Iranians were thinking about shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. This is towards the end of the June 2025 war. And Trump knew that was a mortal threat. And that’s why he and the Israelis wanted to shut the war down. It wasn’t the Iranians who were begging to shut down the 12-day war.
It was the Israelis and the Americans who wanted to shut it down. So anyway, the strait of He ignored that issue as if it didn’t matter. He didn’t even think about what a contingency plan would be if the shock-and-awe campaign did not work as intended as intended and we ended up in a protracted war where the strength was shut down. So when you just calculate these illusions that or these foolish thoughts that he had about Iran having nuclear weapons, about what you could do with a bombing campaign and produce regime change and about the Strait of Hormuz, you understand that this was a blunder of the first order. And to go back to comparing it to the Iraq war, at least the Iraq war ended up with us conquering Iraq and getting rid of Saddam Hussein, which was the principal objective of the war.
all of the other objectives we failed at, but we got rid of Saddam Hussein. We ended up conquering the country. so you could say it was a quasi success or there was some successful aspects of the operation although I think ultimately it was a disaster. But be that as it may, we achieved none of the objectives in the Iran war. It’s really quite stunning if you think about it.
We went in with four objectives. Number one was to eliminate Iran’s nuclear enrichment capability. We’re now at a point where it looks like we’re never even going to get a nuclear deal, much less eliminate their nuclear enrichment capability. Then the second goal was to get rid of their long-range ballistic missiles. That’s worked out very well.
Just think about what we were saying a few minutes ago about what a potent threat the Iranians have in their hands and how that’s only going to get more potent with the passage of time. Then of course our third goal was to eliminate links between Iran on one side, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas on the other. That’s worked out very well. Iran is now demanding before they’ll open the strait, there has to be a ceasefire in southern Lebanon with Hezbollah, in Gaza with Hamas, and in Yemen with the Houthis. we’ve done anything but sever the link.
If anything, we’ve strengthened the link. And then finally, there’s regime change. that was the big goal, regime change. That’s been a total failure, too. So, we had four goals.
We’re zero for four. On top of that, we’ve lost control of the strait, or I shouldn’t say we’ve lost control of the strait. The Iranians now have control of the strait in ways that they didn’t before the war started. our basing structure in the region is wrecked. our alliance structure in the region is in tatters.
we’re in danger of President Trump becoming Herbert Hoover because the international economy may go off a cliff. I mean, it’s just hard to imagine a more catastrophic war than the Iran war. It’s really amazing.
Chris Hedges: Oh, I want to talk about the economy. So the United States has depleted its strategic petroleum reserves down to 1982 levels kind of sludge level. and the other interesting thing I think this was a Wall Street Journal article is that commercial oil companies because the price of gasoline has risen by 23% diesel has tripled in price u so their stockpiles are worth more have actually depleted their own reserves. and then you have the whole issue of food. so if this is not resolved probably fairly soon and then we have inflation what’s inflation now I don’t remember the exact figure but let’s just talk about you know if this drags on the economic blowback.
John Mearsheimer: Well it’s hard to say for sure. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what the oil situation is and it’s not easy to figure out for sure just how close we are to the cliff. with regard to the strategic petroleum reserve, there are a number of people who say that we have a few more months to go before we really begin to run up against falling off the cliff. there are other people who say we’re close to that already, just a few weeks away. It’s hard to say for sure.
furthermore, in terms of what’s coming out of the Gulf, it’s hard to know for sure. I think you can get pretty good estimates on the number of ships coming out. although the United States propagandizes on that front. but what’s coming out of Bab el-Mandeb, this is the Red Sea. You want to remember that there’s a lot of Saudi oil that’s supposed to come or was for a while coming out of the Red Sea.
and that to some extent negated the problem of so little Saudi oil coming out of the Strait of Hormuz, but that apparently is in large part shut down now, although it’s hard to get good numbers on that. but you also have to take into account Chinese demand. one of the reasons that the situation has not been catastrophic with regard to the flow of oil into global markets up to now is that the Chinese greatly reduced their demand for imported oil. and that’s helped stem the tide. Now, there’s some evidence the Chinese are going back in the other direction and Chinese demand for imported oil is going up, but it’s hard for me to figure out exactly what’s going on there.
So, what I’m saying to you, Chris, is I think there are a number of variables that are at play here that make it very hard for outsiders to get a good sense of exactly how dire the situation is. But I think almost everybody agrees that if this isn’t shut down in a month or two, there is a really good chance that the situation will get much worse than it is today. and that has a lot to do with the fact that winter is coming up. and also the food crisis that many people anticipate is likely to manifest itself in the fall and in the winter of this year. But you know exactly how this plays itself out hard to say.
But again I always go back to the fact that President Trump said when he signed the memorandum of understanding that the reason he signed that memorandum and as you know Chris I’ve argued that memorandum of understanding was a surrender document. I think that President Trump was signing a surrender document and I think he had to justify it. And the reason that he justified it as he did was because he understood that we are in deep trouble. He understood this in mid June and that was more than two months ago. That was June 17th and today, right, we’re in late August, right?
and that’s two plus months. And I think the situation has only gotten worse. there’s not any real reason for optimism here. so I think the incentives for President Trump to shut this one down are very great. And again to get back to our discussion before about Scott Bessent’s strategy of strangulation, the reason that we’re moving beyond the blockade and we’re not just relying on the blockade, we’re also relying on the strategy of strangulation is because we’ve got to shut this one down.
As I said before, this is a Hail Mary. And I think it’s a Hail Mary because they understand, people in the administration, that the economy is in real trouble.
Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about food. So, diesel has doubled. Of course, farm equipment uses diesel. Trains use diesel for transportation. and then I’ll let you speak about Ukraine.
Ukraine is not exporting. Ukraine is kind of the bread basket of Europe and especially for wheat. you have spike in the price of fertilizer which transit is an o you know an oil-based product transported through much I think I don’t know the percentages but significant percentages transported or were transported through the Strait of Hormuz food what what are we what potentially could we see
John Mearsheimer: well I think about one-third of the world’s fertilizer came out of the Gulf and there was a substantial reduction. I mean some cargo ships did get through and this affected the planting in the spring of this year and that’s going to have an effect on the harvest. What’s also going to have an effect on the harvest and you see this in almost all the accounts of the food situation is the drought that has taken place in Europe and in other places over the past few months. And then when you marry that to the fact that the Russian bombing campaign against the Black Sea ports that belong to Ukraine and through which huge amounts of wheat and grain are shipped from Ukraine out into world markets. We see when you see that that’s been shut down.
Ukraine has been turned into a landlocked country. And by the way, the Ukrainians, for their part, are attacking Russian ships. And Russia is an even bigger producer of wheat and grain than Ukraine is. And that’s limiting what the Russians and the Ukrainians, excuse me, what the Russians are getting out into world markets. So you have all sorts of reasons to think that the price of food is going to go up significantly in addition to the price of oil and diesel in the months ahead and that will have a truly negative effect on the international economy.
Chris Hedges: inflation.
John Mearsheimer: Well, inflation is one of the byproducts of the problems that we were describing. I mean, if I if wheat and grain are having a great deal of difficulty making it into world markets, there’s a reduction of the supply of those products. The cost is going to go up. That’s I think economics 101. And as the cost goes up, the inflation will go up.
And by the way, the diesel, as you pointed out before, also comes into play in this calculation because it’s very clear that farm equipment, you know, this is all part of the green revolution. Farm equipment relies on diesel. and transportation networks rely on diesel. if you’re shipping, you know, agricultural goods from point A to point B and you’re doing it by truck, that means you’re going to be using a lot of diesel fuel. So, as the price of diesel goes up, that’s going to affect the price of food independent of the fact that the supply of wheat and grain is going to be less in the months ahead than it has than it was a year before.
Chris Hedges: I mean people have painted this dark scenario of an economic collapse, a global depression. do you think that’s hyperbolic?
John Mearsheimer: Well, it has not proved to be the case so far. And if you look at what’s happened with regard to oil, it’s very clear that due to a combination of factors, we have been able to head off disaster at the pass. As I said before, some of this had to do with the fact that the Chinese greatly reduced their demand for imported oil. Also had to do with the fact that we took oil out of not only we, the United States, but countries all around the world took oil out of their strategic petroleum reserves. It also had to do with the fact that a lot of Saudi oil got out through the Red Sea.
and a lot of UAE oil got out through Fujairah, which is a UAE port that is outside of the Strait of Hormuz. and so for for all those reasons, we were able to minimize the damage. There was still damage for sure, but we were able to minimize the damage. And as we were talking about before, the question you have to ask yourself is how long can that go on? And there are lots of people who think it can’t go on for that much longer.
But who knows for sure, Chris? I mean, you know, when it comes to predicting the economic future, we live in a world that two famous British economists called a world of radical uncertainty. These are just very difficult things to predict. and the point is if you’re President Trump or any other world leader, you don’t want to take a chance that we will go off the cliff. You want to do everything to minimize the chances that we will go off a cliff.
because you don’t want an economic crisis. And I think this is why President Trump was incentivized to sign the memorandum of understanding. again, if you just go back to the memorandum of understanding, you look at the terms of that memorandum. It was a surrender document. Trump understood that and he did it because he understood that we were in a precarious situation.
and I believe that he and Bessent, I tried to make this point before. I believe that they do fully understand that we are in desperate straits and that something has to be done to fix the problem. and I don’t think although they probably have better data and better analysis to look at than I do almost for sure I think they nevertheless are being told that something has to be done to shut this one down ASAP and that’s why they’re throwing this Hail Mary pass and then the question by the way Chris becomes what do they do when it fails? I think you and I both agree, most people agree it’s going to fail. Then the question is what do they do?
Well, that is the question.
Chris Hedges: Yeah, that is the question. You know, some people they they flirted with with dropping both Netanyahu and Trump have flirted with this dropping of or use of tactical nuclear weapons. I don’t think that would resolve anything. but what do they do?
John Mearsheimer: Well, putting aside tactical nuclear weapons, they have no military option. they’ve tried the military option. They tried a strategic bombing campaign for the first 40 days of the war. Then they engaged in this tit-for-tat strategy where both sides went back and forth over the course of July of this year. That didn’t work.
the blockade didn’t work. there’s just no military option here. tactical nuclear weapons. I don’t think that’s a viable option. everything you can tell from the media says that virtually every one of Trump’s advisers tells him this is a cockamamie idea.
Trump finds himself, according to press reports, reaching for that option on occasion. which is unsurprising because again he’s flailing around, but his advisers tell him that wouldn’t work. I mean we could go down that road and talk about why it won’t work. but I think you know he really will be faced with two choices. One is signing something like the memorandum of understanding although the Iranians will drive a much harder bargain this time than they did in the 17 June memorandum.
So you know he can basically capitulate. that’s one option. Or the other option is that he can just continue soldiering on the way we’re doing now and just hope for a miracle somewhere down the road and hope that in the meantime we don’t go off a cliff. but those are sort of the two options. I mean the thing about President Trump is it’s hard to imagine him admitting defeat.
He he just hardly ever does that. he’s never wrong. he never admits defeat. and I think that makes it hard to imagine him caving in to Iranian demands. But again, what’s he going to do?
Go back to military force? I don’t think so. And again, using nuclear weapons makes no sense at all. You cannot tell a plausible story about how nuclear weapons rescue the situation you know launching a bevy of tactical nuclear weapons and the Strait of Hormuz to open it up is not going to work. and furthermore what you’re going to do is you’re going to incentivize more and more states to get nuclear weapons of their own.
And then you’re going to send a message to countries like Russia and China and the Israelis that it’s okay to use nuclear weapons. Look, the United States used them. Why can’t we use them? Do you really want to send that message? Do you really want to incentivize nuclear proliferation?
do you really want to turn the Strait of Hormuz into a smoking or radiating ruin? I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s winning in any meaningful sense. So I don’t see tactical nuclear weapons as a solution. Again, this gets back to our discussion a few minutes ago, Chris, about whether or not this is the greatest strategic blunder that the United States has ever made in its long history.
And I think our discussion right now is just more evidence of what a great strategic blunder this was. we we have no options. we have no viable options for winning this war. and and we have achieved again cannot emphasize this enough we have achieved none of our goals and we have also lost control of the strait lost control of our basing structure in the region and basically wrecked our alliance structure in the region truly remarkable
Chris Hedges: and just to close we’ve become a pariah I think most countries are probably around the globe rooting for Iran.
John Mearsheimer: I think there’s no question about it. I think people all over the world are very anxious to see the United States, which they see as a bully, get its nose badly bloodied. By the way, just to change gears slightly here, if you’re the Russians and the Chinese, you have a deep-seated strategic interest in seeing Iran defeat the United States. If you’re Russia or you’re China, the United States is a mortal enemy and you want to see that mortal enemy defeated by the Iranians. And this of course is why the Russians and the Chinese have been helping the Iranians.
But to take this a step further, if you’re the Turks and you look at what’s happening, you want to see the Iranians win this war because you understand that if Iran loses, the United States and the Israelis will turn their gun sights on you. The Israelis have made it very clear that they consider Turkey to be the next big target after Iran. Well, the Turks fully understand this and therefore the Turks want to see the Iranians defeat the Americans and the Israelis, not vice versa. Furthermore, if you just think about Israel and our relationship with Israel and how countries in the Gulf and in the Middle East more generally think about Israel, I think given the events since October 7th, almost all countries in the Middle East, in fact, I would argue all countries in the Middle East, even including the UAE, understand that the United that Israel is basically a rogue state. It’s a dangerous state.
It’s interested in creating a greater Israel and weakening every other state in the region, including the Gulf States. Israel just wants to be the most powerful state by far in the Middle East, and anything it can do to weaken any state in that region is considered a good thing. So, I think that because the United States and Israel are joined at the hip, I think that if you worry about Israel as a threat, you also worry about the United States as a threat because Israel can do pretty much anything it wants and the United States will back them hook, line, and sinker. So therefore, if you’re a state in the Middle East, right, and you’re looking at the United States, you just don’t see the American flag, you see the Israeli flag. This is a tag team.
So I think in very important ways, all sorts of states in that region would like to see the United States get its comeuppance. Now, this is complicated for the states in the Persian Gulf because they worry about Iran as well. But if you just step back a second and think about how to assess the relative danger you face from Iran and the United States from the perspective of a Gulf state. It’s not clear to me that Iran is the greater threat. If anything, especially if you take into account my comment about the United States and Israel being a tag team, it’s the United States that’s the greater threat.
I think if you’re a Saudi, if you’re from Kuwait, you even begin to hedge in that direction or inch in that direction. you know, as I’ve said on a number of occasions to people, Chris, there’s not a single instance in the historical record where Iran initiated attack an attack against another country. Just want to think about that. Iran has not attacked another country in its recent history since the modern state of Iran was created. It’s not a highly aggressive state.
Contrast it with Israel. the difference is like night and day. Israel is one of the most aggressive states in modern history. There’s just no getting around that. And furthermore, Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza.
Iran has not committed a genocide in Gaza. You don’t have to like the regime in Iran. You don’t like have to like its politics, but it’s not an apartheid state that committed a genocide. And it is not initiated any wars against anybody that I can find evidence of. and again the Israelis with the Israelis and with the Americans you find a completely different story.
The United States is a highly aggressive country. So and it’s joined at the hip with Israel. So anyway what I’m saying to you Chris just on the general point you were making about people around the world rooting against us. I think if you think long and hard about how the Gulf States assess the United States as a threat versus Iran as a threat, they may in many cases view the Iranians as a greater threat. But I would argue not by much.
And I would not be surprised if we found if we could, you know, survey people that they actually viewed Iran as less of a threat than the United States. Not by much, but given how dangerous the United States and Israel, this tag team is, Iran is probably not as dangerous as those two states.
Chris Hedges: Great. Thanks, John. and I want to thank Max and Melina who produce the show. You can find me at chrisedges.substack.com.
John Mearsheimer: Thank you, Chris.