Transcript: Israel and Nuclear Weapons – A Talk with John Mearsheimer

The incentives for the Israelis to attack it in the process are very powerful.

You also want to remember if Iran gets nuclear weapons, it’s important that it have a survivable nuclear deterrent. Right? In other words, if the Israelis were then to attack or the Americans were then to attack Iran, if its nuclear deterrent was survivable, that would be very different than if Iran had nuclear weapons that were sitting on an airfield and were a big fat target for the Israelis or for the Americans. So if you’re going to have proliferation and states are going to require nuclear weapons, the best situation is for those states to have survivable nuclear deterrence so they can retaliate after their hit.

4th point you want to keep in mind, it is in America’s interest, and we act this way, to make sure that there is no proliferation. We are adamantly opposed to proliferation, period. And from our point of view, the best possible situation is 1 where there’s only 1 state on the planet that has nuclear weapons. And guess who that is? Uncle Sam. Okay, we do not like proliferation.

All of this is to say that Israel and the United States have the same interest when it comes to Iran. The Israelis don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons for all the obvious reasons and we don’t want them to have nuclear weapons. With regard to Israel itself, and I’ll talk about this in a few minutes, we did not want Israel to have nuclear weapons. So the United States and Israel have fundamentally different views on the Israeli nuclear deterrent, whether it’s good that Israel has nuclear weapons and that Israel has not signed the NPT. But on Iran, our views coincide.

The Final point I want to make has to do with Enrichment and reprocessing. There’s 2 technologies that really matter and I’ll talk more about this when we get to the Iranian case. Enrichment where you enrich uranium and reprocessing where you reprocess plutonium to produce bomb material. In other words, you can go down 2 different roads to get that fissile material that makes a bomb. You can reprocess plutonium. That’s what the Israelis did. Or you can enrich uranium. And that’s what the Iranians are doing.

And to get way ahead of myself which drives the Israelis crazy about Iran’s Capabilities is not that they have nuclear reactors. That’s not a big deal what really matters is they can enrich and they can reprocess And as long as you can enrich and you can reprocess, it’s not that hard to get a bomb. And the Iranians, as I’ll talk about, are not that far away from having a bomb. It’s because of that enrichment capability and that reprocessing capability.

Okay, those are my background points. And they of course will feed into much of what I say here.

How Israel Got the Bomb

We start with the Israelis and talk about, 1st of all, the basic history, how they got the bomb, we then describe their nuclear arsenal. And let me talk about its usefulness.

The Israelis started down the road in the mid 1950s. David Ben-Gurion, who was the 1st prime minister of Israel, was deeply committed to making sure that Israel had nuclear weapons. And his right-hand man was Shimon Peres, who, when I was young, was a big muckety-muck in Israel. And he and Ben-Gurion got the program started, I would say in a big way in the late 50s, 56, 58.

And believe it or not, What made it possible was assistance from the French. The French and the Israelis were quite close at the time. And as I told you, the Americans did not want Israel to have nuclear weapons. And I’ll say more about that. But The French and the Israelis had a lot in common, and the French were willing to give the Israelis a reactor and reprocessing capability, the ability to reprocess plutonium. And once the Israelis had that, right, they were off to the races.

Just a quick point on this, as many of you remember, there was a very famous war in 1956, sometimes called the Suez War. It’s where Britain, France, and Israel attacked Egypt. That is evidence of the Israelis and the French working together. And again, the French played a key role in giving the Israelis the necessary technology. It was not us that did it, it was the French.

2nd point you want to remember, if you look at the story of proliferation during the Cold War, Before 1968, it was reasonably easy for a country to acquire reprocessing capability and enrichment capability Because the United States and the Soviet Union, both of whom oppose nuclear proliferation, were so busy competing with each other. The intensity of the security competition in the 1st half of the Cold war was so intense that they did not cooperate sufficiently to prevent proliferation.

It’s a very interesting situation. Both the Soviets and the Americans were opposed to nuclear proliferation but they couldn’t cooperate enough to really slow it down because they were involved in an intense security competition between themselves. By the late 60s, they come together, the NPT 1968, the Nuclear Suppliers Group 1975, and they don’t completely shut down proliferation, but they do a great deal to shut it down.

The Israelis, because they started in the 50s, as I described to you, got in Before the Soviets and the Americans really cracked down. So it was in December 1963 that the Israelis nuclear program went critical. In other words, they’re producing the fissile material. And then it’s somewhere between 66 and 67. You can’t get the exact date in the open literature that the Israelis actually had a bomb at 66 67 so you can see the Israelis got in early. They’re very lucky in that regard a lot of other countries did not get in early. And furthermore they had help from the French.

What about the United States? A couple points there. As you know, I wrote this book on the Israel lobby with Steve Walt. There’s no question that there’s lots of evidence of the lobby at work, supporters of Israel in the United States who were working to make sure that we did not slow down the Israeli nuclear program. But I’m not sure they were that necessary in large part because the person who was really committed to preventing Israel from getting nuclear weapons was John F. Kennedy. And he was shot on November 22nd, 1963.

And LBJ, as you well know, became the president. And LBJ had a love affair with Israel that was not altogether unlike Joe Biden’s love affair with Israel. And the end result is that Johnson basically looked the other way. So it was Johnson coupled with the power of the lobby that really slowed us down from discovering and stopping the Israeli program. We kind of knew it was there, but looked the other way is really what happened there.

And so it’s just important to understand that, and I’ll give you some of the reasons why in a few minutes, there was significant opposition inside of Israel to developing a nuclear bomb. Ben-Gurion and Peres, Shimon Peres, really had to push very hard to get it through. And it wasn’t so much significant opposition from the outside, although the United States was deeply committed to some extent under Kennedy, but not so under Johnson to slowing or stopping the Israelis. But there was opposition, significant opposition from within.

Final point just on the history here. The Israelis have never admitted that They have nuclear weapons. It’s 1 of these bizarre situations where they have what’s called an opaque deterrent. They’re not really fooling anybody. And I don’t know why they insist on saying, “we’re not going to confirm or deny that we have nuclear weapons.” They do have nuclear weapons, which brings me to their arsenal.

Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal

They have 90 plus warheads. I wouldn’t be surprised if their number of warheads were up in the hundreds. Most people think they’ve produced enough plutonium, they’ve enriched, reprocessed enough plutonium for somewhere between 100 and 200 warheads. But most people give them 90 warheads, 90 plus warheads. And they really don’t need more than that as I’ll make clear in a moment.

And as you know, when you have nuclear weapons, remember what I said, you want to have a survivable nuclear deterrent, right? The Israelis want to make sure that if Iran ever gets nuclear weapons, there’s no way that Iran in a 1st strike can take out Israel’s nuclear arsenal, or any other country for that matter can take out their nuclear arsenal.

So what the Israelis have done is they’ve deployed their warheads on 3 different kinds of systems. This is what the United States and the Soviet Union back in the day, Russia today, China today do. You put them in the ground or on the ground land-based ballistic missiles, either in a silo or on a mobile platform. That’s land-based ICBMs. Or you put them out in the water in a submarine or you build bombers or fighters that can bomb targets from the air. Airplanes, sea launched missiles and land based missiles. That’s the triad.

The Israelis have, I think they don’t, they used to have Jericho ones and they now have Jericho twos and Jericho threes. Those are the land-based missiles, basically hidden in mountains during peacetime and rolled out on mobile platforms in wartime. They also have Dolphin-class submarines. I think they have either 5 or 6 Dolphin-class submarines that have cruise missiles that are nuclear armed. And then they have F-15Is and F-16Is. These are fighter planes that are adapted to carry nuclear weapons. So they have this triad and it is survivable and it is quite large.

How Useful Is Israel’s Nuclear Deterrent?

Now, very interesting question is what’s the usefulness of this nuclear deterrent? And my argument is not very useful at all. And I think this is why a number of people in Israel, and these were not peace-loving dopers, number of hardline people said, “we don’t need nuclear weapons. We’re better off taking our precious resources and spending them on conventional forces or what have you.”

But here’s why they’re not very useful. 1st of all, Israel has the most powerful conventional military forces in the Middle East, number 1. And number 2, it’s joined at the hip with the United States. What does it need nuclear weapons for? What’s the threat out there, except for the possibility of Iran, which we’ll get to.

What’s the threat out there that they have to worry about? What military scenario might they get into where nuclear weapons are useful? The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nuclear weapons, the Israeli Hezbollah conflict, nuclear weapons, I don’t think so. The Israeli involvement in Syria, I don’t think so. I mean, the collateral damage would be enormous.

You’re going to start popping off nuclear weapons in southern Lebanon or Syria or in Gaza. This is just, it’s ludicrous. It’s just not going to happen. And again, they have the conventional forces and they’re joined at the hip with the United States. So why do you need nuclear weapons?

The other thing is, and this is a very important argument, it gives others incentives to get nuclear weapons. In other words, if you Israel have nuclear weapons, the Iranians are going to want nuclear weapons. 1 of the real problems here, and we can talk about this, if Iran gets nuclear weapons, the Saudis have said they’re going to get nuclear weapons. The Saudis get nuclear weapons, the Turks are going to get nuclear weapons, the Iraqis are going to get nuclear weapons, the Egyptians are going to get nuclear weapons.

The nightmare scenario here from Israel’s point of view and even from the United States’ point of view is not just that Iran gets nuclear weapons and then you have Iran and Israel, which is very dangerous in and of itself, as I’ll make clear. But the problem is that others will have an incentive to get nuclear weapons, too.

So the argument can be made that if you’re an Israeli a much smarter strategy is to hedge in other words Sort of have the capability to build nuclear weapons rather quickly if need be But given the situation that you’re in now, don’t build nuclear weapons. Don’t have any nuclear weapons capability because you don’t want to incentivize other countries to follow in your footsteps.

Now how you think about that, by the way, gets back to the earlier point that I made to you about do you want to live in a Middle East where every state has nuclear weapons, survivable nuclear deterrence, and war is not likely at all? Or do you want to live in a Middle East where nobody has nuclear weapons. And the Israeli view is we want to live in a world where only 1 country has nuclear weapons in the Middle East, and that’s us. And that’s perfectly logical from a strategic point of view.

The 1973 War and Israel’s Nuclear Weapons

Now just 1 quick story that I always find very interesting on where Israel’s nuclear deterrent came in very Usefully or proved to be very useful 1973 most of you are too young to remember this but in 1973 the Egyptians attacked across the Suez Canal into the Sinai and the Syrians attacked in the Golan Heights Israelis got caught with their pants completely down Right.

The great surprise attack on October 7th was the 2nd time that Israel has been a victim of an almost complete surprise attack. And the Israelis thought that this was the end. They really did think it was the end because the Egyptians and the Syrians did very well in the 1st 2 or 3 days of the battle before the Israelis turned the tide.

And the Israelis panicked and Moshe Dayan, who was then the Minister of Defense, went to Golda Meir, who was the Prime Minister, and told her that it was time to get the nuclear weapons out. So she gave him permission to assemble 13 nuclear weapons. So the Israelis assembled 13 nuclear weapons and they did it in a very obvious way so that we would see it. We mean in the United States And we would rush huge amounts of armaments to the Israelis to help them stabilize the situation and turn the tide.

So in a very important way those nuclear weapons proved to be very useful for the Israelis in 1973, but they were not useful in the way we usually think about nuclear weapons providing deterrence or coercive capability. Okay, that’s the basic story on what you have with Israel.

Israel Versus Iran

Let’s now talk about Israel versus Iran, which is an issue of huge importance. And I’m going to talk about it from Israel’s point of view because the topic that I was asked to speak about was Israel and nuclear weapons. So I want to talk about Israel and how it thinks about Iran having nuclear weapons.

And again, you want to remember what Ehud Barak said and what I said about having nuclear weapons, right? They’re very powerful incentives for the Iranians to have nuclear weapons. You want to understand that the United States and Israel would not be threatening to attack Iran today the way they’re doing if Iran had a nuclear deterrent. The Israelis and the United States would be much more cautious. So you just want to understand there’s a deep seated sort of imperative, strategic imperative to acquire nuclear weapons on the part of Iran.

And you also want to understand that from Israel’s point of view, this is an existential threat, right? The idea of Iran, which is a mortal enemy, there’s no question you can argue about who’s to blame for this situation. But there’s no question that Iran and Israel are mortal enemies and that the Iranians view Israel as an existential threat. That’s why they think about getting nuclear weapons. And the Israelis think about Iran as an existential threat. And that’s why the Israelis are so interested in eliminating any possibility of that happening.

Okay, what’s the story look like here? It’s quite clear that up until 2003 the Iranians were pursuing nuclear weapons. They were bent on weaponizing up until 2003. That was the year of the 1st Gulf War. That was not the 1st Gulf War. That was, I guess, the year of the 2nd Gulf War. That’s when we invaded Iraq. We really spooked the Iranians because we took down Saddam so quickly. They backed off.

And The American intelligence community has said since then, since 2003, that there’s no evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. But the problem is Iran has enrichment capability and it has reprocessing capability. You just cannot lose sight of that. And when you have those 2 things or 1 of those 2 things, it’s not that difficult to get a bomb. If the Iranians just had reactors, that’s 1 thing. But when you have reactors and enrichment or reprocessing capability, real trouble.

The JCPOA and Maximum Pressure

So what happens Is that the Israelis put huge pressure on us and we have our own incentives which are very similar to the Israelis To make sure that the Iranians don’t use that reprocessing capability and that enrichment capability to weaponize So Barack Obama works over time to get the famous JCPOA in 2015.

The JCPOA is the nuclear agreement that forces Iran to downsize its nuclear weapons capability or its infrastructure that could produce nuclear weapons in a really serious way. The JCPOA, which the Russians, the Chinese, the Americans, the British, the Germans, and the French all create, we all work together to make sure Iran doesn’t get nuclear weapons the Israelis in the person of Benjamin Netanyahu are adamantly opposed Netanyahu does everything he can to sabotage the JCPOA.

And his reason is, 1st of all, they have enrichment and reprocessing capability, and 2, the JCPOA has sunset clauses. It doesn’t last forever, right? And what Netanyahu wants is for us to not agree to the JCPOA, number 1, and then once we agree, he wants us to tear it up.

Well, lo and behold, who becomes president in 2017? He just became president again. And who in 2018 tears up the JCPOA, or at least pulls us out of the JCPOA? Donald Trump. So in 2018, we’re out of the JCPOA for the reasons I just described to you. And Trump says, what we’re going to do is come up with a new strategy. The new strategy is maximum pressure.

Maximum pressure is maximum economic pressure. Sanctions, tariffs, all this stuff. Economic leverage. We’re going to bring the Iranians to their knees. And forget this JCPOA.

Joe Biden, who runs against President Trump in 2020 wins, of course, Biden becomes president in January, 2021. And 1 of his campaign promises, and 1 of the things he says he’s going to do as soon as he takes office is re-institute the JCPOA or we’re going to rejoin the JCPOA. Biden fails. He fails. So we JCPOA is dead and he actually a little bit relaxes the maximum pressure campaign that Trump had.

So where are we now? Where we are now is that the Iranians are enriching uranium. The Iranians are enriching uranium up to 60 percent, right? And if you can enrich uranium to 90 percent, you’re producing enough fissile material for a bomb. And to get from 60 percent to 90 percent is a hop, skip, and a jump. It is not difficult to do.

Most people I know say you can do it in 2 or 3 weeks and you realize this doesn’t mean that you get a weapon in 2 or 3 weeks. It means you have the fissile material in 2 or 3 weeks. Then you need probably a year, maybe less, to build a bomb. And then you need a delivery system as well. So it’s not like in 2 or 3 weeks if the Israelis decide to go from 60% to 90% they have a bomb, but they have the fissile material and that of course spooks us and it spooks the Israelis.

So the question is what are we going to do? What are the Israelis going to do? This is the question of the day, right? The array it’s just very important to understand once you walk away from the JCPOA and Maximum pressure doesn’t work and they’re enriching up to 60% You got trouble you got problems Because again the incentives for the Iranians to get the bomb are very great. We all understand that. So the question is, what do we do?

Israel’s Attempts to Draw the US Into War With Iran

Now, let me just tell you what the Israelis tried to do in 2024. They tried to do this with by the Israelis. And I’ll explain this why in a minute. The Israelis by themselves can’t deal with the problem that they don’t have the air power. They don’t have a strategic air force. They have a tactical air force, just can’t do it. Not clear we can do it. And I’ll lay this out in more detail in a minute.

Not clear we can do it. Take out Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Of course, the problem is even if we take it out, they’ll just rebuild it. Right. And I’ll say more about that. But just let’s talk about what happened last year.

Then, who went to great lengths last year to bait us into getting into a war with Iran. The Israelis have a deep interest in baiting us to get into a war with Iran. Trump, Trump is not a warmonger. It’s just very important to understand that Joe Biden was a warmonger, right? But even Joe Biden did not want to go to war against Iran.

And the Israelis, the person of Benjamin Netanyahu, twice tried to trap us. The 1st was on April 1. On April 1, they attacked the Iranian embassy in Damascus. That’s Syria, April 1. And they killed at least 1 Iranian general. The Iranians said they would retaliate. The Iranians retaliated. This is the 1st time Iran struck Israel. You remember that? That’s the night of April 13th, 14th.

And then the Israelis retaliated on April 19th. And the United States was deeply involved, the Biden administration, in making sure that that didn’t escalate further. OK, that’s the 1st attempt.

Then the Israelis, on July 31, they kill a prominent Palestinian leader in Tehran, in Iran. They kill a prominent Palestinian leader. The Iranians say we’re going to retaliate. And for the 2nd time, April 13th, 14th being the 1st time, the 2nd time, October 1st, the Iranians slam into Israel again with ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. Okay.

Then the Israelis retaliate on October 19th and we get deeply involved tells the Iranians do not retaliate. We do not want this 1 to spin out of control. The Iranians don’t want a war with us. We don’t want a war with the Iranians, but the Israelis want a war that brings in both Iran and the United States, because they want us, the United States, to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, all of them, because they can’t do it.

Why Israel Can’t Destroy Iran’s Nuclear Facilities

Now before I talk about Trump and where he’s at and there I’ll conclude, let me just say a few words about why the Israelis can’t do it. There are 2 places where they enrich. 1 is Fordow, this is the Iranians, Fordow and the other is Natanz, right? And The problem with Fordow is that the enrichment capability is probably about 300 feet underneath a mountain. It’s in a mountain.

And by the way, with regard to Natanz, Natanz is an easier target because the enrichment capability is not in a mountain, but they’re now building new facilities in a mountain, in the Zagros Mountains. If you’ve ever looked at a map, the Zagros Mountains separate the old Soviet Union from Iran, and Natanz is near there. The Israelis are building new enrichment facilities in the mountains. Fordow is in a mountain.

By my calculations, and take these numbers with a grain of salt because it’s really hard to get highly confident data in the open from open sources But I think that our biggest bomb, the MOB, it’s called the MOB is it’s a Massive Ordnance Penetrator. MOP, Massive Ordnance Penetrator. It is basically 30,000 pounds.

Remember those heavy bombs that Biden was holding back from the Israelis that caused a lot of controversy? Those were 2,000 pound bombs. The Massive Ordnance Penetrator is 30,000 pounds. You need a B-2 bomber to drop it. The Israelis don’t have a B-2 bomber, so they can’t drop it. We can drop it.

And by my calculations based on open source material, it can go down 200 feet, it can penetrate and destroy a target 200 feet down into the mountain. But by my calculation at Fordow, the reprocessing, excuse me, the enrichment capability is down around 300 feet. I don’t think we can even get to it. We may be able to get it.

But here’s also what you want to think about. Israelis are about 1,000 miles away from most of the targets. They’ve got to fly long distances. They don’t have a lot of refueling capability. Very important to understand, because they’re going to have to spend a lot of time over the targets because if you do an air campaign like this, right, you got to go up there and you got to deal with the air defenses on the ground and you got to deal with any aircraft that come up to meet you.

When we bombed North Vietnam during the Vietnam War and we went up North, right, we went up with all sorts of aircraft in addition to the bombers that were designed to deal with the guns and the surface to air missiles that are down on the ground And to deal with the North Vietnamese aircraft that came up to engage our aircraft So you have to in a way cut the corridor, right? And that requires a lot of aircraft it requires a lot of time over the targets, right? That’s just to clear out all the defenses so that you can then bring in the forces that hit the targets down below.

The Israelis don’t have a strategic air force. They have a tactical air force. It’s designed for fighting in and around Israel itself. It’s not that big. The United States, of course, has a huge air force. It has lots of capability, cruise missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles, you name it. The MOPs, these Massive Ordnance Penetrators and so forth and so on. The Israelis just don’t have that, right?

So the idea that they can get up there and take out All the targets especially Fordow, but I think they’d have their hands full at Natanz as well Not going to happen. That’s why they’re trying to drag us in. They understand this full well. These people are not fools. I mean when it comes to fighting wars they know how to do it. They understand they cannot take out the target set.

We stand a chance. As I told you I have my doubts about the MOP or the MOB. I don’t know whether it’s a massive ordnance bomb or a Massive Ordnance Penetrator. I think it’s MOP, Massive Ordnance Penetrator. But anyway, we can do it.

The Problem of Rebuilding: Lessons From the Soviet Union and China

But here’s the problem you face then. They’ll just rebuild it. As many of you who’ve taken classes with me have heard me say during the Cold War when the Soviets exploded a nuclear weapon in 1949 that year and then for the next few years thereafter we gave serious consideration to going in and destroying their nuclear facilities. We had nuclear weapons. They didn’t. They were in the process of building them. So we said, let’s think about going in there and destroying Soviet capabilities.

And we decided not to do it for 1 very simple reason they would rebuild they go to the Ural mountains They dig in and they come out with nuclear weapons and they’d be mad as hornets And this is the problem that you face with the Iranians, especially if the Israelis attack them.

Okay, the Israelis attacked them. They take out their nuclear capabilities. They rebuild that capability they end up with nuclear weapons in 7 years, they’re paranoid and mad as hornets, the Israelis are paranoid and mad as hornets, and then you get into a crisis, that’s not going to have a happy ending at all likelihood.

And this is what we basically decided with the Soviets. Same thing was true with the Chinese. Unsurprisingly, both the Soviets and the Americans thought about taking out the Chinese nuclear capability before it reached fruition for obvious reasons. And we both decided it just didn’t make sense. And that’s what we have decided here. That’s what Biden understood.

Trump, Maximum Pressure and the Nuclear Option

Now that brings us to Trump. It’s what Trump understands. 1st of all, Trump’s not a warmonger. For all Trump’s faults, he’s not that interested in fighting wars, right? And he’s made it clear to the Israelis that the military option is not on the table now and What he says he’s going to do instead is he is going to return to maximum pressure Right economic pressure.

The question you have to ask yourself is how well that will work. It did not work very well the last time. The Iranians have figured out ways to get around it. It’s not likely to work very well this time.

That raises the very interesting question moving forward given that the United States is reluctant to do this I mean we may change our mind but given that we’re reluctant to do it, right The Israelis can’t do it and maximum pressure is not working. What are the Israelis going to do? And then you run into the question, is it possible that they will use nuclear weapons against Iran’s burgeoning nuclear capability.

My 1st reaction to that possibility is that’s just not in the cards That’s not going to happen, But then you say to yourself through the Israeli point of view. This is an existential threat This is an existential threat and when you’re faced with an existential threat States to High pursue often pursue highly risky strategies.

So I would argue that there is a small chance that the Israelis might use nuclear weapons against Iran to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons simply because we may reach the point where there is no where the Israelis have no other choice. Thank you.

Q&A: Could Russia or China Speed Up Iran’s Nuclear Program?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Thank you, Professor Mearsheimer. So we’re going to do Q&A now, so I’ll come around with this mic. So if you just raise your hands and just a reminder, make sure you ask a question and try to keep it brief because we don’t have a whole lot of time here. So I see a hand in the back, I’ll start there and then I’ll just try to make eye contact with me.

AUDIENCE: Hi, Professor, thank you for coming here today. I’ve seen the 2 to 3 week timeline for nuclear fission material for several years now and then I’ve also heard the follow-up sentence constantly, which is that weaponization after that, building the missile, the warhead would take something like a year.

But I’ve also seen recently that certain oppositional great powers, oppositional from the perspective of the United States, have expressed willingness to give advanced missile technology to their allies. I’m mainly thinking about Russia giving certain advanced technology to North Korea. If a power like Russia or China were to no holds barred, say we want to advance the Iranian nuclear program, to what extent could that technological sharing cut that 1 year period?

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, this is a great question. You want to remember what I said about combating proliferation during the Cold War? I said during the 1st half of the Cold War up until roughly 1968, the United States and Soviet Union both wanted to prevent nuclear proliferation. They just couldn’t coordinate. And after 68, they coordinated NPT nuclear suppliers group. Soviet Union didn’t like proliferation.

Remember what I said about the JCPOA, China, Russia, the United States, France, Britain, dot, dot, dot. OK, none of them wanted Iran to have nuclear weapons. Cutting against that to some extent is the fact that given our crazy foreign policy over the past few years, mainly under the Biden administration, we’ve driven the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, and the Iranians together. And the Iranians and the Russians have just signed a strategic agreement. I think it was in December of 2024, which gets to your point.

Are the Russians likely to give Iran nuclear capability or help them acquire nuclear weapons, maybe protect them or what have you. My view, and I think the evidence supports this, is that the Russians have no interest in Iran having nuclear weapons now any more than they did in 2015 or back in the Cold War. And what the Iranians are doing is they’re giving Iran conventional capabilities to help defend themselves so that the Israelis and the Americans are deterred from attacking Iran. So I think that’s what’s happening here.

1 final point. Let’s assume you’re basically right. I’m not. And that the Russians are really thinking about that. 1 could argue if Trump works a deal out with the Russians over Ukraine, and they are able to craft a broader security architecture involving the Russians here and the Americans here and other states as well. We may be in a situation where the Russians instead of helping Iran acquire nuclear weapons cut in exactly the opposite direction.

So I think that we want to craft good relations with the Russians for 3 different reasons. 1 to contain China, 2 to put an end to the war in Ukraine, and number 3, the Iran issue. I think we want them to help us because I think this is a very dangerous situation. Let me put it differently. I think this is potentially a very dangerous situation for reasons I said at the very end of my talk.

AUDIENCE: I just have a quick follow up. If China were to see benefit from holding us in the region, perhaps Russia’s not an equation the Chinese want to do, advance this technology. Is that possible?

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: No, they’re not going to do that.

Q&A: Trump’s Gaza Remarks

AUDIENCE: Hi Professor, thank you for the talk. We had previously seen Trump make comments about turning Gaza into a Riviera And when asked about the possibility of US troops in Gaza, he said, “that may happen,” though he quickly walked back these claims. Even without these troops, I feel that such a stance is quite provocative.

And my question to you is, do you feel that this posturing and also Benjamin Netanyahu’s support of this position, do you think it’s another way of Israel trying to, I guess, kind of trap us in the same ways that you were talking about before into possibly escalating into a conflict or at least get our foot in the door towards such a possibility.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well I would say when it comes to the US-Israeli relationship, Israel has a set of objectives and with regard to every 1 of those objectives they want the United States either to support them or to remain silent, remain on the sidelines. And the last thing they want is for us to contest them.

And the Israelis, in my opinion, as many of you’ve heard me say, in Gaza, we’re not simply interested in defeating Hamas and getting the hostages back. I think those were 2 of the main goals. But I think the main goal was to ethnically cleanse Gaza. And I think what Trump said played into their hands.

I actually kind of my gut tells me that Trump that Netanyahu didn’t tell Trump to say what he said in that famous press conference that Trump and Netanyahu had together, I think that Netanyahu was probably as surprised as the rest of us were by what Trump said. I think from an Israeli point of view, The last thing the Israelis want is for the United States to control Gaza. What the Israelis want is to control Gaza themselves and to get the Palestinians out.

Now, Trump was talking about getting the Palestinians out. But I would just say that I don’t want to get into this in any detail because I’d rather talk about the nuclear issue. I don’t think that was a plausible plan. I think it was morally Trump’s plan was morally reprehensible and simply unworkable. I don’t think the Palestinians are going to leave. Number 1, I don’t think the Jordanians and Egyptians are going to take them.

And I don’t think Trump could muster the political support in the United States to go in there and ethnically cleanse the Palestinians. I just don’t see that happening. All of which raises the question in my mind. What was he thinking and I don’t have a good answer.

Q&A: Regime Change and Counter-Proliferation

AUDIENCE: Thank you very much professor I Am curious that a preemptive strike must strike the Israelis is highly unsavory And it seems like they would pursue any other option like regime change in Tehran before they reach that eventuality. But it seems like pursuing these other options also makes the Iranians much more desperate and much more aggressive towards the Israelis. How do you think they’re thinking about this issue?

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah. Well there is often times when it comes to counter proliferation strategies talk about regime change. And the idea is if you can turn a country into a liberal democracy they won’t want nuclear weapons. Last time I looked, the United States was a liberal democracy, we have nuclear weapons. India is a liberal democracy, it has nuclear weapons. Britain is a liberal democracy, it has nuclear weapons. France is a liberal democracy. It has nuclear weapons.

It doesn’t matter what your political system is. If you’re in a bad neighborhood you just want nuclear weapons in almost all cases. And it’s not because you’re evil. It’s because they are the ultimate deterrent. So I don’t think regime change is going to solve the problem.

The Americans, as you know, this is somewhat off the subject, we’re obsessed with regime change, right? The idea is we can run around the world, topple a regime, put somebody else in place of the existing regime and we’re all going to live happily ever after. This is like Putin, oh if we could only get rid of Putin. I don’t, time to get into this. I think that anybody you get who replaces Putin is likely to be worse than him from your point of view. That is, you people want regime change.

I learned my lesson when I was very young, 1963, when we affected regime change in Vietnam. We help kill President Diem and the end result is massive instability. Couldn’t find anybody to replace Diem, who was no day at the beach, mind you. But anyway, we couldn’t find anybody who was even as good as him.

And no accident on March 8th, 1965, the Marines landed in Da Nang and were off to the races because Vietnam is going down the tubes and we have to rescue the South Vietnamese. That’s when I learned my lesson, Don’t get in the business of regime change, at least if you’re thinking that it’s going to improve your strategic situation. So I don’t think that matters.

The Israelis are trying that. They’re trying all these other things like Stuxnet and so forth and so on. It doesn’t work. If you’re determined to get nuclear weapons, you’re going to get nuclear weapons. This is what we figured out regarding the Soviet Union. It’s what the Soviets and the Americans figured out regarding China, right? You got to give people incentives not to acquire nuclear weapons.

By the way, 1 thing I didn’t talk about just because of time is My view on how to deal with this problem, which was politically unworkable like most of my views But my view on how to deal with this problem was after the JCPOA was signed, we should have gone to great lengths, we the Americans, to form or to establish some sort of rapprochement or détente with the Iranians and pull the Israelis along with us.

In other words, take our gun sights off Iran, reduce their incentive to acquire nuclear weapons. You understand that when you start talking about attacking Iran, you give them greater incentive to get nuclear weapons than is otherwise the case.

So I would have coupled success with the JCPOA with a policy of rapprochement, all for the purpose of reducing, maybe greatly reducing their incentives to get nuclear weapons. But both the United States and especially the Israelis are just so hard-line on Iran that you can’t get out of the batter’s box, much less get to 1st base making that argument.

Q&A: Israel-Iran Compared to Great Power Rivalries

AUDIENCE: Thank you. So my question is about if you could describe what exactly the difference in the relationship and say the US and China or the US and Russia, like the 2 are global superpowers. Israel and Iran are regional big players and have a kind of historical antagonism. And perhaps some of that is tied to Israel’s own domestic problems, right?

I don’t think China has a major interest in what goes on domestically in the US, but Iran, it seems perhaps has an interest in what’s going on in Israel in terms of what’s in the West Bank or Gaza. So how does that affect the international and domestic planes intersecting the relationship?

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, this is a very interesting question. I mean, just putting the domestic politics aside for the moment, and just comparing the Israel-Iran situation with the US and the Soviets in the Cold War, and let’s say the US and the Chinese, or even the US and the Russians today, Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons. That’s 1 big difference, but let’s hypothesize a situation where Iran does have nuclear weapons, and let’s hypothesize a situation where they have a survivable nuclear deterrent. I’d say leaving aside domestic politics, there’s not a lot of difference at all.

Let’s just go to the 2 great power dyads, so to speak, US and Soviets, US Russians, US Chinese. You have great powers that are engaged in serious security competition. Crises break out, and they have nuclear weapons. And this is a very dangerous situation.

Again, I’m old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, right? Cuban Missile Crisis, it was scary at the time. In retrospect, it’s even scarier when you read the internal documents, right? You had 2 gorillas armed to the teeth with thousands of nuclear weapons and all sorts of places around the planet where they could have got into a fight.

And Just to take the Russian case Ukraine the war in Ukraine starts February 24th 2022 Okay, The Russians actually do very poorly in 2022. The tide turns in the Russians’ favor early in 2023. I could walk you through how that happens, okay? But 2022, the 2nd part of 2022, fall of 2022, late summer, early fall of 2022. The Russians suffered 2 significant defeats in Kherson. And that Kherson and what was the other 1. Kharkiv right Kherson right they suffer 2 significant defeats.

And the Russians are beginning to think about using nuclear weapons. We now know that. Okay. And Biden is well aware that he’s got to be very careful how far he pushes the Russians. This is why he won’t give them ATACMS missiles for a long time. That’s why they won’t give them F-16s for a long time. They’re really scared. Those guys have nuclear weapons, talking about the Soviets, the Russians. The Chinese, South China Sea, Taiwan, East China Sea, down the road.

So I think Iran versus Israel is not that different, assuming they both have survival nuclear deterrents. In terms of domestic politics, I don’t think domestic politics matters very much in this case. I think it’s basically the strategic interaction.

I think in the Israeli case, there is an unhealthy dose of paranoia which makes me very scared about how they would act in a crisis. In the wake of October 7th you saw this, right? And I think in Iran, I went to Iran in 2018. Not many people go to Iran. I was in Iran in 2018. There’s more than healthy dose of paranoia there too.

And you get into a crisis, right? And especially if you don’t have survivable nuclear deterrents on both sides, and you have 2 countries that think they’re on the edge. Right? The potential for trouble is very great.

Q&A: Would an Iranian Bomb Change the Rivalry?

AUDIENCE: Thanks, Professor. I have a quick question. Do you think that an Iranian nuclear arsenal would really change the relationship between Israel and Iran substantially, given that they’re already sort of locked in a Cold War situation where they occasionally dramatically throw missiles at each other to no great effect, but Iran already carries out most of its aggressive actions through non-state proxies anyways. It sort of already looks like the U.S. Soviet Cold War did. So do you think it’s going to change anything?

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah, I think the answer is no. And it gets to my answer to the young woman’s question. A minute ago, we were hypothesizing in my response to her, we were hypothesizing a situation where Iran has nuclear weapons and that’s the situation that you’re describing.

I think it’s fair to say that Israel and Iran are mortal enemies And there’s hardly any chance that this situation is going to change I believe if there was no Israel lobby the United States would move in here and fix this situation, but the lobby makes it almost impossible. So they’re going to remain mortal enemies.

The Iranians are going to continue to support Hezbollah. They’re going to continue to support Hamas. They’re going to do what they can to regain their influence in Syria. They’re going to continue to support and in fact increase their support of the Houthis they’re going to give the Houthis more sophisticated drones more sophisticated missiles maybe hypersonic missiles.

Those are missiles that can not only cause huge trouble in the Red Sea, slowing down shipping in the Red Sea, but can also directly hit Israel. So this is a real problem from the Israeli point of view. And then of course the Israelis are going to be going to great lengths to cause all sorts of trouble for the Iranians everywhere they can.

1 of the principal reasons the Israelis were so committed to undermining Assad in Syria is because Syria under Assad was the conduit through which armaments from Iran went to Hezbollah. And the Israelis are ecstatic now, as you could understand, that Hezbollah no longer has that conduit. So all sorts of games are being played by the Iranians to figure out ways to get around that.

But no, your basic point I think is correct. Unfortunately, let’s hope you’re wrong and I’m wrong. But I think once Iran gets nuclear weapons, if it does, the competition is going to be as fierce as ever. My point was I think Iran and the United States will be reluctant to attack the homeland. That’s the 1 thing that will change. Reluctant to attack the homeland, but otherwise they’ll be at each other’s throats.

And this gets back to the point that I was making to this young woman. Crises seem inevitable to me. It’s like the US-China competition. I, this one’s probably going to play out over the next 30 or 40 years. I’ll be in the ground, so you’ll have to tell me what happened. But I find it hard to believe that you won’t have a serious crisis or 2.

And then the question is, can you manage your way out of it? We managed our way out of the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I think we were so spooked by the Cuban Missile Crisis that we went to great lengths to make sure we didn’t get into another 1 of those. But who knows for sure?

And this all gets back to the point that I made to you folks at the very beginning About do you want to live in a world where states have nuclear weapons? Or do you want to live in a world where there are no nuclear weapons and what you really want to think about and this is a really important point, you want to think about what the world would look like today if we didn’t have nuclear weapons, right?

Again, I’m not making the argument that it would be good to do away with nuclear weapons. You can make that argument, and if I had to make it, I could make a powerful case for it, But I can make a powerful case on the other side as well.

But we’re in a multi-polar world. We have 3 great powers in the system, all sorts of potential for trouble among them. Number 1, and then we’ve got countries like North Korea. We have countries like Iran. And we have all these middle range powers, Iran being 1, Turkey being another, who all throwing their weight around in all sorts of ways. So there’s a lot of potential for trouble and I think absent nuclear weapons it’d be a much, it’d be a more dangerous world.

Q&A: Ukraine, Gaddafi and the Incentives to Go Nuclear

AUDIENCE: Hi Professor, So my question is that personally I believe that either arm control or nuclear control highly relies on large countries’ collaboration, especially US, using its hegemony power to restrict those smaller countries. So we also seen that Ukraine gave up its nuclear power and that it apparently doesn’t turn out very well for Ukraine.

So in the future, we know that Trump is retreating from many of the international collaboration or contract Do you think this would Incentivize more smaller countries to engage in nuclear power because US would lost interest in restricting them, and also the previous contract apparently doesn’t matter anymore.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah. 2 sets of excellent questions, and let me take the last set 1st. You talked about Trump pulling back the United States from various commitments, And you talked about the fact that Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in 1993 or 1994 and look at what’s happened to Ukraine. And your question is, does that incentivize other countries? There’s no question.

If you look at what happened to Ukraine, if you look at what happened to Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, we told Colonel Gaddafi he had a nuclear weapons program. He didn’t have the weapons. We told Colonel Gaddafi, “give up your weapon, your nuclear weapons program, and we will leave you alone.” How well did that work out? Not well at all. Colonel Gaddafi was a fool. He should have never given up his nuclear weapons program.

And I don’t know if you know this, but I’m probably the only person in the West, the only person who said Ukraine should not give up its nuclear weapons, right? But anyway, the message that is now being heard around the world is it’s nice to have a nuclear deterrent, right?

Coming from a slightly different angle. Trump starts to pull back the incentives for our allies to go get nuclear weapons is very great. The South Koreans, right? During the Cold War, I don’t know if you know this, during the latter part of the Cold War, South Korea and Taiwan began to go down the nuclear road. Taiwan wanted nuclear weapons. Are you surprised? You shouldn’t be. South Korea wanted nuclear weapons. Are you surprised? You shouldn’t be.

But the point is you start to pull out, right? And the incentive structure for countries like Germany begin to change drastically. Germany doesn’t need nuclear weapons today because it has Uncle Sam sitting on top of it. It’s part of NATO. And we provide nuclear deterrence. It’s the American nuclear umbrella. Same thing is true for Japan. I’m Japan, I’m South Korea. I see Donald Trump, the way he treats allies, talking about retreating from this place or that place. Boy, I start thinking about nuclear weapons, right? So that’s a real problem there.

Q&A: US Overstretch and the Middle East

AUDIENCE: Colin Powell’s standard for the United States military was to be ready for 2 major regional contingencies. And I think that a lot of strategists might be thinking right now that the United States can’t both economically contribute to fighting to a stalemate in Ukraine while also fighting 1 or 2 wars in other parts of the world.

So my question is, if the United States and China get into a war over Taiwan, how does the United States being spread too thin already affect what you think would then happen in the regional conflict between Israel and Iran when it comes to nuclear proliferation?

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Well, just at a very general level, the United States really cares about 3 areas of the world, Persian Gulf, Europe, and East Asia. And it cares about East Asia and Europe because that’s where the other great powers have historically been. Those are the 2 most important areas of the world. And we care about the Gulf because that’s where the oil is, and oil really matters to us. And our goal has always been to make sure that no 1 country controls all the oil.

We’re not deeply involved in the Middle East because of Israel for strategic reasons. If anything, Israel is a strategic liability. It’s not even a strategic asset. We’re deeply involved in the Middle East slash Persian Gulf because that’s where the oil is. That’s what we really care about.

The problem that we face today is that historically Europe has been the most important area of the world for us. And East Asia has been either the 2nd most or 3rd most important area of the world for us. For the 1st time in our history, go back to 1783 and March forward to 2017, Europe was the most important area of the world because the European great powers were more powerful than the Asian great powers. And the Soviet Union, which was a Eurasian great power, had most of its military might in Europe, not in Asia.

A fundamental shift that most Americans have not understood has taken place. Asia is now East Asia is the most important area of the world and Europe is actually the 3rd most important area of the world. The Gulf is the 2nd most. I won’t go through why that’s the case. Okay.

This is why Hillary Clinton said in 2011, “we’re pivoting to Asia.” And you always want to remember when you pivot to someplace, you pivot away from another place. And the main place we were pivoting away from was Europe. But what happened is we ended up in this awful war in Ukraine. I mean, we’re not doing any of the actual fighting, but we are deeply involved. Huge amounts of resources are being expended there.

And furthermore, we’re now up to our eyeballs and alligators in the Middle East. You want to remember that about 2 weeks before October 7th, Jake Sullivan, who was Biden’s national security advisor, was gloating, gloating about the fact that he had never seen the Middle East so peaceful. Right today. Oh my God. Right.

So just to get to your question. So we have this very tricky situation where we have limited resources. There’s no such thing as infinite resources in this world we have limited resources and we’re pinned down in Europe and we’re pinned down in the Middle East and We can’t fully pivot to East Asia.

Now if you look at what Trump has been saying, you look at what the Secretary of Defense said on February 12th in Brussels, you look at what Vance said on February 14th in Munich, they’re not just talking about pulling out of Europe and putting huge cracks in the transatlantic alliance. They’re talking about pivoting to Asia. They want to pivot to Asia, right?

So you’re going to see over the next couple of years, us move away from Europe towards Asia. And that’s because we are actually in trouble in East Asia There are a lot of people who say the Chinese are in quite good shape today vis-à-vis the United States because we’ve not paid enough attention to East Asia because of Ukraine and the Middle East.

But your question had to do with the Middle East. I don’t think we can pivot away from the Middle East, mainly because of Israel and our attachment to Israel. And what we have to do, and I think Trump is interested in doing this, is do everything we can to shut down these various conflicts so that we can take our focus off the Middle East as well as Ukraine and look at China.

But as you look at the Middle East, I don’t see us reducing our commitment there. The Palestinian problem is not going to go away, right? It’s not going to go away anytime soon. It’s a front burner issue. It’s going to remain on the front burner. And Nobody has any solution for fixing the problem. And indeed all the solutions, including Trump’s idea that you were referring to, is just going to make a terrible situation even worse.

And then there’s the Iran problem, which we talked about before, and the Hezbollah problem. Hezbollah is not going away. Here in the Western media we’re told that the Israelis decimated Hezbollah. They’re weakened. They’re basically knocked out.

The former Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, issued a tweet about 2 weeks ago. I have it if anybody’s interested. He said all this talk about how we defeated Hezbollah is ridiculous. “We have remarkably little success against Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon.” And yeah, we killed a number of their leaders, but they have lots of leaders. We’ve killed their leaders before and they replaced their leaders, right? So decapitation just doesn’t buy you very much.

So Hezbollah is still there. There’s big problems in southern Lebanon. The Israelis won’t get out of southern Lebanon. The Lebanese government is asking them to get out and so forth and so on. Syria is a mess and the Houthis are not to be underestimated. The Houthis have proven just how tough they are and as I said before they’ll be further armed so I don’t see us getting out of the Middle East anytime soon in a meaningful way I think it’s Ukraine and Europe where there may be some reduction.

Q&A: Would Israel Still See a Non-Nuclear Iran as an Existential Threat?

AUDIENCE: If Iran were to leave nuclear weapons like their manufacturing, would you think Israel will still view it as an existential threat?

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: That’s a very interesting question. If Iran gave up on nuclear weapons, let’s say the Iranians agree to get rid of the reprocessing capability they have and the enrichment capability and they sign some sort of agreement on proliferation where they can have really they allow for really significant IAEA inspections of their nuclear sites. That’s consistent with what you said. Would Israel still view Iran as a mortal threat?

I don’t think it would view Israel would view Iran as an existential threat because Iran would not have the capability to destroy Israel. You want to think about Iran with nuclear weapons versus Iran without nuclear weapons. It’s a categorically different situation, right? Because they’re nuclear weapons, right?

I mean, you want to think what there’s Russia out there. They can turn our country into a smoking, radiating ruin. They have just all those nuclear weapons. And Iran, in a scenario where it has nuclear weapons could do that to Israel. That is an existential threat. However likely you think it is that Iran would use those nuclear weapons, you take that off the table.

I don’t think Israel would see Iran as a mortal threat, but you still would have an intense security competition and they would see Iran as a truly serious threat just like you have today. Right. So I think the Israelis and the Iranians are destined to be adversaries. And as I said before, I think the only thing that could change that is if the Americans didn’t the American policymakers didn’t have to deal with the lobby.

By the way, if you read the chapter, Steve Walt and I wrote the book, of course, on the Israel lobby. I wrote the chapter. I wrote the 1st draft of the chapter on Iran. And if you go back and just page through that chapter on Iran, the Iranians in the 1990s tried on a number of occasions to have a rapprochement with the United States. And Bill Clinton actually took the bait and Bill Clinton wanted to improve relations with Iran. But the lobby moved in and killed it almost immediately.

Q&A: The Power of the Israel Lobby

AUDIENCE: Thank you for this talk. Regarding the Israel lobby, I was wondering if you could talk about where the power of that lies today and if you can measure, say, between AIPAC, which is We often sort of talk about AIPAC a lot and other groups that maybe I don’t even know the name of, but I’m thinking of evangelical Zionist groups and how you measure the power between these various pieces of the lobby.

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: Yeah. Well, the argument that Steve and I make in the book is that the lobby is, it’s a loosely organized group of individuals and organizations like AIPAC that work over time to make sure that the United States supports Israel unconditionally. And those last few words are very important. The goal is to get the United States to support Israel unconditionally.

As you know, any 2 states sometimes have the same interests, and sometimes they have different interests. And when they have different interests, the lobby goes to great lengths to make sure that the United States supports Israel. And it is a remarkably successful lobby. And it has to do with the fact that it is comprised of very smart and very clever people who are profoundly dedicated to getting the United States to protect Israel.

And the United States political system, This is no great insight on my part. All sorts of people have written about this. The United States political system is set up so that lobbies or interest groups can wield huge amounts of influence. You’ve heard of the National Rifle Association, the AFL-CIO, there’s a Cuba lobby. All of these interest groups wield great power in the American political system.

And the fact is that the Israel lobby, I think, is by far the most powerful interest group. And it is because it is so well organized that includes such smart people. And it has lots of resources, including money that it uses to influence elections. There’s nothing illegal about this, right? Nothing immoral about this. It’s the way American politics works.

You could make certain arguments that organizations like AIPAC should be treated as lobbies that are representing a foreign government, that’s not the case. You can make that argument, but it’s not treated as an organization that represents a foreign government. So what it does is perfectly legitimate and it’s just highly effective.

The Lobby and the Two-State Solution

Just 1 further point on this. I mean the people in the lobby think they’re doing Israel a big favor right. They think that getting the United States to support Israel unconditionally is good for Israel. I actually believe the opposite. I believe the lobby is Israel’s greatest enemy. And my main point to illustrate that I can’t go into this in great length has to do with the 2 state solution.

Right. I think Israel’s only hope for living peacefully with the Palestinians is to have a two-state solution you all understand they’re about 7.3 million Israeli Jews and 7.3 million Palestinians, roughly. So you have rough equality. This is inside Greater Israel.

Greater Israel is Gaza, West Bank, and Israel before 1967. We used to call it Green Line Israel, Israel from 1948 to 1967, plus Gaza, plus the West Bank. That’s greater Israel. And there are about 7.3 million Palestinians, 7.3 million Jews. So the question is, what kind of political order do you create in that world if you’re Israel? And you really have 4 choices.

The 1st is you could have a real democracy. But if you have a real democracy, you’re not going to end up with a Jewish state. It’s the end of the Zionist dream. So there’s no way the Israelis would move to a true democracy.

The 2nd option is a two-state solution, which is in the West Bank and in Gaza, you create a Palestinian state and the capital is East Jerusalem. Now every president since Jimmy Carter pushed the Israelis hard, some pushed harder than others to move to a two-state solution. And this, people like Jimmy Carter, people like George H.W. Bush, people like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, they all pushed hard for a two-state solution. Barack Obama, why did they do that?

Because they thought it was the best solution for Israel. And I think it was, underline the word was, the best solution for Israel, okay? But we never even came close. And the reason is the lobby. No American president could put any meaningful pressure on Israel to move to a two-state solution.

And the Israelis were not seriously interested in the two-state solution. I know the conventional wisdom is that they really wanted 1. It was just those evil Palestinians who wouldn’t accept a two-state solution. This is nonsense, right? The Israelis did not want a two-state solution there were some Israelis who did if we could have pushed hard on the Israelis we meaning the United States we might have gotten that outcome and I think that was the 1 solution.

What’s the 3rd alternative the 3rd alternative is apartheid And basically what you have in Israel today is an apartheid state. And for anybody who thinks this is not the case, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and B’Tselem, these are 3 of the most prestigious human rights organizations in the world and B’Tselem is an Israeli human rights organization have written lengthy reports describing why Israel is an apartheid state.

And if you go to Israel, Many Israeli elites talk about Israel as an apartheid state. You can’t use that word here in the United States because people will say you’re an anti-Semite. But in Israel, many Israeli leaders refer to Israel as an apartheid state. So what you have today is an apartheid state.

What’s the 4th solution or the 4th way of organizing your society? It’s ethnic cleansing, right? 7.3 million, drive those 7.3 million Palestinians out. This is what’s going on in Gaza. The Israelis know full well, you cannot militarily defeat Hamas. So what they’re doing is trying to drive the Palestinians out.

That’s why they think what Trump said Was manna from heaven not because they wanted the United States to own Gaza, but because he was legitimizing ethnic cleansing Right, but you have to cleanse because you have an apartheid state. Israel is fully aware of what happened to South Africa, right? You do not want a country that’s increasingly identified as an apartheid state. That kind of rhetoric was not used 10 years ago. Now that rhetoric is used.

So they got to get out of that box and ethnic cleansing in my opinion is the solution to the apartheid problem or they think is the solution to the apartheid problem. I don’t think it’s going to work and at least I hope it doesn’t work but the end result you have this apartheid system.

I think the Israelis would be much better off had they moved to a two-state solution. It would have been very tricky. I don’t want to underestimate it. And as a good realist, I could tell you some of the real problems with a two-state solution. But it was the best of 4 alternatives.

And in international politics, as I often say, you’re picking among or choosing among lousy alternatives. And the two-state solution was the best lousy alternative from Israel’s point of view, in my opinion. But no president could get anywhere in terms of pressuring Israel to move to 2 states.

And remember, Jimmy Carter wrote that book. I forget what the title of it was, but it had the word apartheid in it. Apartheid or democracy or apartheid or 2 state solution. That’s what he was getting at. But he got crucified for using the word apartheid. Oh my God. Right. This is horrible.

But that’s where you end up today. Anyway, I could go on and on about this, but that’s basically what the lobby is, what it does, and my bottom line on whether it does good or bad.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Okay, so yeah, we’re Thank you, Professor Mearsheimer. Thank you.

Related Posts

• Alex Christoforou: Zelensky–Trump Conflict Transforms the War (Transcript)
• Chas Freeman: Trump–Zelensky Conflict: U.S. Cuts Kiev Intel (Transcript)
• Transcript: Russia-Ukraine War Update and Perspectives from NATO Member Countries
• Alastair Crooke: Insurrection & Regime Change Coming to Saudi Arabia – A New Middle East Emerging (Transcript)
• Transcript: How the New Middle East Was Made w/ Simon Sebag Montefiore