Read the full transcript of Professor John Mearsheimer’s interview: “Why Britain Uses Ukraine to Attack Russia” on Judging Freedom Podcast, August 25, 2026.
EDITOR’S NOTE: In this episode of Judging Freedom, Judge Andrew Napolitano sits down with University of Chicago political scientist Professor John Mearsheimer to examine Britain’s longstanding Russophobia and its strategy of using Ukraine as a proxy to confront Russia. Drawing on historical context and realist analysis, Mearsheimer also addresses the limits of U.S. economic pressure on Iran and the shifting realities of a multipolar world order.
INTRODUCTION
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: (00:00:27 – 00:02:50): Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, August 25th, 2026. Professor John Mearsheimer will be with us in just a moment.
Why is Britain so ostentatiously hateful of the Russians? And can the United States economically strangle Iran?
Professor Mearsheimer, welcome here, my dear friend.
Can Sanctions Bring Iran to Its Knees?
Before we get to Britain and Russia, can the plans — if you can call them plans — outlined by Secretary of the Treasury Bessent yesterday, in your view, effectively strangle Iran so that it cries uncle, so to speak?
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:02:51 – 00:05:48): No, there’s no question in my mind — excuse me — that this is not going to work. And let me give you a couple reasons.
First of all, the United States and Israel represent an existential threat to Iran, and for that reason, Iran is going to fight to the death. They’re not going to roll over easily. They understand that they’re fighting for their life. That’s the first point.
The second point is that for this to work, the United States has to get virtually all of Iran’s major trading partners to sever all economic intercourse with Iran, and that’s not going to happen. If you look at the countries that Iran depends heavily on, maybe number one is China, and the Chinese have already said they’re not going to play ball. I do not believe the Turks, who are another big trading partner, are going to play ball with the United States. The Russians are not going to play ball with the United States. And in fact, the European Union does a great deal of trade with Iran, and it’ll be very interesting to see how successful we are at coercing the Europeans into cutting off all economic intercourse with Iran.
Then there’s the whole subject of retaliation. I think if you look at the list of countries that import and export with Iran, what you see is that one of the key countries in addition to China is the United Arab Emirates. And the UAE lives right next door to Iran and has been attacked by Iran before. And the Iranians are telling the UAE that if they join in on this blockade against Iran, Iran will wreck their economy. It will wreck their country. So the UAE has to think long and hard about whether it wants to join with the United States and cut off all economic intercourse to Iran, and I’m not sure that they’re going to be willing to do it.
But even if the UAE goes along, the end result is the UAE is going to be wrecked, number one. And number two, other countries like China, Turkey, Pakistan, Russia are going to continue to trade. So those are some of the key points.
And the final point that I’d make is that everybody understands that a blockade of this sort takes time to work. It doesn’t happen overnight, and the fact is that we don’t have time on our side given the state of the international economy, given that there’s an upcoming midterm election. President Trump has a deep-seated interest in making this work as soon as possible, but it’s going to take time, and then when you add in all the other factors, this is simply not going to work.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: (00:05:48 – 00:06:19): It seems naive, Professor, on the part of Secretary Bessent. I don’t know if he’s economically illiterate or just burdened by a boss, President Trump, who is economically illiterate, at least in the ways of international economics.
But it does seem naive. I mean, why would a Chinese bank risk breaking Chinese law by complying with an American sanction? Why would they think that the bank would do that?
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:06:20 – 00:06:52): Well, the other thing you want to keep in mind before we talk about Bessent is that the rest of the world, for the most part, has a vested interest in seeing us lose in Iran.
I mean, forget the blockade. If you’re Chinese or you’re Russian or you’re Turkish, the last thing you want to see happen here is the United States defeat Iran. You want to see Iran win the war. So you want to always keep in mind that that underlying motivation is sitting out there.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: (00:06:52 – 00:06:55): And again, the Turks want to see Iran win the war.
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:06:56 – 00:07:34): Because if Iran loses, then the Israelis and the Americans will put their gun sights on Turkey. You understand that the Turks have deep-seated interest in making sure that Iran shows that it can stand up to the Israelis and that Iran doesn’t fold, because we’ve been listening to the Israelis talk for weeks now, if not months now, that Turkey is the threat number one after Iran.
So once Iran’s done with, we’ll turn to Turkey. It’s all part of the greater Israel project. So the Turks will go to great lengths to make sure that the Iranians survive.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: (00:07:35 – 00:07:51): And what will the United States do? United States, the only country in the world that harms its allies. What will the United States do to its so-called allies that basically tell Scott Bessent to go fly a kite?
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:07:52 – 00:09:19): Nothing.
I mean, what are they going to do?
Bessent has made it clear that he understands that if he pushes too hard and too fast, he’ll crash the international economy. He’s effectively said that he knows he’s playing with fire here.
And this gets back to your question a minute ago about whether or not Bessent is just a fool or he’s naive or what have you. I mean, I find it hard to believe that somebody who has operated in financial markets for as long as Bessent has, and who has to understand how the international economy works a lot better than you and I do, hasn’t figured out that this is a non-starter. He must know that. He can’t be that foolish.
I mean, if you listen to virtually all the commentary on this blockade, hardly anybody thinks it’s going to succeed. I’ve not heard anybody tell a plausible story about how we’re going to completely isolate Iran economically, and bring it to its knees. Nobody has a plausible story to tell. Bessent must understand this.
And all this, of course, gets back to the fact that this is an administration that makes decisions, and in fact, the February 28th decision to go to war fits in this category, makes decisions that make no sense and run against facts and logic.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: (00:09:21 – 00:09:37): You know, this may sound naive, but does the United States have any moral compass? I mean, who suffers first when these sanctions are effectuated? The consumers, little people that have nothing to do with governmental policy.
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:09:38 – 00:10:19): The United States and the West more generally are morally bankrupt. I mean, what we have seen take place in Gaza since 2023 is a genocide, and the United States is complicit in the genocide.
If you look at what Israel is doing in the West Bank, if you look at what Israel is doing in southern Lebanon, we support the Israelis at every turn. The Europeans support the Israelis at every turn. How could anybody possibly argue that the United States has a morally based foreign policy? We simply don’t.
Iran’s Economic Minister Responds
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: (00:10:20 – 00:10:38): Here’s the Iranian economic minister. I think it was earlier today, but after Secretary Bessent made his comments. Chris, cut number 14.
VIDEO CLIP BEGINS:
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Do you think we will have the same level of success in the economic war as we had in the military war?
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:10:38 – 00:10:39): God willing, it will be the same.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (00:10:40 – 00:10:55): Look, after all, the war caused some damages. No one can deny that it caused damages. After all, they hit our steel, they hit our petrochemicals. But you saw that in a short period of time, efforts were made quickly and attempts were made to return to its previous path.
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:10:56 – 00:11:01): The reconstruction process began and efforts were made to compensate for the shortages in the market.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (00:11:01 – 00:11:08): Likewise, in various sectors, naturally, the events that occur, in fact, the blows they strike cause damages.
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:11:09 – 00:11:15): That caused damages to the country’s economy. We cannot deny that, after all, these blows do not cause damage.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (00:11:16 – 00:12:13): But as I mentioned, all the people, the public, the officials, the statesmen, the military field and the diplomatic field all stood together and defended the country, the integrity of the country, and succeeded in that war.
It was the same during the period of the siege. You also remember the siege after the war. That was in fact another sanction, meaning these sanctions are not new to us now. As for them wanting to cut off the country’s economic arteries now, they have been trying to cut off those arteries for a long time.
Well, now they are talking about a maximum pressure campaign in the economic sphere. These words have truly become repetitive. They have said these things time and time again, and they have seen the result of it as well. The unipolar world is a thing of the past, and if they experience this once more, they will see that they will by no means succeed. The world’s financial and economic arteries are not so simple that they can claim they can cut off Iran’s financial and trade arteries.
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:12:14 – 00:12:17): During the previous period of siege, they also tried to do this and failed.
VIDEO CLIP ENDS:
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: (00:12:19 – 00:12:26): I wonder if he read Professor Mearsheimer’s book, the way he made that comment about the unipolar world is no longer.
From the Unipolar Moment to a Multipolar World
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:12:27 – 00:14:57): I mean, I agree with everything he said.
You want to remember that we got the JCPOA in 2015 because we were able to put significant pressure on the Iranians, and I believe that they were forced to accept the JCPOA, which from their point of view was very difficult to swallow. But it was during the unipolar moment. It was when we had good relations with the Russians and the Chinese and, of course, the Europeans, and all of those countries worked together, all of them, to put pressure on the Iranians, and the Iranians therefore accepted the JCPOA.
We’re in a completely different situation today. Not only are we in a multipolar world where the Chinese and the Russians are our enemy, but they have no interest from an economic point of view, not to mention a military point of view, to go along with us and to help us defeat Iran. In fact, they have exactly the opposite incentive, which is to make sure that Iran defeats us. So it’s the United States versus Iran plus China plus Russia. It’s a completely different world than existed in 2015.
And furthermore, on top of that, you have President Trump, who is ham-fisted when it comes to running American diplomacy and who seems to get worse with each passing month. It’s just hard to believe that he was foolish enough to allow himself to get into this war, that he allowed the Israelis — not so much the Israelis, but Prime Minister Netanyahu and David Barnea — to bamboozle him into this war. And then once he got into it, he’s just not had the good sense to cut his losses and get out.
He should have stuck to the memorandum of understanding that he signed on June 17th. Was it a good deal? No. Was it a heck of a lot better than the deal he’s facing now? The answer is unequivocally yes, but he insists on trying to find some sort of way to win this war. And now we’re back to maximum pressure. And as the Iranian minister said, we’ve heard these words before.
In fact, those were the words that President Trump used in his first term when he pulled out of — foolishly pulled out of the JCPOA. He said, “We’re going to put maximum pressure on the Iranians.” That’s worked really well, hasn’t it?
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: (00:14:59 – 00:15:17): Well, what do you think Tehran will do if the secondary sanctions do have some sort of an effect? Not what Trump and Bessent are predicting, strangulation, but some measurable effect. How will Tehran react?
How Iran Might Retaliate
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:15:18 – 00:17:30): Well, it gets back to what I said about the UAE, which is a major trading partner. The Iranians destroy it. Yeah, they’ll destroy it and they’ll wreck the Gulf. It’s one of those things that, you know, if we’re going down, everybody’s going down with us. That’ll be the mentality.
You’re going to threaten our survival? Okay, we’re going to threaten the survival of our neighbors, any country that we can attack. You know, we’ll go after the Israelis, we’ll go after the Dimona nuclear site, we’ll do everything we can to inflict massive punishment on every state in the region because we’re going down and we’re taking everybody down with us. That’ll be their mentality. It would be your mentality or my mentality if we were in the Iranian position.
I know most Americans are incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of their adversaries, but you want to be able to do that when you think about what you plan to do next. And you want to understand if this strategy works, it’s not going to have a happy ending.
And by the way, the same thing is true with regard to Ukraine versus Russia. We’ve all along been trying to defeat the Russians. To inflict a big defeat on them in Ukraine, to wreck their economy, and to knock them off the list of great powers on the planet. That’s been our goal. It’s been to really do egregious damage to Russia.
The question you want to ask yourself is, what would the Russian reaction have been should we have succeeded? And I think it would have led to a very, very nasty situation, and I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if in that scenario, which thankfully wasn’t realized, the Russians turned to nuclear weapons.
So you have to be very careful not to push countries to the edge of the cliff when they have a retaliatory capability. And the Iranians have a retaliatory capability just like the Russians do. So you should be very cautious. But of course, that’s not the way we operate because we’re the unipole, we can do whatever we want, people will dance to our tune, and so forth and so on. But you see how much trouble that mentality has gotten us into.
Britain’s Rich History of Russophobia
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: (00:17:32 – 00:17:44): Why is the new British government, which sounds just like the old British government, so ostentatiously Russophobic?
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:17:45 – 00:19:50): Well, the British have a rich history of Russophobia, and it goes back into at least the 19th century, and it has to do with India and the fact that the British saw the Russians as a threat to their control of India, which was of course the jewel in their empire.
And then in the 20th century, with the coming of the Soviet Union and communism, what you see is that Britain, liberal democracy heavily bent on capitalism, viewed itself for much of the 20th century as a mortal foe of Russia, or then the Soviet Union.
I remember when I was doing research on the 1930s, the French understood that Nazi Germany was a deadly threat, and the French wanted to work out some sort of rapprochement with the Soviet Union. And the French were interested in creating an alliance between the Soviet Union, France, and Britain, like the Triple Entente before World War I. But it was really the British who made that impossible. The British told the French that they were not interested for a long time in having an alliance of that sort, and a lot of British thinking was motivated by ideology, by hatred of Soviet communism. So that was the thinking before World War II.
Then, of course, World War II broke out, and Britain and the Soviet Union were on the same side, but that war ended, and we entered the Cold War, and during the Cold War, Britain and the Soviet Union were mortal enemies.
So you see, if you go back to the 19th century, you think about the 1920s and ’30s, and then you think about the Cold War, the British have a rich history of hating Russia or fearing Russia, and the end result is that that’s carried over into the present.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: (00:19:51 – 00:20:25): What does the current British Prime Minister gain by this other than the wrath of the Kremlin? And how might the Kremlin manifest that wrath?
I mean, this is not just words. This is the ostentatious — I’ll use the same word — delivery of long-range missiles and drones manufactured in Britain, brought to Ukraine, aimed by MI6, and fired by Ukrainian contractors and soldiers, and landing in Russia.
Andy Burnham’s Predicament
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:20:27 – 00:21:40): I would bet that Andy Burnham, the new Prime Minister, understands that it’s time for Britain to change its relationship with Russia and to start to think differently about the Ukraine war, but he can’t do that at this point in time, and the reason he can’t do that is because of the profound Russophobia in the British population and certainly in the governing classes.
It is really quite stunning to me how deeply committed the British elites are, especially the foreign policy elites, how the media, the mainstream media thinks about the Russians, just how deep the hostility is.
And for someone like Burnham, who has his hands full on so many different fronts, the last thing he wants to do is pick a fight on the issue of Ukraine or the issue of British-Russian relations. So he’s just going along with the flow. He’s in effect a continuation of Keir Starmer’s policies, although I do believe that he understands that it is time to change direction.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: (00:21:42 – 00:22:02): What is your view on the likelihood of the Kremlin attacking anything in a NATO country, whether it’s a government facility, a military facility, or a manufacturing facility that manufactures instruments that find their way inside Russia?
Will Russia Strike a NATO Country?
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:22:03 – 00:23:44): I think at this point in time, it’s highly unlikely. They’d be picking a fight with NATO, and the last thing that the Russians need is a real fight against Ukraine plus NATO. So I don’t think that they’ll do it.
The other dimension to this issue is that the Russians are doing very well in the war. I think once they decided that they were going to take the gloves off in terms of their bombing campaign and go after the Black Sea sites, go after cities like Odessa, and basically shut down all of the Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea, I think they then understood that they were reaching a point where they could really strangle the Ukrainian economies in ways that would have a profound effect on the battlefield itself.
And of course, if you look at what’s happening on the battlefield, the Russians are making steady progress — slow progress for sure, but steady progress. And there’s really very little the Ukrainians can do to rectify the situation. In fact, they’re now drafting women because they’re so desperate to fill up the ranks on the front lines, but that’s not going to solve the problem here. They’re doomed on the battlefield.
And as I say, when you look at what’s happening with the air war, the situation is deteriorating at warp speed for the Ukrainians. And so to start a war with NATO at this point in time and bring NATO into the fight would only work to Ukraine’s advantage. So I don’t think the Russians will do that.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: (00:23:45 – 00:23:52): Professor Mearsheimer, great conversation. Thank you, my dear friend. All the best to you. We’ll look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you.
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: (00:23:53 – 00:23:55): You’re welcome, Judge. Great being on the show as usual.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: (00:23:56 – 00:24:11): Thank you. Coming up later today, if you’re watching us live, in 36 minutes at 10:00 this morning, Aaron Maté. At 2:00 this afternoon, Matt Ho. At 3:00 this afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.
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