Read the full transcript of world-renowned economics professor Prof. Jeffrey Sachs in conversation with Norwegian writer and political activist Prof. Glenn Diesen on “US Prepares to Join War Against Iran”, Jun 17, 2025.
Trump’s Shift from Peace Platform to War President
Prof. Glenn Diesen: Hi, everyone, and welcome. We are joined today by Jeffrey Sachs to discuss the developments in the Middle East. So, yeah, Trump obviously ran on a peace platform. That is America First. He won the election, and I, among others, were quite optimistic. Yet it now seems clear that he has become another war president.
And the surprise attack on Iran, well, has seemingly not gone as predicted as Israel now needs the United States to join in on the war. And Trump appears to have given his response as he now calls on Tehran to be evacuated. And we see the United States massing its military capabilities in the region. What do you make of this? Do you expect the US to get directly involved in the war against Iran, or is this a part of Trump’s negotiations?
The Context of Israel’s Surprise Attack
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Well, first, I think it’s only right to say I don’t know because I don’t think any of us really knows. I was surprised by Israel’s surprise attack. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. The attack on Iran has been on Netanyahu’s agenda for 30 years. Absolutely. Almost on a daily basis, it’s been an obsession of Netanyahu for Israel to pull the United States into a war against Iran.
At the same time, remember that just before this attack started by Israel, the US had announced that negotiations between the US and Iran would take place on Sunday, that is a couple of days ago, as we speak now, on Tuesday, 17 June, that there would be negotiations, that negotiations were proceeding, that they were making progress. And so the attack came in the context of public statements about a negotiating process that not only was underway, but that was reported in positive terms as making progress.
So the question in the very narrow sense is, was it all a subterfuge to have Iran drop its guard so that Israel could attack? Was instead Netanyahu acting independently and then pulling Trump in under Netanyahu’s understanding of Israel’s dominant control of U.S. foreign policy? We don’t know these things for sure. We speculate on the outside.
The Dishonesty of Current Leadership
We can say that governments these days in the US and Europe and Israel are shambolic. Everything that’s said publicly is a lie in one sense or another. Nothing is explained clearly, nothing is explained honestly. There is no consistency day to day. There is no attempt even at consistency.
When the Israeli attack started, Trump didn’t say, well, this was a surprise. He said, we knew about it, but we weren’t part of it. He didn’t make any allusion to the fact that negotiations were to take place three days later. There isn’t an attempt to speak to the public as adults, or in a rational way. This is a small group, gangsters basically, that are fighting over their gangster turf. The rest of us are spectators wondering when the bombs will drop in our neighborhood, when loved ones someplace will be killed. We’re not participants at all of this other than as observers.
Interestingly, when Trump left the G7 meeting and Macron stated, apparently, that Trump was going back to Washington to make a cease fire, Trump’s answer was, he doesn’t know anything about what I’m doing. Speaking about Macron, I have something much bigger than a cease fire going on. This is the President of the United States publicly redressing the President of France with whom he was just meeting in a public tweet or public posting. That shows that even in this supposed rarefied circle of nuclear powers, they’re gangsters. They don’t talk to each other, even themselves, in an honest way.
Netanyahu’s Long-Standing War Plan
So, Glenn, I just have to start by apologizing to you and to everybody. I don’t know the answer to any of this. What I can say unequivocally is that the Israeli plan underway to go to war with Iran is very long standing. That has not been hidden from view. That’s been Netanyahu’s greatest dream since 1996.
Netanyahu’s philosophy and approach is dominate the Middle East, use Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the region to bludgeon, kill, assassinate, overthrow any government that opposes Israel’s actions. What is the end purpose of all of this? The end purpose seems to be to allow Israel to define its own borders in any way that it chooses, as expansively as it chooses.
One might have said, and I write nonstop, that the way that it chooses to define its own borders is complete control over the territory of British Mandatory Palestine, meaning that Israel would have full control over Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But this may be naive because part of Israel religious fanatics look to early passages in the Bible, in the Hebrew Old Testament, saying that God promised the land essentially from the Nile to the Euphrates, or maybe from the Red Sea to the Euphrates, depending on interpretation, but that in any event, the claim is much larger than even Mandatory Palestine.
Israel today occupies parts of Lebanon, parts of Syria, all of Mandatory Palestine, and we don’t know where it is supposed to end. But the basic doctrine of Netanyahu is that’s Israel’s choice, not anybody else’s choice. And that when push comes to shove, the United States will back Israel’s choice because the United States is basically under the control of Zionist, Christian and Jewish and Israeli lobby that will come to run to support Israel’s actions.
Israel’s Multi-Front War Strategy
We’re watching this play out in an astounding way. Israel this year has been at war in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Iran.
You know, you just can’t make this up. This is nonstop war.
I’ll add one more thing in this long winded answer to your opening question and that is what is their theory of war? The theory of war is distinctive. Israel is a small place. It’s got less than 10 million people or about 10 million people. Iran has more than 90 million people. What is the theory? The theory is assassination and regime change. So the idea is decapitation rather than on the ground military invasion.
The idea is get rid of Saddam Hussein and Iraq becomes an Israeli vassal. Get rid of Muammar Gaddafi and Libya becomes an Israeli vassal. Get rid of the great leader and then Iran serves Israel’s purpose. This by itself is a kind of madness. This is a true insanity.
The Failed Track Record of Regime Change
And we don’t have to look for further than the results of Netanyahu’s wars. Did Libya fall into shape? No. Libya fell into nonstop violence since 2011, into open war, not into vassalhood of Israel. Did Somalia fall into place as Israel wanted? No. Somalia fell into chaos. Did Sudan fall into place when America overthrew the Sudanese government by supporting the South Sudan rebellion? No. Amazingly, Sudan not only fell into two, but each of those two parts is in civil war today.
Did Lebanon stabilize? No. Did Syria stabilize? Well, it’s yes, maybe now a jihadist state under Israel control temporarily, that seems to be the case. Did Iraq? No. Saddam Hussein’s departure did not create a vassal state, although it created an occupied state. So the theory of change is assassination and decapitation. Mossad led rather than on the ground. And I think that this is the theory of change for Iran as well.
Prof. Glenn Diesen: To burn down what was there and hope that something better will come in place.
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Well, they’re not just hope. They believe in their arrogance that they can run the show. History has shown and this is, you know, the classic understanding from World War II onward. Aerial bombardment does not lead to regime change, first of all. And second, even if you do assassinate leaders, maybe you can postpone or delay their actions a bit, but you don’t get the kind of political control that you believe that you will.
The G7’s Hollow Calls for De-escalation
Prof. Glenn Diesen: You mentioned the G7 as Trump. He slammed the what he called publicity seeking Macron. But what was interesting at the G7 meeting is both the Americans and the Europeans, they were all saying that they called for de-escalation, both in Ukraine and with respect to Iran, but it doesn’t seem very genuine. You also mentioned that there’s a lot of lying going on because in Ukraine, I mean, if they wanted de-escalation, someone would have picked up their phone.
And also when it comes to Iran, they said they want de-escalation, but they couldn’t ask for a ceasefire. Indeed, that was the context. When Macron said that Trump was going to work on a ceasefire, he had this either angry response. So what exactly is de-escalation if you’re not willing to consider reducing the conflict? Is this is just talk or how do you make sense of the language?
Imperial Powers Determining Outcomes
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: The basic idea of the United States, Britain, France, especially if there is an idea, these are three imperial powers. The idea is we determine the bottom line. So we are the ones that determine the outcomes of a conflict. That’s the mindset. Of course they don’t. This is the post imperial, post Western imperial world. But the Western imperial powers believe that they determine the outcome.
And so in the case of Ukraine, the idea has been, well, yes, there will be a cease fire, but according to Macron, say, or Starmer, NATO will enlarge and Russia will have to accept XYZ and ABCD, EFG and so forth. And so there’s no attempt to get to the core politics at all in the Middle East. The same is true. The unspoken part of all of this is Israel’s claim to have its say and weigh in the Middle East in terms of territory, in terms of crushing, even exterminating the Palestinian people, if that’s what it came to think, that they would not hesitate to do it, as they have shown in Gaza. That’s the unspoken part. So the Western side, these imperialist powers, think that the idea is to impose that outcome. Maybe they quibble about the tactics.
The Orwellian Response to Israel’s Attack
But what was fascinating to me in terms of political rhetoric, although not surprising, Israel attacks Iran and what happens in the rhetoric of all of the west, so called these G7 countries, the immediate response is not Israel should not have attacked Iran. The immediate response was Israel has the right of self defense. It’s so surrealistic, so Orwellian that it doesn’t even pass the propaganda test for five seconds. But this is exactly what happened the day after Israel’s unilateral attack in the context of negotiations to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Definitively with the international monitoring was not to say why did Israel do this in the context of ongoing negotiations or Israel shouldn’t have done this, or Israel even did do this. The politics that Europe displayed in the UN Security Council, as I nearly fell off my chair at each statement, was that Iran must not escalate. And some of the ambassadors speaking, for example, the absolutely shameless presentation by the Danish ambassador on the Security Council didn’t even mention that Israel had attacked Iran.
This is the UN Security Council. They couldn’t even figure out the day that they were there, the day after a unilateral, unprovoked attack in the context of negotiations that Israel had attacked Iran. The only statement made by the ambassador of Denmark was that Iran was out of compliance with the IAEA, as if Israel is not. Israel isn’t even a signatory to the IAEA and is the nuclear weapon power of the region and never allows inspections. But the Danish ambassador only attacked Iran for being out of compliance without noting the negotiations, and still less without even mentioning that there had been an attack by Israel on Iran that day and statements by the Israeli leadership that it would kill the leadership of Iran. No one said boo about that.
The Pathetic State of G7 Leadership
So this G7 is pathetic. You know, Trump came, he went, didn’t matter. It’s pathetic. Then one of them posts something Macron and Trump. This is the post of Macron. These are children that have no respect for us as citizens. And this is sad because these children don’t know how to play together. I don’t even even among themselves, much less with the rest of the world. But they have their hands on the nuclear arsenals that can destroy all of us. And we don’t hear an honest word about it.
Netanyahu’s Liberation Rhetoric
Prof. Glenn Diesen: Well, so, yeah, we see the surprise attack during negotiations on nuclear reactors in Iran, which, you know, should have had made everyone very, very alarmed. But I guess it had the same reaction as the attacks on Russia’s nuclear deterrent two weeks ago. There’s nothing. Instead, yeah, I saw as well, the European leaders arguing that, well, the Iranians are to blame and they have to de-escalate.
And it does. It did sounds something similar to what Netanyahu was saying because he was making a speech saying, you know, we have the right to defend ourselves. And also after the regime change, after destroying the government of Iran, the people there would welcome it as a liberator. He welcomed them as liberators and they would live peacefully, side by side, after the regime had been destroyed. I mean, do these people actually believe this or is this just shameless war rhetoric, knowing that, well, Israel’s partners will uncritically just repeat whatever they say.
The Clean Break Strategy and Long-Term Israeli Policy
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: I don’t know whether they believe it, but it’s not the first time they say it. They’ve been saying it for 30 years. Netanyahu and his American backers issued a document in 1996 called Clean Break. Clean Break explains the political strategy that’s been underway for the next 30 years, which is that Israel will not negotiate with Palestine and therefore will embroil the entire Middle East in war, bringing the United States in to do its bidding. And that the key is to have regimes in place that will go along with this.
So the idea all along has been that the 5 to 10 million Jews in Israel will determine the politics of the roughly 400 million Arabs in the Arab world, and of course, vastly larger numbers if one includes the Islamic world. So they’ve said this all along and they’ve acted on that basis, because every word you heard vis a vis Iran, Netanyahu, I mean, almost to a word, used the same rhetoric in the fall of 2002, testifying in the US Congress about how glorious it will be when Saddam Hussein is brought down, how across the region people will celebrate.
In fact, he said, specifically, when you bring down Saddam Hussein, young people in Iran will rally to the cause. They will see the end of despotism and so forth. And the same has been believed about each of these leaders. Gaddafi, Assad, Saddam Hussein, the Ayatollah. The idea is this mythical thinking that you kill them, you replace them, and then the replacements do your bidding. They fall into line.
The Assassination Machine Strategy
So if you ask me, do they believe it? I think they do believe it because it’s their strategy. It’s not merely their tactic, it is their long term strategy and they built an apparatus around it. Israel is an assassination machine to a large extent. Mossad is an assassination organization to take out leaders that it opposes, believing that it will thereby result in leaders that will support their cause.
I should say, by the way, this resonates with the United States. The US with 4% of the world population, roughly 4.1%, has tried to run the rest of the 95.9% of the world population. It does that, of course, with military bases all over the world, roughly 750 military bases in 80 countries. But it also has to rely on something more efficient, it believes, and that is regime change.
Because the US doesn’t have the manpower to put its Roman legions, if I could use the analogy, all over the world it needs to have governments that fall in line with it. It has a lot of vassal states. The Europeans are vassal states in this way. But the idea has been regime change as the most important instrument that the United States has because it doesn’t want to be and can’t be an occupying force. So it has to impose friendly regimes. So this fits, maybe it fits the imperial model going way back that you put satrapies in or you put local vassal states in, because you can’t really occupy every place if you have your eye on global control.
Global Implications and Reactions
Prof. Glenn Diesen: Well, my last question is how will this affect the wider world? How will Russia, China, other large powers react to this? Because obviously this is not a good day for diplomacy in the faith they would have in diplomacy with the United States. But also to what extent do you see the possibility of this war spreading? Because I’ve seen some reports already about Russia and China resupplying Iran after they were attacked.
The Likely Failure of Military Bravado
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: If history can be our guide, and it’s a very imperfect guide to be sure, because every circumstance is different. The current approach will fail. Either the military bravado by itself will fail because Israel will not have the wherewithal, or even Israel and the United States will not have the wherewithal to defeat Iran. That’s possible. I’m unfortunately not enough of a military expert to give any authoritative reading on that.
But we do know the vastly exaggerated estimations of Western military power is part of this story. The United States has not won wars for decades. Sometimes it’s had military victories, but it’s rarely actually won a long war. And so from Afghanistan to Vietnam to countless other places, this kind of approach has not worked. And it may lose directly in the aerial battles and in the air defense and in Iran’s ability to counterattack and destroy critical locations in populated Israel.
It may fail just on that basis, or it may fail on the basis that the nuclear activities of Iran escalate in result and are not stopped by any of this, or in the fact that there is no regime change. They’re trying, I think, a decapitation not only of the military and scientific leadership, but of the political leadership as well. This is likely to fail, but not impossible. This is an assassination machine. They have targeted drones to the apartment buildings and apartment floors and flats specifically. So they within with Mossad’s methods, which is an assassination unit, they’ve made some progress.
The Reality of Multipolarity and Nuclear Risk
But that can fail, I think, is more likely than not to fail. Even if it were to succeed, it doesn’t occupy a country of more than 90 million people that is a big spread out, diverse and in many ways technologically sophisticated country. So rarely do a few airstrikes actually change the fate of politics or nations. It hasn’t happened in most of the time. So I believe we’re on a path of extraordinary risk and danger and typical bravado and overestimation of Israeli and Western capacity. That has been the general rule overestimation of what the Western advantage brings.
Because the most fundamental factor of our world today is multipolarity. It is that the Western dominance, these G7 leaders, do not run the show and do not have the decisive military advantage to run the show. But in the end, each of these blows and the counter blows bring us closer to nuclear annihilation. Because the even more fundamental truth is that we have nuclear arms all over the place. And not only does Iran have Russia as a backer, it also has Pakistan as a backer. And the idea that this is just a unilateral show of nuclear armed Israel versus the Islamic world versus Iran versus the Arab world, this could really get us all killed, this kind of delusion.
Prof. Glenn Diesen: Well, Professor Sachs, thank you, my friend. I appreciate your time. This is, yeah, it’s incredible we ended up in this situation. I think everyone realized how crazy and, yeah, insane such an attack would be. And that’s exactly how it’s turning out as well.
The Terrifying Reality of Armageddon Expectations
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: It was so crazy that I didn’t think it would happen. Honestly, this is my naivete, I have to say, because I constantly overestimate the idea of a rational response to our circumstances and I underestimate the hubris, the arrogance, the hatreds and the readiness of people like Netanyahu to bring us to the brink of nuclear Armageddon.
By the way, I have to say, and I should add, there is some group, bizarre as it sounds, that looks at the prospect of nuclear Armageddon and shrugs their shoulders and says, well, that’s all biblical prophecy in the book of Revelation. I get my email from American Christian Evangelicals who are the major voter base for Israeli extremism. And I get letters explaining to me, Mr. Sachs, it’s all in the prophecy. And the darker things get, the more these are sign of the times, of the coming Armageddon.
That to me is perhaps the most terrifying point, that some people on this planet actually look at the prospect of Armageddon not only with equanimity, but even with expectation. This is terrifying. And there are millions of American voters like that, weird as can be, I have to say. But actually, that’s the fact.
Prof. Glenn Diesen: Well, on the unexpectedness, I was actually in the program of Judge Napolitano a few hours before the surprise attack. And I also expressed my assumption that perhaps this wouldn’t be an attack because it would be too crazy. But again, I was also proven wrong, so. Well, thanks again, Professor Sachs.
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: Great. Great to be with you. Thanks. We’ll keep watching and talk soon.
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