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Home » Transcript of John Mearsheimer Vs Yoram Hazony on Israel vs. Iran – Debate

Transcript of John Mearsheimer Vs Yoram Hazony on Israel vs. Iran – Debate

Read the full transcript of political scientist John Mearsheimer Vs Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony on Israel vs. Iran – Debate, moderated by UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers (Jun 17, 2025).

Listen to the audio version here:

Freddie Sayers: We are on day five of the Israel-Iran conflict. And already there seems to be two completely different understandings of what is going on that seem unbridgeably divided. In one camp, this is understood as the brave and lonely Israeli government necessarily defending itself from a neighbor that is hell-bent on its destruction, and in fact, doing the world’s dirty work by taking out dangerous nuclear capabilities of a regime in Tehran that is a threat to the whole world, as usual, being greeted with condemnation instead of applause. That’s one view.

The opposite view is that a reckless government in Israel, hell-bent on its own political survival, is adding a new front to an already shameful destruction in Gaza, causing havoc, threatening world peace, and in fact, being given a free pass by a morally weak West. That’s the alternative extreme view.

So how should we try to make sense of it today? Instead of offering a fiery debate between two opposing sides, flame-throwing and insulting each other, we thought we’d find the very best, most eloquent and interesting, subtle spokespeople for each side and talk to them in sequence.

First, we’re going to talk to the world-famous Professor John Mearsheimer. This is someone who describes himself as a realist, someone who has been very vocal and influential in understanding the Ukraine-Russia conflict and has been a searing critic of Israel. He’s written whole books about what he calls the Israel lobby. He feels Israel’s influence on the United States is much too strong. And we felt that he would be an interesting person to put this conflict into context from that perspective.

Then we’re going to talk to Professor Yoram Hazony, also highly influential, both inside Israel, where he is resident and has lived most of his life, but also inside the United States and Europe, because as the founder of the national conservatism movement that now holds conferences across the world, he is really a big inspiration for people inside MAGA, inside the Trump movement and inside nationalist conservative movements across Europe. It will be fascinating to hear from Professor Hazony how he believes this is in Israel’s national interest and whether he thinks the United States has a national interest in getting involved.

Hopefully, at the end of hearing from both of them, we will be, if not completely clear, at least better educated about the different arguments on both sides.

John Mearsheimer’s Perspective

Freddie Sayers: John Mearsheimer, welcome to UnHerd.

John Mearsheimer: Hello, Freddie.

Freddie Sayers: Let me start with the biggest question, which is, what do you think Israel is trying to achieve?

John Mearsheimer: Well, I think their ultimate goal is to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capability. And basically that means making sure Iran has no enrichment. I think if they could get regime change, they would be happy with that. But I don’t think that’s the principal goal. I think the principal goal is to eliminate Iran’s nuclear capability or its ability to get a nuclear weapon. And I think to do that, they have to get the Americans in. I think they went into this thinking that by themselves they could not eliminate Iran’s nuclear enrichment capability. They’d need the Americans to do that. And I think they believe that once they got into it and the war developed, the Americans would come in and the Americans would do their dirty work for them.

Freddie Sayers: Well, there’s two components to that. On the nuclear aspect, do you think it’s fair enough that they cannot tolerate a neighbor that is avowed to their destruction having nuclear weapons?

John Mearsheimer: Well, I think they obviously don’t want Iran to have nuclear weapons for what are good strategic reasons from their point of view. And I would add to that, the United States does not want Iran to have nuclear weapons either. But the $64,000 question is whether or not we can prevent that, meaning the United States and or Israel. The fact is that if they want to get nuclear weapons, there’s nothing we can do to stop them. And all sorts of experts have said that. I recently heard Ehud Barak making that point, former prime minister of Israel. You just can’t prevent it if they decide they want to do it. And I certainly think that this Israeli operation is not going to do much at all to eliminate their enrichment capability.

Freddie Sayers: So you as a realist would say the strategic objective is understandable, but you don’t think they will achieve it through this method. So it’s a kind of pointless attack.

John Mearsheimer: Yeah, I think the Israelis by themselves cannot do it. Almost everybody I know agreed with that basic point before the operation that the Israelis by themselves couldn’t do it. It looked like we might, we meaning the Americans, might be able to do it because we have these 30,000 pound massive bombs that may be able to go down far enough into the ground to eliminate their enrichment capability. But the problem there, Freddie, is that even if you do eliminate the capability now, they’ll just rebuild it.

And I would note to you that they have announced that they have recently opened a third enrichment plant. And this one is even buried more deeply into the ground than the one at Fordow, which is the one that we’ve been concentrating on recently. So I just don’t think that over the long term you can eliminate their or Iran’s nuclear capability with military force.

The Role of American Involvement

Freddie Sayers: The second part of what you said is that you think key to their strategy is getting the Americans directly involved.