John Mearsheimer: Trump LOST, Iran Gets Spoils With Sanctions Relief

Good morning, everybody.Happy Tuesday.Have an amazing show for everybody today.What do we have, Crystal?

Indeed, we do.John Mearsheim are going to join us this morning to talk both about Iran.We have some new developments this morning.President Trump says that support for Iran is a humanitarian mission.That's the note he's sounding this morning.So we'll get his reaction to everything that's developed.

We also wanted to do a deep dive again into what is going on with Ukraine and Russia as that conflict continues to get more dangerous, with Ukraine striking more and more aggressively inside of Russian territory and really going after their oil and gas facilities.So interested to get get his take on that.We're also taking a look at the Republican Party, how things are going overall for the Trump administration, as Tucker Carlson says that he is done with the Republican Party, done voting for Republicans.So kind of an interesting moment, given that he has been one of their top backers for years and years and years.So very interesting.Want to dig into that.

We also have some new numbers on housing.It's not just the price, the ticket price of the house that is too expensive.It is everything.everything that Yeah, I'm excited to talk to them.

You know, all that history with Truman and his haberdashery partner and all that, we could talk about that for ages.Thank you to everybody who's been subscribing to the show, BreakingPoints .com.We're doing our live AMA for our premium subscribers, so get in on that, BreakingPoints .com.You can support our work.

If you're watching this on YouTube, please hit subscribe to our YouTube channel.Listen to this podcast.Please share an episode with a friend or rate us five stars.It really helps other people find the show.But, as Crystal just laid out, we've got the great Professor John Mearsheimer standing by to help us out.us break down the ongoing situation with Iran.

Let's get to it.Joining us now, our great friend of the show, Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago.It's good to see you, sir.Thank you for joining us.It's good to be here as always.or move straight to remain open, and that the money and or sanctions that the treasurer is releasing will go into escrow, will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies from the United States, including corn, wheat, soybeans, because these are desperately needed by Iran and it's a humanitarian crisis, and he feels it necessary to help them now.

What do you make here of the president trying to navigate many of these more recent Iranian denials that they actually will allow nuclear inspectors into their country, despite the fact that the United States did a significant lift all of their sanctions on current Iranian oil.

Well, the deal has always said that the nuclear issue would be dealt with later rather than sooner.So there have been no agreements on the nuclear dimension of this memorandum.That comes later.And I would imagine that the Iranians will be quite accommodating on the nuclear issue, because that will allow them to benefit on all sorts of other issues.But I think that President Trump's comments are sort of premature.And I think what's going on here is he's trying to put lipstick on a pig.

The fact is that the United States has lost this war.And if you look at the deal that's on the table and where it's going,headed, it's clear that the Iranians have won.And for President Trump to admit that is, well, nigh impossible.So what he's trying to do is prove he's a tough guy, and we're going to get our way on a lot of key issues.And we should expect more of that moving forward.

But the fact is that if we get a deal, the outlines of that deal at this point in time are very clear.

Professor, what are the indications that you're looking at to determine how likely it is that we actually are able to come to some sort of an agreement here after the 60 -day period?

Well, all you have to do is look at the state of the international economy, and you have to look at what's happening to our petroleum reserves in the United States.The president has made this clear himself.He has said that we are facing, quote unquote, an economic catastrophe if we don't shut this war down.He's explicitly said that he doesn't want to be Herbert Hoover the second.He fully understands that this war just has to be shut down.There's a set of economic imperatives at play here.

You want to ask yourself, why is it President Trump is willing to sign on to an agreement where we lose on almost every count and the Iranians win on almost every count.They come out of this agreement much better off than they were going into the war.Why did this happen?And the answer is the international economy.And to take it a step further, if you look at the conflict that's now taking place between the United States and Israel, mainly over southern Lebanon, it's quite clear that what has caused President Trump, for the first time in his presidency, to play real hardball with the Israelis is the fact that he's staring an economic catastrophe in the face.and he wants to avoid that at all costs.

And in those circumstances, he's willing to be really tough with the Israelis.

out and then coming back and a lot of symbology.Let's take a listen.

I've spent a lot of time dealing with the Iranians over the last few months.Sometimes I find them extremely confusing as negotiators.But look, we had a little press conference.They obviously don't quite have the same First Amendment protections in Iran that we have in the United States of America.We talked to you guys and then had a series of really good meetings.What I did find kind of funny is that after that initial meeting, there was this, you know, sort of social media firestorm where everybody said the Iranians are going to leave.

And then we proceeded to talk to them for like the next nine hours.So I would just encourage the media mistrust a little bit what you see coming out of Iranian social media.They can be confusing negotiators, but we feel like we're making progress.

There seems to be this just consistent downplaying of any Iranian pushback or any Iranian snub intended towards the United States, which is just extraordinary and part of what's sending many of these neoconservatives into a full -blown freakout here, sir.

Well, Vance understands, much like Trump, that we just have to get a deal.And Vance is the point man here.And I think that we should all hope that Vance succeeds and that Trump succeeds.I mean, we've all been extremely critical, and I'm choosing my words carefully here, we've been extremely critical of the decision to launch this war and wage it the way we did.up to now.It was a huge mistake, but the president and the vice president fully recognized

the error of their ways, and they're trying to repair the problem and fix this before the international economy goes off a cliff.And I applaud them for that, and I just hope that they solve the problem.If they don't solve the problem and we enter into a Great Depression like the one we had in the 1930s, the economic consequences of this will be huge, especially around the world in poor countries.Lots of people will die.and it'll have devastating consequences for the American economy, and none of us want that.So we should hope.

in my opinion, that Trump and Vance, who have now reversed direction, are able to shut this one down.It's obviously going to be a messy process.How could it be otherwise when you're involved with President Trump, who's shooting off all these tweets that say outrageous things from time to time?He'll make it as messy as he possibly can.But I think in the end, we have a an imperative to shut this one down, and I think the Iranians also have an imperative to shut this one down.And I think there's a good chance, one wouldn't want to say it's 100 % guaranteed by any means, but I think we do have a good chance of coming up with some sort of meaningful settlement to this war.

Professor, Israel is very, very, very unhappy that there are talks going on at all, that there's even a possibility of a negotiated settlement along the lines of what is being contemplated.What is your response to people who would, you know, say to you and to me and to Sagar, you people say that the Israel lobby controls everything and we're just their, you know, their puppets.And here you have Trump going directly against what the Israelis want over their vociferous objections, creating a complete political crisis for Netanyahu and an existential crisis for the Israeli state as a whole.Weren't you wrong about your assessment of how much influence the Israel lobby has in the United States?

Up until very recently, there's no question that the lobby had a lock hold on U .S.Middle East policy.There's no question about that.But what has changed here is that we got into this war and it's quite clear that as a result of the war and what Iran has done in terms of shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, that they have the ability to wreck the international economy.And that is a threat that is so great that for the first time in President Trump's second and first term in office.

And for the first time in any recent president's experience, we are seeing a president really bring down the hammer on the Israelis.And I would imagine that as we move forward and it becomes clearer and clearer that this one has to be shut down for economic reasons, President Trump and Vice President Vance will go to even greater lengths to be tough on the Israelis.So this is an anomalous situation, and it's caused by extraordinary circumstances, in particular, the threat of a Great Depression.

Something that we think is absolutely fascinating, sir, was throughout the war, it became very clear about the role of the U .S.dollar throughout this.The petrodollar, of course, has always been a long subject of analysis and of explanation.However, we also saw that China and Iran, you know, by use of crypto or denominating these tolls that they were charging in the middle of the war, were able to bring them some revenue.The recent clues in the U .

S.Treasury sanctions, let's put A3 up here on screen.the screen seem like a clawback at trying to have at least some of the dominance that we previously had before the war.where the most recent interesting part of the primary sanctions relief actually allows Iran not only to sell its oil, but to actually allow those settlement of transactions in dollars.It means that Chinese buyers could pay Iran in dollars.It also even means that American refineries could buy any Iranian petrochemical products.

What do you make here of the U .S.attempt to try and to reverse some of the damage to the global oil market and what Iran revealed about U .S.sanctions throughout this entire war.

Well, first of all, you want to remember that at the start of this war, when the bombing campaign was taking place, we were allowing Iranian tankers to come out of the Gulf and sell their oil on global markets.And the reason is quite straightforward.We needed all the oil we could get on global markets.And it wasn't until President Trump put the blockade on the straight that we cut off, in large part, the flow of Iranian oil into global markets.Now, what's different here is that they can sell those barrels of oil in dollars, and that's different.And the question you want to ask yourself is, why is President Trump doing this?

And the answer is, in large part, because Iran won the war.And this is one of their demands.We simply have no choice if we want to shut this war down.The Iranians have made a number of demands.It's quite amazing how many demands they've made that we have agreed to.And this is one of them.

But furthermore, this works to our advantage because it gets more oil out into global markets and it keeps the price of oil down.So that's a good thing.

So let's say that the negotiations proceed, that the Trump administration and the Iranians are both committed toto some sort of a resolution here.What would that deal mean for Israel?How would it impact their current orientation?How would they have to change the way that they've been operating?

Well, I would make two points here.First of all, overall, the deal is a disaster for Israel.This is widely recognized in Israel.And the fact is that Israel thought that Iran was its gravest enemy and that this war would put an end to Iran's nuclear program, it would end nuclear enrichment, it would greatly weaken Iran, and it would put Israel in the catbird seat in the Middle East.That has obviously not happened.Iran is going to emerge from this war in much better shape than it was on February 27th, the day before the war started.

So this is overall a strategic disaster for Israel.Then you get to the particular issue of Lebanon, and the Israelis want the freedom to, number one, keep their forces in southern Lebanon, which they're now occupying, Number two, have the freedom to bomb Lebanon whenever they see fit.And the Iranians have told us you have to get the Israelis completely out of southern Lebanon, and you have to put an end to their bombing of Lebanon.If we succeed in doing that, that would be a devastating defeat for the Israelis.And they talk about that all the time in their press.So it's quite clear that this war and the agreement that we reach with the Iranians to end this war could have devastating consequences, not just across the board, but in particular on the issue of

Lebanon.

Yeah, zooming out, sir, something I really saw was part of the reason why this seems such a disaster for Israel is it fundamentally just destroys their primary ambition, which is to be the sole regional hegemon.If you have Iran, which is unsanctioned and does receive this $300 billion in funds, some $120 billion of which is already theirs, in addition to tens of billions of dollars a month from the sale of oil, its GDP per capita, I checked in 2024, a rump economy, heavily in the conservative lobbies?

Well, if you look at the principal indicators of latent power, and here we're talking about population size and wealth, the Iranians have about 93 million people.And I would estimate that there are about 7 .3 million Israeli Jews.There are also about 7 .3 million Palestinians inside greater Israel.But even if you add them into the mix, that's still about 14 .6 million people, and that's a lot smaller than 93 million.Then if you look at the human capital in Iran, which is a really good indicator of their potential for generating wealth, they have very impressive human capital.There's no question that this is a country with a very large population and the capability to generate wealth.

a lot of wealth.And it would, in the end, I think, be much more powerful than Israel would be.I think from Israel's point of view, and if you listen to the Israelis' talk, this is quite clear, the two countries they worry the most about are Turkey and Iran, because they both have large populations and they have impressive amounts of human capital.So, the idea that Israel is going to become a regional hegemon in the Middle East begins to look like a flawed argument when you take into account Iran and Turkey.But I would also add to this, if you look at what's happened to Israel since October 7th, Israel is a big mess today.They did not defeat Hezbollah.

Hezbollah is really giving them fits in southern Lebanon.And Hezbollah is not going to be knocked out.It's going to be a perennial foe.Furthermore, they did not defeat Hamas.They inflicted enormous pain on Hamas, but Hamas is still in the fight in a major way.They're in a mess in the West Bank.

They're in a mess in Syria.And if you look at what's happening in terms of all the centrifugal forces that are at play inside of Israel, it looks like a very depressing picture from an Israeli point of view.So Israel today is in really terrible shape.decide the whole question of the future vis -a -vis Iran and Turkey.

And last thing here on the Iran section with Turkey, let's put A5 up here.It does appear the Israelis are now making it an overt threat towards the nation of Turkey.Here's their foreign ministry saying just yesterday, Hamas terrorists based in Turkey are directing attacks against Israelis, funding terrorism, recruiting operatives.The network is exposed and the facts are clear.So it appears that Turkey will be the new front in the Greater Israel Project.What is it about their overt targeting here of Turkey?

Do they just have no disregard for NATO?Do they just not care?Do they think ultimately the United States will come to their defense here against Turkey?I mean, what makes them even think that they can utter something like this when Turkey is itself a NATO power?

Well, the Israelis, in terms of their overall grand strategy, have a number of goals.I mean, obviously they want a greater Israel.They obviously want to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from inside that greater Israel.But another one of their goals is to weaken all of the neighbors to the point where none of them have any meaningful capability to attack Israel.They've already done this with Jordan and with Egypt.And in a very important way, this is what happened with Syria.

And their hope with regard to Iran was to do the same thing.As we've talked about before on the show, their overall goal in Iran was to wreck Iran, to turn it into the second coming of Syria.And what they'd like to do is the same thing with Turkey.One of the reasons the Israelis have always been very interested in creating a Kurdish state, I remember when I first used to hear the Israelis talking about creating a Kurdish state, I couldn't understand why they were so interested in doing that.Well, huge chunks of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria have a large Kurdish population.And if you create a Kurdish state, you break up Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

And that explains why the Israelis want a Kurdish state.In other words, what I'm saying here is they want to do everything possible to weaken all of their neighbors, but especially countries like Turkey and Iran, as we were saying before.which have so much latent power.