John Mearsheimer

The February 2026 war was designed for regime change — "mindless social engineering" doomed against Iranian nationalism exactly as Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq were doomed against local nationalism; regime change is no longer achievable — "that ship has left the port." The follow-on "economic D-Day" sanctions escalation won't work either: Iran faces an existential threat, so the bar for surrender is impossibly high, and two prior blockades already failed to break it. China and Russia (both viewing the US as a "mortal threat" to themselves too) won't help isolate Iran — the idea the US has coercive leverage over China is "a laughable argument." The strategic initiative has now shifted to Iran: Washington has explicitly ruled out further military force (citing "extreme munition shortages"), while Iranian hardliners — not the conciliatory president and parliamentary speaker — are "driving the train" and are, in his view, correct from Iran's standpoint to refuse concessions, since the US already reneged on the 17 June memorandum once Iran opened the Strait as agreed. Notes, without endorsing, reports the administration has discussed tactical nuclear weapons against Iran as a "gamble for resurrection." Six months in, his audit is blunt: the war had four objectives and achieved none ("we are zero for four"), Trump's claim to control the Strait of Hormuz is "ludicrous" when Iran largely controls it, and the whole venture is a disaster worse than Iraq. Now says Iran holds a significant military edge over the US and Saudi Arabia, that the sanctions/blockade approach has failed outright, and that there are good reasons to think Iran may now move toward an actual nuclear weapon, calling the mismatch "Iran versus Saudi Arabia is Bambi versus Godzilla.". Now says the blockade and the financial squeeze have produced no evidence the Iranian government is crumbling, that annihilation rhetoric is producing a rally-around-the-flag effect instead, and that the Iranians hold almost all the cards.

Traces the war directly to NATO enlargement (the 1994 decision under Clinton; expansion in 1999 and 2004; the 2008 decision to bring in Ukraine and Georgia) — not a strategy to contain or deter Russia, which 1990s planning discourse doesn't support, but liberal hegemony extending the Western institutional order eastward, which "blew up" once Russia drew a line after 2008. Recalls his own 1993 Foreign Affairs argument that Ukraine should have kept the nuclear weapons it inherited from the USSR breakup, given the ethnic-Russian/Ukrainian intermingling in the east — a minority realist view dismissed at the time. Expects a frozen conflict (Russia keeping the four annexed oblasts plus Crimea, a "rump Ukraine" to the west) followed by large-scale ethnic cleansing/population transfer, which he says he hopes he's wrong about. Now says Russia has taken the gloves off and will escalate militarily to win the war outright on the battlefield, arguing Trump welched on the Anchorage deal and cannot be trusted to deliver Kiev or Europe anything. Now, reflecting on a recent trip to Russia, says Moscow’s economy and arms production remain strong against a wrecked Ukrainian economy, calls the 2008 NATO decision to open membership to Ukraine and Georgia among the "greatest strategic blunders" in modern history, and expects Russia to increase the intensity of its attacks on Ukraine going forward. Now says, back from Moscow and a dinner with Lavrov, that he met no one there who doubted a Russian victory, that Russia is systematically destroying Ukraine's rear logistics and energy infrastructure, and that Ukraine is committing national suicide.

Says the Netanyahu-Trump war on Iran was a fundamental strategic mistake that is inadvertently reshaping the Middle East against US and Israeli interests, with Iran and the Houthis now dictating events rather than Washington: "it's the Iranians and the Houthis who are reconfiguring the Middle East, not the Americans who are retreating."

Downplays the US carrier shift (George Washington replacing the Abraham Lincoln) as strategically insignificant for containing China — carriers would be sunk quickly in any real conflict — but flags a genuine US military drawdown in East Asia (THAAD/Patriots pulled from Japan and Korea, a stalled Tomahawk sale to Japan) leaving China better positioned than a year ago, with no evidence yet that Beijing feels emboldened enough to move on Taiwan or the South China Sea.

Liberal hegemony (roughly 1992–2017) — spreading democracy, fostering economic interdependence, building institutions to create "responsible stakeholders" — was the anomalous product of unipolarity and was always destined to fail via forever wars and a domestic illiberal backlash. It ended not because of Trump but because China's rise and Russia's revival under Putin restored multipolar great-power competition by around 2017. Trump's Iran war is not its rebirth but "mindless social engineering" — a single self-inflicted strategic error. Now says Washington faces two roughly simultaneous defeats in Iran and Ukraine, with Patriot and THAAD stockpiles drawing down faster than they can be replaced and no spare capacity left to redirect to East Asia.

Says closure of the Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb chokepoints, combined with the failed sanctions campaign on Iran, is strangling oil and diesel supply and will drive US and global food prices higher into the fall and winter.