US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on 29 September 2023 that “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” That all changed on October 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, which unsurprisingly invaded Gaza to destroy Hamas.
After more than six months, it appears to many that Israel is losing its war in Gaza. At the same time, Israel is fighting Hezbollah on its northern border, relations between Jerusalem and Washington are strained, and the International Court of Justice has ruled that a plausible case can be made that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Meanwhile, there is great danger of escalation across the region, as the fighting between Israel and Iran makes clear. Indeed, there is a possibility the United States, which is already fighting the Houthis, might end up in a war with Iran, which neither country wants.
What might be the lasting consequences of these conflicts? Who will emerge weaker and who stronger? And what does this crisis mean for U.S. foreign policy in the region, Ukraine and East Asia?
Centre for Independent Studies. Premiered May 17, 2024
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Tom Switzer: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the InterContinental. My name is Tom Switzer. I’m the executive director at the Center for Independent Studies.
For those of you who don’t know much about CIS, we’re a public policy research organization based up the road on McGuire Street. We are primarily focused on tackling our nation’s great public policy challenges. So, we’re interested in economics, education, energy, housing affordability, intergenerational matters, and foreign affairs. But we’re also very much engaged in the foreign policy debate, which brings us to this evening’s event.
I should stress from the outset that it’s probably fair to say that the crisis between Israel and Gaza in the Middle East is one of the most vexed issues in international relations in 2024. In a month’s time, we’ll hear from Brett Stevens, the award-winning columnist at the New York Times and formerly with the Wall Street Journal. He’ll be speaking in solid defense of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. But tonight, we will hear a radically different view. We, at CIS, believe that it’s very important, especially for a classical liberal organization like CIS, to hear both sides of any debate.
Now, John Mearsheimer is without doubt one of the most distinguished professors of political science in the world. He’s been a professor of political science at the University of Chicago for more than four decades. He’s the author of many prominent and influential books, most notably “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics,” published in 2001. In Foreign Affairs magazine, the prestigious New York-based journal of opinion on international affairs, Mearsheimer’s great power thesis is ranked as one of the three most influential foreign policy theses of the post-Cold War era. John, as Foreign Affairs has acknowledged, is “one of the most famous political scientists in history.”
John is also a global sensation in the digital world. Nineteen of his debates and interviews on YouTube have each attracted more than one million views. It’s extraordinary, especially since he quite correctly predicted that the US-led invasion of Iraq would be not just unnecessary but a strategic blunder of epic proportions. With that, it’s my great pleasure, on behalf of CIS, to welcome Professor John Mearsheimer back to CIS.
John Mearsheimer: Thank you very much for the kind words, Tom. It’s great to be back here, great to see Tom again, and thank you all for coming out to hear me speak tonight.
As everybody knows, since October 7th, the Middle East has been turned upside down. I think before October 7th, almost everybody thought that the Middle East was quite a stable area with no big problems. Then October 7th happened, and it looks like nothing but trouble today and for as far as the eye can see.
What I’d like to do is analyze what has happened since October 7th. I’d like to talk about the causes of the trouble, where we are today, and where we’re going. In pursuit of that, I want to break my talk down this way: First, I want to focus on analyzing the conflict in Gaza, mainly between Israel and the Palestinians, or Israel and Hamas, and also say a few words about Hezbollah because the Hezbollah-Israel conflict is connected to Gaza. That’s the first conflict I want to look at. The second conflict I want to look at is the Iran-Israel-US conflict that took place on April 1st, April 14th, and April 19th. I want to figure out what exactly happened there and what the consequences are. Of course, I’ll do that with the Gaza war as well. So those are the two conflicts I’m going to look at.
Then, in the second part of the talk, I want to discuss the consequences of all of this for Israel, the United States, and Iran. My basic argument is that Israel is the big loser. Israel is in really serious trouble today, and there’s little hope of getting away from that moving forward. Second, the Americans are also losers, although they do not lose as big as Israel does. The winners, not in any decisive way, but the winners are the Iranians.
That’s the basic structure of my talk this evening. Now let me start with what happened on October 7th and talk about the Gaza war. For purposes of background, to put a framework in your head, it’s very important to understand that Israel today is what I would call Greater Israel. Israel controls everything between the river and the sea. Of course, that phrase is usually associated with Hamas, and what Hamas wants is to control everything between the river and the sea, just like Israel does. The end result is that what you have today is a Greater Israel, and that Greater Israel includes what’s called Greenline Israel (that was Israel before the 1967 war), plus Gaza, plus the West Bank. So, there are those three areas that comprise Greater Israel. What’s very important to understand is that inside Greater Israel, there are roughly 7.3 million Palestinians and roughly 7.3 million Israeli Jews. There is rough equality between the two sides.
The question is, how does Israel think about dealing with Greater Israel where you have rough equality between these two populations? There are basically four options. One is you have a democratic Greater Israel. That’s not going to happen because it would no longer be a Jewish state. If you look at demographic patterns, the Palestinians are making more babies than the Israeli Jews, so that’s not happening. The second possibility is a two-state solution. Everybody loves to talk about a two-state solution. That is not happening, certainly after what happened on October 7th, but even before then. I’ll talk more about this. Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli elite have no interest in a two-state solution.
The third possibility is apartheid. Basically, what you now have is an apartheid state. We can go into this in detail in the Q&A if you want to do that, but if you look at Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem, which is the leading human rights group in Israel, all three of those organizations have produced lengthy reports that lay out why Israel is an apartheid state. The fourth option is ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing means getting rid of the Palestinians, for the most part, who live in Gaza and the West Bank, and creating a Greater Israel that is completely dominated by Israeli Jews and has very few, if any, Palestinians in its midst.
Again, the four options are: number one, democratic Greater Israel; number two, two-state solution—those two are off the table; number three, apartheid, which is basically what you have now; and number four, ethnic cleansing, where you get rid of the Palestinians.
Now let’s switch gears a bit and talk about what the situation looked like before October 7th and focus mainly on Gaza. Before October 7th, the Palestinians in Gaza basically lived in a giant open-air prison. What happened was that in 2005, when Ariel Sharon was the Prime Minister of Israel, he decided to pull the settlers out of Gaza. As you know, there are settlers in the West Bank. Up until 2005, there were Israeli settlers in Gaza, and Sharon pulled them out. He pulled them out because Gaza was a hornet’s nest, and having settlers there was a nightmare. They had their hands full on the West Bank and wanted to focus on the West Bank. They pulled all the settlers out, and Gaza became an open-air prison.
Up until October 7th, it looked like Netanyahu and company were able to manage the situation inside of Gaza. Nobody thought what happened on October 7th was going to happen. This is why the Israelis got caught with their pants down—they thought they were managing the situation very well. What was going on there is that Netanyahu was actually very happy with the fact that Hamas was running Gaza. This is hard to believe today, but it is true. He was making sure that Hamas was being funded and doing reasonably well. Now, why is that the case? Because Netanyahu is adamantly opposed to a two-state solution, and Mahmoud Abbas, who runs the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, is in favor of a two-state solution. From Netanyahu’s point of view, Abbas is a threat because he wants a two-state solution. Netanyahu has supported Hamas because everyone knows Hamas does not want a two-state solution. He’s playing off Hamas against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. It looks like it worked. Every once in a while, every couple of years, the Israelis “mow the lawn,” which means they precipitate a conflict with the Palestinians, go in, kill hundreds if not thousands of Palestinians, destroy some buildings, and send a very clear message that they are in charge and want the Palestinians to understand that they have to remain in this open-air prison.
That’s the basic situation that existed. It looked like Netanyahu was managing the situation, and almost everybody thought that, which again is why they got caught with their pants down on October 7th. What happens on October 7th is that Hamas attacks into Israel and achieves a spectacular success. I think the evidence is that Hamas was surprised by how successful they were. Anyway, they eventually left Israel, and the Israelis consolidated the situation inside their borders. Then, they eventually went on the offensive against Hamas, and that offensive is now taking place.
Now, what we want to ask ourselves is, what exactly are Israel’s goals here? This is very important to understand. If you read the mainstream media in the West, including the US and Australia, people talk about Israel wanting to, number one, defeat Hamas, and here we’re talking about decisively defeating and eliminating Hamas. You can understand why that makes sense from Israel’s point of view. The second goal is to get the hostages back. As you all know, Hamas took about 240 hostages, and the Israelis obviously want to get those hostages back. So there are sort of two principal goals here: defeat Hamas decisively and get back the hostages.
Why are they starving the Palestinians? Why are they killing the Palestinians? Why are they making Gaza unlivable? It’s very simple—they want to drive them out.
What’s not discussed in the Western media is the real goal, and the real goal is to ethnically cleanse Gaza. The reason they want to ethnically cleanse Gaza is because, number one, that’s the way you get out of apartheid. You all understand Israel is an apartheid state, and the only way you get out of that situation is to cleanse. Furthermore, it’s the only way you defeat Hamas. I’ll talk more about this. It’s quite clear that the Israelis are not going to defeat Hamas, and I can’t believe they thought they would defeat Hamas before they went in there—they’re too smart for that. But if you cleanse Gaza and drive all the Palestinians out, you drive Hamas out. So you solve two of the principal problems you face with ethnic cleansing: you solve the apartheid problem, and you solve the Hamas problem.
Now, you’re probably saying to yourself, Israel wouldn’t do anything like this. Just a couple of points: First of all, to create the state of Israel to begin with, you had to do massive ethnic cleansing in 1948. In 1967, the Israelis cleansed huge portions of what is today Greater Israel. The idea that they wouldn’t do this—if you read all sorts of Israeli media, they talk about ethnic cleansing all the time. It makes perfect sense if you think about it. Final point I’d make to you is one of the criticisms—I’ll talk more about this—of what the Israelis and especially Benjamin Netanyahu are doing in Gaza is that they have not come up with a plan for what Gaza is going to look like after the shooting stops. In other words, what’s the political solution here once the shooting stops? Israeli military commanders, IDF military commanders, are constantly complaining these days that Netanyahu doesn’t give them any sense of what the final political settlement is going to look like so they can deal with Hamas and deal with the Palestinians with some thought in mind about what the endgame is here.
The reason there’s no endgame, the reason they’re not talking about how they’re going to administer a Palestinian-dominated Gaza, is because they want the Palestinians out. They want to ethnically cleanse Gaza. That brings us to the question, how do you do this? How do you get the Palestinians out? First of all, they definitely went after Hamas to start with—that was the purely military side of the story. They went after Hamas, but to make ethnic cleansing work, you have to, number one, kill significant numbers of Palestinians who are basically innocent, not Hamas. You have to kill large numbers of them and give them a powerful incentive by killing them to drive them out. Number two, you have to make the place unlivable, and that’s what they’re doing. They’re not just killing people; they’re making Gaza unlivable. I could go through this in detail in the Q&A if people want to hear the story, but it is, as many people say, especially the UN people who are there, the place is unlivable. The reason it’s unlivable is because they’re trying to cleanse Gaza. It’s very important to understand that. Finally, what they’re doing is starving the population. There’s all sorts of talk about famine in the northern part of Gaza. The United States is leaning heavily on the Israelis to let food and other kinds of aid in. The Israelis are resisting at every turn. Why are they starving the Palestinians? Why are they killing the Palestinians? Why are they making Gaza unlivable? It’s very simple—they want to drive them out.
So, that’s basically what’s been happening. In the beginning, there was all sorts of talk about genocide. I was on the record publicly saying this is not a genocide. But after December, I changed my mind on that. I think the Israelis are now engaged in genocide. What’s happened here is because they have been unable to get the Palestinians out, they’ve had to increase the amount of killing that they do. They’re continuing to push to get the Palestinians out of Gaza, and the way they do that is to just kill more and more people and make the situation in Gaza more and more unlivable. The situation is just getting worse and worse and worse, despite the fact that the United States and the West more generally are doing what they can to help feed the Palestinians.
So, the question is, where are we today? First of all, they have not defeated Hamas, and they’re not going to defeat Hamas. Kurt Campbell, who is the deputy secretary of state, basically said that yesterday. There are all sorts of stories in the Israeli press that they’re not going to defeat Hamas. They haven’t gotten the hostages back, and they have not been able to cleanse Gaza. Furthermore, they’re stuck in Gaza. They’re there—they got out in 2005, and they’re back there. This is not good. So, what you see here is that Israel is in real trouble in Gaza.
Now, in addition to the problem in Gaza, they have a huge problem with Hezbollah because Hezbollah, in the north, in support of Hamas, has been shelling northern Israel. There are somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 Israelis from the northern part of Israel who have had to move into the center of Israel on a temporary basis and can’t go home because Hezbollah is shelling northern Israel. Hezbollah has said that until this all ends in Gaza, they’re going to continue to fight the Israelis. This is a huge problem for the Israelis. So they not only have trouble with Hamas in Gaza, they have trouble with Hezbollah up on the northern border. By the way, the Houthis are actually now taking aim at the Israelis. The Houthis just recently landed their first missile inside of Israel—just one, but that’s a harbinger of things to come. You see how much trouble Israel is in. They have not achieved their objectives with regard to those two stated objectives and with regard to the ethnic cleansing.
As I said before, you always want to understand there are four options here. The first two are off the table, and that comes down to apartheid or ethnic cleansing. The Israelis understand full well what happened to South Africa—we’ve got to solve that problem. That’s why ethnic cleansing is so attractive, but they’ve been unable to ethnically cleanse so far. That’s the story about Gaza.
Let’s shift gears now and talk about Iran versus Israel versus the United States. Up until April 1st, the war between Israel and Iran, and even the United States and Iran, was a shadow war. It’s very important to understand that we did not want that shadow war to escalate. We did not want to see Iran and Israel get into a fight. Nor did the Iranians. The Iranians had no interest in escalation. The country that had an interest in escalation were the Israelis. The Israelis have had their gunsights on Iran for a long time, and they’ve been doing everything they can over time to pull us into a war against Iran, but we didn’t want a war.
What happens on April 1st, as I’m sure all of you remember, is that the Israelis hit the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria. This drives the Iranians up a tree. The Iranians make it clear that they’re going to retaliate against Israel. The United States is aghast. The United States is very angry at the Israelis for doing this and not telling them that it was coming. So the Israelis look like they’re going to get into a big conflict between Israel and the United States on one side and the Iranians on the other side. But the United States doesn’t want this, and Iran doesn’t want this.
So what happens? This is April 1st, the attack on the embassy. On April 14th, Iran retaliates against Israel. You all remember this. The question is, what happens between April 1st and April 14th, and then what happens on April 14th? It’s all very important to understand these details. The United States and Iran work together through intermediaries, because we don’t have direct relations, to make sure that the Iranian attack is limited, that we see it coming beforehand, and that the United States, the Israelis, and others are able to deal with the attack. Furthermore, we make it clear that we want the Iranians not to hit any populated areas and to basically go after one or two military targets. We and the Iranians agree that it will be a limited attack. We’re coordinating with the Iranians because, again, we don’t want escalation—we, meaning the Americans, nor do they.
When the Iranian attack comes, a hotline, an informal hotline, is set up between the United States and Iran via Oman because both the Iranians and the Americans want to keep this under control. It’s very important to understand that. The Iranians attack, and what happens there? The Americans are deeply involved in defending Israel. You all remember—everybody talked about how the Jordanians, the Saudis, the French, the British, the Americans, the Israelis, they were all involved in dealing with this attack. This is a real problem for Israel because Israel has always prided itself on being able to independently deal with an adversary that thinks about attacking it. Well, in this case, not only are we coordinating things with the Iranians to make sure this is limited and doesn’t spin out of control, but there is considerable evidence that roughly half of the missiles and drones that were shot down were shot down by the United States, not by Israel. Roughly half. We were deeply involved. We had naval ships that shot down Iranian ballistic missiles, and we were using fighter aircraft to shoot down cruise missiles and drones. The Israelis played a very important role in this, but it’s important to understand that we, the United States of America, were coordinating the effort. You see how deeply involved we were. We wanted to keep this under control. We wanted to make sure that the Iranian offensive against Israel was not successful.
That brings me to the final part of the story about April events involving Iran and Israel. The Israelis retaliate on April 19th. Remember, April 1st is when they hit the embassy in Damascus. April 14th is when Iran goes after Israel and does limited damage, hardly any damage. Then on April 19th, the Israelis retaliate. As you would expect, the Israelis wanted to unleash the dogs; they wanted a big counterattack on Iran. The United States did not want that for one second—we’re trying to put a cap on the volcano. So what the Israelis end up doing is basically taking out one radar in the Isfahan area of Iran, just one radar associated with an S-300 missile. It is a very, very limited response, and it’s limited because the United States demanded that it be limited. Furthermore, we went to great lengths to tell the Israelis they actually won a great victory on April 14th by stopping all those Iranian missiles and drones. So Israel accepted the fact that they won a great victory on April 14th. All they needed was just a small-scale attack where they went after one radar, and that was the end of the story. And, of course, that was the end of the story—this one went away, unlike Gaza, which continues to this day.
So, what I’m telling you is you have these two big conflicts: the one in Gaza, which I just described, and then the one involving Iran, Israel, and the United States between April 1st and April 19th.
Now, I want to talk about the consequences of this for Israel, the United States, and Iran. As I said, I believe that Israel is the big loser here. Now you’re saying to yourself, why is that the case? There are a number of reasons. First of all, the Israelis are back in Gaza. They got out in 2005. Ariel Sharon, as you all know, is no shrinking violet—he’s at least as tough an ombre as Benjamin Netanyahu. He pulled out because Gaza is a hornet’s nest. Well, the Israelis are back in Gaza, and they have no way of getting out at the moment, and they have no solution to the problem. They’ve made Gaza unlivable. What are they going to do? The Palestinians are not leaving. What are they going to do? They’re running the place—they’re in deep trouble.
The second reason the Israelis lose is you have to understand how the Israelis think about deterrence. This is a very smart way of thinking about deterrence. I’m not being critical of Israeli thinking here. What the Israelis believe is that their deterrence depends on escalation dominance. Escalation dominance means if somebody whacks me and I whack them back, I whack them back harder than they initially whacked me. In other words, as we go up the escalation ladder, I dominate. The best example of this is in the summer of 2006 when Hezbollah killed a few Israelis and kidnapped an Israeli. The Israelis massively retaliated, and Nasrallah, who is the head of Hezbollah, said, I think two months later, “If I had known what the Israelis were going to do in terms of retaliating, I would have never allowed the attack on July 12th, 2006.” That’s escalation dominance. It’s very important from Israel’s point of view. They have to make it clear to all their neighbors that if you whack us, we’ll whack you back harder.
It’s now very clear the Israelis no longer have escalation dominance vis-à-vis Iran or vis-à-vis Hezbollah. They cannot shut down the conflict with Hezbollah on their northern border. It’s really quite remarkable. The Israelis are hitting Hezbollah very hard, and Hezbollah is responding. Hezbollah has 150,000 rockets and missiles, and those numbers will only grow with the passage of time. So the Israelis are limited in what they can do. With regard to Iran, I described what happened on April 1st, April 14th, and April 19th. That is not escalation dominance. Furthermore, they needed the Americans.
If you look at what’s happening in Gaza, the Israelis could never conduct that operation in Gaza without American support—not even close. All sorts of Israeli generals say that in the Israeli press. They cannot by themselves produce the weaponry to conduct the operations they’re now conducting in Gaza. They need us. What I’m telling you about what happened on April 14th is they needed us. You hear all this talk about Iron Dome and their ability to shoot down missiles. They cannot do it alone. Iron Dome is not that formidable a defensive system. Furthermore, given cost-exchange ratios and the number of missiles that the Iranians and Hezbollah have, Iron Dome over the long term in a fight is just not very useful. From a deterrence point of view, the Israelis are in real trouble.
My first point is they’re in real trouble because they’re stuck in Gaza and they have no solution to the problem. Second, their deterrence has been badly weakened. Third, it’s very important to understand with the coming of all these missiles and the coming of drones, it’s now possible for actors like Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah, and Iran to develop the capability to hit Israel and cause enormous amounts of damage. Lots of people who live in Israel are not very comfortable with this situation. The idea that they are exposed to adversaries—and these are formidable adversaries. I don’t want to make light of the fact that groups like Hezbollah and Hamas would like to finish Israel off. They would. These are really tough ombres. What’s happened here is that with the passage of time, missile capabilities and drone capabilities have reached the point where it’s quite easy for actors like that to employ those weapons to create a real threat for Israel.
The fourth way in which Israel is in trouble is that it has effectively become a pariah state in ways that it never was in the past. If you look at what’s happening in the United States and all across the world on university campuses and college campuses, this is just evidence—whether you think what’s going on is right or wrong—that Israel’s reputation has been badly tarnished. If you think about the fact that South Africa took Israel before the International Court of Justice and the International Court of Justice found not that Israel is committing genocide—they didn’t find that, that is yet to be determined—but what the International Court of Justice did find is that there is sufficient evidence to think that Israel might be committing genocide. If you look at polls inside the United States, it’s truly remarkable how many people, especially Democrats, believe that Israel is engaged in genocide. There’s a recent poll that shows that 56% of all Democrats think that Israel is committing genocide. Think about that—56% of Americans think that Israel is committing genocide. There’s another poll that shows that 57% of Biden voters think Israel is committing genocide, 27% are not sure, and 15% do not believe Israel is committing genocide. This is quite remarkable. When I think about how I thought about Israel and virtually everybody I knew thought about Israel when I was a young boy and a young man, and how virtually everybody I know now thinks about Israel—a fundamental transformation has taken place. The idea that the Jewish state is being accused of genocide is really quite remarkable. This is a sign of big trouble. The use of the apartheid label is used increasingly, and this is not going to change because the situation in Gaza is not going to get any better. That was one of the points I’m trying to get through to you—there is no solution on the horizon here. If anybody asks me in the Q&A period what would I do to fix this problem, I can tell you the answer now—I have no idea. Let’s be very clear on this. Categorically depressing.
Anyway, I think that from Israel’s point of view, what’s happened to its reputation is disastrous, and I don’t think it’s going to get any better over time. So, these four reasons: number one, the fact that they’re stuck in Gaza once more; number two, the fact that their deterrence has been weakened because they don’t have escalation dominance; number three, the fact that they’re surrounded by adversaries who loathe them and would like to destroy them and who have increasing numbers of missiles and drones that can cause them lots of trouble, is bad news; and number four, the pariah state argument.
Now, let me conclude by talking briefly about the United States and Iran. The United States is also a big loser here. First of all, it’s in our interest to have peace in the Middle East. We’ve been fighting so many wars; the American public is just sick of all these wars. The last thing we want is more wars in the Middle East. A war against Iran—this is the last thing people want. We want peace. Furthermore, we need a peaceful Middle East so we can pivot to East Asia. From the American point of view, the most serious threat on the planet is China. The United States has to contain China. We have to pivot to Asia, but we can’t pivot to Asia because we’re pinned down in Ukraine, and now we’re pinned down in the Middle East. This is not good. We want to settle this one, to have a situation like the one that existed before October 7th. Remember Jake Sullivan said a few weeks before October 7th that we haven’t seen the Middle East this peaceful for a long time, and he was very happy about that. It made perfect sense from an American point of view, but that went away very quickly on October 7th.
So, we want peace. The second point is we also care greatly about having friendly relations with as many states in the Middle East as possible. Why is that the case? The Russians are already there, number one, and number two, the Chinese are beginning to move in. For all the older dogs in the audience, we all remember back in the day when the US and the Soviet Union competed in the Middle East. What you’re going to see moving forward is not just the United States and Russia competing in the Middle East, but also China. The Chinese are building a blue-water navy to project power into the Gulf. They depend heavily on oil, so they are doing everything they can to have good relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia. We are very worried about this. The United States doesn’t want bad relations with countries in the Middle East that drive them into the arms of the Chinese and the Russians. You see a lot of that happening.
By the way, you all know about the Abraham Accords. The Abraham Accords were where the United States was recently trying to get Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States all together in a sort of quasi-alliance. This has all gone by the boards now because of what’s happening in Gaza. This is not in our interest, it’s certainly not in Israel’s interest, and it’s certainly not in Saudi’s interest either. So you see the problem that we have here.
Just one other problem, and this applies to the Israelis as well, is the nuclear issue. You all understand Iran is a hop, skip, and a jump away from developing nuclear weapons. Because we, with pressure from the Israelis, pulled out of the JCPOA—the nuclear agreement that the Obama Administration crafted with Iran—the Iranians are now enriching uranium up to 60%. You have to enrich uranium up to 90% to have it capable of being turned into a bomb. It’s very easy to get from 60% to 90%. My guess is, just from reading the literature, that Iran could have enough fissile material for three bombs in about six weeks. That’s not a bomb, that’s just the fissile material. I think it would take probably about six months to build three bombs, and then they’d have to develop the delivery capability. So it’s not like they’re going to develop a bomb in a month or two’s time—that’s not going to happen. But they’re not that far away.
What happens when you bomb their embassy and then you get into a tit-for-tat fight with them on April 14th and April 19th is you give them an incentive to get nuclear weapons. You can see signs of that. You can see signs of the Iranians talking about getting nuclear weapons. So one of the principal problems that the Israelis and the Americans face as a result of what happened between April 1st and April 19th is we’ve incentivized the Iranians to get nuclear weapons. Not that they’ll go through with it, but we’ve given them powerful incentive to do that, and they have the capability because they can enrich uranium up to 90% and then produce bombs.
Just say a few words in conclusion about Iran. As I said before, I think Iran is the winner. I think America is the loser, and I think Israel is the biggest loser. But I think that the Iranians are the winners so far. This is not to say that they have really come out of this smelling like a rose, as my mother used to say—I don’t want to go that far. But on balance, I think they’ve done quite well for themselves.
First of all, they have been able, except for April 14th, to remain on the sidelines. They are using their proxies in the region, or they’re working with their proxies—that’s a better way to put it—to great effect. As you know, the Iranians are allied with Hamas, they’re allied with Hezbollah, they’re allied with the Houthis, and they’re allied with these militias inside of Iraq and Syria that have their gunsights not only on the United States but on Israel as well. They have been able to stay out of the fight yet see their proxies do very well in this conflict with both the United States and Israel.
Another point to keep in mind is that Iran now has very close relations with Russia and China as a result of all this. What we’re doing, what the United States is doing, is driving the Iranians, the Russians, the Chinese, and the North Koreans together. This makes it harder for us to isolate Iran. If Iran starts to go down the nuclear weapons road and we want to put pressure on them, it’s not clear the Chinese and the Russians are going to help us very much. We need the Chinese and the Russians to help us. But anyway, the Iranians feel like they’re in quite a good situation because the United States and the Israelis have not been able to do anything to really harm them.
In fact, Iran got away with whacking Israel. This is the first time that Iran has ever been able to launch missiles and drones from its own territory, hit Israel, and Israel barely retaliated. The Iranians are probably feeling good about that, as they should. The final point is the sanctions against Iran are not working the way they once were. They have weakened. If you look overall at what’s happened to the Iranians and what’s happening to the Americans and especially what’s happening to the Israelis, you see that the situation after October 7th is fundamentally different than the situation before.
Before October 7th, just in the case of the Israelis, it looked like they were in the catbird seat. They were managing very well, in their own opinion, the situation in Gaza. By the way, I want to be clear here—I thought they were doing an excellent job of managing the problem in Gaza. I thought they had things under control. I was shocked by what happened on October 7th. But once October 7th happened, and as we’ve watched these two conflicts play themselves out—one, the war in Gaza and how that’s linked to Hezbollah, and two, the Iran-Israel-United States exchange between April 1st and April 19th—it’s quite clear that the world has changed in ways that are not good for either Israel or the United States. Thank you.
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Tom Switzer: Welcome back to CIS, John. It’s great to have you back. Notwithstanding all those points you made about escalation dominance and the fact that the Israelis are now bogged down in Gaza, aren’t you overstating your point about Israel’s grim security outlook? After all, it’s not declared, but they do have nuclear weapons. As a foreign policy realist, you would surely concede that nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent to a foreign attack. So, are you being overly gloomy about Israel’s security outlook?
John Mearsheimer: I think there’s no question, as Tom points out, that nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent. I don’t think any country with nuclear weapons is going to disappear from the planet because another country attacks it. I think that no country would try to inflict a decisive defeat on Israel because of its nuclear weapons. But the problem is that Israel has an internal problem. Tom’s point about nuclear weapons applies if you’re talking about Iran hitting Israel. It’s an interstate problem. But Hamas is not another country. Hamas is inside Greater Israel. What Hamas is doing is executing a rebellion or an insurrection, and nuclear weapons don’t do anything for you in that regard.
To take this a step further, we’ve talked a little bit—just briefly—about South Africa and the fact that South Africa was an apartheid state. Basically, that state that existed, apartheid South Africa, disappeared. That state had nuclear weapons. South Africa had nuclear weapons. What’s happening inside your society, inside your body politic, matters enormously, and nuclear weapons can’t do much to protect you. You see what I’m saying? But I don’t want to take away from his basic point that nuclear weapons do provide deterrence against Iran getting nuclear weapons or…
Tom Switzer: Well, I mean, many scholars would still argue that the security outlook for Israel is not as grim as you point out, not just because of their access to nuclear weapons. Let me put this to you—this is Fareed Zakaria, a CNN host who’s also a columnist at the Washington Post. Admittedly, he said this before October 7th, but let me put this to you—this is what he says: “First, there is the disappearance of the Arab threat. From its first day in existence, Israel has faced the danger of extinction by Arab armies. This is the threat against which the Jewish state has planned, armed, and trained for most of its national life. Today, that threat is gone. Second, the armies from Israel’s main strategic adversaries—Iraq, Syria, Egypt—are in disarray, while the Israeli armed forces have become the region’s superpower, in a league ahead of the rest.” How would you respond to Fareed Zakaria?
John Mearsheimer: He’s right in the sense that those traditional adversaries have effectively disappeared. When I was young, the 1956 war took place, the 1967 war took place, the 1973 war took place. These were all conflicts that involved Israel up against Arab states. By the way, in 1948, when Israel got its independence on May 14th, 1948—yesterday was Israeli Independence Day, the 76th anniversary—there’s no question that the Israelis fought wars in 1948 against Arab states. That’s his point. But that’s not the threat anymore. There’s a whole new set of threats called Hamas, called Hezbollah, called the Houthis.
Tom Switzer: Aren’t we seeing a broader trend in the Middle East between the Iranian-backed proxies that you just mentioned—Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels—versus Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Gulf states? Isn’t that the broader issue, and doesn’t that, to the extent that it is true, help Israel because you’ve got a civil war essentially in the Muslim community in the Arab world?
John Mearsheimer: How does it help Israel solve the Gaza problem? Explain to me how that helps Israel solve the Gaza problem. While you’re at it, explain to me how it helps solve the missile problem that Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran present to Israel.
Tom Switzer: You like former President Jimmy Carter and the university. We got time for questions. I want to get through it. You’ve called tonight, uh, Israel an apartheid state. Um, you count Palestinians vote?
John Mearsheimer: Uh, it’s important to understand that there are basically three groups of Palestinians: Palestinians obviously in Gaza who we talked about tonight, the Palestinians in the West Bank, and then the Palestinians inside of what’s called Greenline Israel. That was the Israel that existed up until, uh, the 1967 war before they captured those two, uh, territories. When I say there are 7.3 million Palestinians in Greater Israel, that includes the Palestinians in all three of those areas. The only Palestinians who can vote are the Palestinians in, uh, Green Line Israel. The Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank cannot vote, right? So that’s one point.
The second point is the Palestinians in Israel do not have equal rights. There’s no question they can vote, right, but they don’t have equal rights. It’s why I always argue that Israel is not a liberal democracy. If you want to argue Israel is a democracy, right, you can make that argument. I would even fight with you there because of the West Bank and Gaza. But let me say, I’ll give you that, right, that it is a democracy. You can’t make the argument that Israel is a liberal democracy because the Palestinians don’t have equal rights inside Green Line Israel.
This is the principal reason, in my opinion, that Israel does not have a constitution. They’ve moved in that direction a couple of times, but they can’t go too far down that road because they don’t want equal rights. They want a Jewish State, not a state where Palestinians and Jews are equal in number and have equal rights.
Tom Switzer: Okay, but your critics, and they’re not just Jewish leaders, a lot of people in this room would say it’s a stretch to compare Israel today to the old racist South Africa of yesteryear. And this is the late Les Gelb, the former president of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations: “The US is helping to protect one of the few nations in the world that share American values and interests, a true democracy.” And this is Richard Cohen, a longtime columnist of the Washington Post: “The Israel of today and the South Africa of yesterday have almost nothing in common. In South Africa, the minority white population harshly ruled the majority black population. Nonwhites were denied civil rights and in 1958 they were even deprived of citizenship.” Cohen goes on to say, “In contrast, Israeli Arabs, about 1/5 of the country, have the same civil and political rights as do Israeli Jews. Arabs sit in the Knesset and serve in the military, although most are exempt from the draft.” And Cohen concludes, “Whatever this is, and it looks suspiciously like a liberal democracy, it cannot be apartheid.” Again, your response to the likes of Les Gelb and Richard?
John Mearsheimer: Just very quickly, they don’t have equal rights. This is the Palestinians who live inside Green Line Israel. They simply don’t have equal rights. Uh, and what about the Palestinians in Gaza and the Palestinians in the West Bank? This is all part of Greater Israel. But let me make a couple of points, uh, in addition to that.
First of all, whether Israel is an apartheid state is not based on any comparison with South Africa. You have to come up with what is a definition of apartheid and then you have to look at what’s happening inside of Israel and see whether it meets that definition, right? There’s no question that there are differences, and I’ll get to this in a second, between apartheid in South Africa and apartheid in Israel. But the question is, what are the general characteristics of an apartheid regime, and does Israel fit the bill? Now, as I told you before, if you have any doubts about this, there are huge reports written by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B’Tselem, which is the leading human rights group inside of Israel, laying out the case as to why Israel is an apartheid state. And I think those three reports make a very powerful case.
My final point to you is there are a number of South Africans who lived under apartheid in South Africa, including South African Jews and including Bishop Tutu, who make the argument that the apartheid system in Israel is worse than the apartheid system in South Africa.
Tom Switzer: Let’s turn to Rafah, the southern city in Gaza. Now, the Israeli leadership seems to believe that a full-scale ground military invasion of Rafah will finish the job of eliminating Hamas. You’ve said that that’s not realistic. Now, your critics would say that with its gleeful mutilations, its rampages, its rapes and beheadings, its baby killing on October 7th, Hamas needs crushing. And if Hamas keeps control of Rafah and the people it wins.
John Mearsheimer: The Israelis may believe that Hamas needs to be crushed. And you can understand, given what happened on October 7th, why they feel that way. They’re not going to crush Hamas. And if you read the newspapers carefully every day, you will see that Hamas has come back to life in Northern Gaza. And the Israelis have now sent military force into Northern Gaza to deal with Hamas. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal today have articles dealing with the fact that Hamas is almost impossible to defeat. They’re just not going to defeat them. This is why I said to you ethnic cleansing is so attractive to the Israelis. Ethnic cleansing solves the apartheid problem, which Tom was challenging me on a minute ago, and it solves the Hamas problem, which he’s challenging me on now.
Tom Switzer: Many Democratic legislators who have traditionally been very supportive of Israel have called on Netanyahu to be replaced. To what extent would things change in Gaza and the Israeli military operation in Gaza if Netanyahu is replaced, as many Democratic lawmakers and indeed Brett Stevens at the New York Times have called for Netanyahu to be removed? How would things change?
John Mearsheimer: Not at all. This is an argument that I hear in the United States, and it’s made by liberal American Jews, people like Tom Friedman at the New York Times, who believe that Netanyahu is an anomaly. And if we could only get rid of him and replace him with Thomas Jefferson or somebody like that, you know, Israel will live happily ever after. This is a foolish argument, right? It’s quite clear that Netanyahu and his war cabinet and most of the national security elite in Israel today agree with Israeli policy under Netanyahu. So it doesn’t change anything. It wouldn’t change anything. It would change hardly anything.
Tom Switzer: Now you say Israel has had Iran in its sights for a long time, but isn’t it true that Iran, Shia theocracy, has also had Israel in its sights for a long time? After all, many of their leaders have declared the eradication of Israel off the face of the map.
John Mearsheimer: Look, there’s no question that Iran considers Israel to be a mortal enemy and would like to do away with the Jewish State the same way Hezbollah would like to do away with the Jewish State. So there’s no question about that. And there’s no question that the Israelis hate the Iranians or hate Iran, and it’s a case of mutual hatred, mutual dislike, call it what you want. There’s no question about who is responsible for starting this. The implication of your question was that it is Iran that’s responsible, not Israel.
Tom Switzer: Well, say leaders that talk about eradicating Israel off the face of the Earth, it’s pretty provocative, isn’t it?
John Mearsheimer: I agree that that’s correct, but I’m just saying it’s not clear that they started it. You want to remember that Iran once had very good relations with Israel, once had very good relations with the United States, and that even in the 1990s, the Iranians were interested in improving relations with the United States. And one could make an argument that if you had gotten a two-state solution, that Iran would have reconciled itself to dealing with this problem.
So, you know, we haven’t talked much about the two-state solution in large part because I sort of took it off the table early on. But it’s very important to understand that every American president since Jimmy Carter has pushed hard on the two-state solution because we think the two-state solution, we meaning American elites, think the two-state solution is the only reasonable way to get out of this conundrum. What has to be done here is that the Palestinians have to be given self-determination. They need a sovereign state of their own. And this is what the two-state solution was designed to do.
And American leaders understood that if the Israelis did not agree to a two-state solution and you did not get a two-state solution, you were going to have trouble for as far as the eye can see. You all understand, maybe the younger people in the audience don’t, but what happened on October 7th is really not an anomaly. There was the first Intifada, then there was the second Intifada in the early 2000s. 1987 was the first Intifada, and 2000 was the second Intifada. And these were, you know, Palestinian insurrections.
Tom Switzer: But, John, you could get a two-state solution with the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, but Hamas has made it very clear, as you’ve acknowledged, that they don’t support a two-state solution.
John Mearsheimer: Absolutely, there’s no question about that. Just want to be very clear here. This gets back to my point that Netanyahu is playing divide and conquer, right? Netanyahu had quite good relations with Hamas before October 7th because Hamas doesn’t want a two-state solution, and Netanyahu doesn’t want a two-state solution. And from Netanyahu’s point of view, the real threat was Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. And you notice, by the way, that the Americans have been saying that what we need to do in Gaza is put the Palestinian Authority in control, get Hamas out of the way, and put the Palestinian Authority in control. Netanyahu has made it unequivocally clear this is not happening. And that’s because the Palestinian Authority has reconciled itself to a two-state solution, and that’s nightmare news for Netanyahu.
Tom Switzer: You say that Iran’s hand has been strengthened during this dispute, but let me put this to you: Iran is surrounded by hostile Sunni states across the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia is a fanatically anti-Shia and well-armed arch-enemy. In Iraq and Syria, at least until recently, you had Iran facing large Sunni insurgencies dedicated to slaughtering the Shia. Then there’s the internal unrest within Iran. A lot of younger people, a lot of younger Iranians, take a more liberal view about the world than their parents and certainly the Shia clerical regime. So, are you overlooking Iran’s real weaknesses and limitations?
John Mearsheimer: Well, he only gave me 50 minutes to talk. If he had, uh, been willing to fulfill my request to be able to talk for two hours, I would have qualified my argument somewhat. There’s absolutely no question that Iran has significant problems, but the thing you want to remember about Iran is that Iran is much more powerful than all of its neighbors. It has a very large population, and the human capital inside of Iran is very impressive, right? If you were to look at the potential balance of power between Iran and Saudi Arabia, if they were both able to mobilize all their resources, it’s a Bambi versus Godzilla situation.
That’s why the Saudis are so interested in the Abraham Accords. The Saudis want to jump into bed with the Israelis and the Americans because the Saudis understand that the Iranians have a lot of potential power. Whenever you want to measure the power of a country, the two things that you go to, number one, are population size, and number two is wealth. If you look at the Iranian situation, they are potentially a very powerful country, which is not to take away from your points about the problems that they face.
Tom Switzer: Okay, now it’s time for question time. Please, I’d encourage—oh good, I encourage you to try to keep your questions shorter than mine were, but also feel free to ask about not just the Middle East, but also Ukraine and China, about which John has spoken in great detail. First question.
Question 1: You’ve talked about how Israel is now stuck in Gaza. Do you see a similar trap for the US, or do they have a path forward and out of this?
John Mearsheimer: Well, the United States is not going into Gaza, right? I mean, we’re not putting forces in there, but we are joined at the hip with Israel. We have this special relationship, so that as long as Israel is bogged down in Gaza and having all sorts of problems both in terms of dealing with the Palestinians and dealing with the wider world, it has huge consequences for us. We end up vetoing Security Council resolutions that we don’t want to veto. It ends up poisoning our relations with the Egyptians and the Jordanians, so there are all sorts of spin-off consequences for us that are negative. And this is why the Biden administration, to its credit, is deeply committed to trying to figure out how to solve this one.
As I said before, we’d like Mahmoud Abbas to come in, take over, then we can get the rich Arab countries to pour money in, we can rebuild Gaza, and live happily ever after. That’s what we want to do because it is not in our interest to let this go on. But the problem we face is we can’t get the Israelis to go along with us. This is well-documented, and the end result is, you know, no end to trouble, certainly for the Israelis but even for us.
Tom Switzer: Next question. Yes sir.
Question 2: Thanks. John, Ian McIntyre. Since Australia’s security depends on the United States, do we have no option but to take sides in Gaza and Ukraine? Meaning Australia.
John Mearsheimer: I’m not sure what taking sides means. If you’re talking about Hamas versus Israel, that’s very different than talking about the Palestinians versus Israel, right? In other words, I know lots of people who loathe Hamas and hope Israel destroys it, who are very sympathetic to the Palestinians, who believe that Israel is committing genocide, right? So I would argue you can take the side of the Palestinians if you are, uh, an Australian, and you can make the argument that that’s in Israel’s interest, right? People who’ve argued for a two-state solution have long argued that’s in Israel’s interest. That’s the solution, that’s the argument. But if it’s a choice between Hamas and Israel, Australia, certainly the government and most people who operate in the foreign policy establishment, they have no choice but to side with Israel against Hamas.
Tom Switzer: Next question. John.
Question 3: Connor here. Your part of your proposition essentially is that there is no support in Israel for a two-state solution. Now, I know that there’s an organization, membership of which is confined to people who’ve been the rank of major or above in one of the four Israeli defense and intelligence institutions, that has consistently argued—I’ve not checked since October—but it’s consistently argued in favor of a two-state solution while recognizing it’s difficult. I really think that that is in fact a reflection of at least the views of a significant part of the Israeli intelligence and military establishment prior to October 7. Now, given that, and sufficient pressure from the US and otherwise and elsewhere, may require transfers of population from Gaza and the 500,000 settlers in the West Bank, Israeli settlers, but surely there must be to some degree you may be pushing on an open door in trying to arrive at that solution.
John Mearsheimer: With all due respect, I don’t agree with you on that. I think there are a handful of people in the Israeli establishment who are in favor of a two-state solution, but they’re small in number. The elites who…
Question 3: Sorry, that organization includes the heads of all of those four—previous heads of all of those four organizations. Various…
John Mearsheimer: It’s still a small number. I believe there’s no evidence. Furthermore, the Israelis are not going to agree to a two-state solution after what happened on October 7. You’re going to create a viable Palestinian state that has weapons of its own on your border? You’ve not defeated Hamas, you’ve just suffered this devastating defeat on October 7. It’s just not going to happen.
Tom Switzer: Next question.
Question 4: I’d like to just push on this two-state solution a bit further, and really, as you, as a realist—I mean, basically, you said that a Greater Israel, um, with the pal, you know, um, the West Bank and Gaza in it as, as a democratic state is, is, is, is off the table. I think everybody can understand that. I think that ethnic cleansing is off the table because it’s not going to happen. Um, nobody’s going to allow Israel to do that, and I’m not even sure that Israel wants to do that. So you are driven back to the two-state solution, and I’m, I’m sort of intrigued as a realist why you’re not embracing that. And, and, can I just push you on, can’t the United States really use its influence to create that solution coming out of this?
John Mearsheimer: Look, I hope that I’m wrong and the two-state solution is a viable alternative. The Israelis wake up and smell the coffee, and the Americans do what you described. You know, I’ve been wrong before, and if there’s an issue I’d like to be wrong on moving forward, this is the issue. So, in spirit, I’m with you, right? But I don’t think, as I said to the gentleman on your right, that there is much enthusiasm for a two-state solution before October 7 inside of Israel and certainly not now. Public opinion is against the two-state solution as well as elite opinion. Furthermore, with regard to the United States putting pressure on Israel, Steve Walt and I wrote this book on the Israel Lobby…
Tom Switzer: Steve Walt from Harvard University?
John Mearsheimer: Yeah, Steve Walt, who teaches at Harvard. He and I wrote the book on the Israel Lobby, and there’s no way any American government can put significant pressure on Israel.
Tom Switzer: Well, you say that, but the Reagan administration put pressure on Israel and Prime Minister Begin when they invaded Southern Lebanon. This is the New York Times, uh, I think this was just a few days ago. They quoted, this is a quote: “Mr. Reagan used the power of US arms several times to influence Israeli war policy, at different points including war planes, cluster munitions, to be delayed or withheld.” And of course, Joe Biden has recently withheld the support of three and a half thousand bombs to Israel. So, so much for the Israel Lobby.
John Mearsheimer: No, I mean, you could point to one or two instances, back in the distant past, where the United States put some pressure on Israel. And the Reagan administration in 1982…
Tom Switzer: With President Bush Sr. with the settlements…
John Mearsheimer: He failed. He failed. It went nowhere, right? No president has been able to put… I mean, Joe Biden is not going to put meaningful pressure on the lobby. Joe Biden—you understand, Joe Biden wants to win the election this coming November. And if Joe Biden gets tough on Israel, you’ll see what Brett—You’ll have Brett Stevens ask here, ask Brett Stevens. He wrote a big column. As soon as Joe Biden told Israel he was holding up these extra bombs that they really didn’t need anyway because they’ve got so many bombs, as soon as that happened, Brett Stevens had a column and all sorts of supporters of Israel told Joe Biden in no uncertain terms, “You want to remember you’re up for re-election, and we won’t forget.” And of course, the problem that Biden faces, as you all know, is that Arab Americans and many others are going to punish him.
Tom Switzer: Well, the running joke around Jerusalem is that having been strongly supportive of Netanyahu after October 7, Joe Biden is seriously invested in the two-state solution for Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Question 5: I have two questions, but I’ll make them very, very quick. Firstly, you said a couple of times that Israel is stuck in Gaza, they can’t get out. Can you be more specific about why they are stuck and why they can’t withdraw? And my second question: in all the decades that you have been following this conflict closely, where do you think Israel is currently? You said that reputationally and politically they’re losing, but specifically in regards to the information war, and their ability to put out disinformation. We’ve had beheaded babies and people being baked and widespread sexual violence. Do you think that this is different in terms of people’s willingness—the broader public or the greater West’s willingness—to believe everything that is being said?
John Mearsheimer: These are two great questions, as are all the other questions, for sure. But just on the first, the first question is, why are the Israelis—why am I saying the Israelis are stuck in Gaza? Well, they have said they’re not leaving Gaza, right? They’re going to stay there. And they understand that’s a choice. It is a choice, but they decided to stay. I mean, I said they’re stuck in Gaza, and I just said that’s because they decided to stay there. I mean, it may be a choice, you might not like the choice, but that’s the choice they made. And you want to remember they’ve not defeated Hamas, number one. And number two, there’s the question of who’s going to run the place, right? So they’re going to stay. How they do this remains to be seen—where they leave troops, where those troops are deployed, how those troops act—that remains to be seen. But they’re stuck.
Second question is a very interesting question. It was all about controlling the narrative. The Israelis controlled the narrative in really powerful ways up until the late 1980s. Then you had this group of historians in Israel called the New Historians, who were then young at the time, and they got access to the archives and they got access to the records on how Israel was created. And what they did is they exploded all the myths, or almost all the myths, about how Israel was created, and it really portrayed the Israelis in a negative light, okay? And that was the start of trouble. And I could tell you all sorts of stories about that, because people began to think differently about Israel than from the way we thought about it when I was young. There was a book by Leon Uris, it was called Exodus, and everybody read it, and it was a movie. Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint starred in it, and it portrayed the Israelis in a very positive light and the Arabs in a very negative light.
Once the New Historians came along, all sorts of people, mainly at the elite level, began to think differently about the creation of Israel and Israel’s behavior. Then what happens is you get social media and you get the internet. And Israel has huge influence in influencing what The Wall Street Journal, what The New York Times, what The Washington Post says. But TikTok is a nightmare for Israel. It’s an utter nightmare. There’s this famous conversation that you can get on the internet of Jonathan Greenblatt, who is the head of the Anti-Defamation League, the ADL—he’s Abe Foxman’s successor. He’s on the phone talking to somebody, and there’s a video of it, and he’s talking about TikTok, and it’s just a disaster for Israel. People see what’s happening, and the Israelis—this is really quite remarkable—the Israelis are filming themselves doing absolutely horrible things to the Palestinians and then putting it on the internet. It’s just hard to believe.
And furthermore, just on the whole genocide story, if you want to make the case that Israel is guilty of genocide, you have to do two things. You have to provide evidence of intent, number one, and you have to provide evidence that Israel’s actions are consistent with the intent. Now, with regard to intent, the Israeli leaders across the board, including Benjamin Netanyahu after October 7, said all sorts of things that, in my opinion, demonstrated genocidal intent.
Tom Switzer: This was documented in the South African case.
John Mearsheimer: Yes, documented in the South African case. And by the way, there was a piece in Haaretz, which is like the New York Times of Israel.
Tom Switzer: A left-leaning Israeli publication?
John Mearsheimer: Yeah, liberal—American liberal. But anyway, there was a piece in Haaretz, and the headline of the piece in Haaretz said, “The Road to The Hague.” This is the International Court of Justice decision on whether there’s potentially genocide. The Haaretz piece said, “The Road to The Hague is paved with public comments by Israeli leaders,” which is exactly right. You just sort of say to yourself, are they really saying these things? And then again, you have all these videos. I was talking to my daughter one day, who’s not very political at all. She’s in her 40s, and she was talking about watching what the Israelis are doing to children on TikTok, and she said, “I can’t watch TikTok. I just can’t watch these videos anymore. They’re so horrible.” This is a disaster for Israel. It’s a public relations disaster.
Tom Switzer: John, we’ve been very happy to welcome students from year 12, so their last year at high school, from Ravenswood College, which is a prestigious school in Sydney. We’ve got some students here. We’ve got one school teacher, I think, who wants to ask a question, and then we’ll also ask one of the students to ask a question, if that’s possible.
John Mearsheimer: Sure.
Question 6: Yeah, thanks for the talk. You mentioned the winners and losers, referring to the US, Iran, and Israel in this war. But I’m wondering, I’d like to hear what you feel will be the impact on the 7.4 million Palestinians, the other party to the war, in the long run. Obviously, they’re suffering at the moment. But my real question is really about the one-state solution. You said the options are a one-state solution, two-state solution, continued apartheid, or ethnic cleansing. And for those of us that believe that ethnic cleansing and apartheid are not acceptable and that want to see the maintenance of international law, that leaves us with the one-state or two-state. And I think many experts are saying the two-state is not possible given the patchwork of illegal settlements. So what would have to change in the future to bring about a one-state solution?
John Mearsheimer: You know, as I said—did everybody hear the question? I don’t have a good answer to that. I mean, as I said to these two gentlemen on my left, I hope that I’m wrong and they’re right about the possibility of a two-state solution. I think they’re wrong. And as I made clear, I don’t think there’s any way you’re going to get a one-state solution. And I kind of don’t fully understand where this train is headed. I think Israel is in deep trouble. I think the Israelis will continue to push at ethnic cleansing. I think that’s what you’re going to see. I think for the reasons I tried to elaborate here, that from their point of view seems to be the best solution. I don’t think they can get away with it. I’m not 100% sure. I hope they can’t get away with it. But where this all ends, you know, it gets back to the brief discussion I was having with Tom when Tom said, “Oh, Israel has a nuclear weapon, it’s not going anywhere.” And you want to remember that South Africa had a nuclear weapon, as I reminded Tom, and apartheid South Africa disappeared. The sort of long-term future of Israel is in question for a lot of reasons, many of which I have not touched on tonight for time-related reasons. But you want to understand that immediately after October 7, 500,000 Israelis left the country.
Tom Switzer: 500,000 Israelis left Israel after October 7?
John Mearsheimer: Yeah, wow. And it’s just—you know, I was talking to somebody who is in the Polish foreign policy establishment the other day, and he was telling me you’d be amazed at how many Israelis are applying for Polish citizenship, so they can have a Polish passport. And the same is true with other European countries. So you don’t—I don’t want to get into the centrifugal forces that are at play inside of Israel because it’s too late in the evening, but this is a country that just has lots of problems. And where this all goes, I don’t know.
Tom Switzer: Not least the demographic challenges. Now, do we have a question from one of the students at Ravenswood?
Question 7: Hello. I’m a year 12 student at Ravenswood School for Girls. The question that I want to ask is, essentially looking at the US election, how do you think the conflict in the Middle East and the impact of non-state actors will influence the result in the upcoming US election, which you touched on earlier in your talk?
John Mearsheimer: Thank you. I’m jealous of all you students. You’re so young. It’s depressing to think how old I am. Yeah, it’s a very interesting question. What happens if Trump gets elected? First of all, I think in terms of the Middle East and in terms of East Asia, it will have little effect. The interesting question is whether it will matter in Europe with regard to NATO and with regard to Putin. As we all know from the last time around with Trump, he really wanted to throw NATO down the toilet bowl. He has no use for NATO. He thinks the European allies are freeloaders, and he’d like to get rid of them. And he likes Putin. This is not surprising, and he really wanted to have good relations with Putin. He lost on both counts. The blob or the Deep State, whatever you want to call it, beat him back. He is now determined, if he wins, to not let that happen again.
And he is, number one, going to bring in a whole group of seasoned individuals who served with him in the first term who share his view of the world. He didn’t have those people available in 2017 when he moved into the White House in January 2017. He now feels, and I think it’s correct, that he can bring in a team of individuals, and they collectively can beat back the Deep State, number one. And number two, at the Heritage Foundation, they’re coming up with a plan for what to do once they move back into the White House in 2025. So they’re going to have the people, they’re going to have the plan or the grand strategy, and then the question is, can they make it work?
Again, my initial point to you is I think that where they will try to change things in a fundamental way is in Europe. And the question you have to ask yourself is, do you think that Trump, even with all of the preparation that’s now in train, can beat the Deep State? I’m a structuralist, as some of you know. The students clearly know this. I believe that structure really matters and it limits how much agency someone like Trump has. So I’m betting on the Deep State with regard to NATO and with regard to Europe. And I think whether Trump or Biden wins, it won’t matter that much on the foreign policy front. I think the die is cast here, certainly in East Asia, and I think the die is cast in the Middle East. I mean, what’s Trump going to do differently?
Tom Switzer: Well, the Republican Party is clearly more pro-Israel than the Democratic Party. Correct?
John Mearsheimer: Yeah, but even there, because of my point to Tony about the lobby, the Democratic Party is filled with people, especially among the younger Democrats, who are, I think it’s fair to say, hostile to Israel at this point in time. But the elite, the Democratic Party elites, the people who run the country, they’re no different than the Republicans, right? It’s Tweedledee and Tweedledum. And Joe Biden will be the Democrat if the Democrats win, and it’ll be Donald Trump if the Republicans win. And I just don’t think you’re going to get much difference there.
Tom Switzer: Unfortunately, we are running out of time, but I just want to conclude and make a few remarks about CIS. Two of our favorite quotes—you’ve heard me say this before. First, from John Stuart Mill, the famous English liberal thinker of the 19th century. He famously said, “He who knows only his own position knows little of that.” And what that meant was, as my friend and mentor and former CIS senior fellow Owen Harries used to put it—and this is very relevant for the students in the room—take particular care to understand the position of your adversary and to understand it not in a caricatured or superficial form, but at its strongest. For until you have rebutted it at its strongest, you have not rebutted it at all. This is a necessary condition for both developing your own position fully and attacking your opponents successfully.
That’s the first quote. Our other favorite quote at CIS is from the great 20th-century public intellectual Walter Lippmann, also a foreign policy realist. He said, “When we all think alike, no one thinks very much.” Now, I think tonight we heard a strikingly different view from the one you’ll hear in The Australian, the Financial Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Telegraph. I only mention these papers because these are papers that you and I read regularly. And I think it’s fair to say that on behalf of our colleagues and board members here at CIS, John, we’re very grateful for you being here, putting forward the counterargument. You’ll hear from Bret Stephens in a month’s time. Please join me in thanking John Mearsheimer.
[Applause]
