{"id":57735,"date":"2026-02-25T07:04:42","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T15:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=57735"},"modified":"2026-02-25T07:04:42","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T15:04:42","slug":"john-mearsheimer-asks-whats-the-least-bad-alternative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/25\/john-mearsheimer-asks-whats-the-least-bad-alternative\/","title":{"rendered":"John Mearsheimer asks: What&#8217;s the Least Bad Alternative?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Reprinted from <a href=\"https:\/\/mearsheimer.substack.com\/p\/whats-the-least-bad-alternative\">John&#8217;s Substack<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On 22 February 2026, I was on \u201cSwitzerland\u201d talking with Tom Switzer about the possibility of President Trump attacking Iran. We had a fascinating discussion about whether the US has a viable military option. Although we reached no conclusion on whether or not Trump would turn the US military loose on Iran, we did agree that he has no good option on Iran and is choosing among two bad alternatives. Surely the least bad option is not to attack<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rqtA7kvHRBY?si=-pl7NHa55Fak5Oyi\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reprinted from John&#8217;s Substack: On 22 February 2026, I was on \u201cSwitzerland\u201d talking with Tom Switzer about the possibility of President Trump attacking Iran. We had a fascinating discussion about whether the US has a viable military option. Although we reached no conclusion on whether or not Trump would turn the US military loose on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":308,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1054],"class_list":["post-57735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/308"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57738,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57735\/revisions\/57738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57735"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=57735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}