{"id":58232,"date":"2026-03-18T16:42:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T00:42:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=58232"},"modified":"2026-03-18T16:42:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T00:42:17","slug":"john-mearsheimer-on-israel-its-lobby-and-the-iran-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/18\/john-mearsheimer-on-israel-its-lobby-and-the-iran-war\/","title":{"rendered":"John Mearsheimer on Israel, Its Lobby, and the Iran War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Reprinted from <a href=\"https:\/\/mearsheimer.substack.com\/p\/israel-its-lobby-and-the-iran-war\">John&#8217;s Substack<\/a>:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On 17 March 2026, I was on \u201cJudging Freedom\u201d talking with the Judge about Iran and related matters.<\/p>\n<p>Today is the 20th anniversary \u2014 to the day \u2014 of the publication on the internet of \u201cThe Israel Lobby\u201d in <em>The London Review of Books. <\/em>Naturally, the Judge and I talked about the article and book that Steve Walt and I wrote, focusing on the role that the lobby plays today \u2014 as opposed to back in 2006 \u2014 in shaping the discourse about Israel as well as US policy toward Israel.<\/p>\n<p>I emphasized that the lobby\u2019s role in shaping policy remains as strong as ever, but that it has lost control of the discourse. It is now widely believed in the US \u2014 and all around the planet for that matter \u2014 that the US was dragged into the Iran war by Israeli PM Netanyahu and the lobby.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly after the show ended, news came out that Joe Kent, the Director of the Trump Administration\u2019s National Counterterrorism Center had just resigned, and said in his letter of resignation that \u201cI cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.\u201d Of course, that was the line of argument the Judge and I were discussing just beforehand on his show.<\/p>\n<p>The Judge and I also talked about state of the war and the apparent lack of a way the US can either end the war or win it.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7pVG88TilV8?si=NXaOBIbeih3dxtKR\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reprinted from John&#8217;s Substack:\u00a0 On 17 March 2026, I was on \u201cJudging Freedom\u201d talking with the Judge about Iran and related matters. Today is the 20th anniversary \u2014 to the day \u2014 of the publication on the internet of \u201cThe Israel Lobby\u201d in The London Review of Books. Naturally, the Judge and I talked about [&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-58232","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\/58232","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=58232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58235,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58232\/revisions\/58235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58232"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=58232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}