{"id":59242,"date":"2026-05-07T10:53:44","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T18:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=59242"},"modified":"2026-05-07T10:53:44","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T18:53:44","slug":"john-mearsheimer-on-the-iranian-merry-go-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2026\/05\/07\/john-mearsheimer-on-the-iranian-merry-go-round\/","title":{"rendered":"John Mearsheimer on The Iranian Merry Go Round"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Reprinted from <a href=\"https:\/\/mearsheimer.substack.com\/p\/the-iranian-merry-go-round\">John&#8217;s Substack<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On 5 May 2026, I was on \u201cJudging Freedom\u201d talking with the Judge about the latest developments in the Iran war. We focused mainly on \u201cProject Freedom,\u201d President Trump\u2019s plan that he announced on 3 May 2026 to effectively open the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping. The US set that plan in motion on the following day, 4 May 2026, which led to Iran and the US shooting at each other\u2019s boats and ships and a few commercial vessels as well. Most importantly, Iran struck the UAE port of Fujairah, which sits outside the Persian Gulf and allows the UAE to ship a substantial portion of its oil abroad. One day later (5 May 2026), the president halted \u201cProject Freedom,\u201d which was clearly a failure, as the Strait was not opened. We are now back to talking about different proposals for ending the war, coupled with occasional threats from Trump officials to go back to bombing Iran if it does not accept US demands. There is no evidence \u2014 at least in the public record \u2014 that any kind of meaningful deal is in sight.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2wz_OEAaQOo?si=yAtWwzbwaMl_3LgQ\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reprinted from John&#8217;s Substack: On 5 May 2026, I was on \u201cJudging Freedom\u201d talking with the Judge about the latest developments in the Iran war. We focused mainly on \u201cProject Freedom,\u201d President Trump\u2019s plan that he announced on 3 May 2026 to effectively open the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping. The US set that [&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-59242","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\/59242","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=59242"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59251,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59242\/revisions\/59251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59242"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=59242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}