John Mearsheimer tells Tucker why Israel lobby also pushed Ukraine-Russia war

(LifeSiteNews) — In an interview aired Wednesday evening, University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer, a leading realist scholar of international relations, offered a candid explanation for why many of the same influential voices driving confrontation with Iran have also championed deep U.S. entanglement in the Ukraine-Russia conflict.

Mearsheimer identified two key drivers, placing special emphasis on the power of the Israel lobby and its preference for a globally engaged American military.

“The influence of Israel on the American foreign policy establishment cannot be underestimated, in large part because of the lobby,” Mearsheimer told Tucker Carlson.

Israel and its supporters, he argued, have a “deep-seated interest in making sure that the United States is militarily involved all over the world because they want an American military that’s at the ready if Israel gets into trouble.”

Mearsheimer illustrated this point by referencing a recent New York Times article published last weekend revealing heightened Israeli espionage against senior U.S. officials.

According to the report, the Pentagon has elevated Israel to the “critical” counterintelligence threat level—the highest category. Israeli intelligence has reportedly focused on figures such as Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy involved in Iran negotiations, and Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy official, along with his senior aide Michael P. DiMino.

Carlson pressed the implications: “So they’re allowed to just spy on American citizens, but then continue to receive our tax dollars in order to fund spying on us?” Mearsheimer replied that this has historically been the case, despite the special relationship between the two nations’ governments.

Israel targets ‘restrainers’ in Trump administration

The best-selling author highlighted why Israel takes particular interest in Colby. “The Times actually said at the end of the piece, it’s probably because he’s a restrainer. He’s interested in a restrained foreign policy. Colby does not want to be fighting wars everywhere. He once told me that he was opposed to the Iraq war back in 2003.”

“[Colby] wants to concentrate on containing China, but he’s not interested in fighting in Ukraine. He’s a restrainer,” the scholar affirmed. “And of course, the Israelis do not like restrainers. They do not like the Quincy Institute.”

Mearsheimer continued: “Whenever you talk about restraint, like the Quincy Institute in Washington talks about restraint, this raises the hackles of the lobby.”

A powerful U.S. military constantly honed through overseas engagements serves Israeli interests as a reliable “fire department” for potential emergencies. “You want a big fire department that is fighting wars and is honed to win those wars, and this is in Israel’s interest,” he said.

A secondary factor, Mearsheimer noted, involves ethnic and familial connections. “You have lots of Americans, Jews and non-Jews, who have roots in Ukraine. And those people believe strongly that Ukraine should be a sovereign state and that the Russians are the bad guys.” He pointed to a forthcoming book by journalist Stephen Kinzer that details how Eastern European ethnic roots inside the foreign policy establishment shape hawkish attitudes and policies regardless of their lacking legitimate American interests.

READ: ‘Monumental provocation’: How US and international policy-makers deliberately baited Putin to war

Israeli spying on the U.S. is nothing new. Real story is that Trump officials are pushing back.

Israeli intelligence operations against the United States are hardly a revelation. As former CIA analyst Larry Johnson noted, “Israel has been spying on the United States for 70 years,” citing the Jonathan Pollard case as a prime example.

READ: Convicted spy Jonathan Pollard says Israel will target Turkey, Egypt next

For decades, U.S. counterintelligence briefings have listed Israel among the top threats alongside China, according to the personal experience of former State Department official Matt Hoh.

Incidents like the 2019 discovery of Israeli-linked StingRay-style devices near the White House and Boris Johnson’s well-founded suspicion that Benjamin Netanyahu himself planted a listening device in the British prime minister’s private bathroom illustrate a long pattern of brazen espionage against “allies” on the part of Israel.

Indeed, the New York Times report referenced above confirmed other episodes: in 2021, Israeli military intelligence officers were caught planting listening devices at Defense Intelligence Agency headquarters; and last year, Shin Bet officers allegedly tried to plant a device in a Secret Service emergency response vehicle.

Yet the real significance of the Times article lies not in the spying itself, but in the U.S. response. Larry Johnson observed that leaks enabling the story came from within the Trump administration — “at least at the Department of War” — signaling an internal effort to “break the Zionist grip” on foreign policy.

Sachs: Premise Israelis ‘run our politics is coming unhinged’

In a Monday interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano, Professor Jeffrey Sachs emphasized this same point: the article was “clearly a planted story by the U.S. government,” naming targets like Colby and others close to Trump. The news, Sachs argued, is that senior officials are now publicly acknowledging and pushing back against Israel’s illegal activity, which is actual “news.”

“In other words, the whole Israeli premise that they run our politics is coming unhinged” due to shifting political dynamics, Sachs proposed. This is the case primarily due to Israel’s atrocities in the genocidal war against Gaza, ongoing ethnic cleansing in Lebanon and the West Bank, along with their central role steering the U.S. into its ongoing very unpopular war with Iran.

Due to these many factors, “the American people have swung strongly against Israel, and that’s true of just about every country of the world,” Sachs said. “That’s what’s changing our politics right now.”

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