By John J. Mearsheimer
John's Substack
July 15, 2026
On 10 July 2026, I was on the "Deep Dive" with Lt. Col. (ret.) Danny Davis, where we talked mainly about Iran, although we did discuss Ukraine in the last part of the show. On Iran, we talked about the tit-for-tat bombing campaign between Iran and the US that has replaced the failed strategic bombing campaign (28 February-8 April 2026) and the failed naval blockade (13 April-17 June 2026). Now, the Trump administration thinks it can employ a tit-for-tat strategy to coerce the Iranians into allowing commercial ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz without Iran's permission.
Tehran categorically rejects this idea and maintains that any ship going through the Strait has to do so with Tehran's explicit permission. There is no way that Iran is going to back down from this position and the US has no viable military strategy for getting Iran's leaders to change their minds. Indeed, the Iranians have just closed the Strait completely, which is bad news for the Trump administration.
Of course, the US will be tempted to escalate the scope of its tit-for-tat strategy. But that will only backfire, because Iran benefits from going up the escalation ladder. This logic explains why the US signed the Memorandum of Understanding - a surrender document - on 17 June 2026. It had lost the war. Nothing has changed since then to reverse that outcome.
This article was originally published on John's Substack.