“It Is Indeed the Very Essence of Imperialist States to Be Predatory”

— My first question is about Iran and this never-ending war, with a new US–Israeli military operation that could happen very soon. What is your view of the current stage of this war?

— I would start by commenting on what you called a never-ending war. It is indeed the very essence of imperialist states to be predatory, and never-ending wars have been a key feature of what used to be called the Cold War, as well as of the new Cold War that started at the turn of the century.

A central feature of cold wars is the permanent war economy, in the sense of a high level of expenditure on war, maintaining a permanent readiness for war. Look at the United States, but also at Russia, at France, at Britain: these are states permanently engaged in some form of war – low intensity or high intensity, drones and remote warfare or big offensives here or there – in the Global South and, since 1990, in Europe too.

Of all imperialist states, the one that has been most engaged in imperialist wars is, to be sure, the United States. It is followed, I would say, by Russia, in the rhythm and number of its interventions. Since the turn of the century in Russia’s case, and over a much longer period in the case of the United States, these countries have been permanently at war somewhere, at low or high intensity, engaged in deploying and projecting their power.

The onslaught on Iran is not finished at the time we are speaking. There are a lot of reports about a next round, expected to be launched after the US midterm elections. According to press reports, Netanyahu tried to convince Trump to resume the offensive in early October. That would have suited Netanyahu electorally, and he might have thought it would be good for Trump too. But Trump did not see it that way. As popular as the war against Iran is in Israel, it is not popular in the United States.

Trump, however, is very annoyed with his failure in this war so far, and it is highly likely that he will go on the offensive again. Hence the ongoing consultations with the Israelis: Trump’s aptly self-renamed “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth was recently in Israel to talk to the military there. They are preparing a renewed onslaught and Washington has sent additional troops to the Gulf, indicating that a new round would involve a substantial escalation that would target much more civilian infrastructure, in particular, than they have destroyed until now.

Yet, what will happen is going to be affected by the outcome of the midterms. If Trump loses both houses of Congress, he will be in a much more difficult situation. The situation will also depend on the Iranian side. The rulers in Tehran have been quite intransigent, convinced that they have had the advantage until now. But if they see that Trump and the Israelis are serious about a new offensive, this might push them back toward compromise. In that case Trump would take it, even though Netanyahu wouldn’t be happy.

For, although the United States and Israel strike together, they don’t have the same goals. Israel very much wishes the collapse of the Iranian state, the largest state in the region that is both strong and hostile to the Zionist state. The nuclear dimension is a further reason why Israel is obsessed by Iran, starting with Netanyahu himself. But not only him: the Israeli Zionist opposition outbids him on Iran. They are no less bellicose than him on this issue.

As for Trump, for the United States, a chaotic collapse of the Iranian state would not be a good thing at all, because it would destabilize the entire region. It is a highly strategic part of the world for the United States, primarily because of oil as a factor of power, which gives whoever controls it an important leverage over allies in Europe and East Asia as well as over the major foe that China is. All these countries depend to various degree on Middle Eastern oil. 

Oil money is also very important, of course. We are speaking of trillions of US dollars in the hands of the sovereign funds of the Gulf Arab monarchies, and of hundreds of billions of dollars of annual income. These monarchies are major clients of the US military-industrial complex. They put most of their money in the United States, from funding the federal budget through the purchase of Treasury bonds to various placements and investments. They now have huge business entanglement with Big Tech, with the establishment of big artificial intelligence data centers in the Gulf region being planned.

It is therefore a huge package of interests. If you add up all the pieces I mentioned, you can see how absurd the idea is, that Israel is responsible for US wars in the Gulf region. It’s like pretending that the tail is wagging the dog. Israel is a major military asset for the United States precisely because of its strategic value as a military ally in the Gulf. If the United States didn’t have such strategic interests there, it would have little interest in Israel.

Israel’s value for the United States dates from the moment the United States started losing ground to Arab nationalism in the region, in the 1960s. Before that, the United States was not supporting Israel, it was not arming it. This changed, especially after the defeat inflicted by Israel in 1967 to the region’s two most leftwing nationalist regimes in Egypt end Syria. Add to this that Israel can strike very efficiently, as it showed in 1967, without the legal and congressional constraints that may hamper Washington.

The United States is certainly not in the Gulf for Israel; it established its presence there long before Israel was born. They do have convergent interests, but each side has its own specific interests. Those of the United States belong to the most classical imperialist type, translating periodically in typical imperialist wars.

Since 1990, with the Soviet Union’s paralysis and then collapse, we saw the first massive US intervention in the Gulf, after decades during which the United States had been forced out of the region. It had built a major base in the Saudi kingdom after the Second World War but was compelled to evacuate it in the early 1960s. Washington’s first massive comeback to the region happened in 1990, in preparation for the 1991 onslaught on Iraq, which was the most important war that the United States had waged since its withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. This was followed by years of embargo and intermittent bombing of Iraq, until the invasion of the country in 2003.

Since then, the United States has waged several wars in the Middle East and North Africa: in Libya, in Iraq again and in Syria against ISIS, not to mention the broader region all the way to Afghanistan. This shows how central this part of the world is to US imperialist strategy. And any belief, à la Mearsheimer and Walt, that these wars are waged for the sake of Israel is but an attempt to confuse matters and prevent consciousness of what imperialism is.

— That is a very important explanation, especially your argument against the idea of an all-powerful Israel lobby in the US. But speaking of shifts in US domestic politics, we see the erosion of the hegemonic idea that the commitment to Israel is important for the United States. It is a very serious process, affecting not just Democratic voters but Republican voters as well. There is a move toward very harsh anti-Israel rhetoric from people like Tucker Carlson and many other influential conservative voices.

— And the antisemitic right, yes.

— Yes. Do you think this could change the general line of American imperialist interests in the Middle East? And not only in the US: there is a general shift in the perception of Israel…

— I wrote a piece on this in the latest print issue of Jacobin, entitled “Reasons of Empire”, which was republished on the website under a different title. It is a critique of Mearsheimer and Walt and the explanation by the Israel lobby of US involvement in the Gulf region. I describe what I call the “blame it on Israel” stratagem as basically aiming at obscuring the reality of US imperialism. It’s no surprise that this would come from conservatives like Mearsheimer, or from very right-wing people like Tucker Carlson.

There is a historical isolationist trend in the US far right. For many years it was represented by Pat Buchanan. These people are not anti-imperialist, or even antiwar, but they resent US engagement in wars abroad because they believe the United States basically doesn’t need the rest of the world: it has plenty of advantages and should not get involved.

What such people are unable to understand is that the driving force of US imperialism is big US capital, and big US capital has major interests abroad. Of all the countries in the world, the United States is the one that exploits the rest of the world more than any other. It is well known economically that the United States lives beyond its own means at the expense of the rest of the world. So, you see how naive, and in a sense how self-infatuated, the far-right isolationist view is.

Now, the “blame it on Israel” idea becomes popular each time an intervention turns into a fiasco, a disaster. No one said that Israel was the culprit in 1991, when Bush Sr. destroyed Iraq. That was clearly very much in Israel’s interest, but no one said, “Ah, this is due to the Israel lobby.” When did they start saying that? The Mearsheimer–Walt controversy begins with an article published in 2006. By then, the 2003 invasion of Iraq had already turned into chaos. It had clearly become a failure, and then you heard: “Israel is responsible.”

No one mentioned the Israel lobby during the wars in Libya, or against ISIS, or for the intensive bombing in Iraq and Syria after 2014. And now this issue comes back again. Why? Because it appears that the war on Iran is failing, and only when it appeared to be failing. It is a kind of ideological device used, consciously or unconsciously, in confronting the failures of US imperialism. It serves to obscure US imperialist reality and to blame the failure of the empire on a subordinate ally of it. Some people who would label themselves as left also subscribe to these views, out of a belief that it is helpful in inciting people against Israel. But this is quite short-sighted.

— So, would you agree that it is important for the left to separate the question of Israel’s actions in Gaza, from its role in the war on Iran? 

— First of all, it is important to emphasize that the United States is co-responsible for the genocide in Gaza. We must be very clear about that. In my 2025 book on Gaza, I described the genocidal war there as the first joint US–Israeli war, the first time that the United States is fully part of an Israeli war. Not with soldiers or planes, because Israel has more than enough of those against Gaza, which is not Iran, but only a tiny territory of little over two million people.

Without US air and sea bridges delivering bombs around the clock — 2,000-pound and 1,000-pound bombs, that is, one-ton and half-ton bombs — the genocide would not have been possible at such a scale. It was mostly perpetrated thanks to this continuous delivery of some of the deadliest conventional bombs, which Israel doesn’t produce. The Biden administration fully endorsed the Zionist genocidal war and took part in it, hence fully sharing its responsibility. Since the International Court of Justice is examining Israel’s role, it should also examine the responsibility of the United States in this same war.

Regarding Iran, it is not a reverse situation in which Israel is supporting a US war that is not crucial for its interests; it is indeed a full convergence of interests. Israel has its own very strong incentives for that war, its own reasons to be hostile to Iran, which it regards as its main enemy. For the United States, Iran is a major problem because it is an enemy of US interests in the Gulf region, the foremost regional troublemaker.

And this is even more the case for Trump than it was for Biden. Biden loved Israel; he kept saying, “I’m a proud Zionist.” Trump never makes such statements. I have no doubt that, for Trump, the Gulf Arab monarchies are much more important than Israel. That’s where his real interests are, even personal and family business interests: Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have billions of dollars of ventures with the Gulf monarchies. They do a lot of business with them. They have much, much more money there than with Israel. 

This was very clearly illustrated in the ongoing war on Iran. At the beginning, the United States used Israel because the latter had intelligence and capabilities that the United States doesn’t have. The Israelis were instrumental in decapitating the Iranian regime: the war began this year, on February 28, 2026, with the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, along with several top regime leaders.

Soon afterwards, however, a clear divergence appeared between Netanyahu and the Trump administration. The latter went into negotiation with the Iranian regime and even accepted a deal in Islamabad that the Israelis considered disastrous, a substantial victory for Iran. They were extremely upset. And the Trump administration completely ceased even consulting or informing Netanyahu about what it was doing. This is a further illustration that the idea that Israel is steering the US empire doesn’t hold water.

Trump made it very clear from the beginning that, unlike George W. Bush, he was not in the business of regime change, and especially not in the business of bringing democracy anywhere. He is sabotaging democracy in the United States and is certainly not going to bring democracy to another country. He doesn’t pretend that at all. Previous US presidents used to claim that the United States is the beacon of democracy and human rights. Trump has no such pretense at all. He doesn’t give a damn about democracy and human rights; he himself violates them every day.

So, he was very clear that he was not seeking regime change in Iran. He doesn’t want the regime there to collapse. What he wants is to force it, as it stands, to comply with US interests. His model for that is Venezuela. He presided over the Venezuela operation, which he saw as very successful. He just got Maduro removed, and the entire regime fell into full compliance with US interests.

Being very illusioned and believing so much in his ability to achieve successes — with a huge lot of wishful thinking — he thought he could repeat the same with Iran. But he confronted the bitter reality that, instead of achieving this goal, he only managed to reinforce the Iranian regime’s hardliners. That’s where he got into trouble. He then offered a compromise, a very enticing one indeed, but the hardliners defeated it. They insisted, in particular, on keeping control of the Strait of Hormuz.

So now Trump is facing a real dilemma. Either escalation, which is what his Pentagon is actively preparing. Or a return to compromise, in case the Iranian regime changes its attitude. A third option would basically be an acknowledgement of defeat, but that is quite difficult for someone like Trump to admit defeat. That’s why the odds are very much in favor of an escalation, depending in part on the midterms’ outcome.

— My next question is closely related, because right before this election Trump tried to redirect public attention to a new attempt at peace talks on Ukraine, even though nothing at all has changed in Putin’s position. It remains absolutely the same as it was a year or two ago: Ukraine’s full capitulation is basically the precondition for any further negotiations. Despite this, Trump said, okay, let’s restart the process. And one of the very few new details is an attempt to include China in these negotiations, with the idea of it joining a meeting with Trump and Putin to resolve the Ukrainian crisis. What do you think of this new attempt?

— My initial impression is that the latest shift in Trump’s position is very much related to the economic conditions in the run-up to the election. That’s how most US media and commentators interpreted it: he is trying to bring down the price of diesel, they said. But if that’s indeed Trump’s goal, it is rather ineffective and certainly won’t achieve anything in time for the midterms.

So, what is Trump actually trying to do? We hear of big commercial projects between Russia and Trump Inc., Witkoff, Kushner and the rest of the bunch, who have formed a conglomerate of interests. Basically, it is no secret that Trump doesn’t give a damn about Ukraine. Had he not been somewhat constrained politically in the United States, he would have dropped it long ago. But he tried turning it into a source of profit by forcing the Europeans to pay for whatever the United States delivers to Ukraine. Under Biden, Washington was delivering aid, and Ukraine was costing US federal expenditure. Trump ended that, and now arming Ukraine primarily benefits the US military-industrial complex.

With his war on Iran, Trump came under pressure from that angle. The ability to deliver some sort of missiles to Ukraine has been reduced, because the United States itself is now relatively short of them and needs them for its war on Iran. Trump thus finds himself in a position where he can no longer sell the same quantities of weapons to the Europeans for Ukraine. I think this is part of the picture too.

Russia-related economic interests are not new for Trump: he has been exploring them with Putin for a long time. And Putin understands very well how much these guys can be bought. He has therefore been hinting at big opportunities, joint deals, highlighting that Russia is a very big country, representing a huge potential interest, that US capital would be welcome in joint ventures and so on. At some point Ukraine tried to buy Trump in the same way, by offering contracts on its mineral resources. But compared to Russia’s, Ukraine’s are much smaller. These, I believe, are key issues driving Trump’s policies. I don’t think that he has any political strategy beyond such crude interests.

As for China, Trump probably wants it to help in putting pressure on Putin to bring him to soften his position, because, despite everything Trump has tried until now, Putin has remained intransigent. China can surely help convince Putin to give more. At the very beginning of the war in 2022 — and this was very much obscured in the Western media — Beijing proclaimed its attachment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, which was a very strong statement. But Biden did not want to hear it. He completely sidelined the Chinese. He could have done something with China through the United Nations, as Beijing wished, but he preferred steering the conflict to the benefit of US hegemony over Europe and of NATO.

Trump would very much like to end this war, I believe. The Europeans would also like the war to end, but not at any cost unlike Trump, because they fear the consequences of a bad ending for Ukraine.

— We see growing Russian pressure on Europe to stop supporting Ukraine, which now includes acts of hybrid warfare on the territory of the European Union, in Germany and elsewhere. And we see Russian backing for political forces such as the AfD in Germany or Marine Le Pen in France, who are now openly endorsed by Russian media, if you follow the general line of Russian propaganda. At the same time, there is a rise of social protest, mainly in France but spreading to other European countries. Could you give a brief overview of this very complex situation, in which external pressure combines with internal political and social dynamics in the European Union, and especially in France?

— The strong cultural, ideological and political affinities between Putinism and the European far right — the global far right, but now we are speaking more specifically of Europe — are well known. Marine Le Pen, very much the AfD in Germany, Matteo Salvini in Italy, who used to wear a T-shirt with Putin’s face on it, Hungary’s Orban and others are all Putin admirers.

They also think like Trump, who basically believes that it is normal for big states to have a sphere of influence. In the same way that Trump proclaimed what has been dubbed the “Donroe Doctrine” — going back to the nineteenth-century Monroe Doctrine and proclaiming the Western Hemisphere to be the preserve of US hegemony — he would find it normal for Russia to exert hegemony over Ukraine, Belarus and a few other nearby countries. That’s not a problem for Trump, precisely because he doesn’t see Russia as a global peer competitor.

He was very anti-Chinese because he saw China as a huge competitor of the United States, economically above all, whereas Russia, economically, is no match for the United States. Russia is too weak in comparison with its huge size. It’s on the GDP level of countries such as Japan and Germany, even in purchasing power parity. Russia thus remains far behind the United States and China, or even India in that regard. Trump thus tends to look at Russia much more as a potential market than as a competitor. He is mostly interested in Russia’s big potential market and resources.

The European far right share the imperialist ambitions of their own states in countries such as France or Germany, but they would prefer an agreement with Russian imperialism over support for Ukraine, which they regard as part of Russia’s legitimate sphere of influence. This is even more so since that support is economically costly for Europe and therefore decreasingly popular. Hence, it is easy for the far right to exploit this issue.

Today, with all the ongoing social troubles, the cost of support to Ukraine comes more pressing to the fore. Its popularity is dwindling because of the big pressure on budgets. The huge increase in military expenditure under the pretext of countering Russia contradicts the need for social expenditure that the social protests are emphasizing. 

And of course, the Putin regime’s hybrid war, as it is now called, is not new, as we know. It did not start with the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Putin has been supporting the European far right and building links with the global far right for decades now, especially since his own far-right turn in the second decade of this century.

All this puts the Ukrainians in a difficult position. But the most decisive factor, of course, will be the US attitude. The European governments, even the so-called centrist or liberal ones, will not fight for Ukraine without the United States on board. Otherwise, they would need to shift to a much higher degree of war economy, which they are not in a position to achieve for social and political reasons — not for Ukraine, to be sure.

If France or Germany were attacked, these countries would react, of course. But for the French citizen or the German citizen, Ukraine represents an external burden: an economic burden, and, for the Germans particularly, a migration burden. So, if the United States were no longer on board, these countries would hardly carry on supporting Ukraine, and the Ukrainian government would be compelled to yield to the pressure. Trump is presently trying to sweeten the pill, to get Putin to soften his position, to accept some degree of compromise. But again, none of this is happening for pacifist reasons.

— It would be good to end on a more optimistic note. So, my last question is about the potential of this new social protest in Europe: the growing popularity of the radical left in France, and some limited successes of Die Linke in Germany. What do you think about it? And what should the position of the European left be toward these serious threats to European security? Because it’s not just about Ukraine. You can say that the ordinary German or French citizen doesn’t care much about Ukraine, but what about the Baltic states? What about Poland? In his last address at the Valdai Club, Putin suggested that perhaps the whole of Eastern Europe should be repartitioned according to the standards of some new security architecture in Europe. The radical left definitely needs a clear perspective on this, rather than just dismissing what is happening in Ukraine as some inter-imperialist affair that has nothing to do with the interests of ordinary people in their countries.

— We can certainly understand that countries close to Russia’s borders, countries that were oppressed by Russia in Soviet times — treated as satellites of the Soviet Union, or part of the Soviet Union itself in which Moscow was fully dominant — have different feelings toward Ukraine and Russia than the Western Europeans whom we mentioned. That is easy to understand.

With one correction, though. Leave aside the Russian-speaking people in the Baltic states or elsewhere, or in Eastern Ukraine. I’m speaking now of East Germans, of people in the former Czechoslovakia, in Hungary, Serbia or Bulgaria. Even in such countries that are part of Eastern Europe, there are many people with ideological affinities with Putin. Therefore, the idea that the whole of Eastern Europe is anti-Russian is but a Western European geopolitical perception; it is not accurate. Politically, reality is more varied. But, let me repeat that I can very well understand the fears among Russia’s neighbors. They are justified.

What is happening today confirms, however, what those who opposed the continuation of NATO, not to mention its enlargement, were saying: that NATO is no way forward for peace and security. Instead of really pushing for international guarantees and a framework encompassing everyone, like the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, along with the United Nations, those fearing Russian expansionism in the former Soviet sphere of influence relied on NATO. And you clearly see the problem today, with the United States shifting its attitude, putting in trouble those same Eastern Europeans who fear Russia. They are very anxious now.

As for the rise of sections of the left in Europe on the backdrop of increasing social unrest, they are on the whole forces reflecting this reluctance toward increased military expenditure in the name of fighting Russia over Ukraine. Take the French radical left, La France insoumise, which is the largest radical-left force in Europe today. Take the left in Spain, Italy, Die Linke in Germany. All of these have much softer attitudes toward Russia and much more reserved attitudes on support for Ukraine than the classical right, or even the social-democratic left. The radical left has an antiwar impulse and would be very supportive of some compromise ending the war in Ukraine. That’s indeed why I have advocated from the very beginning in February 2022 a combination of support for Ukraine’s right to self-defense and support for a peaceful democratic settlement of the war through the United Nations.

Today, the most promising rise of the left anywhere is in the United States: the rise of the left within the Democratic Party, the role DSA are playing. It is the most promising development because it is happening in a situation where the far right, the MAGA current, is already in power, and the left is fighting back achieving successes. There is still a very long way to go, of course, but this is very important.

In France, unfortunately, the rise of the radical left is offset by a larger rise of the far right. In next year’s presidential election, the likelihood of a victory of Marine Le Pen is much higher, according to present polls, than that of the left. She would largely beat Mélenchon if she faced him in the second round of the election according to present polls; she would get close to two-thirds of the vote. This is very worrying indeed.

That’s why I said that the most promising political development is what is occurring in the United States. Not that the left will take power there anytime soon, but a defeat of Trump would mean much more than the defeat of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán or Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić, for example. Even much more than Lula’s victory against Flavio Bolsonaro in Brazil. A resolute defeat of Trump would have a much bigger negative impact on the global far right and the European far right. And, of course, a downfall of Putin’s regime in Russia itself would be a hugely positive factor in world history, although it doesn’t loom on the horizon at present, unfortunately. Ultimately, however, I would describe the ongoing global radicalization of the present youth, Gen Z, as the most promising development in today’s world, the most important fightback against neoliberalism ever since it began unfolding globally in the 1980s.

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