How Washington and Tel Aviv are driving the world toward war: Jeffrey Sachs

A professor at Columbia University and former adviser to the United Nations, Sachs is known for his work on global development, international economics, and geopolitical strategy. Over the past decade, he has also emerged as a vocal critic of US foreign policy and military interventions.

Speaking to India Today, CGTN and CNBC-TV18, Sachs argues that the war is neither spontaneous nor defensive but the culmination of decades of geopolitical strategy, miscalculation, and power politics—one that risks plunging the world into a wider crisis.

"Everything that is being said is a lie." 

Professor Jeffrey Sachs' interview with India Today on 4 March 2026

This is a premeditated strike that has its roots in 30 years of Israeli pressure. This was nothing about an imminent threat. This was in the middle of negotiations that were proceeding to re-establish an agreement that the United States had ripped up in 2018 regarding Iran's nuclear programme.

Everything that is being said is a lie. Not surprisingly, the United States government lies for a living, but there was no imminent threat whatsoever. Iran was under a decree of its supreme leader that Israel and the United States murdered that prevented a nuclear weapon in any event on religious grounds. But more than that, Iran did not want a nuclear weapon.

It had agreed in 2015 to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to put Iran under strict UN supervision. Iran abided by the agreement. The United States and Israel destroyed the agreement. This is a plan for US control over the Middle East and for Israeli hegemony militarily in the Middle East. It's nothing other than that. This is a very dangerous situation   that could become another World War II.

Benjamin Netanyahu said that this is the culmination of 40 years of his dream. That's what I've been saying for years: that Israel is prodding the United States into open war because Israel wants hegemony in the Middle East.

The United States wants global hegemony. So that's what the partnership is about. The idea that the United States can sustain this forever is also a fantasy. Everybody is saying whatever they want to say, but Donald Trump, unfortunately, is a deep and chronic liar and very dangerous because the combination of Trump and Netanyahu has set the fuse for World War III.

(The pro-war faction) There's not a deep disconnect among  those groups. They are in confusion because they lie and they don't have their narrative straight. But the  disconnect is between our military security state, which runs the United States, and the American people. That's the disconnect. There is overwhelming opposition in the United States by the  people to this action.

Roughly 3/4 of the American people are against it; one  quarter are for it. They don't have a story because they're lying all the time. When you have gangsters that are making things up, they cannot   coordinate their stories properly. But basically, this is a long premeditated war. It took a lot to get all of this military power into the region. Israel has been trying to provoke this war for decades. 

I don't think American society will  accept boots on the ground. I don't  believe it. Uh because Donald Trump is a deeply unpopular person who came into office promising  exactly the opposite. The American people see through these lies. This is a war of choice chosen by Trump and Netanyahu.

The Americans do not want  boots on the ground, and I don't think it  will happen, frankly. So what will happen depends on this underlying military situation. Do the US and Israel have the interceptors? Do they have the interceptors to protect the region? Will Iran run out first? Will the bombing by the United States and Israel on Iran stop Iran's retaliation? These are military questions in the next weeks that will determine the situation.

Trump operates on a basis of retribution or punishment. This is the second  time within one year that the United States said it was negotiating and then, in the midst of negotiations, bombed the counterpart. It also killed the  counterparts of Hamas when it was  negotiating with Hamas.

This is actually  a tactic, a very transparent one. Enter  negotiations with us, and then we will kill   you. This is not even contested. What does this say about a rules-based order or the lack of it in the world? Today it's these countries. Tomorrow it could be any country in the  world. The only rules-based order we have is the United Nations Charter. We can decide to live with it or not live with it.

If we live with it, then we have to recognise that what the United States government is doing is blatantly illegal because under Article 2, Paragraph 4 of the UN Charter, it says that no state may use the threat of force or force  against another sovereign state. This is  very straightforward. That's the  principle on which the entire  rules-based order is found.

The United States does not accept that principle. The United States is the world's empire.  It believes that the strong do what they  can and the weak suffer what they must. A line of western history that goes back to the ancient wars in Greece. And that is the American view. 

"US and Israel underestimated Iran" 

Professor Jeffrey Sachs' interview with China Global Television Network on 14 March 2026

Iran tried to negotiate twice. Both times it  was bombed by Israel and the United States. Iran is under an absolutely brutal attack. It's under carpet-bombing. The US and Israel are destroying   infrastructure. They murdered this man's father and the leaders of the Iranian government. They are killing thousands  of people. So exactly what is to be  negotiated? This is a brutal war of   aggression by Israel and the United  States, and Iran is responding.

And it's not surprising that they are responding. They're under threat of conquest. Basically, that was what Trump said: that  he would pick the new leader that Israel  and the United States would run Iran. Well, the Iranian people have a different view. Clearly, they're showing  up by the millions to say that they don't want to be run by the United  States and Israel.

I see a scenario where the US can declare victory. Trump does. But is there a way to achieve real victory by the United States? No. This is a  disaster for the United States. It is a  disaster for the whole world. The US and  Israel have thrown the entire world into turmoil. Perhaps into World War II. This was a brazen, violent, ill-thought-out move by these two countries, and now we're all suffering   the consequences of this.  

The United States is at war in many places. It is at war in the Western  Hemisphere. It invaded Venezuela. It's talking openly about invading Cuba, which it's currently blockading. Trump just met with Latin American leaders and talked about other military operations in the Western Hemisphere.

Trump has threatened to invade  Greenland. The United States is still heavily engaged in war with Russia in  Ukraine. We have war spreading through the Middle East. Israel is invading more countries. We have the war between Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

The way it's going, uh, this year will be an economic catastrophe if this continues, and it looks like it will continue. And history has shown, especially in the 1970s when there were two such oil supply disruptions, that the consequences for the world economy are extremely severe, sharp, and   relatively rapid in arriving. So, I think we're in for a very, very significant global crisis brought to you by Israel and the United States.  

The United States during my entire lifetime, which is getting on, has underestimated its adversaries from Vietnam onwards. The United States repeatedly has declared victory in days or weeks only to find that the wars extended years or decades, with the  United States crawling back home afterwards, having failed in all of its stated objectives and having squandered trillions of dollars and cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

So this is very common. Yes, they completely misjudged Iran entirely. They said that this would be one decapitation strike that people would come out on the streets against the regime for. Trump would pick the new leader. This is the fantasy world of   American leaders, especially Trump, who  has the most delusional perspective of all.

More than 1500 Iranians have been killed in the conflict so far. That also includes 168 school children who were killed in perhaps the most egregious of those attacks when their school was attacked in the south of the country. We look at South Lebanon, where the Israelis have been bombing the Lebanese there.

Two hundred children have been killed there. Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza. It's doing the same in Lebanon now. And it's doing the same with its carpet bombing of Tehran in Iran. And the world needs to stand up and stop accepting this as something even remotely normal or acceptable. Israel needs to go home and live within its own borders and get its head together again because it's acting in a completely insane way. This needs to stop. This is mass murder with US complicity. So this is something that absolutely needs to stop.

"US has no strategy; Trump is delusional." 

Professor Jeffrey Sachs' interview with CNBC-TV18 on 6 March 2026

This war fulfils Benjamin Netanyahu's dream of 40 years to overthrow Iran. Netanyahu's objective is to permanently  eliminate any state of Palestine  and to bring down any governments in  West Asia that support Palestine. And he has led wars across Africa and the Middle East for this objective since 1996, including in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and now his dream, Iran.

In my view, this is a malevolent, absolutely illegal, and dangerous mindset. Rather than having a state of Palestine alongside a state of Israel, which would bring peace to the world, Netanyahu is a maximalist who wants Israel to dominate the region of the Middle East.

The United States has shared Israel's objective because the US objective is world control, believe it or not. And Israel serves the purpose of control of the Middle East. So, the United   States wants control of West Asia. It wants control of the Americas. It wants control of Europe. And Trump, in particular, wants to control the entire world oil economy.

That's why he has commandeered Venezuela's oil and why he is attacking Iran as a threat to American dominance in the Middle East. So this is a project that goes a long  way back. It has nothing to do with  Iran's nuclear weapons because there are no nuclear weapons.

The religious leader of Iran said that this was  against Shia Islam, and so the US and Israel killed him. Iran and the UN had negotiated a complete inspection regime for Iran back in 2015. But Netanyahu and Trump ripped up that agreement in 2018, the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.  

The US has no strategy. Trump, we know from all experience, is delusional. He's psychologically unstable. He can't keep agreements. He does not have a long-term strategy. Look at how he dealt with the tariff issue when he had no legal authority to do this. He operates by bullying and by grand pronouncements that have no justification. You have no right to ruin the  whole world economy.    

There is a need for peace. There is a need for the rule of law. There is a need for the end of this aggression.

There's a need for Israel to live within its own borders, which are the borders of 4 June 1967, and to let the Palestinians live within their borders. So, there's a need for a completely   different approach. The United States will not put boots on the ground because the American people are completely against what is happening right now.

Trump will lose the midterm elections. He is unpopular, and his approval ratings are falling, and they will continue to plummet. He lied to the  American people. He lied to his base. He lied about the tariffs. He lied about the economy.

So, his approval is very low and falling. He will lose. I hope   that the ballots are honestly counted. If they are, there will be an outcome that will control what right now is executive rule, not constitutional rule.