John Kerry blasted President Donald Trump’s decision to wage war with Iran on Thursday, calling the current two-week ceasefire “remarkably loosey-goosey” and warning that extending the conflict could shake global economies. Speaking on GBH’s Boston Public Radio, Kerry said the stakes were far bigger than the White House was acknowledging. “It’s shocking, honestly,” he said.
Kerry said the war had already changed conditions in the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point at the eastern end of the Persian Gulf that carries about 20% of the world’s oil. He said the route was effectively under Iran’s control after the fighting began, even though a ceasefire announced Monday was supposed to reopen it to tankers. Initial reporting after Tuesday’s ceasefire suggested few if any oil ships had actually passed through. “Shuddering to think about” was how Kerry described the threat to global economies if the war drags on.
The former secretary of state tied the conflict to years of failed diplomacy. Kerry, who was the lead U.S. negotiator of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had previously pushed the same war plan to Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama and that both refused. In Kerry’s telling, Trump’s decision is now handing Netanyahu what he had sought for years. “In this case, you have a war that is essentially fulfilling the long-held dream of Prime Minister Netanyahu to do as much damage to Iran as he is permitted to,” Kerry said.
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Kerry rejected the White House line that Iran posed an immediate danger before the attacks in June 2025, when Trump said the United States had “obliterated their nuclear program.” He said an imminent threat would have meant Iran could move in “one or two days, three days, a week, whatever” — maybe a month — not at some distant point. “No, there was not an imminent threat,” he said, adding that “there isn’t a notion possible to conjure up by which they could have made a nuclear weapon at this point in time.”
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He also turned his criticism on the administration’s tone, saying Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s language was “childish” and that the White House was operating with a “strategic gap” greater than any he saw in public life. “I think there is a strategic gap her that is more significant than any I saw under any presidency while I was in public life,” he said. For Kerry, the next step is plain: negotiations to end the war are essential, because the longer the conflict runs, the more it risks spilling beyond Iran and Israel into markets and governments far from the battlefield.
