The Iran Breakdown with Mark Dubowitz

The United States has launched a fresh wave of strikes against Iran, hitting roughly 90 targets along the country's coastline, as tensions over the Strait of Hormuz threaten to unravel a fragile ceasefire between Washington and Tehran. With diplomatic channels strained and the regime holding Hormuz hostage, the path back to de-escalation looks increasingly uncertain. To unpack what comes next,...

The Israel-Lebanon framework brokered by Secretary Rubio may be historic, but Hezbollah still hasn't disarmed. The deal ties Israeli withdrawal to the Lebanese army securing designated pilot zones — yet Hezbollah and its parliamentary allies have already rejected it outright. Meanwhile, the U.S.-Iran MOU threatens to undercut the whole effort, handing Tehran leverage over Israel's right to...

The 60-day MOU between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States may dominate headlines, but for 90 million Iranians it changes nothing. The agreement contains no mention of the Iranian people — who only months ago faced a brutal massacre by the regime of an estimated 40,000 protesters. Deal or no deal, the Iranian people face water shortages, power outages, staggering inflation, frozen e...

President Trump has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran, opening a 60-day window to negotiate a final deal. The debate is fierce: does the US-Iran MOU go far enough? Iran's nuclear program, ballistic missiles, regional proxies, and frozen assets all remain unresolved — leaving critical questions about what any final agreement may actually deliver. Robert Greenway — military ve...

The clock is ticking on the Islamic Republic — but what does finishing the job actually look like? With the regime battered, broken, and the pressure campaign at a critical inflection point, the U.S. faces a defining choice: double down or negotiate from strength? What tools remain in Washington's arsenal, and how does the Trump administration turn military and economic pressure into lasting p...

The Islamic Republic played one of the few cards it had left: the Strait of Hormuz. How did military planners prepare for this moment? Was a closure inevitable? If the U.S. and Israel had not confronted the Islamic Republic, where would we be today? And is Hormuz a diminishing weapon of leverage in the hands of Iran as countries take steps to reduce their dependencies on the straits? Mark Dubowitz...

Every Iranian revolution begins with an ordinary life hitting an extraordinary wall. Stolen Revolution captures those moments — the personal reckonings with a regime that promised faith and delivered suffocation. Co-authored by award-winning journalists Yeganeh Torbati and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, the book traces six Iranians living the full arc of modern Iranian history: a Khomeini devotee cast fro...

A deal has been struck. The Strait of Hormuz is reopening. Iran's nuclear program is — allegedly — being curtailed. And sanctions relief is on the way. But what did the United States actually get? What did the Islamic Republic walk away with? And does this agreement close the door on Iran's path to a nuclear weapon — or just delay it? Richard Goldberg — FDD's Senior Director for Energy...

Is the U.S.-Iran ceasefire built to last? While the bombs have stopped, the strategic Battle for Hormuz continues to threaten global stability. In this episode of The Iran Breakdown, FDD CEO Mark Dubowitz is joined by Aaron MacLean — CBS News national security analyst and host of the School of War podcast — to assess the military, strategic, and geopolitical stakes of the Iran war. Is the ceasefir...

In this special solo episode of The Iran Breakdown, FDD CEO Mark Dubowitz pushes back hard on the narrative that America is losing the war with the Islamic Republic. Step by step, he makes the case that Tehran has just suffered the most severe strategic defeat in its 47-year history — its leadership decapitated, its nuclear program gutted, its air defenses shattered, its proxies in ruins, and its...

Riyadh is pressing Washington with a blunt message: don't leave the job half-finished. Saudi Arabia publicly condemned the strikes — and privately urged Trump to launch them. Now MBS faces the question he's long telegraphed: if Iran gets a bomb, the Kingdom follows. With IAEA inspectors locked out, is that still a signal — or active policy? Bernard Haykel, Princeton's foremost scholar...

No tanks. No invasion. No march on Tehran. Instead: a methodical campaign to dismantle Iran’s war machine — missiles, drones, command networks, and the economy keeping it all alive. But can you break a regime by breaking the system that sustains it? Urban warfare expert John Spencer joins Mark Dubowitz to unpack the real logic of this war — from the “neurological” battlefield to the fight over Hor...

Iran isn’t just under pressure. It’s under siege. Its currency is collapsing. Its ports are constrained. Billions are bleeding out as war damage mounts and oil revenue tightens. This isn’t sanctions as usual. It’s economic warfare—aimed at the regime’s ability to survive. The question now: Does this force Tehran to the table… or push it toward something far more dangerous?

Back in January, the regime carried out the deadliest crackdown in modern Iranian history. As it gunned down protesters in the streets, it launched a parallel war online. A coordinated campaign to turn a domestic uprising into a so-called CIA–Mossad plot — rewriting the story in real time and pushing that narrative deep into Western discourse. The January crackdown and the narrative battle that ac...

For years, Washington has leaned on sanctions to contain Iran’s most dangerous capabilities. Tehran’s drone and missile programs didn’t just survive under pressure, they adapted, scaled, and in many ways thrived, fueled in part by Western-made components slipping through global supply chains. The result: a procurement network that’s harder to disrupt, more resilient, and still very much intact. No...

This war isn’t just being fought with missiles and drones. There's also a war of the words, a narrative battle. While the regime pushes its narrative at home and abroad, the West struggles to keep up — and the Iranian people are caught in between.  So, who controls the story: the regime, the West, or the Iranian people? Mark is joined by historian Ali Ansari to unpack the battle of narratives,...

On the battlefield, the Iran war is expanding, and the real negotiations aren’t happening in backchannels — they’re happening in the Strait of Hormuz.  The Iran war isn’t just about Iran. It’s about energy, leverage, and whether Beijing—and even Taiwan—are already learning the lessons of this war in real time.  FDD’s Matt Pottinger joins host Mark Dubowitz to break down why a deal may be closer th...

We’re marking one year of The Iran Breakdown by bringing you a special conversation from our sister FDD podcast. In this episode of Foreign Podicy , host Cliff May sits down with Mark Dubowitz to unpack a question at the core of this show: what the Islamic Republic actually believes — and how it has waged war on the United States and its allies since 1979. It’s a conversation about ideology, strat...

The regime is down — but it's not out. So... what does collapse actually look like? Not strikes... Not decapitations... The moment the regime loses control. Mark asks Ray Takeyh and Reuel Marc Gerecht to answer the only question that matters now: Are we close to the breaking point? If not, how do we close that gap?

The U.S. and Israel again struck deep inside Iran. The Supreme Leader is dead. The region is on edge. The question is no longer whether this is war — but how long will it last and what will be the impact. The conflict has now spread far beyond Tehran’s borders: Hezbollah rockets have drawn Israel into full-blown engagements across Lebanon, Gulf states have condemned Iranian aggression as they reel...

Bonus Episode of The Iran Breakdown: Mark Dubowitz joins FDD's Jonathan Schanzer and Rich Goldberg for a late night FDD SITREP following the death of Khamenei. --- In the early hours of February 28, the United States and Israel launched a coordinated military campaign against the Iranian regime—Washington calling it “Operation Epic Fury,” Israel calling it “Operation Lion’s Roar.” Strikes hit...

The U.S. and Israel have conducted joint military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Dubbed "Operation Epic Fury" by Washington and "Lion's Roar" by Jerusalem, the strikes were launched on February 28 after nuclear negotiations with the regime failed to yield progress. President Trump stated that U.S. objectives are to "defend the American people by eliminating im...

How does Iran fit into the global ecosystem of terrorism — and why does the West struggle to see the full picture? For decades, policymakers treated ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Iran’s proxy network as separate threats. But that's not reality. This is: They operate in the same battle space and exploit the same weaknesses in Western strategy. To examine what the West missed — and what it may still be ge...

📺: Watch this episode on YouTube here. Ronald Reagan didn’t defeat the Soviet empire with tanks — he defeated it with pressure, principle, and moral clarity. Can the same strategy work in Iran? A recent FDD Memo, “ Freedom for Iran: Learning From U.S. Support for Polish Anti-Communists in the 1980s ,” says that it can. Mark is joined by the Memo’s authors, Charlie Laderman and Nazee Moinian, to b...

One of the gravest human rights crises in recent history is happening right now in Iran. The Islamic Republic has carried out mass killings on a scale not seen in modern Iranian history, slaughtering an estimated 33,000, arresting tens of thousands, and subjecting countless Iranians to torture, disappearance, and sham trials. Internet blackouts have plunged entire cities into darkness in an effort...