The Iran Breakdown with Mark Dubowitz

Trump has been dealt a major political blow in the midterms. Is Tehran preparing to take advantage? FDD’s Mark Dubowitz and Behnam Ben Taleblu examine how Iran’s rulers are interpreting the election results, whether the Islamic Republic sees an opportunity to challenge a weakened American president, and what Trump’s Iran strategy could look like over the next two years. They also explore the regim...

Four American presidents. One persistent enemy. And a confrontation that has brought the Middle East to war. Brett McGurk has spent more than two decades at the center of American Middle East policy, serving Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. Now, in his new book, Brink , he takes readers inside some of the most consequential national security decisions of our ti...

Japan occupies a unique position: a close ally of the United States, a strong partner of Israel, and a longtime diplomatic interlocutor with Tehran. In this episode of The Iran Breakdown , Japan’s Ambassador to Israel, Yusuke Arai , offers a rare perspective on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the threats it poses to Israel, lessons from Japan’s experience with North Korea, and the limits of diplomacy an...

To understand the war unfolding with Iran today — and where it could lead — you have to understand the history that brought the Middle East to this moment. In this episode of The Iran Breakdown , Mark Dubowitz sits down with acclaimed historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East , to put today’s conflict with Iran in its deeper historical context....

Elliot Kaufman and Yonah Jeremy Bob are the co-authors of the new book, In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel’s Fight Against Hamas and the Iranian Axis – an inside account of the decisions, debates, and personalities that shaped Israel’s multi-front war, from October 7 to Hezbollah and ultimately Iran. Elliot Kaufman is an editorial writer and member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial b...

The Islamic Republic may discover that surviving the war was the easy part. Its military has been mauled, its deterrence shattered, its proxies weakened, and now an already dysfunctional economy faces relentless pressure — with no victory to rally around and no economic rescue on the horizon. On the latest episode of The Iran Breakdown , host Mark Dubowitz is joined by FDD’s Miad Maleki, a former...

For decades, Washington and Jerusalem worried about Iran dominating the Middle East. But as the Islamic Republic weakens, is Erdogan’s Turkey positioning itself to become the region’s next great revisionist power? Mark Dubowitz is joined by two Turkey and Middle East experts: Steven A. Cook , the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations...

In this episode of The Iran Breakdown , Mark Dubowitz sits down with FDD’s Rich Goldberg for a wide-ranging discussion on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, global energy markets and America’s growing energy dominance. Rich leads FDD’s Energy and National Security Program and served in the second Trump administration, where he helped establish the White House National Energy Dominance Council. During the...

What makes the Islamic Republic of Iran different from a conventional regime seeking security, prosperity, and survival? Its ideological DNA fuses Maoist revolutionary thought, Frantz Fanon’s vision of anticolonial struggle and redemptive violence—channeled through Iranian intellectual Ali Shariati—and a revolutionary Shia theology of martyrdom, resistance, and struggle against oppression. Ayatoll...

The next battlefield isn’t in the sky or at sea—it’s underground. The Islamic Republic, together with Hamas and Hezbollah, spent decades building a subterranean fortress: hundreds of miles of terror tunnels beneath Gaza and Lebanon, and deeply buried nuclear and missile facilities designed to survive even the most powerful airstrikes. At the center of that strategy is Pickaxe Mountain, where Tehra...

Iran isn’t dismantling its nuclear program—it’s burying it deeper underground. At the center of growing U.S. concern is Pickaxe Mountain, a massive underground complex that signals the regime has no intention of abandoning its nuclear ambitions. Buried deep beneath solid rock and heavily fortified, the facility may be the most challenging nuclear target the United States has ever confronted, raisi...

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...