Podcast
The Iran Breakdown with Mark Dubowitz
Hosted by FDD · EN
Welcome to the Iran Breakdown. Hosted by Mark Dubowitz, this miniseries from FDD is here to guide you through one of the most critical geopolitical and human rights challenges facing the world today.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has been a central player in global headlines for decades: its pursuit of nuclear weapons, funding of terror groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and others; its oppression of its own people, and its growing alliances with global power states like China, Russia, North Korea. But beneath the headlines lies a deeper story, story of a regime that is losing legitimacy, a restless population, hungry for freedom, and a global community with many conflicting ideas about how to respond. And that's what we'll cover in 10 episodes of The Iran Breakdown.
14episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Strait Victory: Bypassing Iran's Hormuz Chokepoint (feat. Richard Goldberg)
5d ago01:01:52Tap to summarizeThe 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 is joined by FDD Senior Advisor Rich Goldberg — who served on the National Security Council as Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction, helped stand up the White House National Energy Dominance Council, and leads FDD's Energy and National Security Program — to break down the military and energy battles over the Strait and the cards President Trump still has left to play.
Transcribe →Stolen Revolution: Behind Iran's Protest Movements (feat. Bozorgmehr Sharafedin)
5d ago00:57:30Tap to summarizeEvery 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 from power, a poet who gave voice to a generation's shattered dreams, a bureaucrat who risked everything to expose state corruption, an entrepreneur crushed by the security apparatus, and two young women who joined the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.Iran International's Bozorgmehr Sharafedin joins FDD Iran Program Senior Director Behnam Ben Taleblu to unpack the human stories behind Iran's seismic shift from reform to revolution, and what they reveal about life under the Islamic Republic.
Transcribe →The Iran Deal - What Trump Got, What Iran Got, and What Comes Next (feat. Richard Goldberg)
2w ago01:00:09Tap to summarizeA 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 and National Security, former White House NSC Director for Countering Iranian WMD, and one of the architects of maximum pressure — joins Mark Dubowitz to break down the deal, assess the terms, and ask the question that will define its legacy: vice grip or open door?
Transcribe →The Iran Ceasefire Didn't End the Battle for Hormuz (feat. Aaron MacLean)
4w ago01:06:16Tap to summarizeIs 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 ceasefire a pause button or a vice grip? And what did Iran's Hormuz gamble reveal to Beijing, Moscow, and every member of the axis of aggressors watching closely?
Transcribe →Winning the Iran War — Whether Washington Knows It or Not
May 400:19:59Tap to summarizeIn 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 economy in a death spiral with the clock running out. The only remaining question: will the ceasefire be a pause that lets the regime breathe — or the closing vice on a failing regime? Mark argues the discipline to answer that question correctly is the last thing standing between America and a durable victory.
Transcribe →The Door Tehran Kicked Open: MBS, The Bomb, and The Battle for The Gulf (feat. Bernard Haykel)
Apr 2901:00:48Tap to summarizeRiyadh 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 of the Arabian Peninsula and author of the forthcoming book, The Realm: MBS and the Transformation of Saudi Arabia, joins Mark Dubowitz to break down what Riyadh wants, what it's willing to do, and what Washington still misunderstands about the man running the Kingdom.
Transcribe →No March on Tehran: The Military Logic of the Iran War (feat. John Spencer)
Apr 2300:52:36Tap to summarizeNo 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 Hormuz — and what victory actually looks like when there’s no surrender to sign.
Transcribe →Operation Economic Fury (feat. Miad Maleki and Rich Goldberg)
Apr 1600:59:26Tap to summarizeIran 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?
Transcribe →Regime Revisionism: Tehran's War Before the Iran War (feat. Jay Solomon & Negar Mojtahedi)
Apr 900:55:03Tap to summarizeBack 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 accompanied it aren’t isolated incidents. They set conditions for the war that followed, shaping global perception before a single American fighter jet took flight.So, was all of this just another page from the regime’s standard propaganda playbook? Or is information warfare now a core pillar of its survival?
Transcribe →Iran's Global Game of Drones (& How To Stockpile While Sanctioned) (feat. Kerri Bitsoff)
Apr 200:31:42Tap to summarizeFor 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.Now, Tehran isn’t just building for itself. It’s exporting the model — arming Russia in Ukraine, supplying proxies across the Middle East, and even laying the groundwork for drone production in places like Venezuela, putting parts of the United States within range.So the question isn’t whether sanctions work — it’s whether we’re hitting the right targets.To break all of this down, host Mark Dubowitz is joined by Kerri Bitsoff — a former senior official at the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) who has been called a ‘secret weapon’ in the fight against Iran's weapons procurement.
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