The Iran Breakdown with Mark Dubowitz

Epizode

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  Pickaxe Mountain: Iran’s “Unbustable” Nuclear Bunker? (feat. Andrea Stricker) 21.07.2026 40min

  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, raising difficult questions about whether it can be destroyed by conventional means.Andrea Stricker, deputy director and research fellow in FDD’s Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program, joins Mark Dubowitz on The Iran Breakdown to explain why Pickaxe Mountain matters, what makes it so difficult to neutralize, what military and non-military options remain, and which other parts of Iran’s nuclear program deserve urgent attention.
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  The End of the Ceasefire as We Know It? (feat. Rich Goldberg) 10.07.2026 51min

  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, FDD Senior Advisor Richard Goldberg joins Mark Dubowitz on The Iran Breakdown to break down the state of the ceasefire, the latest developments in the Strait of Hormuz, and Washington's shifting strategy.
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  Lebanon: More than "a Piece of the Puzzle" (feat. Carine Hajjar) 01.07.2026 48min

  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 self-defense and potentially unlocking billions of dollars for the regime that arms Hezbollah in the first place. With Hezbollah the linchpin of Tehran's "axis of resistance," leaving Lebanon unaddressed is a danger that can't be ignored.Carine Hajjar — opinion journalist at The Washington Post and Steamboat Institute fellow with deep roots in Lebanon — joins Mark Dubowitz on The Iran Breakdown to ask whether this is Lebanon's real chance to break free of Iran's grip, or another false dawn.
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  What Iranians Think About the US-Iran Deal (feat. Medhi Parpanchi) 25.06.2026 52min

  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 exports, and throttled internet as a daily reality. Meanwhile, a sanctions waiver allows the IRGC to sell oil and receive payment directly, financing the very institution that oversees their repression.With the naval blockade lifted and maximum pressure easing, the Islamic Republic is now turning its full attention to the last threat it faces: the millions of Iranians who want it gone.Medhi Parpanchi — native Iranian and Persian-language journalist at Iran International — joins Mark Dubowitz on The Iran Breakdown to ask the question Washington isn't: what does this mean for Iranians?
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  Breaking Down the US-Iran MOU (feat. Robert Greenway) 19.06.2026 58min

  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 veteran, diplomat, and a key architect of the Abraham Accords — joins Mark Dubowitz on The Iran Breakdown to cut through the noise. They examine the MOU's terms, the long arc of Trump's maximum pressure campaign, and what happens if Tehran doesn't comply.
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  What Does Winning In Iran Look Like? (feat. Marc Thiessen) 09.06.2026 50min

  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 political change?Mark Dubowitz is joined by Marc Thiessen, American Enterprise Institute fellow, former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush, and Washington Post columnist, to map out the next phase of the U.S. pressure campaign, the strategic choices that will define the endgame, and what it will take to finally free the Iranian people from over four decades of brutal rule by the Islamic Regime.
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  Strait Victory: Bypassing Iran's Hormuz Chokepoint (feat. Richard Goldberg) 03.06.2026 1h 1min

  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 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.
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  Stolen Revolution: Behind Iran's Protest Movements (feat. Bozorgmehr Sharafedin) 03.06.2026 57min

  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 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.
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  The Iran Deal - What Trump Got, What Iran Got, and What Comes Next (feat. Richard Goldberg) 26.05.2026 1h

  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 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?
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  The Iran Ceasefire Didn't End the Battle for Hormuz (feat. Aaron MacLean) 14.05.2026 1h 6min

  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 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?
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  Winning the Iran War — Whether Washington Knows It or Not 04.05.2026 19min

  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 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.
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  The Door Tehran Kicked Open: MBS, The Bomb, and The Battle for The Gulf (feat. Bernard Haykel) 29.04.2026 1h

  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 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.
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  No March on Tehran: The Military Logic of the Iran War (feat. John Spencer) 23.04.2026 52min

  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 Hormuz — and what victory actually looks like when there’s no surrender to sign.
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  Operation Economic Fury (feat. Miad Maleki and Rich Goldberg) 16.04.2026 59min

  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?
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  Regime Revisionism: Tehran's War Before the Iran War (feat. Jay Solomon & Negar Mojtahedi) 09.04.2026 55min

  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 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?
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  Iran's Global Game of Drones (& How To Stockpile While Sanctioned) (feat. Kerri Bitsoff) 02.04.2026 31min

  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.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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  War of the Words in Iran (feat. Ali Ansari) 26.03.2026 46min

  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, the reality of regime power, and who may ultimately shape Iran’s future.
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  From Tehran to Taipei: How the Iran War Reshapes China’s Taiwan Calculus (feat. Matt Pottinger) 26.03.2026 44min

  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 than it looks, why Trump may not take it, and how this war is already reshaping the global balance of power — and why China’s watching closely.
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  Breaking Down The Islamic Republic (Cliff May feat. Mark Dubowitz) 20.03.2026 1h 4min

  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, strategy, and a threat too often misunderstood.If you want to understand the regime in order to make sense of the war, start here.
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  Cracking The Regime (feat. Ray Takeyh and Reuel Marc Gerecht) 20.03.2026 49min

  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?