#473 – Iran War Debate: Nuclear Weapons, Trump, Peace, Power & the Middle East
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The following is a debate between Scott Horton and Mark Dubowitz on the topic of Iran and Israel. Scott Horton is author and editorial director of antiwar.com, host of The Scott Horton Show, and for the past three decades, a staunch critic of US foreign policy and military interventionism. Mark Dewoods is a chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, host of the Iran breakdown podcast, and he has been a leading expert on Iran and its nuclear program for over twenty years. And now a quick few second mention of his sponsor. Check them out in the description or at lexfreeman.com
Gentlemen Okay. Alright. It's great to have you here. Let's try to have a nuanced discussion slash debate and, maybe even steel man opposing perspectives as much as possible. Alright. As it stands now, there's a barely stable ceasefire between Iran and Israel. Let's, maybe rewind a little bit. Can we first lay out the context for this Iran Israel war and try to describe the
key events that happened over
the past two weeks, maybe even the, a bit of the deeper roots of the conflict? Sure.
Like first of all, thanks so much for having me on. Great to be on with Scott. I know he and I don't agree on a lot, but I certainly admire the passion and and the dedication to stopping wars. So that's that's something we wanna talk about. So let's talk about how we got to this war. So president Trump comes in office and immediately lays out that his Iran strategy is maximum pressure on the regime, and he will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And he and he makes that clear consistently. He's I think made it very clear during his first term, made it clear throughout his career. And thu
Scott, is there some stuff you wanna add to that?
Sure. Well, he started with, January. Right? Trump's second term here and the maximum pressure campaign. Essentially, as should be clear to everyone now, all these negotiations were just a pretext for war. Trump and his entire cabinet must have known that the Ayatollah is not going to give up all enrichment. That is their latent nuclear deterrent. Their posture has been heavily implied, don't attack us and we won't make a nuke. While America's position was, if you make a nuke, if you start to, we'll attack you. So it's the perfect standoff. But what happened was, and you might remember a few w
the nuclear, Iran's nuclear program? What is the red line here? Does Iran have this, need for a latent nuclear deterrent? And what what is the thing that's acceptable to The United States and to the rest of the world? What should be acceptable? Yeah,
Alex. So there there was a lot to unpack there. So let's sort of just back up a little bit and just talk about, first of all, the regime itself. Islamic Republic Of Iran came into power in 1979, is been declared a leading state sponsor of terrorism by multiple administrations dating back to the Clinton administration, by Obama, by Biden, by Trump. And it is a regime that has killed and maimed thousands of Americans, not not to mention, obviously, hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners. It is a regime that has lied about its nuclear program. It never actually disclosed its nuclear sites. Al
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