Lex Fridman Podcast
#473 – Iran War Debate: Nuclear Weapons, Trump, Peace, Power & the Middle East
26 Jun 2025
Debate on Iran war between Scott Horton and Mark Dubowitz. Scott Horton is the author and director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, host of The Scott Horton Show, and for the past three decades, a staunch critic of U.S. foreign policy and military interventionism. Mark Dubowitz is the chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, host of the Iran Breakdown podcast, and a leading expert on Iran and its nuclear program for over 20 years. This debate was recorded on Tuesday, June 24, after the Iran-Israel ceasefire was declared. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep473-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/iran-israel-debate-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback - give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Mark's X: https://x.com/mdubowitz Mark's Podcast: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmEsAFBNkqsMQnt5pypwEX0ul0NyIjd3E The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD): https://www.fdd.org/ Scott's X: https://x.com/scotthortonshow Scott's YouTube: https://youtube.com/@scotthortonshow Scott's Podcast: https://www.scotthortonshow.com/ Scott's Website: https://scotthorton.org/ Scott's Books: https://amzn.to/3T9Qg7y The Libertarian Institute: https://libertarianinstitute.org/ Antiwar.com: https://antiwar.com/ SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: Hampton: Community for high-growth founders and CEOs. Go to https://joinhampton.com/lex Notion: Note-taking and team collaboration. Go to https://notion.com/lex Shopify: Sell stuff online. Go to https://shopify.com/lex Oracle: Cloud infrastructure. Go to https://oracle.com/lex LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex OUTLINE: (00:00) - Introduction (00:36) - Sponsors, Comments, and Reflections (08:02) - Iran-Israel War (16:45) - Iran's Nuclear Program (48:37) - Nuclear weapons and uranium (1:00:40) - Nuclear deal (1:26:14) - Iran Nuclear Archive (1:48:50) - Best case and worst case near-term future (2:24:15) - US attack on Iran - Operation Midnight Hammer (2:47:48) - Nuclear proliferation in the future (3:08:46) - Libertarianism (3:21:35) - Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) (3:37:10) - Trump and Peacemaking process (3:42:08) - WW2 (3:55:08) - WW3
Full Episode
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 U.S. foreign policy and military interventionism.
Mark Dewoods is a chief executive of the Foundation for Defensive Democracies, host of the Iran Breakdown podcast, and he has been a leading expert on Iran and its nuclear program for over 20 years. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description or at lexfreeman.com slash sponsors. It's the best way to support this podcast.
We got Hampton for a private, highly vetted community for founders and CEOs. Notion for team collaboration and note-taking. Shopify for selling stuff online. Oracle for cloud computing and Element for your health. Choose the wise of my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. They're all here in one place.
I try to make them interesting by talking about some random things I'm reading or thinking about. But if you do skip, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. To get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexfreeman.com contact. All right, let's go. This episode is brought to you by a new sponsor, an incredible community called Hampton.
It's a private, highly vetted community for high growth founders and CEOs. It is lonely to be a leader. Every CEO I know, every founder I know, especially in the early days, are truly on an emotional rollercoaster. So Hampton provides a great community for the founders to meet.
Every month, eight founders, face-to-face, having real conversations about daily struggles entailed in being a founder and entailed in being human, quite frankly. Groups are forming in New York City, Austin, San Francisco, LA, Miami, Denver, and other top cities nationwide.
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This episode is brought to you by Notion, a note-taking and team collaboration tool that is super-powered by AI. It integrates AI into the note-taking process better than basically anything I've tried, and that's certainly true in the case of teams.
So it's doing things like collecting all the information from the meeting you just had, it captures everything, can make it searchable, summarized, there's transcriptions, All of that. And it's all automatically saved in Notion. And they do search across multiple apps. So across the whole Microsoft ecosystem, Google, Gmail Drive, everything.
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