Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, On the Uprising in Iran
Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, covered the uprising in Iran for Hugh today:
Audio:
Transcript:
HH: As you heard me say at the beginning of the show, the biggest story in the world is what’s going on in Iran. And I know we all have our favorite interesting stories, and I cover the news as it breaks, but the biggest story in the world is in Iran. For 47 years, that tyranny has been in place. And for almost as long, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has been working to bring it down and free the people of Iran. Joining us now is the CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Mark Dubowitz, who has been on with me before. He did a great podcast series last year on Iran, which was 12 parts. He added another part this weekend called Iran Breakdown. I recommend it to you. Mark, welcome. Let me start with a big, what’s your reaction to what’s happened over the last two weeks and a day?
MD: Well, Hugh, thanks so much for having me on. Look, Hugh, it’s extraordinary. I mean, as you said, I’ve been working on Iran for 22 years, working with a lot of administration, both Trump administrations, on maximum oppression on the regime but also encouraging maximum support for the Iranian people. And the Iranian people have been out on the streets since 2009 repeatedly calling for death to the dictator, end the Islamic republic, establish relations with America, with Israel. And now, in the past two weeks, they’ve taken to the streets. Millions of Iranians are on those streets, but they’re also getting mowed down by the security forces. Thousands of Iranians have been slaughtered, tens of thousands have been arrested, tortured, and dozens executed. So it is a pivotal moment for the United States, for Iran, for the region.
HH: So I stress to my audience they can’t trust what they see on X unless they know that the person on X is someone they can trust. They can trust you. They can trust Cliff May, Karim Sadjadpour at Carnegie. You’ve got a lot of colleagues at FDD I’m pushing out. How do you tell, if you’re just a newbie to the Iran issue, who to trust on this about what’s going on there since the regime has severed outside world contact with they people of Tehran and across all of Iran?
MD: Yeah, I mean, Hugh, listen, it’s difficult to know what’s going on, on the ground, because as you’ve said, they’ve shut down the internet. They’re interfering with Starlink access. Videos are still coming in, and we’re certainly seeing what’s happening on the ground. What do I trust? Look, I don’t trust anybody defending the regime, number one. Number two, I don’t trust anybody saying that U.S. intervention is going to lead to some kind of rally around the flag. The notion that millions of Iranians are on the streets and they’re getting mowed down by the security forces, but somehow if President Trump intervenes and goes against the regimes, these Iranians are going to defend the regime, I think is nonsense. So anybody saying that should not be trusted. I think there are a lot of good Iranian voices. My colleague, Saeed Ghasseminejad, certainly Reza Pahlavi. I mean, he’s all over social media, the crown prince, the son of the former Shah. He has been very articulate and I certainly would trust many of the things that he’s saying.
HH: Okay, now let’s talk about what the President can do. He was my guest last Thursday, and he said very bluntly ‘we’ll hit them very, very hard if they kill people.’ But he also gave them a little bit of an out. He said some of these deaths were because of stampedes. Later that night, he didn’t use that out with Sean Hannity as much, and it’s been totally abandoned by Sunday night. The President now knows there are thousands of people dead. I’m sure we’ve confirmed that to him. What could he do, in your view, that would be most effective in freeing Iran?
MD: So I think there are a number of things he can do. I mean, first of all is to target the security forces that are actually engaged in this brutal repression. Go after the repression apparatus. And you could do that through offensive cyber and/or military strikes against the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij, the police. These are the people that are engaged in this brutal repression. Number two is he’s already reached out to Elon Musk, is to try to restore or improve the Starlink connection so these videos are coming out. Iranians are right now being murdered in the dark. They need to be brought to light, and that’s very important. I think the President and Elon can do that. Number three, you know, what Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump discussed at the end of December that you reported on, Hugh, was the growing and reconstituting Iranian missile program, which is going to represent a significant threat to the United States and Israel as it gets rebuilt. The Israelis are going to go take it out. I think better the United States takes it out, because if the United States takes out the missile program, Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, is going to be quite reluctant to respond, because he knows that if he attacks the United States, that’s the end of his regime. If the Israelis take it out, it’s going to read to another round. Iran will fire hundreds, if not thousands of ballistic missiles at Israel, and we’re going to be in a major war, and the United States and President Trump’s going to have to deal with that. So I think President Trump, if he has the opportunity, take out those dangerous ballistic missiles, support the people, unlock the communications, go after the regime apparatus.
HH: Mark, this is a difficult question for anyone to answer, but you’ll know if anybody knows. I heard Karim today in a podcast with Dan Senor say that the IRGC is 150,000 strong. All right, Iran is 90 million people. 10% is 9 million people. 1% is 900,000 people. So 150,000 IRGC members, that’s a third of 1%. How hard is it to overthrow 150,000 thugs? It’s a lot of thugs. They’ve got a lot of guns. There aren’t any other guns in Iran, but that’s not a big police state. It’s relatively small, isn’t it?
MD: Well, there’s 150,000 IRGC. There’s probably 2-3 million members of the Basij, which is their militia. Those are the thugs that drive around on motorcycles and beat up and torture and kill Iranians. So you’ve got a couple million there. And they’re also importing thugs from Iraq. This is the Iraqi-Hezbollah and the Shiite militias that they’re bringing in. They’re bringing in Arabs to kill Persians, because in some cases, the security forces don’t want to turn their guns on their own people. So the regime’s apparatus is formidable, but you’re right. Listen, I mean, there is 92 million Iranians. And if 10% came to the street, they could overwhelm the security forces. And certainly, some of them are armed, particularly some of the Kurdish groups, the Baluchis, and others. So I think that’s certainly potential.
HH: So Mark, you’re not old enough to remember the actual revolution. I watched it in real time with Ray Price and Richard Nixon in San Clemente, my second job out of college. People marched in the daytime then. Do you expect anti-regime marches to occur in the daytime?
MD: Yeah, they are. They’re occurring in the daytime. They’re occurring in the nighttime. I mean, what I’m worried about, Hugh, is that if there’s no U.S. intervention, that these protests are going to die off because of the brutal repression. And whether it’s day or night, they’re, the guns are being turned on Iranians. Thousands are being slaughtered. At some point, they’re just going to have to, they’re going to stay home. And if they stay home, the regime is going to come out of this, yes, a wounded animal, but a bitter one, a lethal one, a much more dangerous one. And I’d be worried that Iranians will never go back on the streets.
HH: Follow Mark on X @MDubowitz. Follow everyone at FDD @FDD. Mark is coming back next hour so my drive time audience inside the Beltway hears him for six minutes and repeat a lot of this. So make sure you listen to both segments of my interview with Mark Dubowitz and follow him, and follow the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Stay tuned.
— – – – –
HH: I’m bringing back Mark Dubowitz who was with us last hour. He is the CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, one of the actual people you can trust on Iran. Follow him on X @MDubowitz. Follow everyone at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and there are a lot of them. There are a half-dozen Iran experts. The FDD is actually the go-to place. Mark, when we ran out of time last hour, I wanted to ask you. President Trump mentioned on Air Force One last night that the regime wants to negotiate. My reaction is God no, don’t do that. They’re just playing for time. Is that your reaction?
MD: Yeah, Hugh, absolutely. I mean, this is a typical regime trick. Their back is against the wall, so they offer negotiations and try to trap American negotiators. And the only place where they tend to win against America is at the negotiating table. They won against Biden. They won against Obama. They think they could possibly win against President Trump. I think it would be a big mistake to go back to the table fundamentally because, number one, it would be a betrayal of the Iranian people that are on the streets. And number two, Hugh, there’s no way that Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, is going to meet the minimum demands that President Trump has – a full dismantlement of their nuclear missile programs and terror networks. No way Khamenei’s going to give into that. And if not, he’s just going to play for time, try to divide America, try to divide the White House, try to divide the U.S. from Europe, and he’s going to ultimately try to embarrass the President. And I don’t think the President is going to be embarrassed, an is prepared to be embarrassed. So he needs to enforce the red line that he laid out.
HH: Now Mark, the Israelis could have killed Khamenei, and no doubt, we can kill Khamenei. But there are arguments on both sides. Ought we to leave him alive? Or ought we to, if we have the ability, have him shot and killed?
MD: Well, I do think we need to decapitate the leadership of Iran. And that includes Khamenei, but it also includes senior IRGC commanders, those who are in control of the command and control system of Iran, and that includes the repression apparatus. So yeah, if you can decapitate the leadership, then there’s a possibility of others stepping into their place. I mean, that’s what President Trump did in Venezuela with Maduro. I think there is more than just Khamenei. There are others, but certainly a decapitation effort should be seriously considered.
HH: All right, now Mark, what are the, how many IRGC bases are there? How many Basij bases? The final Israeli wave was going to hit them. President Trump waved it off in order to bring that conflict to an end last June. How many target sites are we talking about?
MD: So there are, I mean, there are dozens and dozens of IRGC and Basij bases all around the country. Obviously, headquarters in places like Tehran, but certainly, it’s a target-rich environment. I mean, the Israelis and the Americans have detailed intelligence on all of these bases, maneuvers, apparatus. This has been studied for years, Hugh, I mean, particularly by the Israelis. I mean, Mossad and military intelligence in Israel have a very, very large and expansive target set, and that information has been provided to the Americans. So there’s no shortage of targets. It’s just a question of what President Trump will choose.
HH: If President Trump brings down this regime, I think he goes to the top of American presidents at least since FDR. He’s going to actually surpass Reagan. The Soviet Union, of course, dissolved under George H.W. Bush. How would you rank that achievement? I think Iran is a lynchpin, and I’ve got Nixon on the brain. Nixon used to say it’s everything. It’s one of the two pillars of the Middle East. And so how big of a moment is this for Donald Trump?
MD: Yeah, I’ve said publicly, Hugh, you know that, that if he brings down the Islamic Republic of Iran, he will be one of the greatest foreign policy presidents in modern history, if not the greatest. I mean, the Islamic Republic of Iran, first of all, has killed and maimed thousands of Americans. It has created massive bloodshed and chaos in the Middle East, and continues to drag us into these endless wars in the Middle East. It’s sponsored terrorism globally. It’s threatened to kill President Trump and tried to kill him. And it has tried to build nuclear weapons. It has built a massive ballistic missile program. It’s fired hundreds of those ballistic missiles at Israel and missiles and drones at our allies in the Middle East. I mean, it has been such a force for murder, chaos, and violence, that to get rid of it and to replace it with something better and more stable, more peaceful, and more prosperous would be a game-changer for American national security. And by the way, it would also allow us to do what we need to do, which is to focus our resources in the coming years on the multi-generational threat from the Communist Chinese Party.
HH: Now I read him your quote, and he laughed. He said, “Haven’t I already done that?” He’s done pretty well, I’ve got to admit. Ruining the Iranian nuclear deterrent is a big deal. But do you think we could count on a post-Khameneist-Khomeinist regime being stable and at least not evil?
MD: Yeah, I mean, President Trump also did say that, he said, “I accept that.” I accept that in his interview with you.
HH: Yeah.
MD: Right. You know, I think he appreciates how important taking down the Islamic Republic is, and I think he has for most of his adult life. I think we have got, I don’t think we can count on anything in the Middle East, and we certainly can’t count on anything in geopolitics. But there’s no doubt in my mind that whatever comes next will be much better.
HH: So everyone in your car, go to FDD, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Follow it @FDD. Follow Mark @MDubowitz, and there are lots of other people as well. But make sure they’re reliable. Don’t believe the regime propaganda. Don’t believe the regime apologists. Don’t believe people who’ve supported the JCPOA. Believe people like Mark. Thank you, Mark Dubowitz.
End of interview.
The post Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, On the Uprising in Iran appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.