Scott Horton UNLOADS on Nuclear War, Netanyahu & Iran | 345
Julian Dorey · 14 Oct 2025 · 2h 6m
Guest: Scott Horton · Host: Joey Def, Julian Dorey
This conversation with an antiwar foreign policy writer and radio host traces the long backstory behind the current Israel-Iran confrontation and the broader arc of American Middle East policy. The guest lays out how Iran's nuclear program began under the Shah with US help, how successive administrations (Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump) handled negotiations and sanctions, and why he views the 2015 nuclear deal as a real constraint that Trump discarded, setting up the strikes carried out this year. He walks through the mechanics of uranium enrichment to explain why he thinks Iran's 60% stockpile functioned as a bargaining chip rather than a weapons program, and argues that Israeli and American strikes did not destroy Iran's program so much as increase the odds Tehran eventually builds a bomb. Along the way the discussion covers Netanyahu's decades-long claims about an imminent Iranian nuke, the weakening of Hezbollah and Hamas, the fall of Assad, and pointed criticism of Netanyahu's personal conduct and motives, including material drawn from his own memoir. Earlier sections cover the host's intellectual formation, his admiration for Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard, and his account of blowback theory linking US interventions to terrorist attacks including 9/11, the Boston bombing, and the Orlando nightclub shooting. He also discusses his forthcoming book and educational project on foreign policy history.
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What comes up
Timestamps link into the episode on YouTube.
- Foreign policy as root of government overreach
- Austrian economics, Mises Institute, and hard money
- Murray Rothbard's theory of left, right, and the progressive era
- Ron Paul's career and legacy
- The 2007 Giuliani blowback debate moment
- History of Iran's nuclear program from the Shah to Clinton
- Post-9/11 Iran cooperation attempts and the axis of evil speech
- Obama, Netanyahu, and the JCPOA nuclear deal
- 2025 Israeli and US strikes on Iran and their aftermath
- Netanyahu's character, Gaza war, and Israeli politics
- Blowback and terrorism case studies (Orlando, 9/11 origins)
- Russia-Ukraine war history and new book Provoked
Said on this episode
Quoted from the auto-generated transcript, which mishears names and technical terms. podcite.com reports what a show said; it does not endorse or fact-check it.
“It was always a bluff that don't make me begin to make nukes. We would always say if you start making nukes, we'll attack you.”
“Israel is going to be permanently controversialized now. They are a dead letter name is mud on the left and more and more on the right all the time.”
“So roughly a large Waco massacre every single day over there. Every single day.”