Everyone thinks the Iran file has stalled. Or Horvitz, Ex-IDF officer and JPPI Senior Fellow Or Horvitz, argues the opposite: a quiet US strategy shift is already underway.
In this Deep Dive episode, host Jacob Laznik sits down with JPPI Senior Fellow Or Horvitz, former head of the IDF’s Hezbollah and Lebanon desk, to argue that Washington has quietly abandoned deal-making for a “maximum pressure 2.0” campaign aimed at the collapse of the Iranian regime, and that almost no one in mainstream coverage is naming it.
Horvitz maps the two camps inside the Trump administration (Secretary Rubio betting pressure topples the regime, VP Vance betting it forces compromise), why he thinks negotiating with today’s hawkish leadership is pointless, and how Iran’s economic freefall sets a starting point far worse than the first sanctions era.
“I genuinely now believe that there is no other way but to topple this regime,” he says, while warning, “Iran is a bully, and you cannot appease a bully.”
Drawing on the Reagan-era pivot from containment to proactive pressure against the USSR, Horvitz explains why change has to come from inside Iran, what the West missed during the January uprising, his fear of a secret nuclear program in the desert, and the historic window opening in Lebanon as a cash-starved Iran can no longer fund Hezbollah.
He closes on Syria’s new leadership, the growing-but-lesser challenge of Turkey, and a plea to strip Israeli and American foreign policy of election-season politics. Sober analysis with, in his words, cautious optimism.