WASHINGTON— “A nuclear Iran isn’t just a threat, it’s the threat,” Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies warned in the new podcast “The Iran Breakdown.”

Ahead of arms talks Saturday in Oman, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian claimed Wednesday that his country is “not after a nuclear bomb.”

Who believes that?

In one episode of the riveting series, Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Rich Goldberg warned that, given Iran’s enrichment capabilities, he believes the Islamic Republic of Iran could “produce weapons-grade uranium,” and fast. “We’re talking about a long holiday weekend,” he offered.

The Iranian people are not the enemy. They haven’t been free since the ill-conceived Islamic Revolution of 1979.

The podcast series begins with Reza Pahlavi, the Crown Prince of Iran and son of the late Shah who was forced into exile. As a child, Pahlavi was groomed to succeed his father. Then came the revolution.

Now the Crown Prince is working to bring down Iran’s “corrupt regime,” which cracks down on dissidents ruthlessly and has been implicated in numerous assassinations and terrorist plots.

“And you still think that the solution is to negotiate with them?” Pahlavi asked rhetorically. “Seriously?”

President Barack Obama was among the world leaders who signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015. In his first term, President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal and imposed sanctions on Iran. President Joe Biden wanted to rekindle the 2015 pact, but that didn’t happen.

Now what? Dubowitz fears that Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action fans “believe they can rope-a-dope President Trump, the way they rope-a-doped many American presidents, pull him into negotiations, prolong those negotiations and in doing so remove the economic pressure.”

Dubowitz is concerned about a push for a deal with minor tweaks to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that buys the regime more time and money, not a deal that leads to a free Iran.

“I’m very worried about [Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei running circles around another American president,” he explained.

It’s true that last month Trump wrote to Khamenei to propose these talks. And we know the president would just love to announce to the world that he brokered an international peace deal that critics believe is beyond his grasp.

But Trump knows that Iran has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”

The president’s rhetoric this week has hardly been mushy. “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said during a recent pool spray. And his “maximum pressure” campaign is focused on squeezing Tehran with such harsh measures as “driving Iran’s oil exports to zero.”

We live in scary times.

Foundation for Defense of Democracies staff have had to live with 24/7 security for some six years—inside the United States. That tells you everything you need to know about the Iranian threat.

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