America's Road to Tehran - Part 2

The David McWilliams Podcast

David McWilliams

News & Politics

4.5 • 692 Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2026

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

In part two of our history of Iran and the Middle East, we move from the 1979 Iranian Revolution to the bombing of Tehran today. This is the story of how America’s Cold War obsession with the Soviet Union mutated into something else entirely: the gradual Israelisation of U.S. policy in the region. Along the way we trace the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, America’s backing of the Mujahideen, the rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq War, the Iran-Contra scandal, the Intifadas, Oslo, Netanyahu, Hamas, and the long collapse of any serious Palestinian settlement. What began as a struggle over oil, empire, and superpower rivalry became a different kind of conflict altogether, one driven by proxy wars, sectarian alliances, occupation, and political miscalculation. If part one explained how the West lost Iran, part two explains how the region was remade in the decades that followed, and how all of it leads directly to the crisis we are watching now.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The podcast is all about the second part of our relationship between Iran and America.
0:08.3	This podcast is going to take us to the Mujahideen.
0:10.9	It's going to take us to Afghanistan.
0:12.2	It's going to take us to Palestine.
0:13.2	It's going to take us to Palestine.
0:14.8	It's going to take us right up to the bombing of Tehran, which is going on as we speak.
0:22.4	I hope you enjoy it.
0:23.3	It's all coming up in a couple of minutes.
0:27.8	To understand the economy, you have to understand human nature.
0:34.0	This podcast is powered by ACAST.
0:39.5	How are you doing there?
0:40.8	It is time for the podcast.
0:43.3	John is giggling here.
0:44.7	We were doing some good impressions.
0:46.3	We may well do them towards the end of the podcast.
0:49.5	Maybe not.
0:50.3	It is a very, very, very serious podcast to do today because the second part, John,
0:56.2	of our relationship between Iran, America, Israel, the Middle East, all that.
1:02.1	We brought you up to the revolution.
1:05.5	So we started the last time in around 1940 odd.
1:09.5	Yeah.
1:09.8	And then we brought listeners all the way up to the Iranian Revolution.
	...

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