Confronting Capitalism: Trump’s Historic Blunder in Iran
Jacobin Radio
Jacobin
4.7 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
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Summary
The US-Israeli war against Iran may have been initiated without any coherently stated goals or popular support, but we can already see that it’s a horrific quagmire. It also doesn’t look like Trump and Israel will get the swift Iranian regime change they hoped for.
On the latest episode of Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber is joined by Jason Brownlee, a professor of government at the University of Texas Austin, to discuss the history of regime change wars, the geopolitical interests in the Middle East, and Trump’s further descent into the neoconservative blob.
Read Jason’s most recent Catalyst essay here: https://catalyst-journal.com/2021/03/shadow-wars-and-corporate-welfare
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Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy and published by Jacobin. Music by Zonkey.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, listeners, and welcome to another episode of confronting capitalism. |
| 0:22.1 | On this episode, Vivek Chipper will be talking with Jason Brownlee about the war with Iran. |
| 0:28.1 | Jason is a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in |
| 0:32.5 | comparative politics and foreign policy. |
| 0:35.5 | This conversation was recorded on March 13th, so things may have |
| 0:38.8 | changed by the time you listen to this episode. As a reminder, our first ever live show is coming |
| 0:44.2 | up on April 6th. Vivek will be joined by Crystal Ball and Matt Karp to discuss the left's |
| 0:50.0 | electoral politics strategy from 2016 up to the present. |
| 0:54.1 | There will be a link in the description where you can buy tickets. |
| 0:57.1 | If you have any questions for any of our panelists, please email them to confronting. |
| 1:01.8 | dot capitalism at jacobin.com. |
| 1:04.6 | Enjoy the show. |
| 1:06.1 | Well, here we are. |
| 1:08.0 | It's another month and another U.S. invasion of another country, so lots to discuss. |
| 1:12.7 | Looks like it's becoming a habit for us now. But I'd like to welcome Jason Brownlee, who's a |
| 1:17.5 | professor of government at University of Texas, Austin, as well as a contributor to Catalyst. |
| 1:24.2 | He's written two excellent essays for Catalyst. There's the limits of military |
| 1:28.4 | counter-revolution, which came out in 2018, and Shadow Wars and Corporate Welfare, which was his |
| 1:33.8 | essay at the inauguration of the Biden administration, which predicted a pretty bellicose and |
| 1:40.7 | militaristic administration, in which it turned out to be unfortunately quite true. |
| 1:45.1 | Jason is also the author of the upcoming book, Force Without Authority, America's Wars in the |
| 1:52.0 | Middle East and South Asia. Actually, it's out now. It's a book by Oxford University Press, |
... |
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