Episode
America's Road to Tehran - Part 2
- Podcast
- The David McWilliams Podcast
- Published
- Mar 10, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2848
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://shows.acast.com/the-david-mcwilliams-podcast/episodes/how-america-became-israel-iran-hezbollah-hamas-and-the-road
- Audio
- https://sphinx.acast.com/p/acast/s/the-david-mcwilliams-podcast/e/69aee9f7869afb111d0dff3a/media.mp3
Actions
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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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.