1/15/26 Max Blumenthal on the CIA and Mossad’s Latest Move Against the Iranian Regime

·49 min·4 clips

The Mossad's own Farsi account tweeted 'go to the streets' -- days before Mike Pompeo said nearly the same thing.

1. Scott Horton interviews Max Blumenthal, editor of The Gray Zone and author of Goliath and The 51 Day War, about the state of the Iran regime-change effort following a recent 12-day war. 2. Blumenthal says Trump reportedly called off further airstrikes on Iran, judging that continued bombing would only consolidate the Islamic Republic's institutions and risk retaliatory attacks on U.S. bases. 3. He frames the decision as politically fraught for Trump, alleging pressure from donor Miriam Adelson to pursue Iran's destabilization in exchange for campaign support. 4. Blumenthal traces the recent protests to Iran's currency collapse and roughly 40% inflation, driven partly by U.S. sanctions, but says the original bazaar-based protests were largely peaceful and government-tolerated. 5. He says the unrest turned violent only after monarchist and Mossad-linked elements infiltrated the protests, citing a Mossad Farsi-language tweet from December 29th and a nearly identical statement soon after from former CIA director Mike Pompeo. 6. Blumenthal describes CCTV footage aired on Iranian state TV showing police and Basij members being lynched by organized mobs, and says an eight-year-old girl in Isfahan was killed by armed rioters. 7. He cites Reuters and UAE reporting that Kurdish PJAK fighters killed eight Basij guards on January 10th, and says Baluchi and KOMALA militants with past U.S. and CIA ties have also joined the unrest. 8. Blumenthal criticizes Amnesty International's framing of the protests as 'largely peaceful,' comparing it to the group's retracted false testimony before the 1990 Gulf War. 9. He revisits Iran's 2009 Green Movement and the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests, saying autopsy sources told him Amini died of a medical emergency rather than a police beating, though her arrest itself was unjustified. 10. Blumenthal says over a million pro-government demonstrators have since filled Tehran's streets, a show of support he says Western media has largely ignored. 11. He warns Iran now faces an escalated phase of hybrid warfare, and that eight senior IRGC generals killed on the first day of the 12-day war were replaced within eight hours. 12. Blumenthal says Iran could respond to any renewed strike by targeting U.S. bases and Israel's Mossad headquarters at Hakirya in North Tel Aviv, near where Netanyahu reportedly shelters in a bunker. 13. He and Horton discuss reports that Trump has been advised he could kill Khamenei directly with an airstrike, modeled on how the U.S. removed Maduro in Venezuela without formally installing a new government. 14. Blumenthal distinguishes the MEK, a Paris- and Albania-based group led by Mariam Rajavi with historical Saddam Hussein backing, from Iran's homegrown monarchist movement led by Reza Pahlavi in Potomac, Maryland. 15. He says a Delta Force raid to capture Khamenei is operationally implausible given Tehran's landlocked geography, recalling the failed 1980 Operation Eagle Claw hostage rescue that crashed in a sandstorm near Tabas. 16. Blumenthal warns that toppling the Islamic Republic without a viable successor risks balkanizing Iran's 80-90 million people along its Kurdish, Arab, and other ethnic lines, an outcome he says Israel wants but the U.S. and Europe do not. 17. He praises independent investigative journalist Kit Klarenberg for exposing Western intelligence influence operations, contrasting his work with outlets like OCCRP that Blumenthal calls state-aligned. 18. The tone is a fast-paced, source-heavy investigative conversation between two people who know each other well, briefly interrupted by ads for Horton's books and sponsors. 19. Listeners following Iran-Israel-U.S. tensions, intelligence-community influence operations, or Middle East regime-change history would get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners seeking a neutral, both-sides overview of the Iran protests rather than a pointed critique of Western and Israeli involvement may want a different source.

As heard by us

A focused episode on Iran, covert recruitment, and the reporting history behind the claims.

This single-episode review follows Scott Horton and Max Blumenthal as they talk through Iran, regime change, and the murky work of reporting when communications are being restricted.

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Why you'd press play

You want to know how a regime-change conversation feels when even the host admits the internet blackout makes sources hard to reach.

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