Richard Goldberg: America is winning the Iran war. The Strait of Hormuz is moving on U.S. orders, and the escape hatches are closing.

The harder question is how you turn that pressure into an end state before Tehran finds a way to wait you out.

Richard Goldberg is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He ran Iran weapons-of-mass-destruction policy on the National Security Council in the first Trump term, helped stand up the National Energy Dominance Council, and was sanctioned by Iran in 2020 for the maximum-pressure campaign. He has been one of the public architects of the blockade-plus-sanctions strategy now running as Operation Economic Outcast.

On this episode of Counterweight, Goldberg walks through what “winning” means six months in: nuclear and missile setbacks, ships running dark through Hormuz, the cash crunch and gasoline rationing inside Iran, and why Treasury closing escape hatches still leaves a harder problem. How do you go from economic suffocation to victory without a ground war, and what should “maximum support” for the Iranian people actually look like before the midterms?

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Richard Goldberg: Foundation for Defense of Democracies · fdd.org

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CHAPTERS

0:00 Teaser — Hormuz on U.S. orders, hatches closing

0:55 Host intro

2:38 Richard Goldberg

2:57 What winning looks like — nukes and missile breakout

11:24 Hormuz no longer Iran’s — blockade plus Outcast

13:01 Ships running dark through Hormuz

17:27 Trump’s vibe shift — no more MOUs

18:03 Why the MOU happened and why Project Freedom went underground

27:53 Demining and whether America was stringing Iran along

29:02 The MOU as Iran’s surrender of Hormuz

29:51 Gas lines and the cash crunch inside Iran

31:27 How real is the squeeze — subsidies and the house of cards

40:10 Can economic pressure alone topple the regime

42:00 Maximum support — arming Iranians and naming an alternative

52:41 October surprise risk before the midterms