The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies was founded by former New York Times journalist Cliff May 25 years ago, and he remains the president of this sturdy, highly respected D.C. think tank.
FDD’s CEO is Mark Dubowitz, whose reputation is equal to that of any public intellectual with a focus on the Islamic Republic of Iran. FDD’s line-up of fellows, senior fellows, and scholars is second-to-none, and FDD covers every significant issue related to the Islamic Republic of Iran. (Iran, of course, has been waging a proxy war against the United States and Israel through Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, Iraqi militias, and lone terrorists for almost five decades).
Hardly a day goes by that an attentive consumer of news about the radical Islamist regime headquartered in Iran does not benefit from a study or commentary from Team FDD’s many experts, including Behnam Ben Taleblu, Richard Goldberg, Retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark C. Montgomery, Jonathan Schanzer, and many more. FDD analysts are thoroughly professional and have proven remarkably accurate in their assessments of the Islamic Republic over decades.
The Islamic Republic has long hated the accurate and measured attentions of FDD, and the regime has purported to sanction the organization itself and more than half a dozen of its scholars. Truth scalds totalitarian jihadis, and so the rump regime in Tehran genuinely hates FDD and its people.
This is among the reasons why FDD’s credibility is so sky high among everyone across the partisan landscape of the Beltway. Because the Islamic Republic hates FDD, Americans ought to trust FDD, and, by and large, serious people do. Which brings me to the recent warning from Dubowitz.
Dubowitz is a prolific writer and podcaster. The podcast series he hosts, The Iran Breakdown With Mark Bubowitz, began in March of 2025, three months before President Donald Trump ordered “Operation Midnight Hammer” that obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program at the Fodor facility (even as Israel was erasing other aspects of the Iranian nuclear program during its 12-day war, which culminated alongside the American strikes on the deep bunkers of Fodor). The podcast recently passed 60 episodes — each superbly produced — and is an ongoing deep dive into all aspects of the increasingly shaky Iranian regime.
Point being: Pay attention to Dubowitz and company. And never more so than right now.
And right now, Dubowitz’s warning is that Iran has to be considering one or even many “October surprise attacks” on its neighbors, Israel, the United States, and anywhere that its weapons or terrorists can reach. America’s military is certainly prepared for anything, but the public ought to be braced, too.
The Islamic Republic is reeling as summer closes. Public statements from both sides of the Janus-faced regime tell the world this. Its “civilian” mouthpieces are publicly calling for an end to the war because the country’s economy is in collapse. At the same time, the military junta atop the shattered remnants of the regime rattles non-existent sabers. Ayatollah Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of the first Iranian supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini, is a prominent Iranian politician and cleric with a unique standing in Iran, and this week, he called on the Revolutionary Guard to strike an agreement with Washington.
The Economist reported last week that a seven-man junta has consolidated power inside the Guard-led regime, and whether or not the magazine got the specific right, a junta of some sort runs the rump regime and is unlikely to accept its loss to the Americans and the Israelis. The regime is thus divided against itself and hated by the people it imprisons, especially the families of the more than 40,000 innocents the regime murdered in January’s massacre.
Aging revolutionaries whose dreams and fantasies lie in ruins around them are unlikely to surrender power and go quietly into exile, even as they move their vast fortunes abroad to benefit their families who survive what increasingly looks like the inevitable collapse of the regime. The junta knows that even if Trump suffered a political defeat in November’s elections, it would not change the fact that he alone runs American foreign policy for the next 26 months. They must also be able to extrapolate conditions in Iran for another two-plus years.
IS THE US RIGHT TO REMOVE SYRIA’S DESIGNATION AS A STATE SPONSOR OF TERRORISM?
So the idea of a grand gesture through suicidal attacks has to appeal to the remnants of the once powerful but now nearly spent regime. This reality powers Dubowitz’s warnings and FDD’s broader work. Everyone in American government — of both parties or none — should be following the arc of this story and paying close attention to FDD in what appears to be the final days of this murderous and still dangerous regime.
Fanatics with nothing less to lose pose a specific kind of threat, and it’s not a rational one — kamikaze attacks in every direction. Americans should support Trump and the military as the Islamic Republic plays out its last few, desperate moves.