Hugo Goerner, founder of EPAC, talks with retired CIA officer Clare Lopez on a wide-ranging look at Iran, Gaza, and a cockpit attack that nearly brought down a passenger jet.
Watch:
Lopez, who spent her CIA career in the Russia division and later focused on Iran and the Middle East, argues that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — not the clerical establishment — now runs the regime, and that by June 2025 Iran had the pieces of a deliverable nuclear weapons program: highly enriched uranium (publicly admitted to 60 percent), long-range ballistic missiles, and work on warhead design.
She walks through open-source reporting from the IAEA, the Institute for Science and International Security, and the National Council of Resistance of Iran, and explains why she says President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu launched Operation Midnight Hammer and Operation Rising Lion against sites including Natanz, Isfahan, and Fordow. She also flags Pickaxe Mountain in the Zagros range as a site that, in her account, has not been struck or inspected.
The conversation then turns to Gaza. Lopez rejects genocide accusations against the IDF, points viewers to urban-warfare analyst John Spencer, and contrasts evacuation warnings, leaflet drops, and calls with Hamas’s use of hospitals, schools, UNRWA facilities, and mosques. She also discusses Egypt’s closed Rafah crossing, regional refusal to take Gazans, and her claim that civilians as well as fighters took part in the October 7, 2023 attacks.
In the final segment, recorded the day after the incident, they cover Flydubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv. An Omani copilot allegedly stabbed Indian captain Smit Machchhar and the aircraft plunged thousands of feet before passengers — including Israeli passenger Yaniv Hayoun — forced their way into the cockpit. Off-duty Flydubai pilots landed the jet at Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. Lopez treats it as a terrorist attack and notes that a full official readout was not yet public.
Chapters:
00:00 — Intro: Clare Lopez and EPAC
01:00 — CIA background and how she came to Iran
03:22 — What Trump is trying to do with Iran
04:05 — IRGC vs. the clerics; Rising Lion and Midnight Hammer
06:14 — Enriched uranium, missiles, and warhead work
09:57 — Pickaxe Mountain and buried material
14:55 — UN Human Rights Council and the Gaza narrative
16:18 — John Spencer, IDF warnings, population claims
19:28 — Evacuation, Rafah, and Black September
22:21 — October 7 and Gazan civilians
24:41 — Why Gaza’s buildings were hit
27:14 — The Flydubai stabbing and emergency landing
32:48 — Yaniv Hayoun and the landing in Saudi Arabia
36:17 — Motive, and closing
Guest views are her own and were offered while investigations and official readouts were still incomplete.
