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Cato Weekly Podcast • January 22, 2026 

# Iran on the Brink: Another Middle East War in the Making? 

With aircraft carriers moving into position and calls for “new leadership” in Tehran growing louder, the risk of U.S. military action remains high despite the absence of a coherent strategy. The Cato Institute’s Brandan P. Buck and Jon Hoffman argue that vague objectives, inflated threat perceptions, and regime-change fantasies threaten to pull the United States into a costly war that Americans do not want.

[![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) 
This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). 

##### Featuring 

[![Brandan P. Buck - cropped](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2024-11/brandon-buck-cropped.jpg?itok=Lt1PZyoy)](/people/brandan-p-buck) 

##### [Brandan P. Buck](/people/brandan-p-buck)

Research Fellow, Cato Institute

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](https://x.com/Brandan_Buck) [ 

](mailto:bbuck@cato.org) 

[![Jon Hoffman cropped](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2024-05/jon-hoffman-portrait-cropped.jpg?itok=_ZK8UIoh)](/people/jon-hoffman) 

##### [Jon Hoffman](/people/jon-hoffman)

Research Fellow, Cato Institute

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](https://x.com/Hoffman8Jon) [ 

](mailto:jhoffman@cato.org)