●Live & On the Record
Jonathan W. Hackett
Master Sergeant, USMC (Ret.) · Author · National Security Analyst · Yale Law School
Jonathan W. Hackett is a retired U.S. Marine Corps interrogator, counterintelligence agent, and special operations capabilities specialist. For two decades, he ran intelligence operations and special activities in dozens of countries across four continents, including postings with Marine Forces Special Operations Command, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. He is the author of Theory of Irregular War (2023) and Iran’s Shadow Weapons: Intelligence Operations, Covert Action, and Unconventional Warfare (2025), and currently studies at Yale Law School. A regular commentator on Iran, the Middle East, and irregular warfare, he has appeared on the BBC, CBC, Al Jazeera, Sky News, and dozens of podcasts, and has briefed members of the UK Parliament.
Books
File 01 / 02
Iran’s Shadow Weapons
Intelligence Operations, Covert Action, and Unconventional Warfare
Drawing on two decades of firsthand experience and previously unseen declassified reporting, this book maps the structure and logic behind Iran’s foreign intelligence activities, covert action, and unconventional warfare — from shadow-fleet oil smuggling to proxy financing and the regime’s playbook for outlasting sanctions.
A work poised to become a standard reference on Iran’s security services, praised for placing them in careful historical context.
— Arash Azizi, contributing writer, The Atlantic
Theory of Irregular War
A field-tested framework for why irregular wars happen and why conventional forces keep losing them
Argues that irregular war emerges from “sovereign dysfunction” across territory, political-economic institutions, and social order — a theory built from Hackett’s own deployments and a rigorous critique of existing doctrine, endorsed by scholars and practitioners across the special operations and academic communities.
Essential reading for the irregular wars still to come, and a book that might have reshaped early post-9/11 strategy had it existed sooner.
— Dr. Ben Connable, author of How Insurgencies End
In the Media
File 02 / 02
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TV & Radio (25)
TV / Radio
CBC News
Why Iran keeps negotiating in Switzerland despite claimed violations — it's about the money.
TV / Radio
Al Jazeera English
Challenges facing U.S. Navy escorts trying to get commercial vessels safely out of the Persian Gulf.
TV / Radio
CBC News
The stalemate around the Straits of Hormuz and the risk calculus facing shippers and insurers.
TV / Radio
BBC
The maximalist positions the U.S. and Iran are taking in negotiations over the Straits and the nuclear issue.
TV / Radio
Sky News
A spate of over a dozen Iran-linked attacks in the UK and Europe since late March 2026.
TV / Radio
BBC News Radio
Iran's shadowy "dark fleet" — flags of convenience, falsified cargo manifests, and shell-company oil sales.
TV / Radio
CBC News
What the maximalist U.S./Iran positions from the Islamabad talks meant, using a football-negotiation analogy.
TV / Radio
CBC News
Maximalist negotiating positions, the Straits of Hormuz, and rifts forming in the Republican party.
TV / Radio
CBC
The law of armed conflict question raised by threats against cultural sites, and a Marine's obligation to follow orders.
TV / Radio
BS-TBS Hodo (Japan)
How U.S. ground operations might unfold and what remains of Iran's air-defense capability. (In Japanese.)
TV / Radio
CBC
The survival and evasion mindset of a downed pilot behind enemy lines.
TV / Radio
BBC
What the recently rescued American in Iran would have been thinking the moment he went down — weather, enemy, terrain, and time.
TV / Radio
i24 News
Commentary segment (topic not specified in source notes).
TV / Radio
BBC
The role of allies and partners — including Japan's minesweeping fleet — in securing the Straits of Hormuz.
TV / Radio
BBC Persian
Ground-force options and the precision limits of Iran's medium-range ballistic missiles. (In Farsi.)
TV / Radio
BS-TBS Hodo (Tokyo)
How the 31st MEU may be used in the Persian Gulf, and Japan's minesweeping/counter-piracy experience.
TV / Radio
BBC
How military planners adjust contingency plans amid rapid policy change.
TV / Radio
BBC Persian
How a missile with a nominal 2,000km range reached Diego Garcia, 4,000km away. (In Farsi.)
TV / Radio
ITV News
The logistics of extracting or destroying Iran's stockpiles of enriched uranium.
TV / Radio
BBC
The 31st MEU's deployment from Japan to the Middle East, and Iran's internet blackout.
TV / Radio
BBC Persian
A shift in the U.S./Israel campaign against Iran, signaled by a change in target types. (In Farsi.)
TV / Radio
BBC
Whether air power alone can force regime change (short answer: no).
TV / Radio
BBC
How much longer the Islamic Republic's military defenses can hold, and U.S. sustainment/logistics constraints.
TV / Radio
Times Radio
Commentary on the degradation of Iran’s air defenses.
TV / Radio
DW (Germany)
How downed US airman was rescued inside Iran.
Podcasts (32)
Podcast
Change Agents (Andy Stumpf)
Mirror-imaging Iran's negotiators, and why Iran's 47 years of negotiating experience outmatches U.S. turnover.
Podcast
Eyes on Geopolitics
"Iran's Trump Card" — how U.S. strategy elevated military outcomes over political ones, to the IRGC's benefit.
Podcast
Talking with Experts (Preston Stewart)
Whether a separate U.S.-Iran peace is possible while Israel and Hezbollah remain at odds in Lebanon.
Podcast
Eyes on Geopolitics
Iran ceasefire talks, European recruitment of teens, and whether the DNI role should be abolished or reformed.
Podcast
The Telegraph — Iran: The Latest
Why the U.S.-Iran peace deal is further away than claimed, and Iran's "Mosaic doctrine."
Podcast
The Team House
Whether the U.S. will resume the air campaign against Iran, and the four camps inside Iranian domestic politics.
Podcast
The Team House
The legal justification for a U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, and the economics of a light-crude mismatch.
Podcast
Eyes on Geopolitics
Why taking Kharg Island before securing the Straits of Hormuz would be premature — plus a look back at a June 2025 prediction.
Podcast
Eyes on Geopolitics
Logistics over tactics, the Bab al-Mandab Strait, and whether the military has seen a recent brain drain.
Podcast
Eyes on Geopolitics
Whether Hezbollah or Iranian sleeper cells are already inside the U.S. — capability plus intent equals threat.
Podcast
Eyes on Geopolitics
What a Marine deployment onto Kharg Island might look like, and why Israel is legally the top recipient of U.S. security assistance.
Podcast
The Telegraph — Battle Lines
How military planning done far in advance interacts with policy objectives that can shift overnight.
Podcast
Eyes on Geopolitics
Why Iran is selling more oil to China now than before the war started.
Podcast
BICOM Podcast (Ep. 291)
Unconventional warfare with the Kurds — history, which factions matter, and what U.S./CIA support could look like.
Podcast
Eyes on Geopolitics
The CIA's plan to arm Kurds in Iran, Iranian magazine depth, and regime succession odds.
Podcast
Eyes on Geopolitics
What Iran's actual constitutional succession process looks like after Khamenei — and why the popular theories are wrong.
Podcast
The Telegraph — Battle Lines
How Operation Roaring Lion came together, and the friction between military planners and the NSC.
Podcast
Eyes on Geopolitics
Reading the early signals of U.S. strike preparation against the backdrop of student protests in Iran.
Podcast
Eyes on Geopolitics
Three possible outcomes of the Iran protests, IRGC control of the economy, plus Venezuela and Greenland.
Podcast
Inter Populum (Journal of Irregular Warfare and Special Operations)
"The Houthis do not exist" — terrain, tribes, and tactics in 500 years of Zaidi resistance to lowland rule.
Podcast
BICOM Podcast (Ep. 275)
Inside Iran's IRGC shadow network — nearly two dozen MI5-disrupted plots on UK soil in twelve months.
Podcast
The Team House (Ep. 368)
Iran, covert action, signature strikes, and stories from the field — released alongside the Iran's Shadow Weapons audiobook.
Podcast
Eyes on Geopolitics
Israel's Nasser hospital strike in Gaza, the June assassinations of Iranian leaders, and how signature strikes work.
Podcast
Eyes on Geopolitics
Escalation signs ahead of possible U.S. strikes on Fordow, and what happens if Khamenei is killed.
Podcast
The Team House (Ep. 351)
MARSOC deployments across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, and the road to writing both books.
Podcast
The Break It Down Show
Counterintelligence, the Global War on Terror, and the tension between SOF culture and conventional military norms.
Podcast
School of War (Ep. 199)
Hard lessons from interrogations and special operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Podcast
Irregular Warfare Podcast (Ep. 122)
Debating the "dysfunctional sovereign" theory of irregular war with Dr. Sandor Fabian.
Podcast
The Dead Prussian (Ep. 117)
How French, British, and German military thought shaped U.S. views on irregular war — and why Clausewitz doesn't apply.
Podcast
Revolution in Military Affairs (S4, Ep. 5)
Why Iraq fell apart, and the difference between "war" and "warfare."
Podcast
Brutecast (S7, Ep. 21) — Krulak Center
Theory of Irregular War, plus a wide-ranging Q&A on everything from turbulence to quantum mechanics.
Podcast
New Books Network
What irregular war actually is, why the U.S. keeps struggling through these conflicts, and a proposed way out.
Print & Op-Eds (16)
Print / Op-Ed
UK Parliament — testimony
Testified that the IRGC should be proscribed in the United Kingdom; discussed on the record by MP David Taylor.
Print / Op-Ed
The Cipher Brief (op-ed)
"Proscribing the IRGC Will Make Britain Safer" — argues the UK lags the US, Canada, and EU on IRGC-linked sanctions enforcement.
Print / Op-Ed
LBC (op-ed)
"The starfish, not the spider" — why leadership strikes alone can't dismantle the IRGC's decentralized network.
Print / Op-Ed
The National
Pentagon options for a land operation by U.S. Marines and paratroopers to "take the Strait."
Print / Op-Ed
The Jerusalem Post
Comments on whether U.S. deterrence signaling toward Iran is actually working.
Print / Op-Ed
Daily Mail
Comments on an IRGC-linked Bahraini news channel operating out of the UK (previously shut down in the U.S. by the DOJ in 2021).
Print / Op-Ed
The Jerusalem Post
Comments on the EU's designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization.
Print / Op-Ed
The National
Houthi-linked TV station's presence in London to be raised with the UK security minister.
Print / Op-Ed
The Sun
Iran’s Cluster Bomb Attacks on Israeli Civilian Areas Could Constitute War Crimes, Experts Say
Print / Op-Ed
BT.dk (Denmark)
Whether Iran's cluster munitions used against Israel could constitute war crimes.
Print / Op-Ed
The Times
Inside Iran protests that threaten regime: ‘This is the final battle’.
Print / Op-Ed
IranFocus
"The Iranian regime's mafia" — Khamenei's wealth and the IRGC's smuggling operations.
Print / Op-Ed
Democratization (Vol. 32, No. 6)
Academic journal review of Theory of Irregular War.
Print / Op-Ed
Small Wars Journal
"Covert Action in Irregular Wars" — unraveling the CIA's Timber Sycamore program and Syria's rapid collapse.
Print / Op-Ed
Military Review (Army University Press)
Book review of Theory of Irregular War by Sean R. Kentch.
Print / Op-Ed
Marine Corps Gazette
How the USMC might find its place in a post-GWOT world where allies and partners take the lead in executing national strategy.
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