In a live debate over whether America should bomb Iran, one side brought facts and history; the other brought interruptions, patronizing lectures, and recycled empire talking points. On Tuesday, I participated in a debate on whether the US should be bombing Iran with Naomi Wolf—a feminist author, journalist, former Rhodes Scholar, and CEO of Daily Clout. To say that the interaction was a disappointment is putting it mildly. The tactics she employed are tried-and-true methods of the old dying legacy media. Her attempts to use logical fallacies and ad hominem attacks against me revealed that she was either ill-prepared for the discussion or thought she would be able to distract me and the audience from the topic at hand. Neither worked. I encourage all readers to watch the actual debate for yourselves. This analysis and breakdown of some of the debate’s finer points is intended to elaborate on some of the points I made and highlights her attempts to deflect from the subject of the debate. This isn’t about me or Ms. Wolf personally. This is about war propaganda being pushed in the mainstream corporate media, as well as the mainstream alternative media, where Ms. Wolf is firmly entrenched. This isn’t about our personal squabbles, but about destroying propaganda from the US empire, which hopes to convince the American public that yet another war is worth supporting and dying for. This is especially relevant because Naomi Wolf is well-known in vaccine-skeptic circles for her work dissecting the COVID19 Pfizer documents released under a court order by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Wolf collaborated with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon and volunteers from his “War Room” website, leading to the publication of the book The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity. I have never interacted with Wolf before last week, when I stumbled across a tweet in which she responded to critics calling her out for supporting the US military’s bombing of Iran on February 28th: “I am not supporting “war.” In this case of Iran, regime change is necessary, just as it was with regime change in Germany post WW2,” she wrote. “The United States has a right to defend itself from serious national security threats; and as a woman, I do not think that anyone serious can be an apologist for a regime that enslaves half the population and that tortures and murders its own people en masse.” I responded to her by stating, “Yes, you are just repeating state talking points and falling for the latest empire expansion.” She followed up by asking if I would debate her live and, if so, to email her. Thus began several days of back and forth emails attempting to come to an agreement on the terms of the debate. Despite her inviting me to debate, she initially asked for my resume, my location, my “real name,” and my work history prior to journalism. While I was annoyed at the whole conversation, I play along in the interest of having a debate that I hoped would be educational. For the last 2 days I’ve been emailing Naomi back and forth to set a date for this debate. First, she doesn’t want a moderator. Second, she’s been asking for my resume, my age, etc - running a background check or something. Third, she only wants it streamed on her channels,… https://t.co/8nNiS0OPA9 — Derrick Broze (@DBrozeLiveFree) March 3, 2026 Once she was satisfied that I was, indeed, who I said I was, we hit another snag: she refused to agree to a moderated debate. I’ve seen enough online debates devolve into shouting matches, so I was cautious about going forward without a moderator. She also didn’t want me streaming the debate to my own channels. Ultimately, she agreed to allow me to stream the debate, and I agreed to forgo a moderator. I also had to agree that I would not make clips of the conversation because she feared being taken out of context. After all these negotiations, I wasn’t exactly optimistic—but I remained hopeful for an honest debate. I was unfortunately mistaken. Are We Debating Iran or Where I Live? I was still hopeful that the debate might be a fruitful discussion between two intelligent people with opposing views. I did my due diligence to understand Ms. Wolf’s positions on Iran and anticipate her arguments. When the debate finally began, she offered me the chance to make an opening statement. I stated: “My basic position is that the US getting involved in this conflict really doesn’t represent—not only what Donald Trump and his administration claim to be, America First—I don’t think it’s about actually representing or defending American interests. Especially while there’s plenty of issues at home that Americans heard Trump campaign on and that are not being addressed.And I also think, in a broader picture, it really represents Israeli Zionist interests, not American interests. I think we have to take into consideration the fact that there’s been no congressional, Constitutional approval for this conflict—as with every conflict for the last decades. Trump is continuing that same practice as Obama and Bush before him, Biden of course as well And that, generally, it’s not in the US interest. There’s also a history of US interference in Iran going back to the 50s—Operation Ajax—which I think is relevant in terms of understanding why Iran is the way it is today. And, overall, I don’t think Americans need to be dying for this conflict, which, as I said, seems to be more about Israel’s desire for the Greater Israel Project and removing their claimed enemies than anything that represents American interest or America First.” Almost immediately, it became clear she was not interested in a serious debate on the agreed topic—should the US be bombing Iran? Wolf thanked me for my statement and then said I hadn’t presented any evidence for my claims. Silly me—I thought it was just an opening statement, and that after her opening we would get into the details. After making it clear she believes the US bombing Iran is justified and that she is a “MAGA Trump voter,” she shifted to discussing my location and if I vote in US elections. “I will note that you live in Mexico and I don’t know if you vote in US elections. Do you?” For a moment this caught me off guard, because I certainly didn’t sign up to debate my choice to leave the US in 2020 or why I am a principled non-voter. Nevertheless, I told her the only time I voted was in 2004, when I was 18 and foolish enough to think voting would change the course of American politics. Her response? “Well, if you don’t vote, why are we having this debate?” I quickly informed her that the idea that one must vote or live within a country to have an informed opinion on policies that impact people worldwide is, respectfully, ridiculous. She repeated this silly framing for several minutes, bringing up my living in Mexico at least 8-9 times. Despite my efforts to redirect the conversation back to the topic at hand, it would take another eight more minutes before we actually heard her arguments for why the US should be bombing Iran. Standing For Peace and Against Regime Change Wars Her arguments were essentially that Iran has been the aggressor by directly or indirectly attacking Israel, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Qatar, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen, and ships in the Red Sea. Wolf noted these attacks have been criticized by Arab states, including those supporting Palestinians or opposing Israel. She repeated talking points about Iran’s nuclear program being a danger to the world. Finally, she said the US strikes on Iran are justified because they help counter a “murderous, insane, deranged, irrational” regime. My initial response was to ask her how long Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed Iran was about to finish nuclear weapons. She said she didn’t know, so I informed her that Americans have heard such unsubstantiated claims from Netanyahu since 1992. As a member of the Israeli Knesset, Netanyahu stated that Iran was three to five years away from being able to develop and produce a nuclear bomb. He repeated these claims with varying timelines in 1995, 2002, 2009, and onward to the present day. Wolf said she wasn’t concerned with Netanyahu but with the United States. However, it’s disingenuous to pretend Netanyahu’s statements have had no impact on US foreign policy toward Iran. I also brought up the fact that in June 2025, Trump claimed US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities had “completely obliterated” all of Iran’s nuclear capabilities. In fact, on June 25, 2025, the White House released a statement titled “Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated—and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News.” Almost immediately, it was clear that Trump was, once again, exaggerating or outright lying. A leaked classified report indicated that the bombing set back Iran’s nuclear program by a few months at best. The point is that the Trump administration lied in 2025, so there’s no reason to trust similar claims now when we’re told Iran is once again close to nuclear weapons. Before addressing her claims about Iran’s attacks on various nations, I reminded Ms. Wolf that I did not come to the debate to defend Iran, Israel or the United States. I do not stand in defense of any government. I stand for the people of Iran, the people of Israel, the people of America—all those opposed to these wars, who recognize that only the regular working-class people suffer from them. Regarding Iran’s strikes, I noted that they were responses to preemptive US and Israeli attacks launched without provocation. I pointed out that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio initially stated that the US military needed to attack first because they knew Israel was planning to bomb Iran, and the US feared retaliation against American bases. .@SecRubio: “The president made the very wise decisi
