Glenn Greenwald

Journalist, author, Pulitzer Prize winner

Glenn Greenwald is one of the most acclaimed journalists of the 21st century. A former lawyer, he entered the field with his own blog in 2005 to voice his opposition to the Iraq War and the associated civil liberty infringements. He quickly earned himself a reputation as one of the most cutting political analysts in the world.

This renown expanded in 2013 when, while writing for the Guardian, he began publishing classified information provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. For this epoch-shaping work, he and his team won the Pulitzer Prize.

Soon afterwards, he left The Guardian to found The Intercept, a non-profit left-leaning news organisation. In 2020, however, he resigned, citing political censorship by the site’s editors, who tried to quash his reporting on Joe Biden’s actions regarding China and Ukraine. Today, he hosts the political news and commentary show System Update on Rumble.

Why did we invite him on?

Last week, we invited Matthew Syed on the show to discuss the Iran-Israel quagmire and make the case for Western engagement in the conflict.

Glenn represents the anti-war position. Historically, this has been the typical left-wing view - Glenn himself describes himself as such. However, in 2025, this perspective represents a not-inconsequential proportion of the MAGA coalition.

Since he came down the golden escalator 10 years ago, Trump has been the primary target of left-wing ire; criticisms of him were often easy to dismiss as hysterical leftism. Many described his election victory last November as a referendum on ‘wokeism’ itself, as a coalition of unlikely allies came together to put him back in power.

However, the coalition is crumbling: the Iran-Israel war has fractured his own base. Several major players in the right-of-centre political discourse, from Charlie Kirk to Scott Horton to Dave Smith, have condemned the strikes and pleaded for a total ceasing of American engagement in the Middle East.

We always want to hear from both sides, and as soon as things began to escalate, we began the search for someone to air the anti-war perspective.

Glenn is one of the most respected non-interventionists in media today, and once his name came up, we knew we had to have him on.

What did we talk about?

”Trump is often a byproduct of whoever he chooses to listen to at a given moment. Things seemed hopeful for a while.”

Last week, Matthew Syed joined us to share his Israeli-sympathetic perspective on the war. To Matthew, Iran’s fundamentalist mindset posed an existential threat to Israel - if they could get their hands on a weapon that could flatten the Jewish state, they would likely do so. Given that, it’s entirely understandable that Israel and its allies might take drastic action to prevent that.

Glenn, however, frames it from the other side - why might Iran want to enrich uranium? Is it purely to aggress on Israel? He thinks not; instead, he lays out what he deems the two key reasons: leverage and deterrence.

”What leverage does Iran have? I think part of the strategy was, as they have a right to do, not to pursue nuclear weapons, but to have some leverage. ‘Hey, we’ll give up this 20-30% enrichment if we get a decent deal back in place’. And there’s a deterrence aspect. When you see Israel bombing Lebanon, bombing Syria, taking land from them, being much more aggressive in the West - we know what they did in Gaza. Going to 60% is a way of saying they can get a nuclear weapon if they choose … If you want to ask Iran to take on obligations that nobody else has, obviously they need something in return.”

To Glenn, Iran is acting just as any other country in their shoes might. We in the West are expecting them to accept a deal they would not accept, and deny themselves the incentives that explain our behaviour.

But is Iran really acting like any other country? What about the funding of terrorist proxies in the area, groups with designs of destabilising the region? Here, Glenn asserts that America’s criticism of Iran’s conduct here is pure hypocrisy. America has spent decades propping up described ‘terror’ organisations to further its nation’s interests, should we expect Iran to be any different?

”We’re gonna lecture other countries on the evils of spending money on proxies and weapons to defend themselves in a region where they have all kinds of threats? That’s supposed to be a hallmark of evil?”