Mark Dubowitz

Mark Dubowitz (born 11 September 1968) is a South African-born Canadian-American attorney and former venture capitalist, and CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-profit think-tank. He is a proponent of sanctions against Iran and was a leading critic of the Iran nuclear agreement, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. According to The New York Times, "Dubowitz’s campaign to draw attention to what he saw as the flaws in the Iran nuclear deal has taken its place among the most consequential ever undertaken by a Washington think tank leader."

He was a leading critic of the Iran nuclear agreement, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but then tried to save it after President Trump withdrew from the agreement according to his own account. In 2015 he became a citizen of the United States. He is Jewish and his great-grandparents fled the pogroms in the Russian Empire.

Dubowitz earned a master's degree in international public policy from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, where he focused on China. He also earned a Juris Doctor and Master of Business Administration from the University of Toronto. He has also studied at Jerusalem's Hebrew University. He spent the first 8 years after law school working on funding technology start-ups in Toronto, as an attorney and venture capitalist in Toronto.

Career Dubowitz is the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He co-founded FDD's Center on Economic and Financial Power and FDD's Center on Military and Political Power,

He joined the FDD in 2003 and became an authority on international terrorism and sanctions against states that sponsor terrorism such as Iran and North Korea. that shape the Islamic Republic. Notable guests included Reza Pahlavi, Crown Prince of Iran, Iranian activist Masih Alinejad, and Urban warfare expert John Spencer.

Dubowitz is a lecturer and senior research fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, where he teaches and conducts research on international negotiations, sanctions, and Iran's nuclear program. In 2014, Dubowitz argued the U.S. and European sanctions against Russia were a warning, and not an attempt to reverse the occupation of Crimea quickly. In 2017, Dubowitz and Jonathan Schanzer co-authored a Wall Street Journal opinion article advocating U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

Iran's Foreign Ministry sanctioned Dubowitz and the FDD on 24 August 2019, alleging that they participated in designing, imposing, and intensifying sanctions against Iran. In a 2025 op-ed, Dubowitz and Ben Cohen argued that funding cuts to USAID would "bring accountability and efficiency", while preserving the soft power mission.

Opposition to Iran nuclear deal and Iranian government According to The New York Times, "no one outside the Trump administration was a more persistent or effective critic [of the Iran nuclear agreement] than Mark Dubowitz".

He told Ynet in 2011 that at FDD they "closely monitor international companies that do business with Iran, invest in Iran's energy sector and provide important equipment and technologies to this sector.

Dubowitz opposed the Obama administration's nuclear diplomacy with Iran, testifying before Congress on several occasions against the nuclear talks, including to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (February 2014), Senate Banking Committee (January 27, 2015), House Financial Services Committee (July 22, 2015), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (July 29, 2015), Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (August 5, 2015), and the House Ways and Means Committee (November 4, 2015).

In June 2025, Dubowitz said that an International Atomic Energy Agency report showed that Iran was violating its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and preventing investigations of possible nuclear weaponisation work. During the June 2025 conflict between Israel and Iran, Dubowitz said that Israel might lack the ordnance necessary to destroy Iran's underground Fordow enrichment facility and advocated U.S. assistance for an attack on the facility.

Dubowitz authored or co-authored several op-eds on the Iran deal, published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.