Barely an hour had passed since the first American and Israeli missiles were fired Iran struckPresident Donald Trump has made clear that he hopes to change the regime. “It is time to take control of your destiny,” he told the Iranian people in a video. “This is it Moment of action. Don’t let it pass.”
It doesn’t seem complicated. After all, with Iran’s deeply unpopular government weakened by heavy air strikes, some of its top leaders dead or missing, and Washington showing support, how difficult would it be to overthrow an oppressive regime?
Maybe too hard. So says history.
Washington has a long and complicated past when it comes to regime change. There was Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and Panama in 1989. There was Nicaragua in the 1980s, Iraq and Afghanistan In the years following 9/11, W Venezuela Just weeks ago.
There was Iran too. In 1953, the CIA helped engineer a coup that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected leader and gave near-absolute power to Iran. Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. But as was the case with the Shah, who was ousted in Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution after decades of increasingly unpopular rule, regime change rarely goes as planned.
Attempts to form governments friendly to the United States often begin with clear intentions, whether the hope for democracy in Iraq or support for an anti-communist leader in the Congo at the height of the Cold War. But too often these intentions get bogged down in a political quagmire where democratic dreams turn into civil war, once-docile dictators become embarrassed, and American soldiers return home in body bags.
This history has long been a Trump talking point. “We have to abandon the failed policy of nation building and regime change,” he said in 2016.
“In the end, the so-called ‘builders of nations’ destroyed many more than they built,” he said in a speech in Saudi Arabia in 2025, mocking US efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. “Interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand.”
Now, after Saturday’s events, a key question arises: Does today’s United States government understand what it is getting into?
Iran The economy is in chaos and The opposition is still strong Even after Brutal crackdown in January The protests led to the deaths of thousands of people and the arrest of tens of thousands. Many of the country’s key military proxies and allies – Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Assad government in Syria – have been weakened or eliminated. Early Sunday, Iranian state media confirmed Israel-U.S He was killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The United States has not established a post-war vision and does not necessarily want the complete overthrow of the Iranian leadership. As in Venezuela, it may already have potential allies in the government willing to fill the power vacuum.
“But there is a lot that needs to happen between now and a possible scenario along these lines,” said Jonathan Schanzer, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank in Washington that has been highly critical of the Iranian government. “There must be a feeling that there is no salvation for the regime per se, and that they will need to work with the United States.”
In a country whose core leaders are deeply united by ideology and religion, this can be very difficult.
Schanzer said: “The question on my mind now is whether we were able to penetrate the ranks of the regime who are not true and more realistic believers.” “Because I don’t think true believers will convert.”
It is too early to know whether, or to what extent, the political winds are shifting in Tehran. Next leaders may turn out to be just as repressive or be seen at home as an illegitimate tool of the United States.
“We will see if elements of the regime start to move against each other,” said Phillips O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “Air power can damage leadership,” he said. “But it can’t be guaranteed that you’ll bring something new.”
In Latin America, Washington’s involvement goes back a long way — to the time when President James Monroe declared the hemisphere part of the United States’ sphere of influence more than 200 years ago.
If the Monroe Doctrine began as a way to keep European countries out of the region, by the 20th century it justified everything from coups in Central America to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. Historians say this intervention often led to violence, bloodshed and mass human rights abuses. They say there is a lesson.
Direct US intervention has rarely “led to long-term democratic stability,” said Christopher Sabatini, a senior fellow for Latin America at think tank Chatham House in London. He points to Guatemala, where American intervention in the 1950s led to a civil war that did not end for 40 years and left more than 200,000 dead.
Or there is Nicaragua, where support for Contra rebels against the Sandinista government in the 1980s contributed to a long-running civil conflict that devastated the economy, killed tens of thousands and deepened political polarization.
Although overt and widespread American involvement in the region mostly faded after the Cold War, Trump has revived this legacy.
Since taking office last year, Trump has launched the boat Strikes against alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean, He ordered a naval blockade regarding Venezuelan oil exports and became involved in electoral politics Honduras and Argentina. Then, on January 3, US forces arrested powerful Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and flown him to the United States to face drug and weapons charges.
What happened next in Caracas may indicate what the White House hopes will happen in Tehran. Many observers believe the United States will support Maria Corina Machado, who has long been the face of political resistance in Venezuela. Instead, Washington has effectively marginalized it and repeatedly shown its willingness to work with it President Delcy RodriguezWho was Maduro’s second-in-command.
“There are those who would claim that what we did in Venezuela is not regime change,” said Schanzer, of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The system is still in place. There is only one person missing.”
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Tim Sullivan has written from more than 35 countries for The Associated Press since 1993. Danica Kirka in London and Eleonore Hughes in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report.