Since early January, President Trump has committed several times to intervening in Iran should its regime violently repress domestic protests, explaining that the U.S. was “locked and loaded and ready to go,” and that Tehran would “get hit very hard.”
Trump made similar threats before. But the coup that Washington launched on January 3 to depose Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro suggests he may be serious about conducting regime change in Iran. That would be a colossal mistake. Though the U.S. could still get entangled in Venezuela, Iran is a much larger country, far from Washington’s “backyard,” and in a deeply unstable region.
Yet regime change has ardent supporters in America’s establishment. Israel also endorses the goal.
Since his return to power, Trump has intensified Washington’s sanctions. Despite reassuring intelligence estimates, he decided, right before new talks with Tehran, to join the strikes campaign that Israel had launched in mid-June last year against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
During that 12-day war, he portrayed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as an “easy target” and evoked regime change (although he backtracked later). In late December, he proclaimed that America and Israel would “knock [Iran] down” should it revive its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
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