US President Donald Trump has repeatedly touted the US operation in Venezuela as a “perfect” example of how regime change unfolds, and there are direct parallels between Venezuela and Iran.
“I think what we did in Venezuela was the perfect, perfect scenario,” Trump told The New York Times in a brief interview on Sunday.
However, U.S. operations in Caracas and Tehran unfolded very differently.
In Venezuela, airstrikes were limited and aimed at helping U.S. special forces capture authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro. His arrest caused his former deputy, Delcy Rodriguez, to make a quick change of tune and almost immediately welcomed the US overtures.
In Iran, US and Israeli airstrikes were far more widespread, killing Khamenei and hundreds of others. These attacks were met with immediate and widespread Iranian retaliation across the Middle East, but they were likely retaliations that Iran had been planning for weeks.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has ruled out dialogue, sending a clear message that Iran’s remaining leadership is ready to fight rather than take direction from the US government.
Analysts say what happens next in the already escalating war with Iran is highly unpredictable. And Iran’s theocratic, ideologically driven regime bears little resemblance to the one built around former strongman Mr. Maduro.
Two completely different governments: Iran and Venezuela
The Islamic Republic of Iran was designed to survive.
Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, said that although Khamenei was at the top, the government’s power was highly decentralized, spread among the military, religious clerics, and various other political institutions.
“Since the June attack on Israel, the supreme leader and the regime have decentralized much more power. In some ways, beheadings don’t really work the same way they do in other countries,” Nasr explained in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday.
“You can kill the people at the top, but the system is built to work,” said Nasr, a former US State Department official.
Israel claimed to have killed 40 Iranian military leaders in the first wave of attacks. However, Iran’s regime and retaliatory plans clearly remain intact.
“Iran today can be said to function on the basis of a deep state consisting of bureaucrats, politicians, clerics, commanders of the Revolutionary Guards and military commanders… They took guidance from him, but the day-to-day running of the country was not carried out by (the Supreme Leader), but by this deep state,” Nasr added.
And unlike Venezuela, Iran’s regime is a theocracy turned dictatorship. Many officials, diplomats, and security forces are ideologically driven and hold hard-line views.
Previous crackdowns on dissent in Iran have aimed not only at crushing anti-government sentiment, but also against religious opposition, modern reforms, and women’s rights.
Analysts argue that one way for potential Iranian leaders to gain domestic legitimacy to fill the power vacuum left after Khamenei’s killing is to double down on some of these views and demonstrate greater strength against the country’s adversaries.
“It is possible that future leaders will be more hardline than Ayatollah Khamenei. We are in a period of transition and that is very likely, especially with regard to the Revolutionary Guards,” said Aniseh Basiri Tabrizi, senior analyst for Iran and Iraq at Control Risk.
“We have seen that they are quite indiscriminate in their attacks and the type of attacks are also very indiscriminate compared to, for example, the June war,” she told CNN.
The US president continues to talk about a new leadership in Tehran, even as the Trump administration presents conflicting war goals.
Despite U.S. officials insisting the war was not aimed at regime change, President Trump called on Iranians to govern their country. And on Sunday, he told the New York Times that there were “three very good options” for who should govern Iran, without naming names.
Unlike Venezuela, where the U.S. operation was followed by a quick visit from acting President Rodríguez, Iran has no automatic deputy leader willing to cooperate with the U.S. government. Rather, Khamenei’s death triggered an internal deliberative process beyond the reach of the United States and Israel.
David Petraeus, a retired U.S. Army general and former CIA director, said there is no local opposition to Iran’s pro-regime Revolutionary Guards and Basij forces.
“The challenge here is that there is no figure like Ahmed al-Shara in Syria with the military power that could overthrow the brutal Bashar al-Assad’s hollow regime forces in Syria in 2024,” Petraeus told CNN.
Whoever is appointed next in Iran “will need the blessing of the security services, including the Revolutionary Guards as well as the Council of Experts,” said Sanam Vakil, head of the Middle East program at the Chatham House think tank.
“They’re going to look for someone to support their interests,” Bakir said in an interview with CNN’s Brian Todd.
History has shown that airstrikes without boots on the ground are very unlikely to lead to regime change toward democracy or meaningful reform.
“That never worked,” Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, told CNN.
Although modern bombs almost always hit their targets, “tactical success does not mean strategic success,” explained Pape, who writes a column about how escalation unfolds during war.
Air strikes do not push people to protest in the streets. He argued that these instill fear in the population and make it easier for leaders to make nationalist claims to maintain power.
Rather, the experience of air raids risks creating a power relationship between society and the government versus foreign military attackers.
Attempts to change government by air typically result in a reorganization of what is essentially the same government, or a more nationalistic or unpredictable government, Pape said.
“We will continue to see retaliation, continued escalation, and the conflict is likely to end as one side depletes its resources,” Control Risks’ Basili Tabrizi predicted.
CNN’s Alejandra Jaramillo, Christian Edwards, Brian Todd and Dugald McConnell contributed to this report.
