Tag: regime change

Trump’s Contrasting Regime-Change Strategies in Iran and Venezuela

President Donald Trump has made it clear that the new U.S.-Israeli air war against Iran is aimed at nothing less than the overthrow of the country’s clerical regime. Such an ambitious objective should not come as a surprise. Both the powerful Israel lobby and most of the conservative movement in the United States have endorsed the goal of forcible regime change in Tehran since the Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah in 1979. Even a sizable percentage of anti-war liberals have tended to make an exception with respect to policy toward Iran.

The ostensible goal embraced by nearly all of Tehran’s critics has always been to oust the mullahs and bring a secular democratic government to power. In December 2025, prominent conservative organizations, media outlets, and individuals in the United States and Europe voiced emphatic support for anti-regime protests that had erupted in Iranian cities. On January 15, 2026, Trump himself openly threatened to intervene militarily if Iranian security personnel continued to crack down on demonstrators.

Tehran’s adversaries in the United States and other Western countries insist that they want to see a secular, fully democratic government emerge in Iran. Trump’s rhetoric during the initial phases of his new war is consistent with that objective. The administration’s supposed embrace of an ambitious regime-change agenda for democracy in Iran, though, stands in dramatic contrast to Washington’s much more pragmatic conduct in Venezuela. Such a substantive difference raises justifiable uncertainty about the nature and extent of U.S. regime-change goals in Iran, even if the current war proves to be successful militarily.

Although the Trump administration ousted Venezuela’s left-wing dictator Nicolas Maduro in early January 2026, Trump allowed Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, and most other members of the regime to remain in power. That restraint infuriated libertarians and many conservatives in the United States. Most of them wanted to see Washington install in office opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and an outspoken advocate of free markets. Indeed, Machado is the darling of prominent libertarian organizations, especially the Cato Institute.

However, Trump and his policy team seemed perfectly content with continuing an authoritarian socialist regime in Caracas, as long as the leaders were willing to do Washington’s bidding. Policy concessions from Rodriguez’s government with respect to the treatment of the U.S. oil industry and a willingness to display less receptivity to China’s economic penetration of South America came quickly, and the White House appeared to be placated.

The cynical pragmatism of U.S. policy in Venezuela should make U.S. crusaders for Iranian democracy wonder about the sincerity of the Trump administration’s commitment to that value in Iran. There also are major elements in the internal movement opposing the clerical regime who appear to be more than a little unsavory and might be willing to play a role similar to Delcy Rodriguez’s adopted role in her country.

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US-Israel war on Iran ‘decided ⁠weeks ago’ under cover of nuclear talks: Report

The unprovoked US-Israeli war against Iran launched on 28 February had “been planned for months, and the ⁠launch date ⁠decided ⁠weeks ago,” even as the US and Iran carried out indirect nuclear negotiations, an Israeli defense official told Reuters.

Washington and Tel Aviv renewed negotiations in February over Iran’s nuclear program. President Trump was under pressure from Israel force Iran to give up uranium enrichment, as well as its ballistic missile program and support for regional resistance forces.

Amid the negotiations, Trump sent an “armada” of US naval ships and warplanes to the region, threatening to launch an attack if officials in Tehran refused to make a deal.

After the latest round of talks on Thursday, a senior US official told Axios the talks were “positive.”

Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, who mediated the talks, said the talks had shown “significant progress.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also expressed optimism, saying both sides had shown a “clear seriousness” about getting a deal.

However, the US and Israel launched large-scale attacks against Iranian targets early Saturday, suggesting the negotiations had never been serious.

In the wake of the attacks, Omani Foreign Minister Albusaidi said that the negotiations he mediated had been “deliberately undermined.”

Mehran Kamrava, director of the Iranian studies unit at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, stated that Israel “appears to have launched an attack designed to derail the negotiations.”

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Going to War, Again, for Israel

Once again, America is going to war for Israel. Once again, many will die for the Zionist state, including American service members. Once again, we will stumble blindly into a military fiasco. Once again, we will do the bidding of a foreign power whose interests are not our interests, but whose lobbyists have bought up our political class, including Donald Trump. Once again, we will violate the U.N. charter by attacking a country that does not pose an imminent threat.

This is not our war. This is part of Israel’s demented vision of Greater Israel, of dominating the Middle East. But Israel needs our military, our taxpayer dollars, our weapons to do it. And we have handed them the keys to our formidable arsenal.

The architects of the war with Iran, which the administration feels no need to justify to the American public or the international community, admit it will not be quick.

Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told CBS News on Saturday that the goal is not only to curb Iran’s nuclear program, but “dismantle their terror support network.”

“To do all that is going to take longer than the strikes on their nuclear program last summer,” Cotton said. “We’re probably looking at weeks, not days, of joint efforts by the United States, Israel and our Arab partners, who have also been attacked this morning.”

Israel’s lackeys in the political class, along with their courtiers in the media, including former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) employee Wolf Blitzer, as well as academia, are shining examples of Israel’s transparent and often illegal meddling in the American political system. Forget Russia. Forget China. No foreign government comes close to exerting Israel’s influence.

Democratic Party leaders are not opposed to attacking Iran — they are opposed to attacking Iran without being consulted. Two dozen Democrats lept to their feet and applauded every time Trump threatened Iran, or lauded Israel, in his State of the Union address. The Biden administration and Democratic Party leadership made no effort to reinstate Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement. It focused instead on sustaining the genocide in Gaza. It cheered Israel’s decapitation of Iranian proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Kamala Harris in her feckless and tone deaf presidential campaign promised to continue funding the genocide, which alienated many voters, and labeled Iran our most dangerous enemy.

Endless war is a bipartisan project.

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Iran says it has ‘one word only’ for America in tense standoff between representatives at emergency UN Security Council meeting

Iran‘s representative told an emergency United Nations meeting that they have ‘one word only’ for the United States following the deadly airstrikes on Iran earlier today. 

Iran’s Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani told America to be ‘polite’ at the emergency meeting following Operation Epic Fury, which saw airstrikes targeting Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. 

‘I have one word only,’ Iravani said, at the meeting in New York City on Saturday. ‘I advise to the representative of the United States to be polite.’

‘It will be better for yourself and the country you represented, thank you.’

US Ambassador Mike Waltz hit back at Iravani and said: ‘Frankly, I’m not going to dignify this with another response.’

‘Especially, as this representative sits here, in this body, representing a regime that has killed tens of thousands of its own people and imprisoned many more simply for wanting freedom from your tyranny,’ he concluded. 

The tense meeting saw Iravani describe the war against Iran as one against international law and international legal order under the United Nations Charter. 

‘This morning, the United States regime – jointly and in coordination with the Israeli regime – initiated an unprovoked and premeditated aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran for the second time in recent months,’ Iran’s ambassador said. 

‘This is not only an act of aggression; it is a war crime and a crime against humanity,’ Iravani continued. 

‘The invocation to “preemptive attack”, claims of imminent threat, or other unsubstantiated political claims, are unfounded legally, morally and politically.’ 

The UN Security Council, charged with ensuring international peace and security is maintained, is comprised of 15 members, including five permanent members; China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States. 

Other current members include Bahrain, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Greece, Latvia, Liberia, Pakistan, Panama and Somalia.

At around 1.15am on Saturday, the US and Israel began hitting Iranian targets to ‘dismantle the Iranian regime’s security apparatus.’ According to the United Nations News, the strikes do not meet the criteria of lawful self-defense and ‘constitute a violation of Article Two’.

In response, Iran said it will invoke, ‘without hesitation,’ the Charter’s Article 51 for its ‘inherent and lawful’ right to self-defense. 

But, Israel’s Ambassador Dany Danon said the attacks were an ‘act of necessity’ to put an end to an ‘existential threat,’ UN News reported. 

‘This is not the anger of a radical fringe,’ Danon said. ‘It is State-sanctioned hatred.’ 

Waltz equally defended the operation, and said: ‘This is a moment in history that requires moral clarity.’

Waltz claimed that the operation had ‘specific and strategic’ objectives in efforts to reduce missile capabilities that threaten allies, target naval assets used in international waters and disrupt machinery that provides militant weaponry. 

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Israeli strike on Iranian school kills over 100 children – media

Over 100 students have been killed and dozens injured in an Israeli airstrike on a girls’ primary school in the city of Minab, in southern Iran, according to the country’s news agency Tasnim. The attack comes amid ongoing airstrikes on the Islamic Republic by Israel and the US.

Israel launched what it described as a pre-emptive operation against Iranian military and nuclear-related targets on Saturday, saying the strikes were aimed at neutralizing threats posed by Iran. US President Donald Trump later said Washington was joining the operation, citing the failure of nuclear diplomacy as a direct trigger for the renewed bombing.

One of the strikes reportedly targeted an elementary school in the city of Minab, killing at least 148 students and leaving 95 others injured, according to local officials.

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U.S. Strikes Iran in Unconstitutional Attack, Breaking Major Trump Campaign Promise of No More Foreign Wars

President Trump broke a key campaign vow today by ordering an attack on Iran.

American war planes hit targets across the nation, including the capital Tehran, because negotiations to stop Iran from developing atomic weapons were unsuccessful and, Trump said in short speech, to protect American “national security.”

Iran retaliated, striking the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, and poured missiles into Israel. Iran also hit targets across the Middle East.

Top Republicans rightly called the U.S. air raid unconstitutional.

The Attack

“In the initial wave, the U.S. carried out dozens of strikes with attack planes launched from bases around the Middle East and from one or more aircraft carriers, a U.S. official said, The New York Times reported:

The warplanes are part of the largest U.S. military buildup since the Iraq War in 2003, and the deployment includes two aircraft carriers, a number of naval destroyers and more than 50 fighter planes.

The focus of the American strikes for the moment is military targets in Iran, a U.S. official said. Besides its nuclear facilities, Iran is believed to have more than 2,000 missiles, primarily short- and medium-range ballistic missiles that threaten Israel and American forces across the region. Those missiles are scattered at launch sites across Iran and were among the first targets, U.S. military officials said.

Announcing “major combat operations” in an eight-minute speech, Trump called the Iranian regime “a vicious group of very hard, terrible people” whose “activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.”

Trump said that the regime has chanted “Death to America” for almost 50 years and “waged an unending campaign of bloodshed and mass murder, targeting the United States, our troops and the innocent people in many, many countries.”

He also noted the attack on the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979; the taking of American hostages, who were held for 444 days; and the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983.

“From Lebanon to Yemen and Syria to Iraq, the regime has armed, trained and funded terrorist militias that have soaked the earth with blood and guts,” Trump said:

And it was Iran’s proxy, Hamas, that launched the monstrous Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, slaughtering more than 1,000 innocent people, including 46 Americans, while taking 12 of our citizens hostage. It was brutal, something like the world has never seen before.

Iran is the world’s number one state sponsor of terror, and just recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested. It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon. I’ll say it again, they can never have a nuclear weapon. That is why in Operation Midnight Hammer last June, we obliterated the regime’s nuclear program at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan. After that attack, we warned them never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons, and we sought repeatedly to make a deal. We tried. They wanted to do it. They didn’t want to do it. Again they wanted to do it. They didn’t want to do it. They didn’t know what was happening. They just wanted to practice evil. But Iran refused, just as it has for decades and decades.

Trump said the regime has “rejected every opportunity” to end their “nuclear ambitions, and we can’t take it anymore.” 

“This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States Armed Forces,” Trump said:

I built and rebuilt our military in my first administration and there is no military on earth even close to its power, strength or sophistication. My administration is taking every possible step to minimize the risk to U.S. personnel in the region. Even so, and I do not make this statement lightly, the Iranian regime seeks to kill. The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war. But we’re doing this not for now. We’re doing this for the future.

“Take Over Your Government”

Trump also urged Iran’s army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, to lay down their weapons or “face certain death,” and urged Iranians to overthrow their government.

“Your hour of freedom is at hand,” he said. And “when we are finished, take over your government,” he said:

It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.

In his state of the union speech, Trump promised to attack Iran because of its supposed intransigence on nuclear weapons.

The IRG comprises about 200,000 members, the Times reported:

Iran has a fleet of hundreds of fast boats that specialize in swarm attacks in the Persian Gulf. It has a massive arsenal of 3,000 to 6,000 naval mines that can enable it to temporarily close off the Strait of Hormuz.

Aside from striking Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and sending missiles at Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates, Iran closed the Straight of Hormuz, a vital seaway for the world’s oil supplies. One estimate said the price for a barrel could rocket to $250.

“We have closed the Strait of Hormuz until further notice,” the Iran Military Monitor wrote on X:

“Let the Orange Pig open it if he can!”

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Trump Threatens to “Take Over the Whole Thing” After Iran Strikes Kill Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

President Trump broke his silence following the Iran strikes on Saturday morning, telling Axios of potential “off-ramps” in the conflict. 

“I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear and missile programs],” Trump told Axios in a phone interview from Mar-a-Lago.

This is the first time Trump commented on the strikes since releasing a statement early on Saturday morning.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, Trump announced earlier that American forces are engaged in what he described as a “massive and ongoing operation” aimed at neutralizing the Iranian regime’s ability to threaten US troops, American allies, and the homeland itself.

Trump pointed to the 1979 US Embassy hostage crisis in Tehran, where dozens of Americans were held captive for 444 days, the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing that killed 241 US military personnel, Iranian-backed militias responsible for killing and maiming hundreds of American troops in Iraq, and continued proxy attacks against US forces and commercial vessels in Middle Eastern shipping lanes.

He further said that after Operation Midnight Hammer last June, where US forces bombed three nuclear facilities in Iran, “we warned them never to resume their malicious pursuit of nuclear weapons, and we repeatedly sought to make a deal.”

“We tried. They wanted to do it—they didn’t,” Trump said. “They wanted to do it—again—they didn’t want to do it.”

In closing his statement, Trump encouraged the Iranian people to seize control of their government.

“When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” Trump said to the people of Iran.

“This will probably be your only chance for generations. For many years, you have asked for America’s help, but you never got it. No president was willing to do what I am willing to do tonight.”

Israel further confirmed it had launched a pre-emptive strike on Iranian territory, joined by a broader US military offensive targeting military and nuclear sites across Tehran and other major cities, including areas near the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei has since been confirmed dead by Israeli officials.

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‘This could spark the largest regional war yet’: Russian analysts on the Iran strikes

As the United States and Israel launch a military operation against Iran on February 28, 2026, global attention turns to the Middle East, where the stakes could not be higher. Analysts and experts from Russia are weighing in, offering a wide range of perspectives on the strategic calculations, potential consequences, and risks of escalation. From regime change ambitions to Iran’s military capabilities, from oil markets to the broader geopolitical fallout, these voices provide a nuanced look at a rapidly unfolding crisis.

Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor-in-Chief of Russia in Global Affairs:

Trump has delivered a full-blown ultimatum to the Iranian leadership – in effect, a declaration of war until the objective is achieved, with maximalist aims that extend all the way to regime change. Apparently, he has concluded that the risks – including potential losses – are acceptable (something he had hesitated over before), and that success would yield decisive strategic gains: a final reshaping of the Middle East in the interests of Israel and the United States.

A military campaign of this scale, launched without the consent of Congress, runs counter to the US Constitution. In the case of Iraq, Congress granted authorization for the use of force in advance. Nothing of the sort has happened here. If it’s all in, then it’s all in – a bet on a swift and spectacular outcome.

But what if it isn’t?

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U.S. CENTCOM Releases Fact Check Over Iran’s Claim 50 U.S. Service Members Have Died and Gives Update on Military Installations Hit by Iranian Missiles

The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) has offered a fact check over the claims made by the Iranian regime that 50 U.S. service members have died in missile attacks conducted by Iran.

In a statement on X, the U.S. CENTCOM shared, “The Iranian regime claims to have killed 50 U.S. service members. LIE.”

CENTCOM continued, “There have been no reported U.S. casualties.”

The U.S. Central Command also cleared up rumors that a U.S. Navy ship was struck by Iranian missiles and shared, “No U.S. Navy ship has been struck. The Armada is fully operational.”

Later in the fact check release, CENTCOM gave an update on the Iranian regime’s claims that severe damage had taken place at U.S. bases in the surrounding regions of Iran and revealed that damage to the U.S. base was minimal and has not impacted the U.S. military’s current operations.

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World leaders respond to regime-change strikes on Iran: ‘Peacekeeper is at it again’

The joint American and Israeli military operation launched against Iran on Saturday — dubbed Operation Epic Fury — has prompted mixed responses abroad.

While Russian officials were among the most critical of the strikes, several European leaders similarly condemned the American-Israeli initiative.

Amid reports of massive explosions in numerous Iranian cities as well as retaliatory attacks on American bases in the region and Israel, a spokesman for the British government stated, “We do not want to see further escalation into a wider regional conflict.”

The British spokesman — whose government previously blocked a request from President Donald Trump to use U.K. air bases during a pre-emptive attack on Iran — added that “Iran must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, and that is why we have continually supported efforts to reach a negotiated solution.”

Whereas the U.K. government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer appeared less than enthusiastic about the strikes, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch expressed solidarity with the U.S. and Israel “as they take on the threat of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its vile regime.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke critically of “Iran’s murderous regime and the Revolutionary Guards,” but claimed that the “developments in Iran are greatly concerning” and urged “all parties to exercise maximum restraint, to protect civilians, and to fully respect international law.”

Switzerland’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs noted that it “is deeply alarmed by today’s strikes by the United States and Israel against Iran” and echoed von der Leyen’s request that warring parties “exercise maximum restraint, protect civilians and civilian infrastructure.”

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