U.S. President Donald Trump’s attack on Iran with the explicit goal of regime change marks another move away from his previous non-interventionism and toward an increasingly aggressive foreign policy.
It also bets that Americans, despite a recent history of getting bogged down in foreign quagmires, will back a bellicose move with unpredictable consequences.
In an eight-minute video posted to social media early Saturday, Mr. Trump started by framing the attack on Iran – which the U.S. conducted alongside Israel – as a pre-emptive strike intended to “raze their missile industry to the ground” and eliminate a threat to Americans.
But he swiftly made clear that his goal goes beyond that. Mr. Trump offered immunity to Iranian troops who lay down their weapons and called on Iranians to overthrow the regime in Tehran.
“Take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations,” the President said. “America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny.”
He also warned his own people to prepare for U.S. soldiers to be killed as Iran retaliates. “The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war,” he said.
And he laid out the history of attacks on Americans by Iran’s theocratic government and its proxies, dating back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran on Saturday, targeting its leadership and plunging the Middle East into a new conflict.
Reuters
Mr. Trump did not seek congressional authorization for the military operation. Democrats and some Republicans said Saturday they would try to force a vote next week. “I am opposed to this War. This is not ‘America First,’” maverick Republican Rep. Thomas Massie tweeted.
Most Republicans closed ranks around the President.
Lindsey Graham, the hawkish South Carolina senator who has become one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies, on Saturday vowed that the attacks “will bring this regime down” in Tehran, but tried to preempt worries that it would represent another lengthy military commitment.
“Donald Trump does not get us entangled in forever wars, but he sure as hell stands up to the bad guys and he makes it safer,” Mr. Graham said on Fox News.
Carney backs U.S. air strikes on Iran
Some major figures in the President’s MAGA movement, however, decried the war as a betrayal of his nationalist principles.
Pundit Tucker Carlson described the U.S. attack as “absolutely disgusting and evil” in an interview with ABC. Nick Fuentes, the far-right influencer, tweeted at Mr. Trump: “NO WAR WITH IRAN. ISRAEL IS DRAGGING US TO WAR.”
In a string of social media posts Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Georgia congresswoman who went from staunch Trump ally to critic over the latter’s refusal to release the Epstein files, accused the President of abandoning his base.
“I did not campaign for this. I did not donate money for this. I did not vote for this, in elections or Congress. This is heartbreaking and tragic. And how many more innocent will die? What about our own military? This is not what we thought MAGA was supposed to be. Shame!” she wrote.
In his second term, Mr. Trump has regularly unleashed foreign military operations and repeatedly threatened more interventions.
Last June, Mr. Trump ordered the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites after Israel launched air strikes on the country. Last month, he attacked Venezuela to spirit away dictator Nicolás Maduro to the U.S. and force the remnants of his regime to turn over the country’s oil to the U.S.
Mr. Trump has also threatened to annex Greenland and depose Colombian President Gustavo Petro, before backing down in both cases. This week, he said the U.S. could launch a “friendly takeover” of Cuba.
It has all amounted to a stark pivot from MAGA’s isolationist roots. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump argued that “the current strategy of nation-building and regime change is a proven, absolute failure.”
Ahead of the 2024 election, Mr. Trump and his campaign claimed his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, would somehow start “World War Three.”
In his second inaugural address a little over a year ago, Mr. Trump cast himself as a “peacemaker” who did not want to get involved in foreign conflicts. “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end — and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into,” he said then.
Mr. Trump’s approach resonated with a country tired of long and costly foreign military interventions: the eight-year-long invasion of Iraq and nearly two decades of fighting in Afghanistan.
Even Barack Obama’s more limited bombing campaign in Libya in 2011 ultimately saw that country spiral into bloody factional fighting that included deadly attacks on U.S. compounds in Benghazi.
Oona Hathaway, an international law expert at Yale University, said Mr. Trump’s actions – both against Tehran and Caracas – threaten to “return us to a world in which might makes right” and end the relative international stability that has existed since the end of the Second World War.
“Today’s attack on Iran is an attack on the postwar legal order,” she told The Globe and Mail.
Mr. Trump’s current push to overthrow the Iranian regime – if he forges ahead with it – would represent an escalation over his previous interventions.
Analysis: Trump takes on his biggest bet so far in striking Iran
Last month, he ultimately shied away from regime change in Venezuela, opting to work with Delcy Rodríguez, Mr. Maduro’s second-in-command. In this week’s State of the Union address to Congress, he praised Caracas as a “new friend and partner” of the U.S. under Ms. Rodríguez.
And after the round of bombing in Iran last June, Mr. Trump claimed to have obliterated the country’s nuclear capabilities and swiftly pushed for a ceasefire.
University students carry their belongings across an overpass near Milad Tower in Tehran on Saturday.ARASH KHAMOOSHI/The New York Times
In recent weeks, however, the White House has said that Iran is actually continuing to build its nuclear program and still poses a threat. U.S. and Iranian officials negotiated this past week without reaching a deal.
John Bolton, who served as Mr. Trump’s national security adviser for part of his first term, told The Globe shortly after the attack on Venezuela that his former boss does not really have a guiding political philosophy, which is why some of his decisions can appear so self-contradictory.
“In many of his neuron flashes, Trump looks isolationist, but the behaviour he’s engaged in across a wide variety of fronts is the farthest thing from isolationism, and that’s because he moves from one thing to another very easily,” said Mr. Bolton, who has long supported regime change in Iran.
“Think tank people, commentators who are constantly trying to find new doctrines and theories – he just doesn’t operate at that conceptual level,” he added.