Epoch Times - Gordon Chang: Here’s why Iran will be different from Afghanistan and Iraq
Aired: 2026-03-02
Duration: 02:28


=== Regime Change Risks (02:07) ===

[00:00:00]  Jumping back to Iran for a moment here, you know, the concern, and I think this is a very legitimate concern, is that, you know, there's a kind of a power vacuum that gets filled by something worse.
[00:00:11]  And, you know, we looked at some of our, you know, regime change operations of the past and quite a number of them didn't, the more recent ones especially didn't go very well, right?
[00:00:23]  Didn't go very well at all.
[00:00:24]  And so what makes Iran different somehow?
[00:00:29]  I don't think we can get worse than what we've got right now.
[00:00:33]  But we've had regime change operations like Germany and Japan.
[00:00:37]  And that was because there was political will to make sure that those operations went well.
[00:00:45]  And we had American business that was fully on board.
[00:00:49]  I think the reason why Afghanistan and Iraq didn't go well is because you didn't have the secure environment in which business could come in and transform society.
[00:01:01]  And this is the issue right now in Syria.
[00:01:04]  You know, Syria's leader, a former al-Qaeda operative, said, look, and he said this to the United States.
[00:01:09]  He said, I want to be Japan and Germany.
[00:01:12]  I don't want to be Afghanistan or Iraq.
[00:01:16]  I don't want U.S. aid.
[00:01:18]  He said that.
[00:01:18]  He said, I want U.S. business.
[00:01:22]  And so we have to go back and understand what made Japan and Germany successful.
[00:01:27]  And we can do it again if we have the political will, if we can create the peace and sustainability.
[00:01:34]  And I'm sure that we can, because Iran is very different than Afghanistan or Iraq.
[00:01:40]  Well, one thing that Iran really does have going for it is that, again, I think, as I said earlier, it's an 80-20 issue, 80%.
[00:01:48]  I mean, this is, of course, a rough estimate gleaned through VPNs and so forth of sentiment, but really are against the regime and are looking to do something better.
[00:01:59]  They feel it's something that was imposed on them.
[00:02:01]  And, you know, of course, it's in an atrocious totalitarian system.

=== Iran vs. Iraq (00:20) ===

[00:02:08]  Iran is not Iraq, although they border each other.
[00:02:14]  Iran has a tradition.
[00:02:17]  That tradition was interrupted for 47 years by the theocratic regime.
[00:02:22]  But the Iranian people will get this right.
[00:02:24]  And we saw how many people in Iran wanted to be free.