Michael Knowles reacts to U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s central government sites, framed as regime-change efforts mirroring past interventions like Venezuela and Iraq—though skeptics note Iran’s resilience post-1979 Revolution. Economic strain and backlash over mass killings may weaken the regime, but Trump’s push, echoing Bush’s Iraq War justifications, risks legacy damage if strikes fail or escalate, especially amid 53 civilian deaths at a targeted school. Historical precedents like the 1953 CIA-backed coup (installing the Shah) and speculation about Reza Pallavi’s role in a potential transition add complexity, raising questions about whether this gambit could backfire like past U.S. meddling. [Automatically generated summary]
The United States has launched a major attack on Iran.
This targeting not just some periphery sites, but the very center of government.
The explicit goal of the strike is regime change in Iran, not merely the setting back of a nuclear program or other weapons programs.
This is the real deal.
No one is particularly surprised by this, especially after the strike on Venezuela, because in the lead up to Venezuela, you saw this huge, gradual buildup of military assets in the region.
You saw the extension from the White House of all sorts of diplomatic olive branches.
Maduro refused the olive branches.
Then the U.S. went in and took him out.
So you saw the same thing building up here.
A few weeks ago, people were waiting for the United States to launch a strike on Iran.
But I remember I was on with Hugh Hewitt, and we agreed that, no, probably we were seeing the same playbook play out, which is there was going to be this buildup of military assets, there were going to be more diplomatic olive branches, and then when that was not going to work, Trump was going to strike.
Here is the political issue for the White House.
Iran is not Venezuela.
Iran is not Venezuela.
Iran is not Afghanistan.
Iran is not Iraq, though there are way more parallels with Iraq.
Iran is a real country with a real solid regime.
And so, changing out that regime is going to be a little bit more difficult.
Obviously, there are a lot of people who are elated by the strike on Iran.
Notably the Iranian Americans whose families fled from Iran after the revolution in 1979, but also plenty of the Iranian people who have been waiting for some kind of regime change.
And the only way that regime change was going to come about was very likely with regional strikes from Israel and ultimately with strikes from the global empire, which is the United States.
So what does it all mean?
We have intervened in Iran before.
We've intervened in Iran a number of times.
The clearest example would be 1953, when the CIA and MI6 out of the UK helped lead a coup that threw out Mossadegh, the socialist, and consolidated the power of the Shah of Iran.
Now it looks like the Shah's son, the crown prince, Reza Pallavi, is going to try to unify the Iranian people and bring some political stability to Iran if the regime is actually displaced.
However, all of that remains a little bit dubious because let's not forget after the CIA coup in 1953, the Islamic Revolution happened in 1979.
So the pro-Western U.S.-backed regime only lasted for about 26 years.
The mullahs, the Ayatollah, the Islamic regime, has now lasted almost double that.
So I'm a little skeptical of regime change in Iran.
The reason that this strike was launched now was the opportunity.
And this creates a little bit of a problem for the argument for war, because we were told, what, just weeks ago, that the United States had totally wiped out Iran's nuclear program, just obliterated it in the strikes on Fordo and the other nuclear sites.
So if the argument for war right now is that Iran was on the brink of a nuclear weapon, it creates a little tension with the arguments we were making about Fordo just weeks ago.
Really, I think the reason that the U.S. struck now is we had the opportunity.
Iran is weak economically.
The regime is weak in terms of popular support.
The regime in Iran just slaughtered tens of thousands of people and is extremely unpopular.
So this was the opportunity to do it.
President Trump's Foreign Policy Risk00:02:22
President Trump laid that out.
said that if the Iranian people want their freedom, this is their last chance probably for generations.
So, where does this leave President Trump?
A lot of people care a lot more about the Trump administration in the United States than they do about anything happening in Iran.
What's amazing is, with this strike, President Trump has put himself in a very similar position to George Bush in Iraq.
It was the same justification for going to war.
Same justification was weapons of mass destruction that pose an imminent threat to America.
And it was backed up by the same ideological justification, which is that the people want freedom.
So what's so amazing is President Trump launched his political presidential career in 2015, in many ways running against the Bushes and against the stupid wars and against all of them.
Now President Trump is putting himself in a similar position to Bush.
However, I guess his argument is we're going to do it well.
So initially it was Bush had the wrong idea.
Now the argument would be, well, Bush might have had the right idea, but he did it poorly.
And the one thing I got to say with Trump on foreign policy is don't bet against Trump on foreign policy.
He has the best record on foreign policy of any president in my lifetime, including George H.W. Bush.
But this is a much higher risk.
Because by putting himself in the same position as George W. Bush, President Trump will either wind up with the legacy that George W. Bush had, which is to say, not a great one, in his own party or in the other party, or President Trump could correct the errors of a quarter century ago.
President Trump could reinvigorate a muscular U.S. foreign policy that corrects the entire Bush era.
All of which is to say, the stakes are very, very, very high.
This is not just dropping the Moab.
This is not just taking out a dictator in Latin America.
The stakes are as high as can be for foreign policy.
This is going to be a longer operation.
There's going to be a lot more negative images already.
There's the school that was struck in Iran, death toll reportedly around 53.
The stakes are much, much higher.
President Trump is taking a risk with his entire foreign policy and potentially his entire presidential legacy.