After the death of Ali Khamenei, the 86-year-old leader of the Iranian dictatorship, Donald Trump can once again boast of rapid success in a complex military operation. Iranian state media confirmed that the ayatollah was killed in US-Israeli bombings on Saturday. But unlike after the kidnapping of autocrat Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela last month, there is no successor in Iran who will willingly serve the American president — without making any democratic concessions. The new war in the Middle East seems to have only just begun. The consequences are incalculable.
What the United States’ strategy or end goal is remains vague. In an eight-minute video announcing “major combat actions,” Trump promised to destroy Iran’s missile industry, navy and nuclear ambitions — which he said he had eliminated last June. He called on ninety million oppressed Iranians to overthrow the dictatorial theocracy themselves after almost fifty years.
Also read
Trump is going to war again, the electoral risk is for his party
Interviews since the first bombs fell have been popping up in all directions. In return for The Washington Post Trump saidin the middle of the night: “I only want freedom for it [Iraanse] people.” In a later interview with news site Axios he claimed that he has several excuses. “I can go on for a long time and take over the whole thing, or I can end it in two or three days and the Iranians say: ‘See you in a few years when you [je nucleaire en raketprogramma’s] start rebuilding’.”
According to Axios, this would indicate that Trump could still make a deal with what is left of the regime, à la Venezuela. A deal on the end of the development of a nuclear weapon that Khamenei did not ‘grant’ him. “The Iranian regime had their chance, but refused to make a deal — and now they are suffering the consequences,” Defense Secretary wrote Pete Hegseth on X.
After Khamenei’s death, Trump announced on his Truth Socialin capitals, indicated that the bombings would continue “uninterruptedly for the entire week or as long as necessary to achieve our goal: peace in the Middle East and, indeed, the entire world.”
Ever impatient Trump
The Islamic Republic had been weakened both regionally and domestically since Israel’s extreme retaliation for the Hamas attack in 2023. The opportunism to take advantage of that weakness seems to outweigh the future of the Iranian people for the US and Israel. It can quickly be abandoned by the ever impatient Trump. While the American president seems to hope that others will clean up his shards, the chance that they will continue to fly around is much greater than in Venezuela. Iran has the capacity to retaliate regionally, cause international terror and disrupt the oil market and shipping lanes.
Before the planned attack, Trump did little to prepare minds at home for a new war. In his annual State of the Union speech in Congress last Tuesday, he barely said a word about it. Friend and enemy accuse him of breaking his election promise of ‘America First’. Quotes in which Trump ridiculed George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq and Barack Obama are endlessly recycled on social media reproached due to a lack of domestic popularity, plunged the country into new foreign conflicts and spoke out against “failing regime changeHe promised in his last election campaign: “I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to end them.”
Trump did warn on Saturday that Iranian retaliation could cause American casualties in the Middle East, where tens of thousands of soldiers are stationed. There have been casualties in Israel and Dubai during Iranian counter-actions, but no American deaths have been reported yet.
Regime change does not come out of the blue
Democratic Party leaders have expressed disgust at the Iranian regime and nuclear program, but insist that Congress must authorize such acts of war. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote that he had urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio “to be honest with Congress and the American people about the objectives of these attacks and what comes next.”
His colleague in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, calls for “a watertight justification for this act of war” and “a plan to prevent another costly, protracted military standoff in the Middle East.” Others, including Sen. Ruben Gallego (Arizona), called the attack “wrong.” “Trump campaigned on the promise of exposing pedophiles and stopping wars,” he wrote on X, referring to the Epstein dossier. “Now Trump is protecting pedophiles and starting wars.”
Trump is directing the military operation from his Florida resort, with Rubio, but without Vice President JD Vance at his side. Both supporters and opponents of the bombings demonstrated near the White House on Saturday. Iranian-American advocates appreciate that this president is doing something against the dictatorship that their families are suffering under. But they also realize that positive regime change will never come about with air strikes alone. When a dictator was deposed, as in Libya in 2011, something at least as violent and unstable took its place.
“I don’t think anyone can give a simple answer to the question of what will happen in Iran if the supreme leader and the regime fall,” Rubio told Congress in January. “There is no modern precedent for regime change achieved solely through airstrikes. Bombs can damage infrastructure. They can weaken capabilities. But they do not create organized political alternatives.” The uncertain period he predicted has now arrived.
