Regime Change for Iran?
Has a better ring to it than 'CIA-assisted coup'
As Fox News’ Sean Hannity celebrated President Trump’s victory in reaching a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Iran Tuesday night, over at CNN, liberal and conservative pundits were conducting their usual verbal battle on News Night With Abby Phillip, in part over the question of whether the White House should pursue regime change in Iran.
The White House sent mixed messages about its intentions in Iran after Saturday’s B-2 attack on the country’s nuclear facilities. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth took to Sunday’s news shows to deny the president had any interest in regime change, with Vance telling NBC’s Meet the Press; “We are not at war with Iran, we are at war with Iran’s nuclear program.”
Trump shot this all down with his post on Truth Social later Sunday; “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be regime change??? MIGA!!!”
Immediately, I had thoughts of a Trump Tower popping up in downtown Tehran as an expansive resort was being constructed on the Iranian coast on the Persian Gulf.
The seasoned right- and left-pundits of News Night Monday were old enough to evoke and compare President George W. Bush’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein early in the war on Iraq (March 2003 – December 2011) as an example of what “regime change” in Iran could turn out to be.
None of them, not even the only pundit on the CNN panel older than me, Cornel West, bothered to bring up what may be the more relevant example of “regime change” in the Middle East: The CIA-assisted British-US coup of democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. In Iran, in 1953 (the year of West’s birth, coincidentally).
Together with the British Foreign Service, the US Central Intelligence Agency reinserted the Shah of Iran, largely to preserve Western oil interests (British Petroleum was called the British Persian Oil Company from 1914-1954) until his brutal regime was replaced by the brutal Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.
Later in the 1950s, the US helped Iran develop nuclear capabilities.
This conjures parallel between Trump’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is very much for regime change in Iran, and the CIA’s relationship to UK intelligence circa 1953.
I would like as much any small-d democrat to see the ayatollah-led Iranian government overthrown in favor of a pre-Shah government like the one it had briefly in the early 1950s. The Mahsa Amini protests following her death in a Tehran hospital nearly three years ago after she apparently was beaten by authorities for not properly wearing her hijab in public had given a brief glimmer of hope that Iran’s populous, which overwhelmingly opposes the ayatollah’s regime, might have been able to achieve change from within.
It seems the lessons of our regime change in Iran – learned slowly at first, then suddenly by the time of the Carter administration – should serve as a warning for whatever the Trump White House decides is our policy there today.
Lassa is founding editor of The Hustings.