Iran 2026 Is Not Iraq 2003. By Niall Ferguson in The Free Press.
It’s just “regime alteration:”
After the U.S. captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro last month, I suggested to a senior administration official that what we had just seen was not regime change but regime alteration — in the sense that, while Maduro had been replaced by Delcy Rodríguez, the structure of the Chavista regime remained in place. The alteration was that Delcy would now report to Washington, not to Havana or Beijing.
“Regime alteration,” he said, writing it down. “I might use that.”
Indeed, regime alteration is the practical consequence of the approach laid out in Trump’s National Security Strategy published late last year. The strategy rules out the deployment of American ground forces other than special forces. It requires a short time frame for military operations. It will disappoint those who want to fast-track Venezuela and Iran to democracy. But the lesson of Iraq has not been lost on Trump.
That is why it misses the point to say, “Trump claimed to be an isolationist and he’s just started another forever war.” One thing I can confidently promise about the U.S.-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic: It will not last long.
Khamenei — the theocrat who has ruled for more than 30 years, setting Iran’s intransigent nuclear policy, building up Hezboollah, Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen, and who had Iran fighting heavily in Syria — is almost certainly dead.
On Saturday afternoon, Trump announced that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had been killed.
Boo!
As last year, the diplomacy of the last few weeks was merely maskirovka — a disguise — to persuade the Iranians that they might talk their way out of the destruction Trump threatened in early January, when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was slaughtering protesters in the streets. …
Far from being strung along by wily Persian negotiators, the Trump administration was surprisingly explicit in its warnings — even more so than last June. On February 19, Trump told Iran that it had just 10 to 15 days to avert potential military action. A week ago, his special envoy Steve Witkoff declared that Iran was now “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material” and insisted that “zero enrichment” was one of Trump’s “red lines.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Tehran’s refusal “to talk about [its] ballistic missiles to us or to anyone” was “a big problem.”
Omani-mediated talks continued in Geneva until Thursday, but anyone who thought that Witkoff and Jared Kushner were planning to return from the U.S. after “consultations” wasn’t reading the Situation Room. Trump told reporters last Thursday that “we’re either going to get a deal, or it’s going to be unfortunate for them.” By refusing to yield on enrichment and missiles, the Iranians chose the unfortunate option. …
Not Iraq 2003:
Operation Epic Fury differs from Operation Iraqi Freedom—the 2003 invasion of Iraq—in two key respects. Yes, the justification is preemption against a regime intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction and implicated in international terrorism. But the goal is not to march into Iran and confer, much less impose, freedom on the Iranians. It is to decapitate the Islamic Republic’s political structure and leave the Iranians to take their freedom from the mullahs and their murderous henchmen. As Trump said in his speech this morning, “members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the armed forces and all of the police” can “have complete immunity” if they lay down their weapons.
Will this succeed? We don’t yet know, but it’s important to note that the Iranian regime has few effective friends. …
Iran’s barrage of missile attacks on its neighbors’ territory has achieved little other than to convert fence-sitters into supporters of the U.S.-Israeli effort. In what will surely prove to be a spasm of self-immolation, the Iranians have hit Bahrain (which hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters) and other targets in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. This is how to lose friends and alienate people.
Who’s ruling Iran now?
The real question is: Who rules in Tehran after Khamenei? Or, to put it bluntly, who’s the Iranian Delcy in this regime alteration? The 86-year-old head of state is now either dead or so deep underground that he can at least be considered buried. (His nickname these days is “Moushe-Ali,” or “Ali the Mouse,” because he’s mostly in a deep hole.) …
Good news / bad news:
The good news is that regime alternation is easier than regime change, as we have already seen in Venezuela. In the Middle East, the U.S. has unrivaled dominance. As we have seen, neither Russia nor China can do much to help Iran.
The bad news is that “triangular diplomacy” now works against the United States. In late February 2025, Xi Jinping said after a video call with Putin that Russia and China are “true friends who have been through thick and thin together.” Their Axis meets regularly and appears to have a game plan. Europe is in danger of becoming the battleground of Cold War II, as Asia was the battleground of Cold War I. A Ukrainian defeat by Russia would be disastrous for European security, which is why Trump wants to end the war there. But the biggest risk the world faces is still a Taiwan Crisis, the economic consequences of which would be greater than the 1973-74 Oil Shock because of the centrality of Taiwan’s semiconductor fabs to the world economy. It’s hard to see how Trump and Xi will find common ground on this issue during their summit in April.
The price of oil hasn’t moved much, currently US$ 67.