Of all the head-scratching aspects of the ongoing US-Iran war, perhaps none is greater than the fact that it was launched by a president who was elected in part on the basis that he would never do such a stupid thing. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, was the only recent leader of the country who avoided war while in power and insisted that although his opponents of the Democratic Party may bring the United States into “World War III,” he, on the other hand, will keep peace and avoid the mistakes of the past. Despite promising to dismantle the playbook that past administrations have repeatedly used to launch regime-change wars in the Middle East, Trump is writing his latest chapter.
US interventions to change regimes in the wider Middle East—going back to the 1953 revolution in Iran but more recently in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya—all followed very similar patterns. Once the president decided to act, he and his senior administration officials would exaggerate the threat, exaggerate the benefits of the action, declare victory prematurely, discover various unintended consequences, and then find themselves facing a costly political and strategic disaster. The details were different in each case, but the pattern is not clear. And Trump, despite the constant change in the cause of the war, is now on the way to repeat.
Of all the head-scratching aspects of the ongoing US-Iran war, perhaps none is greater than the fact that it was launched by a president who was elected in part on the basis that he would never do such a stupid thing. The President of the United States, Donald Trump, was the only recent leader of the country who avoided war while in power and insisted that although his opponents of the Democratic Party may bring the United States into “World War III,” he, on the other hand, will keep peace and avoid the mistakes of the past. Despite promising to dismantle the playbook that past administrations have repeatedly used to launch regime-change wars in the Middle East, Trump is writing his latest chapter.
US interventions to change regimes in the wider Middle East—going back to the 1953 revolution in Iran but more recently in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya—all followed very similar patterns. Once the president decided to act, he and his senior administration officials would exaggerate the threat, exaggerate the benefits of the action, declare victory prematurely, discover various unintended consequences, and then find themselves facing a costly political and strategic disaster. The details were different in each case, but the pattern is not clear. And Trump, despite the constant change in the cause of the war, is now on the way to repeat.
Start by outlining the threat. In his February 28 statement announcing the start of the war, Trump said he was taking action to remove “imminent threats” from Iran, which he did not confirm. Early intelligence claims of early Iranian strikes were quickly proven false. When he was pressed to justify the claims a few days later, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio came up with the idea that “the immediate threat is that we knew that if Iran was attacked—and we believe that it would be attacked—that they would go after us immediately,” a strange thing implying that the attack on Israel that the United States would not prevent in some way is what made the country enter the war.
To demonize the Iranian regime, Trump also said that Iran was “probably behind” the 2000 attack on the USS. Cole and that it had missiles that could “soon” reach the United States. He did not provide any evidence for the first claim, which experts believe is dubious, and the second directly contradicts his claim. Defense Intelligence Agency Assessment from last year, which found that Iran was a decade away from possessing the missiles.
As the cost of war began to rise, the Trump team turned to other and even more extreme justifications for military action. US special envoy Steve Witkoff claimed that Iran was “one week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material” and “there is nothing stopping” it from enriching it. Rubio claimed that Iran was a year away from a ballistic missile force that would give it “immunity” against attack, adding that “if we don’t hit them now … they’ll be able to do whatever they want.” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly claimed that Iran was “storing enriched uranium” at a Tehran research facility, a claim that Witkoff called “Perry Mason”. And Trump, not to be forgotten, mentioned his belief that if the United States “didn’t strike in two weeks, they would have a nuclear weapon” and that Iran was planning to “take over the entire Middle East.”
Again, there is no evidence to support that claim, which is also hard to square with previous White House statements that the US-Israeli strikes last summer had “eradicated” Iran’s nuclear program and removed the threat for at least several years. Indeed, after three rounds of conflict with Israel and the United States since 2024—which had reduced Iran’s nuclear and missile programs, proxy forces, military leadership and air defense—the threat from Iran was perhaps less “closer” than it had been in years. But that did not stop the Trump administration from claiming the opposite.
Like some of its predecessors, the Trump administration has also begun to exaggerate the potential benefits of military action (while downplaying its costs). If Trump were describing the operation as a way to further degrade Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities, then his claims would be plausible. Instead, he and other officials are describing the war as one that will ultimately liberate the Iranian people, eliminate Iran’s threat to the region and the West, end its support for terrorism, and lower global oil prices. In his statement declaring war, Trump told the Iranian people that “the hour of your freedom is at hand” and the government will be “yours for the taking.” A week later, faced with rising oil prices, Trump insisted not only that they would “go down very quickly” but that “we will have removed a major, major cancer from the face of the earth.” Also downplaying the risk of high oil prices, White House senior adviser Jarrod Agen stressed that, in the long term, “we will not have to worry about these issues in the Strait of Hormuz because we will get all the oil out of the hands of terrorists.”
It is possible, of course, that “Iranian nationalists” will in fact “take over your institutions” like Trump. he wanted them to do and that they will democratize their country, get along with their neighbors including Israel, and end the international oil market situation in that country. But in the most likely scenario where things don’t go that way, Trump will have taken his place in the ranks of past US presidents who promised freedom or security to the people and failed or didn’t want to deliver because their hopes were crushed by force. There is every reason to believe that if the costs of this war continue to rise, the Iranian people’s “hour of freedom” will not be Trump’s priority and the protesters will be left to their fate.
Trump’s comments on March 9 that the war was already “pretty much over,” along with other officials such as Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth listing war goals that did not include a change in Iran’s leadership, hinted at the possibility that he will in fact “declare victory and go home” before regime change is achieved. At the same time, however, Trump called Iran’s selection of Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Iran’s former ruler, as the new supreme leader “unacceptable” and said he was prepared to kill him if he did not accede to US demands, suggesting regime change remains very much on the table.
Unintended consequences also feature prominently in this conflict. Alarmed by the seemingly easy success of three previous military exchanges with Iran since 2024, Trump appeared to have not expected that this time, instead of focusing on a distant and well-protected Israel, Iran would attack its regional neighbors, striking regional airports, Western hotels, oil refineries, gas terminals and shipping in Homuz. Trump called the response “perhaps the biggest surprise” of the war and appeared completely unprepared to deal with its consequences, which included skyrocketing oil and gas prices, shortages of missile defense systems, and the stranding of tens of thousands of American citizens in the region. And this is happening less than two weeks into a conflict that could produce many other unexpected results in time, including terrorist attacks in the West, a bonanza of oil revenues for Russia, instability in Iraq, China taking advantage of the deployment of US military assets away from Asia, civil conflict or the breakup of Iranian soil, or the emergence of a repressive military government in Tehran.
The Trump administration has yet to “declare victory” in Iran, another sadly familiar part of the regime change playbook but give it time. Last week, Trump gave the U.S. military effort at least a 12 on a scale of 0-10, declared that “almost everything has been removed,” and referred to the Iran conflict as a war “we’ve already won.”
War is unpredictable, and we will see. But if we’ve learned anything from past regime change efforts in the region, a “mission accomplished” declaration is not evidence that the conflict is over or that victory is assured. It’s just a sign that old lessons have not been learned.
