Reading Tea Leaves: U.S. Backs Off Support for Regime Change in Iran
Pompeo’s directive appears to put an end to the Trump administration’s hinting that it supports efforts to destabilize the Iranian government if not topple it.
Pompeo’s directive appears to put an end to the Trump administration’s hinting that it supports efforts to destabilize the Iranian government if not topple it.
Ultimately, negotiations, dialogue, and engagement remain the real pathway out of the decades-long conflict between the United States and Iran.
War profiteering is one thing. Funding the enemy who kills your own troops is quite another. Such a concept is inherently a Catch 22.
The Trump administration has no intention of respecting the wishes of the Iraqi government.
Is Donald Trump beginning to learn some of the lessons that can enable him finally to start growing up in the presidency?
If we, the people of the U.S. and Iran realize that we have much more in common with each other than we do with our respective national governments, then we can come together and promote global engagement, people-to-people exchanges and diplomacy.
The past almost 20 years provide good evidence that our bomb-first-ask-hard-questions-never approach to violence and security challenges has not made us or the world safer.
Like people of color and those of different religions or genders, women experience different challenges and can face greater obstacles to progress — particularly in security-focused careers and institutions that are male-dominated.
Power dynamics in the Muslim world are shifting and splintering, with Saudi Arabia on the outside looking in.
Putin’s investment doesn’t appear to be working out as he may have hoped.
In the end, Trumo’s assassination of Qassem Soleimani is a futile act, a confession of a bankrupt non-strategy.
We’ve avoided war for now. But the regime-change crowd in Washington won’t stop trying.
Trump doesn’t seem to realize that he himself built the escalation ladder by withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal.
To the sure delight of the hardliners inside and outside the U.S. administration who have always favored regime change, Trump has no plan B that can create a credible path back to diplomacy and negotiations.
President Kennedy once said that, “Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.”
Hawks hated the Iran nuclear deal because they feared not that it would fail to prevent Iran from getting the bomb, but that it would succeed — and thereby deprive the United States of a rationale to dominate the region and discipline its foe.
Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah recently warned that retaliation for the Soleimani assassination would be aimed at U.S. military assets, suggesting that suicide bombers will be deployed.
If U.S. troops in Iraq are attacked by Iran, the Trump administration will feel compelled to respond, and the U.S. will soon be fighting yet another war in the Middle East.
Regime change is now in its coffin and the assassination of Soleimani is the last nail hammered in.
The attempt to create discord within Iran over the killing of Soleimani, who was widely respected by Iranians of many different walks of life as the protector of Iranian national security, is doomed to fail.
The political fallout from Trump’s kill order will extend far wider than Iraq.