Regime Change Vs. Regime Replacement: Lessons From History

Many people are asking questions about what happens to Iran after the ayatollahs are gone. It will almost certainly be better than what it was.

The only way America would be worse off would be if the regime in Tehran were replaced by a regime run by even worse ayatollahs with even faster access to nuclear materials, ballistic missile development, and terror funding.

President Trump said:

I guess the worst case would be, we do this and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen. We don’t want that to happen. It would probably be worse if you go through this and then, in five years, you realize you put somebody in who was no better. So we’d like to see somebody in there that’s going to bring it back for the people.

The president is correct. And you could see from his rather dismissive smile that he does not think the “worst thing” is going to happen.

There are a ton of people out there on the Left and the horseshoe Right ignoring the simple fact that the ayatollahs are the worst possible regime. These people yell about the evils of regime change, about the dangers of long-standing occupation with boots on the ground, etc.

Let’s cover all of that right now. Let’s start with regime change. We keep hearing about how regime change is dangerous, a failure.

Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader and pathological liar, said,

Americans spent the last two decades fighting and dying in the Middle East. Parents watch their kids shipped off to foreign lands. So many lives lost, so many billions wasted, so much suffering and anguish that scarred an entire generation. Why is Donald Trump hellbent on making history repeat itself? Why is he plunging America headfirst into a war that Americans do not want, and which he cannot even explain?”

Schumer is a wildly dishonest player.

He’s been yelling about the ayatollahs for years, but then apparently quietly supporting the JCPOA, which was Obama’s attempt to ship pallets of cash to the ayatollahs and give them a ten-year runway to a nuclear bomb. But the truth is, he only cares enough to yell a little bit. And then he turns around, and he yells at anyone who actually wants to do something about the ayatollahs.

But let’s talk about that term, regime change. Regime change implies a long-standing commitment in which the United States engages in serious nation-building efforts.

Sometimes that works. Germany, Japan, and South Korea are prime examples.

Sometimes it doesn’t work. Afghanistan would be the prime example.

Iraq is actually a checkered example. We forget about Iraq and what happened afterward; Iraq is indeed a functioning but fragile quasi-democracy with a nominal GDP roughly 10 to 15 times larger than it was under Saddam Hussein. The current regime has real problems and is associated with a wide variety of sectarian groups, but it is certainly better than Saddam’s, even if most Americans believe that the cost wasn’t worth it.

That’s a fair argument against the war in Iraq, but not against the principle of regime change overall.

In Iran, we’re not really talking about regime change in the technical sense, because regime change refers, generally, to an American-overseen process of government building where we put hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground, and then ensure every step of the governmental transition.

What we’re talking about with Iran is regime destruction or replacement, where we knock over the regime and let it fall, but we don’t actually participate in long-term nation-building.

Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t, because it turns out that history is complicated.

There are many examples of regime replacement or regime destruction. Some of those are failures. For example, in Libya, we provided air support to rebels to take out Muammar Gaddafi, which was a huge mistake that I opposed at the time. And then we let the country take its own course. That led to a massive migration crisis and an all-out civil war that continues to this day.

Why was that a mistake? Because Gaddafi was actually contained, and the people rebelling against him were a checkered group of sundry terrorists and others.

And then there’s Iran itself, where the Carter administration essentially withdrew support from the Shah of Iran, and we have been suffering with the consequences ever since.

But there are more positive examples. In Chile, we created the pressure that led to the coup against the Marxist Salvador Allende, who was replaced by General Augusto Pinochet, who was an anti-communist and also a human rights abuser, but who began instituting capitalist mechanisms that eventually led to prosperity and, under American pressure, democratization. In fact, we are the ones who pressured Pinochet out of power. He thought about another military coup when he lost an election, and we said, we will not support anything remotely like that. You’re giving up power.

Or, for example, Panama, where we deposed Manuel Noriega. We then installed the winner of the prior election, and things have worked out pretty well.

And, of course, that’s pretty much what we just did in Venezuela, where we destroyed the top of the regime and then left a second person in place. And now that person, Delcy Rodriguez, is basically being squeezed until she squeaks.

She put out a statement yesterday saying,

I thank President Trump for the willingness of his government to work together on an agenda that strengthens binational cooperation for the benefit of the peoples of the United States and Venezuela.

In other words, not all “regime change” is alike. It’s not always Iraq. And pretending that it is, is ignorant. There’s a reason why Venezuela was handled one way and why Iran is being handled in another. And it’s not necessarily because Venezuela is in the Western Hemisphere. It’s because Iran is run by a fundamentalist Islamist death cult.

In order to truly understand how evil the ayatollahs are, let Patrick Bet David, who has some experience in this area, explain.

He said of the original Ayatollah Khomeini:

You guys want to know what Khomeini once said about what to do to women in prison? He once said female prisoners who are virgins must be raped before execution to prevent them from entering heaven. Isn’t he an amazing guy to say something like that? That’s the guy that died — when he died, I was in Iran, June 3, 89 — I was there when the guy died. They didn’t kill him. He died. This guy who was supposed to be a hero for them? “Female prisoners who are virgins must be raped before execution.” … No human being – You would never write that. You would never subscribe to that.

Not all regime change is the same.