As US and Israeli fighter jets continue their operations against Iran, the specter of “regime change” has once again seized the headlines.
With US President Donald Trump declaring that “an Iranian regime armed with long-range missiles and nuclear weapons would be an intolerable threat,” the world is experiencing a sense of déjà vu.
While the current operation, dubbed Roaring Lion, aims to curb the Islamic Republic’s nuclear and ballistic ambitions, it raises a historical question that has plagued Washington for 70 years: Can the United States successfully engineer political change in foreign capitals?
A look back at American interventions from Latin America to the Middle East reveals a pattern of high hopes, unintended consequences, and a public increasingly weary of foreign entanglements.
“If there is one issue that remains in some consensus in the polarized American political system of today, it is the opposition to unnecessary wars around the world, and mainly to ‘regime change’ moves,” Rotem Oreg-Kalisky, a researcher of US politics and foreign policy, and the founder of Liberal, told The Jerusalem Post.
US track record on regime change
This fatigue is born of experience. The US track record on regime change is, at best, mixed, and at worst, catastrophic.
It is a bitter irony that the current conflict centers on Iran, the site of one of the CIA’s first major successes – and arguably, its most consequential long-term failure. In 1953, the US and the UK orchestrated the coup that toppled prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh after he nationalized the country’s oil industry.
Prof. Danny Orbach, an associate professor in the History and Asian Studies Departments at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, described the Cold War logic that drove the decision.
“The US claimed that Mossadegh was unpredictable, too nationalistic, and that he could not be reasoned with,” Orbach said regarding the mindset of the era. “The US feared he was under the control of the communists. For this reason, the Americans decided on that military coup under the auspices of the CIA, which toppled Mossadegh.”
The pendulum swing
The coup reinstated the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. But in 1979, the pendulum swung back violently. As millions took to the streets, US president Jimmy Carter pressured the shah not to use force, a move Orbach said was a critical turning point.
“Carter was a weak president in this regard. He failed,” the professor said. “He didn’t understand what the danger was in that supposedly moral stance he took.”
The result was the shah needing to escape Iran and the rise of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which established the very Islamist regime that threatens the region today.
Notably, throughout the Cold War, Washington viewed Latin America as a chessboard where neutral leaders were liabilities.
“The idea was that the Cold War was a zero-sum game,” Orbach said. “Whoever wasn’t ‘with me’ was ‘against me.’ And anyone who wanted to make strong reforms toward the Left was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as a communist.”
This led, for example, to the 1989 invasion of Panama to oust and arrest president Manuel Noriega, a former CIA asset turned liability. “The Americans meddled in the backyards of regimes across Latin America,” Oreg-Kalisky said.
“They instigated influence operations, carried out guerrilla actions to weaken hostile regimes, and tried to raise leaders more friendly to the United States in their place.”
The September 11 attacks
However, the skepticism that defines modern American foreign policy was forged in the fires of the Middle East following the September 11 attacks.
Then-US president George W. Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan initially succeeded in toppling the Taliban. Yet, two decades later, the 2022 withdrawal from the country under US president Joe Biden resulted in the immediate collapse of the US-backed government.
“Biden pulled the American troops out of Afghanistan, and in that very same week, the Afghan government, which the Americans dedicated 20 years and billions upon billions of dollars to build, fell into the hands of the Taliban,” Oreg-Kalisky said.
For Orbach, the collapse of Afghanistan revealed a fundamental truth about nation-building that American money could not fix.
“It’s not that no one supported the Americans,” Orbach said. “But what was the difference? More people were willing to die for the Taliban than for the government.”
The 2003 invasion of Iraq might serve as the ultimate cautionary tale. Driven by intelligence failures regarding weapons of mass destruction and a desire to finish unfinished business, the US toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, only to unleash chaos.
“For George Bush the son, there was an ideological incentive to topple Saddam Hussein, after George Bush the father did not manage to do so in the First Gulf War,” Oreg-Kalisky said.
The dismantling of the Iraqi state created a vacuum that was, paradoxically, filled by Iran. The weakening of Baghdad allowed the ayatollahs to extend their influence across the “Shia Crescent,” leading directly to the regional instability Israel faces today.
As the US engages once again with Iran, the shadow of these past wars looms large. Meanwhile, the trauma of Iraq and Afghanistan has created a disparity between how Americans and Israelis perceive military force.
“The American public had a war that they were told was super justified in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. These wars ended in terrible disaster,” Orbach said.
“Therefore, the American public is very skeptical regarding wars, whereas the Israeli public is much more skeptical concerning peace.”