Even in its weakened state, and battered by recent American and Israeli strikes, Iran is not Venezuela. The Islamic Republic is a battle-hardened regime. The removal of a single figure is unlikely to bend the entire country to Washington’s will.
Trump’s recent reference to Jimmy Carter’s disastrous 1980 attempt to rescue American hostages held in Iran also shows that he is aware of the pitfalls that could accompany any attempt to put US boots on the ground.
Eight American servicemen died when a helicopter and EC-130 transport aircraft collided on the ground in Iran’s eastern desert.
That botched operation, coupled with the humiliation felt at the spectacle of hooded American hostages being paraded in front of cameras in Tehran, was a significant factor in Carter’s electoral defeat later that year.
“I don’t know that he would have won the election,” Trump told journalists from the New York Times last week, “but he certainly had no chance after that disaster.”
But 46 years later, there is a bigger question driving Washington’s military calculations: what is the Trump administration actually trying to achieve in Iran?
“It’s hard to tell exactly what course of action Trump is likely to take,” Will Todman, senior fellow in the Middle East programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said, “given we don’t know what his full aim is here.”
President Trump is probably trying to influence the Iranian regime’s behaviour, Todman said, rather than topple it.
“I think the risks of regime change are so great that I don’t yet believe that is his primary objective here,” he said. “It could be more concessions in the nuclear talks. It could be to stop the crackdown. It also could be to try to implement reforms that lead to… some sort of sanctions relief.”
Trump has said elements of the Iranian regime have reached out, anxious to negotiate, presumably to keep a dialogue going on the country’s nuclear programme.
“What you’re hearing publicly from the Iranian regime is quite different from the messages the administration is receiving privately,” Leavitt said on Monday, adding that diplomacy was “always the first option”.
