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Iran is not Venezuela; how everything went wrong for Trump.

By Jorge Ramos

HAVANA TIMES – Donald Trump was deeply misled by the success of the operation to oust Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro on January 3rd. He mistakenly believed he could use the same strategy to end the Iranian regime: eliminate the Ayatollah and his top aides, then install his own version of Delcy Rodríguez. So, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Trump that intelligence services had discovered the entire Iranian government leadership was scheduled to meet on February 28th, he decided to strike.

Everything went wrong.

Indeed, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed—along with almost his entire central command—in the initial airstrikes. It was a catastrophic miscalculation by the Iranian leadership, especially given that they knew Israel had been waiting years for such a moment.

Trump, feeling like a global emperor and displaying his characteristic triumphalism, declared on several occasions that the war was all but won and that the Iranian air force and navy had been destroyed. Yet, Iran continued to attack U.S. military bases in the region as well as its neighbors. That wasn’t all. After the first few hours of combat, Trump urged the population to rise up against the regime, but no one took to the streets. Something wasn’t working. Political statements did not align with the facts.

Nor was there any evidence that Iran posed a threat to the United States. Comparisons immediately arose with the 2003 Iraq War, during which George W. Bush’s administration fabricated the existence of weapons of mass destruction that never actually existed. At least 187,000 civilians died in Iraq, and the death toll in Iran has already surpassed 3,400, according to a count by the Iranian organization HRANA.

This, too, was an unjustified war from the start. There is no doubt that the brutal Iranian dictatorship has sought the destruction of the State of Israel for decades and that, if left unchecked, it could manufacture and use atomic weapons. It has long possessed enriched uranium and would not take long to convert it into bombs. Yet the question remains whether war was the best alternative for eliminating or reducing Iran’s nuclear threat, and the answer is a resounding no.

During his presidency in 2015, Barack Obama signed an imperfect agreement with Iran to limit its nuclear capabilities. Monitoring the Iranians was difficult. However, in exchange for compliance with the treaty (known as the Iran Nuclear Deal), the United States gradually lifted a series of economic sanctions and unfroze funds held in international banks. The agreement had many flaws, yet it achieved its objective: for 11 years, Iran did not manufacture a single atomic bomb.

In statements made to ABC News, former President Obama said that the memorandum of understanding Trump reached with the Iranians—which he has touted as a major success—is not “a significant improvement” over what already existed, and he reminded us that the United States cannot “seek solutions with bombs.”

Trump, who is locked in a fierce battle against Obama’s legacy, asserted that the agreement signed by the former president “was a path to manufacturing a nuclear bomb, whereas ours is a wall against a nuclear bomb.” The truth is that the 14 points of the agreement between Trump and the Iranians contain only promises and nothing concrete to keep the Iranians in check. Technical details will have to be negotiated over the next 60 days.

That is how Trump lost the war.

We are worse off than we were before February 28. There has been no regime change in Iran. Quite the opposite. The new Ayatollah, Mojtaba Khamenei, is filled with rage and a desire for revenge following the deaths of his father, mother, wife, and one of his children, according to various reports. The Iranians still possess nuclear material and have not surrendered a single gram. They succeeded in getting economic sanctions lifted after more than a decade. Furthermore, they will receive a $300 billion economic aid package from their neighbors. They did not surrender, nor did Trump destroy a “civilization.” And to top it off, they retain control of the Strait of Hormuz, which had been open prior to the war.

This last point is what strangled Trump’s war strategy and proved to be his weak spot. The Iranians withstood American bombardment for months, but Trump could not withstand the blockade of the strait—through which a fifth of the world’s oil flowed—which triggered a rise in inflation and gasoline prices in the United States. In short, Trump was defeated by the pocketbook. He did not want to head into the November congressional elections with a depressed economy.

In the coming days, we will continue to hear Trump’s triumphalist declarations claiming he won the war and that there is no one like him. The claim about the war is false. But it is true—and a good thing, too—that there is no one like…

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