President Donald Trump’s sudden embrace of regime change in Iran is drawing stark comparisons to the early days of the Iraq War – and leaving his cabinet officials scrambling to clean up the fallout.
Trump on Sunday floated the idea of ousting Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, even rebranding his signature MAGA slogan into a new mission that The Atlantic’s David A. Graham wrote was "surprising" to him.
“If the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!” Trump posted Sunday on his Truth Social platform.
But as Graham pointed out, just hours earlier, Vice President JD Vance appeared on "Meet the Press" and declared the opposite, insisting the administration is not interested in pursuing a regime change in Iran.
“Our view has been very clear that we don’t want a regime change,” Vance said. “We do not want to protract this or build this out any more than it’s already been built out.”
Trump’s direct contradiction “would have been embarrassing for someone still capable of the emotion,” Graham told readers Monday.
“Vance’s views on foreign policy are deeply shaped by the Iraq War, in which he served,” The Atlantic staff writer added. “Now his boss is at risk of speedwalking that conflict one country to the east.”
He wrote that while the Iraq War “was the product of months of preparation by the George W. Bush administration,” Trump, on the other hand, “has done even less of that thinking, and leads a nation far more politically divided and warier of foreign intervention.”
“Iran is a country of some 90 million people, not a dollhouse to be rearranged,” Graham concluded Monday.