U.S. President Donald Trump looks on after disembarking Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., February 27, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
President Donald Trump's goals for the U.S.-assisted strike on Iran on Saturday rely on a "fantasy" situation, and could unleash "utter anarchy and chaos" across the region, according to one analysis.
Early Saturday morning, the U.S. coordinated strikes with Israel against multiple high-profile targets in Iran. Israel struck multiple sites where the country's political and military leadership, which killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the dictator who ruled the country since 1989. The U.S. struck multiple Iranian nuclear facilities even though Trump previously declared the sites were "totally obliterated" during a similar bombing campaign last year.
Trump said in an early morning address that the U.S. had two goals for the operation: to destroy the country's nuclear capabilities and to create an opportunity for regime change.
“To the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump said in the more than eight-minute video posted on Truth Social. He also implored the Iranian people to “take over your government. It will be yours to take.”
There's just one problem with that theory. There is no group strong enough to take over the country's government, author and journalist Fred Kaplan argued in a new article for Slate.
"It is worth recalling that, in 2003, President George W. Bush sent 150,000 troops to depose Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, yet even they were unable to impose order but instead incited an insurgency and a civil war that lasted nearly a decade and destabilized the entire region," Kaplan noted.
He added that the strikes on Iran also have the potential to create "utter anarchy and chaos" similar to what happened in Libya after the killing of Muammar Gaddafi.
"Whatever happens, it seems that Trump has not thought through the political consequences of his war—a crucial failing in a war of choice; this certainly was not a war forced upon him," Kaplan wrote.