“One could argue,” he wrote, “that the U.S. has had the same ‘regime’ since 1789, when the Constitution entered into force and George Washington became president.” Arash Azizi, a scholar of Iranian history and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, told me that “the war and decapitations have affected the internal factional balance, but they haven’t changed the regime. I think this is likely in the medium term (and it would have been even without the war)”—the regime’s signature policies are both unpopular in Iran and strategically untenable, Azizi explained—“but nothing of the sort has happened yet.” In other words, Trump is misusing the phrase to project an image of success in this historically unpopular war. In addition to escalating the conflict in Iran, he has sought to destabilize other foreign governments over the past few months: After the January capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (and the subsequent installation of a Trump-approved interim leader), the White House established its first effective oil blockade against Cuba since the Cuban missile crisis.
Author: Will Gottsegen
Published at: 2026-03-31 22:23:00
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