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President Donald Trump’s declaration that the United States was “locked and loaded” if Iran’s security forces killed peaceful protesters carried a special sting. Less than 24 hours later, US special forces attacked Caracas, abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from his home and took him to New York to face trial on “narcoterrorism” charges.
In showing that his administration can follow through on threats in Venezuela, Trump has escalated the psychological pressure on the Islamic Republic. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called his statement “reckless and dangerous”. Clearly, the Iranian government got the warning.
However, Iran is no Venezuela. What happened in Caracas on Saturday cannot really take place in Tehran.
A solid military infrastructure
The realities of operability, which allowed an invasion to occur in Venezuela, highlight why a similar intervention in Iran is simply out of the question for the US.
The CIA had operated in Caracas for half a year, preparing for the operation. The intelligence agency had an asset close to Maduro who helped track him down. In the early hours of Saturday, US fighter jets launched air strikes on military targets in and around Caracas. A US special forces team was dispatched afterwards to abduct Maduro from his residence.
What helped secure the success of the operation was that the Venezuelan military was in disarray and Maduro had been largely abandoned by his allies Russia and China.
Six months earlier, Iran made clear that it is not an easy regime change target. During the 12-day conflict with Israel in June, Tehran’s weaknesses were revealed but so was its resilience.
Despite Israel’s surprise attacks that eliminated some of the most important leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iranian nuclear scientists as well as the Israeli psyop efforts threatening various officials and high-ranking military officers with death unless they defected, the Islamic Republic did not budge.
The US strikes on Iran’s underground nuclear sites using bunker buster bombs did not shake the regime either. In response, the Iranian military was able to fire hundreds of missiles in retaliation, piercing Israel’s Iron Dome and striking military targets.
This resilience stems from the regime’s self-imposed isolation from external shocks. The vast business empire of the IRGC in construction, telecommunications and exports, valued in the billions of dollars, provides its top commanders with a tangible personal interest in regime survival, irrespective of its ideological underpinnings.
Iran has the largest military in the region with one million active and reserve soldiers. The IRGC alone commands at least 150,000 soldiers, many of whom have been battle-hardened in the Middle East already. Then there is the Basij militia, which itself has hundreds of thousands of regular and reserve members.
An invasion of Iran would not be as easy as Venezuela; it would not even be comparable to Iraq, given the mountainous Iranian landscape and vast urban areas.
Furthermore, the Chinese and Russians are unlikely to abandon Iran, a much more important partner than Venezuela. They are likely to provide it with highly advanced intelligence and weaponry as well as political support and cover.
In recent days, Iran has been experiencing mass protests fuelled by economic woes. But this may not turn out to be the opportunity that the US and Israel may think it is.
The upheaval is yet to come near the level of the rallies in 2022. Killings have been excessive – 20 protesters have been killed in the past few days – but we are yet to see any visible cracks in the regime. The IRGC, for example, has not had defections that could destabilise the corps and eventually lead to the fall of the regime.
Furthermore, history shows that external aggression tends to unite rather than fragment societies. This was made clear in the summer when Iranians did not fall for Israeli incitement against their government.
Despite their repressive tactics, the authorities in Tehran have also acknowledged protesters’ concerns. On Saturday, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, said that the “bazaaris’ protest…is a valid one” and that the government is “seeking to remedy the problem”.
Undoubtedly Iran’s crises are real: The severe economic downturn and inflation, the disputes over Iran’s nuclear plans, and the supreme leader’s poor health and the question of succession could create fissures in the regime.
But these are slow-burning crises and not the kind of vulnerabilities on which the Venezuela operation was based. The Iranian government has managed to endure four decades of sanctions, conflicts and internal upheavals because of its solid institutional frameworks, which can weather painful moments.
The Venezuela intervention, then, is more illustrative of the limit of US power rather than a model for what can be done in another country, such as Iran. Trump can isolate and remove individual leaders whose states are already empty shells, as in Venezuela. He and his generals cannot, however, control and transform a complex country like Iran. Any such project would undoubtedly lead to chaos and bloodshed in the region far more intense and lasting than in Iraq.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
