News SOS for Journalists Latin America Culture

Photos Photo of the Day Videos

How Trump Lost His War with Iran

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

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........

© Havana Times