Iran is not Venezuela as much as Trump wants it to be

With no clear successor and much of Iran’s power structure still intact, the White House faces a far more complex fight than it did in Venezuela.

President Donald Trump departs at the end of a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room at the White House in Washington, on March 2, 2026. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

President Donald Trump had a likely successor in mind when his administration took out former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January. He doesn’t have that in Iran.

In the runup to the joint U.S.-Israel operation that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of top Iranian officials, CIA officials worked to make inroads with some members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two people familiar with the matter who like others in this article were granted anonymity to describe sensitive operations.

But while the intelligence gleaned helped the U.S. and Israel successfully target Iran’s supreme leader and several other top Iranian officials, the administration had little certainty about who could realistically take power in Iran and would be able to work with Washington.

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