When reports emerged that the U.S. ousted Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, a familiar assumption quickly took hold about another longtime foe of Washington. If the U.S. could engineer the extraction of a sitting authoritarian leader in Caracas, many reasoned, then Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei could suffer the same fate. But that assumption is deeply flawed, if not dangerous, particularly for Iranians who hope for meaningful political change.

Despite President Donald Trump’s repeated rhetoric about controlling Venezuela and ending authoritarian rule there, the reality is far more sobering. While Maduro was captured by U.S. forces and flown to New York to face charges, his longtime Vice President, Delcy Rodríguez, a regime loyalist, was sworn in as interim President. Her hold on power, backed by Venezuela’s Supreme Court and much of the military, shows that the core institutions of the state have not collapsed and that the governing elite continues to exercise authority. Even opposition figures, such as the Nobel laureate María Corina Machado, have been excluded from shaping what comes next, revealing the limits of a genuine political transformation.

What has emerged for now is a system that survived by adapting, absorbing........

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