Trump's Iran Regime-Change Plan Was Even Crazier Than Anyone Imagined

Plans to install Mahmoud Ahmadinejad atop a decapitated Iranian regime were reportedly considered by the U.S. and Israel. Ahmadinejad is described as a hardline figure tied to the 2009 election controversy, mass protests, and a brutal crackdown. The account portrays him as anti-American and associated with Holocaust denial efforts, while also helping enable the IRGC’s control of Iran’s economy. It characterizes Trump’s Iran war as poorly conceived and strategically disastrous. The regime survived and became more hardline, while the war failed to eliminate threats and instead increased Iran’s leverage over the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf oil trade. U.S.-Israeli strikes degraded some military capabilities at high cost, but leaked assessments and independent analyses suggest Iran retained more drones and missiles and inflicted greater damage on U.S. assets than claimed.

"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardline former Iranian president whose fraudulent reelection win in 2009 triggered the largest mass protests in Iran since the revolution and who has blood on his hands from the brutal crackdown that followed. The anti-American 9/11 truther who once hosted a conference for Holocaust deniers, who helped facilitate the IRGC's stranglehold on Iran's economy, and whose vulgar and histrionic rhetoric prompted widespread condemnation and ridicule - including a vintage SNL digital short featuring Adam Levine."

"It was already abundantly clear that Donald Trump's war in Iran was poorly conceived, inadequately planned, and generally a recipe for geopolitical disaster. The war itself has been a strategic failure by most any measure. Iran's decapitated regime didn't just survive; it's become even more hardline and inflexible. The war hasn't eliminated the threat the regime posed; it has exacerbated it, prompting Iran to seize leverage it didn't have before the war, over the Strait of Hormuz, over Gulf oil trade and infrastructure, and, as a result, over the global economy (and U.S. fuel prices)."

"Iran's military capabilities have been seriously degraded by thousands of U.S.-Israeli air strikes - at the cost of tens of billions of dollars and a huge percentage of the U.S. munition stockpile. But the scale of that military success has also been called in question in light of leaked U.S. intelligence assessments and other independent analyses that indicate Iran retains far more of its drone and missile capabilities, and did far more damage to U.S. military assets in the region, than Trump administration officials have ackn"

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