The dramatic US special forces operation that captured Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and whisked him to New York has sent shockwaves far beyond Latin America, landing with particular force in Tehran. The raid has exposed the fragility of Iran's international alliances and sparked intense debate over whether the Islamic Republic, led by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is now vulnerable to a similar external push.
Tehran's Nervous Reaction to Caracas
The clear anxiety within Iran's ruling establishment was visible when the editor of the hardline Javan newspaper published a defensive column titled "Iran Is Not Comparable—Don’t Waste Your Time." This attempt to dismiss parallels itself reveals deep concern. The bond between Iran and Venezuela, forged through shared hostility towards the United States and a mutual need to bypass energy sanctions, now looks like a liability. Tehran has invested an estimated $2 billion to $4 billion in Venezuelan projects, from oil refineries to housing, and the US action jeopardizes this financial stake and a key diplomatic relationship.
While a Delta Force raid on Khamenei's residence in Tehran is far more complex than the Caracas operation, the symbolic blow is potent. The regime is confronting significant internal unrest. A new wave of mass street protests has been met with severe repression, resulting in at least 36 deaths and 2,000 arrests. This crackdown prompted former US President Donald Trump to issue a stark warning, stating the US was "locked and loaded" to intervene if the slaughter continued.
A Regime on the Defensive at Home and Abroad
Khamenei has survived major protest movements before, including the 2009 Green Revolution and the 2022-2023 Women Life Freedom uprising. However, the current moment feels different due to a compounding series of failures. Domestically, the economy is in dire straits with a currency in freefall, sparking public fury over inflation. Internationally, Iran suffered a humiliating defeat in an air war with Israel last year and proved incapable of protecting its core allies—Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Hamas in Gaza, and Hezbollah in Lebanon—from significant damage.
This strategic weakness is directly linked to public anger. Iranians complain that the regime and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have squandered hundreds of billions of dollars on foreign adventures and a uranium-enrichment program with no commercial value, while neglecting domestic needs like water supply and public services. Support for Assad alone is estimated to have cost around $30 billion.
Would More Strikes Hasten or Hinder the Regime's End?
This brings the focus back to Trump's threats and the potential for US or Israeli military action. History suggests that authoritarian regimes fall only when their domestic security apparatus refuses to kill for them—a threshold not yet crossed in Iran. While external pressure through threats over human rights abuses and ballistic missile programs is sound policy, the calculus for direct military strikes is fraught.
There are two compelling reasons for restraint. First, the regime benefited from a rally-around-the-flag effect after the US-Israeli airstrikes in June of last year. Foreign bombardment and inevitable civilian casualties often unite a population, however reluctantly, behind its leadership. Protesters may retreat, fearing being seen as aiding an external enemy.
Second, even if a renewed attack triggered the regime's collapse, the outcome would likely not be a stable pro-Western democracy. Power would most probably shift to a less clerical but still hostile government run by the IRGC. Worse, Iran—a multi-ethnic empire—could plunge into a devastating civil war and power vacuum, creating a crisis on the scale of Syria but in a country with over three times the population.
The core question is not whether Iran would be better off without the current Islamic Republic, but whether more airstrikes would advance that goal. As Napoleon advised his generals, one should never interrupt an opponent while they are making a mistake. For now, the regime's own strategic overreach and domestic mismanagement may be doing more to undermine it than any external force could achieve.
