By T N Ashok
NEW YORK: When President Donald Trump speaks of Iran, he no longer discusses deterrence in conventional terms. Gone is the Cold War lexicon of containment, mutual assured destruction, or carefully calibrated signalling.
In its place sits something starker: the explicit threat of regime liquidation as a tool of American statecraft. What is emerging from Trump’s White House is not merely a harder line toward Tehran, but a coherent—if ruthless—doctrine that treats sovereignty itself as conditional, available only to those willing to subordinate their interests to Washington’s preferences.
The immediate catalyst is Iran’s internal convulsion. Protests triggered by economic collapse—the rial trading past 1.4 million to the dollar—have metastasized into the most serious challenge to clerical rule since 1979. At least 540 dead, more than 10,600 detained, and a near-total internet blackout suggest a regime fighting for survival.
Yet Iran’s crisis matters less for what it reveals about Tehran than for what it illuminates about Washington: a willingness to exploit internal fractures as instruments of foreign policy, backed by credible threats of force.
“Iran called. They want to negotiate,” Trump said recently. “But we may have to act before the meeting.” The formulation is telling. Diplomacy is not being rejected; it is being instrumentalized as a countdown clock to intervention.
The intellectual architecture of Trump’s approach rests substantially on Venezuela. Inside the administration, the collapse of Nicolás Maduro’s government is treated as vindication—evidence that sustained pressure, economic strangulation, and the credible threat of military action can topple even deeply entrenched autocracies.
Though details remain classified and contested, Trump has publicly characterized Venezuela as a decisive American operation that neutralized regime leadership and forced its exit.
Whether this narrative withstands scrutiny matters less than its operational effect: it has become the template. Venezuela demonstrated, to Trump’s satisfaction, that authoritarian resilience has limits, that sanctions can be weaponized beyond mere inconvenience, and that the threat of force—if believed—can alter calculations in capitals from Caracas to Tehran.
The lesson drawn is simple: regimes crack when they believe America is willing to destroy them, not merely contain them.
This represents a fundamental departure from post-Cold War norms. Previous administrations treated regime change with ambivalence, pursuing it episodically (Iraq, Libya) while disclaiming it as policy. Trump’s innovation is to make it routine—a foreseeable consequence of non-compliance rather than an exceptional act requiring elaborate justification. The phrase circulating among officials captures the starkness: “kneel or perish.”
Three assumptions underpin this doctrine. First, that internal legitimacy in authoritarian states is more fragile than external observers assume. Iran’s unrest, in this view, is not an aberration but a signal: sanctions have worked, the Revolutionary Guard is overstretched, and the succession to 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei looms as a potential rupture point. The regime, Washington believes, is weaker than it appears.
Second, that American military power—particularly precision strikes and cyber operations—can degrade a regime’s repressive capacity without requiring ground forces or nation-building.
The goal is not occupation but decapitation: eliminating command-and-control, crippling internal security, and creating space for opposition movements to succeed where Washington will not deploy troops. This is regime change reimagined for an era of fiscal constraint and public war-weriness.
Third, and most cynically, that success breeds deterrence. If Iran’s government falls under American pressure, the calculation goes, other regimes will recalibrate. Autocrats in Havana, Pyongyang, or Harare will face a choice: accommodate American demands or risk extinction.
Allies hedging their bets—New Delhi’s “strategic autonomy,” for instance—will discover that neutrality carries costs. Even Beijing, despite its economic heft, will think twice before backing clients Washington has marked for removal.
This is not deterrence as traditionally understood—the prevention of specific hostile acts. It is deterrence through demonstration: making an example sufficiently brutal that others comply preemptively.
Iran is the immediate focus, but the doctrine’s implications extend far beyond the Middle East. Officials describe Trump as increasingly impatient with what he perceives as defiance masquerading as sovereignty.
Colombia and Mexico, both ostensibly American partners, face scrutiny over narcotics cooperation and China’s growing influence. While neither confronts imminent military action, the toolkit is familiar: tariffs, financial sanctions, and threats of escalation designed to narrow their room for manoeuvre.
The message is consistent: there are no neutral corners. Countries must choose—not between democracy and autocracy, which would at least offer moral coherence—but between American preferences and their own assessment of national interest.
India illustrates the dilemma. New Delhi maintains strategic ties with Washington, historic links with Tehran, and acute sensitivity about energy security. Washington is now pressing India to abandon neutrality on Iran, testing how far “strategic autonomy” can stretch when the hegemon demands alignment.
“Neutrality is becoming more expensive,” said one U.S. diplomat. The implication is that sovereignty, in Trump’s world, is not an inherent right but a privilege extended to the compliant.
Yet even within the administration, doubts fester. Military strikes, however limited, risk rallying Iranians around a regime they otherwise despise—a dynamic that undermined Western intervention in Iraq and Libya.
Iran’s parliamentary speaker has already designated U.S. bases and Israel as “legitimate targets” should Washington intervene. Unlike Libya in 2011, Iran possesses proxies across the region, ties to Russia and China, and a demonstrated capacity for asymmetric retaliation. The risk of miscalculation—of a limited strike spiralling into regional conflagration—is considerable.
More fundamentally, the doctrine assumes that power can substitute for legitimacy, that fear can produce stable outcomes. History suggests otherwise. Regimes removed by external pressure rarely yield successors aligned with the intervening power; more often, they produce chaos, resentment, and blowback. Venezuela’s post-Maduro transition, whatever Washington claims, has not produced a model ally—it has produced uncertainty and a vacuum others are eager to fill.
There is also the problem of precedent. If Washington normalizes regime change as a response to non-compliance, what constrains others? Russia has already used similar logic in Ukraine. China may apply it to Taiwan. The erosion of sovereignty as a norm does not benefit only the powerful; it creates a world where might makes right, and the strong do as they will.
For China, Iran’s fate is a bellwether. Beijing has so far urged restraint, but U.S. officials believe China is unwilling to confront Washington militarily over Tehran. Instead, they expect Beijing to hedge—publicly advocating dialogue while quietly insulating itself economically.
Yet if Iran falls to American pressure, China’s calculus shifts. Every client state, every economic partner becomes a potential liability, vulnerable to the same coercive logic. The result is not necessarily Chinese accommodation but deeper retrenchment, accelerated efforts to build sanctions-proof financial architecture, and a more explicit challenge to American primacy.
For Europe, the Middle East, and much of the Global South, the message is chilling: the international order is reverting to a Hobbesian state where raw power dictates terms and institutions exist only at the sufferance of the strong.
Trump’s gambit on Iran is thus more than a regional crisis. It is a wager that American dominance can be reasserted through coercion, that sovereignty can be made conditional, and that the rest of the world will submit rather than resist.
Whether that wager succeeds may determine not only Iran’s future but the structure of international politics for decades to come. As one official put it: “If Iran falls, the world changes. And everyone knows it.” What remains unclear is whether the world that emerges will be more stable—or merely more brutal. (IPA Service)
