How Iran Is Not Iraq, Differs From Other Regime-Change Wars

Iran is just another Iraq, critics of President Donald Trump's recent strike on Iranian nuclear sites have said. But experts and Iranian dissidents have argued that this time may be different — and that comparisons to past regime-change wars miss key differences about Iran's history, its people, and its opposition movement.

In Iraq, post-war planning was undone by the absence of a credible alternative to Saddam Hussein. The country's opposition was fractured, often aligned with Iran-backed parties or Kurdish separatists. Into this vacuum stepped figures like Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi exile whose false intelligence about weapons of mass destruction helped sell the U.S. invasion.