Trump 'reaping bitter fruit' of thinking Iran intervention as easy as Venezuela, says former diplomat

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/10/trump-iran-intervention-easy-as-venezuela-maduro-capture-john-feeley

Donald Trump is “reaping the bitter fruit” of erroneously thinking that the capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, offered a blueprint for toppling the Iranian regime, according to one of the US state department’s most respected former Latin America experts.

John Feeley, a Marine helicopter pilot who later served as the US ambassador to Panama, believed Trump had been “flush with the victory from Venezuela” when he made the ill-fated decision to attack Iran in February, leaving a trail of destruction across the Middle East and dealing a hammer blow to the global economy.
(snip)

Feeley, who left the foreign service during Trump’s first term, said the Venezuela assault had led Trump to expect a similarly “marvellous little two-week, three-ribbon war” in Iran. “I think it’s very true that the success of the Venezuela episode led him to give the green light … and begin the Iran episode,” he said, voicing fears that a similar miscalculation might soon be made in Cuba, which Trump recently vowed to “take”.

“I think these guys will make the very jejune and naive mistake of thinking that Cuba is going to be just like Venezuela, in the same way they misunderstood that Iran was going to be just like Venezuela,” he said. “These are 70-year regimes, 50-year regimes in the case of Iran. They’re decentralised, the ranks are trained, they’ve been indoctrinated … That’s a very different scenario than Venezuela, which was a criminal mafia that had only really consolidated its position in the last decade. But I think this administration is shortsighted enough … to still foolishly believe: ‘We’ll just go in there’.”
(snip)