First, the CIA tracks the head of an oil-rich nation pursuing America to a heavily guarded compound in the heart of his country’s capital, surrounded by mountains.
That leader is then removed from power with a deadly and irresistible display of American military force.
Finally, a more docile successor is installed to do Washington’s bidding.
That was the recipe for Donald Trump’s recent capture of the Venezuelan regime. The country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, was kidnapped in Caracas before dawn on January 3.
After special forces captured Maduro, his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, stepped forward with Trump’s blessing, launching a once-unlikely pro-American era for a South American country whose leaders had long criticized “Yankee” imperialism.
“I thank President Donald Trump for his administration’s gracious willingness to work together,” Rodríguez posted on X on Thursday, in perhaps his most brazen act of genuflection since the fall of his ally.
Two months after Maduro’s fall, Trump appears set to replicate the “regime capture” model in Iran after its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in Tehran during a devastating Israeli-US operation targeting his base.
“I have to participate in the appointment (of his successor), like with Delcy in Venezuela,” Trump told US news website Axios this week.
Speaking to the New York Times, he said: “I think what we did in Venezuela is… the perfect scenario.”
A State Department official told the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s strategy – “managing” a regime’s behavior from afar without putting American boots on the ground – could be called “decapitate and delegate.”
However, experts in South America and the Middle East have serious doubts about whether what has worked so far in Caracas will work 7,000 miles away, in Tehran.
“Turning Iran into a kind of docile puppet regime is much less practical than in Venezuela where (even under Maduro)… the government was already inclined to work with the United States, its historical energy partner and the key player in the region,” said Benjamín Gedan, former South America director on the national security council staff at the White House and now director of the Stimson Center’s Latin America Program.
And he added: “This idea that after Venezuela the United States could go around the world intervening and installing a figure of Delcy Rodríguez wherever our aircraft carrier raises anchor, is kind of a silly idea.”
Iran experts believe Trump’s demand to participate in electing the country’s next leader is likely to be rejected out of hand by the country’s surviving officials as blatant interference in its domestic politics. The country has bitter memories of meddling by outside powers, including Britain, Russia and the United States.
To a large extent, the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic regime to power was driven by nationalist resentment over alleged foreign intervention. The then reigning pro-Western monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was widely considered an American puppet.
Anti-Americanism, exemplified by the revolutionary chant “Marg bar Amrika” (Death to America), has been at the center of the regime’s ideology since the revolution’s spiritual founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, called the United States “the great Satan.” Slogans and murals expressing antipathy toward the United States are prominent in Tehran and other Iranian cities.
Trump’s insistence on being consulted seems even more far-fetched given that the countries have not had diplomatic relations for 46 years, in contrast to Venezuela, where the United States had ties until 2019. US ties with Iran were severed by the Carter administration in 1980 after revolutionaries stormed the US embassy in Tehran and held 52 US diplomats hostage.
Alex Vatanka, head of the Iran program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, called Trump’s attempt to insert himself into Iran’s leadership election “beyond delusional” and questioned whether he had a viable plan to impose a Venezuela-type scenario.
“Regime change would have been much easier than converting existing Shiite Islamist militants to the Maga movement, which is basically what he is asking for,” Vatanka said.
He added that outside influence was possible because individuals from “what remains of Khamenei’s inner circle” were working with foreign intelligence services.
“But you still need to have an action plan,” he said.
“You have to decide who within the regime you can work with. Then, together with that group, you either convince the others who are fighting right now to co-opt them, or you help the Americans kill them.
The interim president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, in Caracas, Venezuela, March 4, 2026. Photography: Leonardo Fernández Viloria/Reuters
“That way someone can emerge as the leader and do what Rodriguez is doing in Venezuela… But I haven’t seen anything that suggests to me that that level of thinking has been applied to what the United States is doing right now. They could decide to withdraw, saying, ‘We killed Khamenei, there are no nuclear weapons left, the missile launchers are destroyed.’
“It is an open war, and in such a situation, it becomes even more difficult for anyone left in the regime to want to suggest that they are willing to work with the United States… They will be killed before they get out of bed the next day.”
Naysan Rafati, senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, said the United States and surviving members of the regime may have a shared interest in continuity, but warned that this could risk alienating much of Iran’s population, who are still angry over the bloody crackdown on recent protests at the cost of thousands of lives.
“Even if the system has a shrinking base of ideological followers, those followers probably feel that this is the end of the game if they do not unite. Therefore, there may be a mobilization of forces,” he said.
“The best outcome for Washington is to ensure change within continuity: finding a partner that can quickly forge a critical mass of the Iranian system on terms the United States can live with,” Rafati added.
“But that ambition faces two challenges: finding enough voices within the regime to accept change and leaving many Iranians dissatisfied with continuity.”
Experts believe the real choice about Iran’s next leader lies with the powerful Revolutionary Guards, who control Iran’s military policy as well as large sectors of the economy.
South American specialists believe that Trump’s apparent desire to repeat “the Delcy model” reflects his emboldening by Washington’s apparently successful appropriation of the remains of Maduro’s authoritarian regime.
“There was no loss of American aircraft or service members, we have a government that had been portrayed as at least relentlessly hostile, and is now very accommodating. We have a country with immense natural resources (which, as Trump sees it) are newly available to the United States,” Gedan said.
But, the former White House adviser added, beyond the fact that Iran is much further away and better armed than Venezuela, it is too early to say whether Trump’s tactic has worked in South America.
“Within a year, if the US Navy is not still in the Caribbean, Venezuelans, little by little, could feel that they suddenly have a break and some autonomy again,” Gedan predicted.
The distraction of the conflict in the Middle East could even benefit Maduro’s successors as they seek to outlast Trump and extend his 27-year rule. “Their plan is not to be a puppet regime forever,” Gedan said. “Their plan is to wait for the United States to move forward.”
