\n<\/p>\n
The Trump administration\u2019s<\/span> war on Iran is reckless and ill-planned, four government officials briefed on the attacks told The Intercept.<\/p>\n Even in classified briefings, Trump administration officials laid out no clear vision for the U.S. war on Iran or its aftermath, the sources said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe administration doesn\u2019t have a clue. They do not have an actual, real rationale, endgame, or plan for the aftermath of this,\u201d one of the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters, told The Intercept.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no thought process into what any of this means long term,\u201d said another. \u201cIt\u2019s not coordinated regime change. It\u2019s just \u2018bomb them until they\u2019re less of a threat.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about the administration\u2019s plan for Iran after the war, that official responded: \u201cWhatever.\u201d<\/p>\n Internal criticism of the attacks comes as President Donald Trump teased that the war could go on \u201cforever\u201d despite promising his administration would avoid Middle East \u201cforever wars<\/a>.\u201d Trump has floated the idea of de facto American rule of Iran through a puppet regime, similar to the leaders who have run Venezuela since the U.S. attacked that country<\/a> and kidnapped<\/a> its president, Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, in January. \u201cWhat we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect scenario,\u201d\u00a0Trump said<\/a> on Sunday. \u201cLeaders can be picked.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodr\u00edguez] in Venezuela,\u201d Trump told<\/a> Axios on Thursday.<\/p>\n Officials predicted that the war would have negative consequences for decades, echoing the results of the last U.S. ouster of an Iranian leader. One of the sources, who has experience in the Middle East and talked to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity, likened this conflict to the 2003 Iraq War, which was also illegal<\/a>, ill-planned, and resulted in decades of regional instability<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump\u00a0has repeatedly called for an Iranian uprising in the wake of the U.S. attacks. \u201cThe hour of your freedom is at hand,\u201d he declared on Saturday. \u201cWhen we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take.\u201d But behind closed doors, the U.S. has made it clear that support for would-be Iranian revolutionaries isn\u2019t certain \u2014 or even likely. In classified briefings, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said the U.S. might intervene to support the Iranian people if an opportunity for ushering in democracy presented itself, but that the U.S. was primarily focused on a discrete set of tactical goals to degrade Iran\u2019s military power, two of the government officials told The Intercept.<\/p>\n One of the sources briefed on the attacks evoked the 1953 coup in which the U.S. and British governments toppled Iranian Prime Minister\u00a0Mohammad Mossadegh. The overthrow of Iran\u2019s first and only democratically elected government ushered in more than two decades of dictatorship under U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his dreaded secret police<\/a>, SAVAK. \u201cTrump\u2019s history only goes back as far as the revolution. But 1979 started in 1953. And this [war] goes back to that [coup],\u201d the source told The Intercept, referencing the 1979 Iranian revolution.<\/p>\n Trump has also referenced the 1979 revolution, but not the anti-American backlash that fed it. \u201cYou go back 37 years, really 47 years, close to 50, look at what\u2019s happened and all the death,\u201d Trump said<\/a> to CNN, referencing those killed by Iran since the revolution.<\/p>\n The U.S. official scoffed at Trump\u2019s one-sided history, noting this war\u2019s roots stretch back to the CIA\u2019s coup almost 75 years ago. \u201cIt could be decades before we know how badly this will affect us. But you can bet it will,\u201d the official said, referencing the lag between the 1953 coup and the 1979 revolution. \u201cPeople in Iran remember. We do not.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The CIA was<\/span> responsible for the 1953 coup that ousted Mossadegh. \u201cThe military coup that overthrew Mosadeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government,\u201d reads the agency\u2019s postmortem<\/a>.<\/p>\n The CIA was also behind the targeted killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the hard-line Shiite cleric who ruled Iran for nearly four decades. After tracking his movements, the CIA reportedly passed his location to Israel, which conducted the attack that killed him on Friday,\u00a0according to U.S. officials<\/a>.<\/p>\n The U.S. has offered shifting explanations for the new war with Iran, including claims that Iran posed an \u201cimminent\u201d threat to America or that Israel effectively forced the U.S.<\/a> into the conflict. In a legally mandated, unclassified letter submitted to Congress on Monday, Trump declared that the military operation was designed to \u201cneutralize Iran\u2019s malign activities<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n In a phone conversation with ABC News\u2019 Jonathan Karl, Trump also claimed that the killing of Khamenei was the latest salvo in dueling assassination attempts. \u201cI got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well, I got him first,\u201d Trump told Karl, apparently referring to U.S. intelligence from the summer of 2024 that\u00a0Iran was plotting to assassinate<\/a>\u00a0then-candidate Trump. That same summer, a gunman with no known ties to Iran attempted to kill Trump at a campaign rally<\/a> in Pennsylvania. Iran denied involvement in the attack.<\/p>\n After a 1970s congressional inquiry, known as the Church Committee investigation<\/a>, brought to light the CIA\u2019s role in numerous plots to kill foreign leaders<\/a>, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order that banned \u201cassassinations.\u201d The ban is now part of\u00a0Executive Order 12333<\/a>, which states: \u201cNo person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The White House did not respond to questions of the legality of, and rationale, for the targeted killing of Khamenei.<\/p>\n President Barack Obama, speaking in Cairo, Egypt, in 2009, admitted the U.S. role in the \u201coverthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.\u201d Four years later, the CIA officially acknowledged its role in the 1953 coup d\u2019\u00e9tat when it\u00a0released declassified<\/a>\u00a0documents on the operation.<\/p>\n CIA documents are also frank about the type of \u201cblowback\u201d \u2014 the unintended, often violent, consequences of covert operations and foreign policies that were kept secret from the American public \u2014 of which Trump is either ignorant or ignores. \u201cPossibilities of blowback against the United States should always be in the back of the minds of all CIA officers involved in this type of operation,\u201d noted the CIA lessons-learned report<\/a>\u00a0on Mossadegh\u2019s ouster. \u201cFew, if any, operations are as explosive as this type.\u201d<\/p>\n In his 2013 book, \u201cThe Coup,\u201d Iranian American historian Ervand Abrahamian wrote that Mossadegh\u2019s removal by the CIA irreparably scarred Iran and \u201cleft a deep imprint on the country \u2014 not only on its polity and economy but also on its popular culture and what some would call mentality.\u201d\u00a0The Iranians who overthrew the shah in 1979 branded America \u201cthe Great Satan,\u201d a moniker that endures to this day, as a result.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has overthrown two regimes in as many months this year with its killing of Khamenei last week and its kidnapping of Maduro<\/a> in January. The Trump administration has been running Venezuela via a puppet regime ever since.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n