A campaign of shock and awe that launched a tsunami of bombs. An enemy that quickly succumbs under overwhelming firepower. And a triumphant American president touting a quick and easy campaign.
In 2003, President George W. Bush walked confidently on the deck of an aircraft carrier less than five weeks after ordering the invasion of Iraq and declaring an “end to major combat operations” under a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished.”
It turned out quite the opposite.
The invasion became a meat grinder, leaving thousands of Americans and possibly more than a million Iraqis dead. It unleashed forces whose effects are felt in the region and beyond to this day.
More than two decades later, another American president attacked another Persian Gulf nation, promising quick success in yet another Middle East adventure that he believes will remake the region.
President Trump and his team have vehemently rejected any comparison between “Operation Epic Fury,” launched Saturday, and “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” On Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a bellicose news conference and insisted: “This is not Iraq. This is not endless.”
However, the attack on Iran – nearly four times larger than Iraq and with more than twice its population – presents no shortage of challenges, which could spread chaos far beyond Iran's borders and become a defining feature of the Trump presidency.
In many ways, analysts say, overthrowing Iran's leadership represents a far more complex task than Iraq has ever faced. Iraq was a state with deep sectarian divisions and largely dominated by a single dictator: Saddam Hussein.
The Iran that emerged after the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79 had a supreme leader, but also developed an elaborate system of government. That includes a president, a parliament and various government, military and religious hierarchies, said Paul Salem, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
“Unlike Saddam's Iraq, the Iranian state is multi-institutional and therefore much more resilient and, yes, not as vulnerable,” Salem said. “And hostility toward the United States and Israel is at the heart of the Islamic Revolution, incorporated into the State.”
Here are some of the ways attacks on Iran could become the same scenarios Trump once derided in his days as a pacifist candidate:
Boots on the ground
For now, the United States and Israel have exerted their air power to subdue Tehran. In the first minutes of the joint operation, a fleet of 200 aircraft – Israel's largest – attacked more than 500 targets in Iran, according to the Israeli military. One of those attacks killed the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran is still fighting back, launching missiles against Israel, Persian Gulf nations, Jordan and other areas with US bases in the region. The United States has the qualitative and quantitative material advantage to eventually prevail, but Iran's capabilities will not make it easy for it, as military and aircraft losses in the last two days have demonstrated.
And wars have never been won with air power alone. Instead of relying on troops on the ground, Trump expects ordinary Iranians to finish the job for him.
“When we're done, take over your government. It will be yours,” he said in a video speech on the first day of the campaign.
During the Arab Spring of 2011, protesters across the Middle East took to the streets to demand change. But those efforts mostly did not lead to meaningful reforms and, in some countries, led to further repression.
In Iran, it is true that many people would welcome the demise of the Islamic Republic, just as many Iraqis rejoiced at the fall of Hussein. But the mostly unarmed protesters are unlikely to succeed in a confrontation with agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or its volunteer wing, the Basij.
It is also difficult to estimate how many of Iran's 93 million people despise the government enough to rise up against it.
Meanwhile, Trump has left the door open to sending US troops, but the calculations for such a deployment raise questions.
According to the US military, counterinsurgency doctrine dictates between 20 and 25 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants to achieve stability. In the case of Iran, that would mean deploying 1.9 million people, almost all active duty, reserve and National Guard personnel of the US military.
New leadership is unclear
At this point, it is not clear that the decapitation of much of Iran's ruling class will produce any real change in the government, much less a successor inclined to bow to the wishes of the United States. The highest levels of the Islamic Republic are staffed by a large group of mostly hardliners, unsurprising, perhaps, for a nation that has been preparing for an attack for years, if not decades.
Any new leadership that emerges could unite around Khamenei's “martyrdom.” He is not especially popular in life, but seems to have become, in death, a rallying cry for defiance. And the martyrs are exalted in Shiite Islam, the predominant faith in Iran.
“He was the religious leader of the Shiites, so it's like killing the Pope,” Salem said. “And it's more popular to die as a martyr than, say, of a heart attack… He went out in style, there's no doubt about that.”
When the United States occupied Iraq, the expectation was that whatever came next would be a fervent ally of the United States, an idea perhaps best captured by the notion in Washington that a grateful Iraqi population would shower American troops with flowers. That didn't happen. And in the Darwin-style selection of leaders that followed, those who emerged victorious had little love for America.
One of them was Nouri Al-Maliki, a Shiite supremacist whose policies were blamed for fueling years of sectarian bloodshed, and whose loyalties often seemed more aligned with Tehran than Washington.
Meanwhile, Tehran, taking advantage of its proximity and deep ties to the new Iraqi ruling class, was able to pull Iraq – a Shiite-majority country – deeper into its orbit.
After the Iraqi government, with the help of a U.S.-led coalition, expelled the Islamic State from Iraq in 2017, Iran was able to add allied militias to Iraq's armed forces. That created the paradoxical situation of fighters aligned with Tehran wielding material supplied by the United States.
Iraq has yet to emerge from Iran's shadow. After the most recent election in Iraq, Maliki appears set to become prime minister once again, prompting Trump to write in Truth Social: “Due to his insane policies and ideologies, if elected, the United States of America will no longer help Iraq.”
A fragmented opposition
Iran's population is diverse; An estimated two-thirds of Iranians are Persians, while minorities include Kurds, Baluchs, Arabs and Azeris.
Those minorities have long-standing grievances against the ruling majority. It is possible that Trump's campaign and the resulting disarray could fuel separatist tensions.
Just last month, Iranian Kurdish factions joined together in a coalition that they said would seek the overthrow of the Islamic Republic “to achieve the right of the Kurdish people to self-determination and establish a national and democratic entity based on the political will of the Kurdish nation in Iranian Kurdistan.”
A seasoned insurgency
Over decades, the Islamic Republic created a network that at its peak stretched from Pakistan to Lebanon.
It was a fearsome constellation of paramilitary factions and docile governments that became known as the Axis of Resistance. It included Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestinian lands, the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
After the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, Israel (and eventually the United States) launched offensive campaigns to weaken the groups.
Although weakened, the factions still survive and could form a powerful, transnational and motivated insurgency when the time comes to fight whatever emerges if the Islamic Republic falls.
Bulos reported from Khartoum, Sudan, and McDonnell from Mexico City.
