Why America shouldn’t intervene in Iran like it did in Venezuela

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. You know Iran’s leaders are worried about the implications of last weekend’s US raid in Venezuela when the editor of the hardline Javan newspaper feels he has to write a polemic, headlined Iran Is Not Comparable—Don’t Waste Your Time, saying there aren’t any.

But whether the Islamic Republic is ripe to fall from an external US or Israeli nudge is a much more complicated question. These two deeply unpopular regimes have bonded over their hostility to the US ever since the 1980s, and most recently in their common need to circumvent energy sanctions.

It’s possible that last weekend’s smash-and-grab extraction of President Nicolás Maduro from Caracas to New York may have jeopardized yet another link in Tehran’s rapidly shrinking web of alliances, together with a substantial financial investment. I say “possible," because it isn’t yet clear how the weekend’s successful US special forces operation will play out.

Maduro’s former deputy, Delcy Rodriguez, made conciliatory remarks toward the US at her inauguration as president on Monday. She also, however, reserved her most demonstrative hugs and bows for the ambassadors from the regime’s major international allies, China, Iran and Russia, and is cracking down hard to crush any potential domestic opposition.

All of this matters to Iran, not because US Delta Forces are about to swing through the windows of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s home—that would be much harder to pull off in Tehran than Caracas—but because the Islamic Republic he leads has rarely looked as weak. Iran’s ageing clerics are once again having to deal with a wave of mass street protests, and their security forces have so far killed at least 36 people and arrested about 2,000 in