Iran Is Not Venezuela—But That’s Not the Point: The Ethics of American Tactical Power

Washington has in the recent past treated Iran and Venezuela as parallel cases: sanctioned authoritarian states weakened by economic pressure, internal corruption, and political isolation. Yet Iran is not Venezuela—and not for the reasons many observers assume.

The difference is not simply about ideology. Nor is it corruption, repression, or anti-American rhetoric. All exist in both systems. The more important distinction is structural. The Islamic Republic is an endurance regime built through decades of institutional layering: clerical networks, revolutionary organizations, military and intelligence structures, economic patronage systems, ideological institutions, and narratives of national resistance forged through war and isolation. Venezuela’s political system, by contrast, remains comparatively personalized and thin.

A former U.S. ambassador to Venezuela recently observed that the Venezuelan government is effectively held together by roughly 30 people. Whatever one thinks of the Islamic Republic, that is not remotely the case in Tehran. Iran’s governing system is deeply entrenched across multiple institutions and sectors of society, allowing pressure to be absorbed and redistributed rather than concentrated solely at the top. That distinction matters because strategies premised on elite fracture, leadership disruption, or rapid collapse do not necessarily translate to endurance regimes.

But ultimately, that is not the point.

The larger question is what these comparisons reveal about the way Americans continue to think about foreign policy itself—particularly the tendency to confuse tactical success with strategic vision. What happens when American strategy increasingly defines success through disruption rather than political outcome? And what does it mean for international order when coercive capability begins to substitute for foreign policy itself?

The American public consistently signals support for a “strong” foreign policy. Yet what strength actually means remains unresolved. Is strength measured by the ability to destabilize adversaries, remove hostile leaders, and demonstrate coercive reach? Or does strength require something more difficult: the construction of a sustainable political order after tactical victory has been achieved?

This tension is hardly new. During the Cold War, the United States repeatedly supported operations across Latin America aimed at containing hostile governments, removing adversaries, or preventing perceived ideological threats from consolidating power. Some operations succeeded tactically. Leaders were removed. Governments fell. Rival networks fractured. In some cases, portions of local populations initially welcomed American involvement.

But tactical success often gave way to something far darker.

Across parts of Latin America from the 1940s through the 1970s, military regimes supported directly or indirectly through broader Cold War interventionist policies became associated with mass repression, disappearances, torture, political imprisonment, and the deaths of tens of thousands of people. The moral and political costs of those interventions did not disappear simply because particular operations achieved their immediate objectives.

That history continues to shape how American power is understood globally. It also raises a deeper question that remains unresolved in current debates surrounding Venezuela, Iran, and other adversarial states: Is foreign policy success merely the ability to remove hostile actors, or does it also require responsibility for the political order that follows?

The strategic problem was not merely intervention itself, but the absence of a coherent political vision capable of outlasting tactical success. That former ambassador also warned that without broader strategic changes, the United States risks repeating earlier interventionist patterns in Latin America—achieving tactical success while failing to shape a sustainable political order.

The lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan ultimately reinforced a similar reality: Military and tactical success do not automatically translate into political legitimacy or durable order. Governments can be removed, adversaries weakened, and institutions dismantled while the deeper political questions of governance, legitimacy, and social cohesion remain unresolved. The form of intervention may differ across cases, but the underlying challenge persists.

These histories matter because similar assumptions continue to shape discussions surrounding both Venezuela and Iran today.

Many policymakers still view pressure campaigns through the logic of elite fracture: Increase sanctions, deepen isolation, encourage defections, and eventually the governing structure collapses from within. That logic may appear plausible in a highly personalized system where political cohesion depends heavily on a smaller network of actors tied together through patronage, corruption, and fear.

But endurance regimes operate differently.

The Islamic Republic was shaped by revolution, war, sanctions, isolation, and a 47-year narrative of resistance against foreign domination. Its institutions were not designed for flexibility under pressure. They were designed for survival under pressure. This is precisely why external coercion often hardens rather than weakens the system.

Many Iranians deeply oppose the Islamic Republic while still remaining profoundly sensitive to questions of sovereignty and foreign intervention. People can love their country and still hate their government. That distinction is universally understood around the world, yet it is often flattened in external discussions of Iran. The memory of the 1953 coup, the Iran-Iraq War, sanctions, and decades of external pressure are not abstractions inside Iran’s political consciousness. They form part of the regime’s legitimizing narrative and continue to influence how both elites and ordinary citizens interpret foreign threats.

This does not mean the Islamic Republic enjoys broad popular legitimacy. It clearly does not. Iran has experienced repeated waves of mass protest over economic collapse, political repression, corruption, and state violence. While the Islamic Republic retains a loyal core constituency of about 15 million and a powerful coercive apparatus, large segments of Iranian society no longer believe the government represents their interests or fulfills its side of the social contract.

But weakened legitimacy is not the same as institutional fragility. That distinction matters strategically and ethically.

Too often, American foreign policy debates collapse into an overly narrow question: Can pressure produce capitulation or collapse? In that framework, coercive capability risks becoming a substitute for foreign policy itself.

What is striking is how persistently American foreign policy debates reduce themselves to this binary in the first place. Discussions surrounding adversarial states often revolve around pressure, destabilization, capitulation, or collapse, while far less attention is given to the slower and more politically difficult work of diplomacy, regional integration, institutional evolution, or long-term strategic accommodation. Even when negotiations occur, they are frequently framed not as political engagement in their own right but as instruments for coercion.

This narrowing of political imagination matters because endurance regimes are shaped precisely by the belief that external powers ultimately seek submission rather than coexistence. In that environment, pressure easily reinforces the very siege mentality Washington hopes to weaken.

The issue is not whether the United States possesses the capacity to destabilize adversaries. It clearly does. The deeper question is whether American power increasingly defines success through disruption rather than through political outcome. Tactical operations can remove individuals, degrade networks, or generate temporary leverage. They cannot by themselves produce legitimacy, institutional trust, or durable political order.

Endurance regimes expose this limitation particularly clearly because they force policymakers to confront the reality that coercive power and political transformation are not the same thing. Pressure can weaken economies, damage infrastructure, isolate governments, and impose enormous costs while still failing to produce the political outcome external actors seek. In some cases, it may reinforce siege mentalities and strengthen the coercive instincts of the state itself.

Iran demonstrates this paradox acutely. The Islamic Republic has repeatedly absorbed sanctions, regional isolation, covert operations, cyberattacks, proxy conflict, and military pressure while continuing to preserve core institutions of power. The result is not necessarily strategic success for Tehran. Iran today faces profound internal crises, from economic collapse to social fragmentation and declining legitimacy. But the persistence of those crises has not automatically translated into regime collapse or political moderation.

That reality demands a more uncomfortable conversation about the ethics of American tactical power.

If strength is measured only through the ability to impose costs on adversaries, then tactical escalation can easily become its own justification. But if strategy is meant to shape political outcomes rather than merely demonstrate coercive capability, then legitimacy, institutional depth, historical memory, and political culture cannot be treated as secondary concerns.

Iran is not Venezuela. But the deeper lesson is not about comparative authoritarianism alone. It is about the dangers of mistaking tactical pressure for political strategy—and about whether the United States is prepared to define strength as something more enduring than disruption itself.

Neda Bolourchi is non-resident senior fellow at the Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group.

Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs is an independent and nonpartisan nonprofit. The views expressed within this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Carnegie Council.