A week in, how Trumpâs war with Iran ends is an open question | CNN
After a week of violence reconfiguring the Middle East, some US goals seem in reach, others perhaps fanciful. But the question of where it all ends echoes the loudest. US President Donald Trumpâs demand that he help select the new supreme leader of Iran provides perhaps the clearest insight yet of how close a conclusion might be. On the surface, it appears wildly fanciful, almost absurd, to think that the 88 senior Iranian clerics charged with replacing the theocrat at the top of an Islamic Republic founded to resist American influence would take their cue from, or heed, the White House. But Trumpâs demand, and his rejection of late Ayatollah Ali Khameneiâs son, Mojtaba as his successor, reveals two important points. First, that Trump thinks the Venezuela model can work here â of military action forcing a regime to change, rather than forcing regime change. But Iran is a hardline, aggressive, heavily-armed autocracy that has been wreaking havoc across the Gulf for a week, and that killed thousands of its own people just a few weeks ago. It is not as simple as ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduroâs oil kleptocracy. Yet Trumpâs aspirations betray where the US might
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