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Data Bear 🏳️‍🌈February 28, 2026 at 3:06 PM EST

A long time ago, I used to know a lot about foreign-imposed regime change (FIRC) and study them. I guess that makes me qualified to write a thread about them, especially in wake of Trump bombing Iran. So here goes nothing. 🧵 After WWII, the Allied powers installed democracies in Germany, Italy, and Japan. All three stable 80+ years later. We tried the same formula in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003). Hundreds of thousands died. The Taliban rules Afghanistan today. Why? 1/ Zooming out is important. Foreign-imposed regime changes (FIRCs) are seen as a product of the Cold War, but they aren't. Alex Downes catalogued 120 cases from 1816-2008 in his book. Countries have always tried replacing leaders to get what they want. amazon.com 3/

FIRCs predate the COld War, US global dominance, and even the steamship. Britain FIRCed Afghanistan in 1839. The US intervened in Nicaragua 1909-12. The Soviet Union FIRCed Afghanistan. Vietnam did Cambodia. South Africa did Lesotho. Replacing leaers seems to be a global shortcut. 4/ So why FIRC? The logic is cold: intervening states believe the current leader won't serve their interests. So they install someone who they think will. But the imposed leader immediately faces a structural trap because they have TWO constituencies. 5/ belfercenter.org

The leader's first constituency is the foreign patron who installed them. Their second is the domestic population they must govern. Those two audiences typically want contradictory things. Every decision signals to one audience that the other won. 6/ To give historical examples, you cannot simultaneously strengthen AND weaken plantation labor laws. You cannot let United Fruit extract profits AND redirect them to Guatemalan workers. You cannot tolerate political expression in Prague AND restore the Communist Party line through censorship 7/ The tension between these two constituencies is not a Cold War phenomenon, either. When the US intervened in Nicaragua in 09-12, the new leaders needed to satisfy Washingt's commercial interests and build domestic legitimacy. They failed and instability insued. 8/ Yet, the examples from WWII seemed as shining counterexamples to a legacy of failure. Democratic FIRCs succeeded. Authoritarian/economic FIRCs failed. This simple relationship got absorved as a law of physics and became the intellectual core of neoconservative foreign policy. 9/ Many neoconservatives genuinely beieved spreading democracy — even if by force — would yield stable democratic socieities. Iraq in 2003 put this conviction to the test. Not only did Iraq fail spectacularly, the underlying premise misread the evidence. almendron.com 10/

Acadeics began studying this failure and realized that the WWII FIRCs didn't create democracies from thin air. They restored democracies. Successful democratization requires prior democratic institutions, economic development, and total military defeat. 11/ jstor.org

Democracy took root after WWII because democracy itself had a strong domestic constituency whose interests aligned with Washington's pro-democratic policies. It was not because it came by bayonet. Iraq and Afghanistan lacked those preconditions and the foreign regimes were not defeated. 12/ In their read of history, the neocons mistook correlation for causation. "Democratic FIRCs worked in WWII" is true. "FIRCs work if they impose democracies" is an unsupported claim. And the preconditions to make the second type a success cannot be manufactured. jstor.org 13/

In trying to understand the failure of Iraq, academics generated a burst of scholarship that turned the WWII narrative on its head. These "successes" weren't modal outcomes. They were the outliers. Most FIRCS are catastrophically harmful. papers.ssrn.com

1 in 3 FIRCed countries experiences civil war within a decade. Imposed leaders also dismantle institutions to consolidate power, damaging economies, governance, and trust. See: Iraq after de-Baathification. 15/ cambridge.org

Now what does this all mean for Iran after last night? I AM NOT AN IRAN EXPERT. PLEASE CORRECT ME IN THE REPLIES. Applying theory, many preconditions for FIRC success are not obviously present in Iran today. But the picture is also much more complicated than it first appears. 16/ Iran has a lot democratic history that often goes under the radar. It had a constitution, parliament, and elections from 1906 until 1953, when the US and UK overthrew the democratically elected Mosaddegh to reinstall the Shah. That coup is itself a textbook FIRC case! 17/ Iran also has a real domestic constituency for change. The Women Life Freedom movement after Mahsa Amini's death in 2022 was large and widespread. There have been protests after falsified elections and mass demonstrations across the country this year. Iranians are tired of their government. 18/ But a protest movement is different from institutional memory of democracy. Wanting democracy and having the preconditions for imposed democracy to succeed are two very different things. Having a mass street movement is one thing, but electoracl candidates conceding defeat is another. 19/ But this side-steps the most important and uncomfortable question. What does Washington actually want from Iran? Its demands are no nuclear program. Regional alignment away from Russia & China. Israeli security. A freely elected Iranian government might not be able to agree to all of that. 20/ If a democratic, legitimate government emerges in Iran and its interests diverge from Washington's, "democracy promotion" could be pat rhetoric. Washington could choose compliance above democracy. Just like they did in Iran in 1953. 21/ The 1953 coup destroyed Iran's most promising conditions for organic democratization and poisoned the well for American-backed democracy for generations. The US created the very problem it now claims to want to solve. Ironic doesn't quite cover it. 22 In sum, FIRC is sold to the public as a quick path to stability. Yet, 120 cases across two centuries suggest it is one of the most reliable ***generators*** of instability outside of interstate war. amazon.com

The question after Trump's demand for regime change is not whether the US can change Iran's government through force. It iis whether, given 120 cases over two centuries, there is any reason to believe this time will be a success. The data say: probably not. /end Sorry this got so long. It's a complicated topic and I'm sure there's a bunch of nuance I missed. I will caveat again that I am NOT AN IRAN EXPERT.