Is US President Donald Trump overthrowing two dictatorships at once?Image: keystone/watson
analysis
Thanks to the US President’s actions, two dictatorships may fall at once.
Jan 3, 2026, 3:21 p.mJan 3, 2026, 3:24 p.m
As Goethe says: “I am part of that power. Who always wants evil and always creates good.” Donald Trump puts this fundamental problem of philosophy in a current context as follows: Will the American president – guided by base motives – succeed in ousting two despicable regimes from power in Caracas and Tehran?
Trump has no moral compass. As is well known, he is a transactional ruler who is only interested in deals and who does not shy away from mixing private interests with public ones. He wants evil, but paradoxically, perhaps that is precisely why he succeeds where his good predecessors failed.
Joy demonstrations in Caracas.Image: keystone
He managed a ceasefire in Gaza. It may be fragile, but at least innocent women and children no longer die every day. He may be well on the way to correcting decades of injustice in Venezuela and Iran.
No one will shed a single tear for Nicolás Maduro’s regime – should it fall. For more than 20 years, Venezuela has been ruled by a regime that, while claiming to serve the poor, actually funnels the country’s oil wealth to a narrow clique of military officials. Millions of people fled because of this and those who did not did so voted overwhelmingly for the opposition in the last elections. Without batting an eyelid, Maduro turned this defeat into a supposed victory in his favor.
In Tehran, one of the most hideous regimes of today sits at the controls of power. Together with the Revolutionary Guards, the Ayatollahs have been oppressing the predominantly young population with incredible brutality since the 1970s. They, too, squander the country’s wealth by supporting terrorist organizations such as Hamas, the Houthis and Hezbollah, while at the same time the majority of Iranians are starving.
This is why revolutionary uprisings occur at regular intervals in Iran. The most recent of these broke out on December 28th, in the bazaars of Tehran, which are actually dominated by conservative traders. However, the protests against the collapse of the Iranian currency quickly turned into a demonstration against the Ayatollah regime, which was also joined by large sections of the population.
Rules over a theocracy: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.Image: keystone
With a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump pledged his support to the demonstrators and at the same time warned the regime not to take violent action against the peaceful protesters. The fact that this post once again contains an embarrassing typo has been generously overlooked this time.
What speaks for Trump’s actions?
Unlike his predecessors and European heads of state, he is not content with sending out the same old communiqués advising both sides against using force. Warnings of this kind are regularly ignored by authoritarian rulers, just as “red lines” are crossed without hesitation. Autocrats know what empty words are and how to throw them into the wind.
Trump, on the other hand, pursues a so-called “Madman theory”. He acts “crazy” and on instinct and it is impossible to predict what he will do next. This is what happened when he sent his B-2 bombers towards Iran last summer. Or by having fishing boats sunk in the Caribbean Sea because they are supposedly transporting drugs.
It is precisely the ruthless use of American military power, even in violation of international law and its own guidelines, that earns Trump the respect of the authoritarian rulers – and yes – and the admiration of the populations of the affected countries.
Together against Iran: Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump.Image: keystone
So everything is “green”? Will the eternal Trump critics also have to give in this time and bow to the US President? Unfortunately not, and for several reasons.
As mentioned, Trump is not interested in morality, but in deals. He doesn’t want to reintroduce democracy in Caracas, he wants the oil. The largest known oil reserves in the world are located in Venezuela. That is why Trump falsely claims that the American oil multinationals were robbed through nationalization.
In Iran, too, the US President is not interested in democracy, but rather, together with his friend Benjamin Netanyahu, in taking the most dangerous player in the Middle East out of the game.
Trump’s approach is also extremely contradictory. Together with his MAGA base, he is, or has been, the most vehement critic of “regime change,” which means actively overthrowing an authoritarian regime in order to then build a democracy.
The two Bushes tried this in Iraq with the ideological support of the neocons – and failed resoundingly. With the motto: “What do I care about my chatter from yesterday,” Trump is now also relying on “regime change” and risks – should it go wrong – that the affected population will have to suffer even more.
Wanted “regime change”: George W. Bush.Image: keystone
Above all, Trump is finally saying goodbye to a rules-based world order. In Beijing and Moscow, his actions are being followed both carefully and favorably. What Trump likes in Central America and the Middle East may also be right for Putin in Ukraine and Xi in Taiwan. We are thus saying goodbye to international law, democracy, the rule of law and human dignity and are heading towards a world in which a few great powers are in charge and the others have to watch how they come to terms with it.
In his recently published national security strategy, Trump makes no secret of the fact that he is striving for such a world order. He also wants to subject his own country to this order by persistently undermining democratic and constitutional institutions.
Trump made it clear over the holidays how he imagines his America. He turned Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, into a mini-Versailles and gathered his court there. It happened the way Trump likes it. Between lavish parties, heads of state like Volodymyr Zelenskyj were received or the order to arrest Maduro was given.
Holding court at Mar-a-Lago: Donald Trump with his wife Melania.Image: keystone
Only Trump is not a sunny king, but a crazy king. Or as Tom Nichols puts it in “Atlantic”: “The United States is now run by someone who is not in control of his thoughts and emotions, and who thinks that the men and women of the US military are nothing more than little lead soldiers.”