March 10, 2026

As the world is submerged in the second week of President Trump’s unprovoked military onslaught against the nation of Iran, questions about “who the president really is,” have arisen. Has he morphed into a neo-conservative, or was MAGA a fraud, just a vehicle for President Trump to get elected?

President Trump over the course of two elections condemned preemptive military intervention, regime change, endless wars, and nation building. America First opposed these neo-conservative (neocon) policies and was supposed to concentrate on building up America and improving the lives of its citizens. President Trump is a failure.

President Donald Trump, after a year of obsessively but unsuccessfully attempting to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, has turned to war and regime change throughout the world. There can be no question that President Trump is violating the U.S. Constitution and is dangerously involving the United States in a new Middle East war. There was no imminent danger to the U.S. from the nation of Iran that necessitated the bombing attack beginning on February 28, 2026. Those early morning preemptive missile strikes bring to mind an eerie remembrance of March 20, 2003, when President George W Bush launched his neocon inspired invasion  of Iraq in pursuit of regime change. President Bush and his circle of advisors arrogantly believed they would remake Iraq in their Western image.

Regime Change VS Iran

Iran does not possess the level of enriched uranium necessary to produce a nuclear weapon. Iran did not have a missile delivery system capable of reaching U.S. There was no imminent danger. Despite various efforts to spin or massage the message, President Trump himself publicly admitted that he is pursuing regime change against the government of Iran. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and others have now tried to provide a fig leaf for the president’s war policy. Rubio claimed on Monday March 2, that Israel was planning to attack Iran and therefore in anticipation of Iran responding with attacks on the U.S. homeland, the U.S. was in imminent danger, necessitating preemptive action against Iran. This convoluted argument whether true or not, was rebuked the next day when President Trump stated that it was he, who was forcing Israel’s hand. Days later, President Trump boldly declared that he had to take out Iran’s clerical leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,  before “he got me.” A few days later President Trump demanded to be involved in choosing the next leader of Iran. Regime change for any reason is still regime change.

In the short term, Americans are the big losers from President Trump’s war of choice. Oil companies will increase their revenues and make big profits as oil prices skyrocket. This will add more hardship to the American people, the majority of whom are already economically struggling. Defense production plants and arms manufacturers will expand from infusions of new government money, taxpayer debt. However, weapons and munitions do not increase the wealth of society, do not improve American’s standard of living.

Iran: A Strategic Nation

Iran has the right to process uranium for peaceful purposes. All nations, Iran included, have the responsibility to obtain the technology of nuclear energy to better provide for the welfare of their citizens. There has been no public evidence presented that Iran has other intentions. Descriptions of Iran’s nuclear energy program by western governments, are saturated with their geopolitical prejudices, with little intention to find a mutual pathway for development. Despite this negative narrative, Iran is a strategically and economically significant nation in the world.

Iran is a resource rich nation of ninety-three million people, seventeenth largest in the world, and second largest among Middle East nations. Iran’s oil reserves are estimated at 208 billion barrels-third largest in the world, and gas reserves at thirty-four trillion cubic meters-second largest in the world. China purchases 80% of Iran’s oil, 13.5% of China’s crude oil imports. Iran is a member of the BRICS, a leadership body of the Global South. Iran is also a strategic hub of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), bridging both the land based and maritime routes of the BRI.

In summary. Before President Trump launched his preemptive war on Iran, the following was known:

• Iran did not possess the quality of enriched nuclear material capable of becoming a nuclear bomb.
• Iran did not possess long range delivery systems that could reach the U.S.
• The U.S. military and intelligence community assessed that the U.S. was in no imminent threat of a nuclear attack from Iran.

Significant US Regime Change Actions (1961–2026)

• Cuba (1961): Failed CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs.
• South Vietnam (1963): Support for a coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem.
• Brazil (1964): Support for a military coup against President João Goulart.
• Indonesia (1965–1967): Assisting in the ousting of President Sukarno.
• Dominican Republic (1965): Military intervention to prevent a leftist government.
• Chile (1973): Support for the military coup that ousted President Salvador Allende.
• Grenada (1983): Invasion to remove the military government.
• Panama (1989): Invasion to remove dictator Manuel Noriega.
• Iraq (1991, 2003): The 2003 invasion directly removed Saddam Hussein.
• Afghanistan (2001): Invasion to topple the Taliban regime.
• Libya (2011): Backing the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi.
• Ukraine (2014): Involvement in the Maidan revolution.
• Venezuela ( Jan 3, 2026): Abduction of President Nicolas Maduro
• Iran ( Feb 28, 2026): Elimination of the country’s leadership, and the intuition of  bombing of Iran

Listed above, are overt U.S. military interventions into foreign nations to change their governments.

Regime Change Always Fails

We know from historical experience of decades of war fighting, that nations can be weakened but not defeated by bombing campaigns alone. Boots on the ground are required to fully subjugate a nation. We also know well from U.S. military instigated regime change in this century, post kinetic war-fare plans are consistently faulty and bring unforeseen consequences. The lack of vision and propensity for fantasy has dominated all U.S. failed regime change deployments.

The most recent fiascos of regime change were President Bush’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and President Obama’s overthrow of Umar Gadaffi in October 2011. Bush’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein, based on false claims of Iraq’s involvement in the September 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., led to 500,000 to 1,000,000, deaths. For almost a quarter of a century following Bush’s unjustified invasion, this region of the world has suffered permanent instability and the creation of ISIS and its  terrorist offshoots, triggered by the U.S. destruction of Iraq. In the more than fourteen years since Obama’s overthrow and murder of Gadaffi, Northern Africa, across the Sahel and Sahara, have been in continuous chaos. Obama created the deadliest unstable region anywhere in the world.

Regime change is not a substitute for a positive foreign policy. It has never been successful, and it should never succeed. One cannot expect to improve a nation by simply eliminating its leadership through military means. The nation state is not an empty construct to be coerced or manipulated by the militarily powerful. The modern sovereign nation state, created  by humankind, has advanced over several centuries. It is a precious institution, which human beings brought into existence as a means of organizing a language-culture-territory into a single sovereign entity, which can ensure continuation of its society into the future over successive generations.

No nation is perfect, but all nations can evolve, improve, and lessen their imperfection. All nations are in one sense, a continuous “work in progress.” Nations have different systems of governance derived from their history. However, all nations have an intrinsically common self-interest: the growth and development of their people. Nations are made up of human beings, who endowed with the power of creative reason, are capable of unlimited change. The art of diplomacy and statesmanship is to search for means to induce improvements of all nations. To support them on their path towards progress in accordance with the “common aims of mankind.” Genuine, thoughtful leaders find the most propitious methods to bring out the potential good of other nations. Deploying military force against another nation should be the very last resort against an aggressor.

Avoid Military Adventures

Secretary of State, (and future President), John Quincy Adams, speaking on July 4, 1821, in celebrating the Declaration of Independence, cautioned against misadventures of U.S. foreign policy:

Whenever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit….(emphasis added).

Twenty-five years earlier, President George Washinton, had also warned about foreign entanglements in Europe:

…nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is this slave to its animosity or to its affection, either which is sufficient to lead astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another, disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay whole of slight causes of umbrage and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. (emphasis added).

Trump: MAGA or Neocon?

President Trump’s foreign policies have become indistinguishable from the neocons that he spent many years attacking. The neocons, who emerged in the Republican Party during President Reagan’s administration, became dominant in the presidency of George W. Bush. The spiritual godfather of the neocons was Leo Strauss, a follower of Friedrich Nietzsche and Carl Shmitt, a leading political jurist for the Nazis. The neocons rejected America’s unique history as an anti-colonial constitutional Republic. They believed in the right of the “elites” to use “noble lies”-disinformation, to manipulate the citizens in order to achieve the “greatness” of America. They espouse the use of a muscular military to achieve “benevolent global hegemony,” to overpower “anti-democratic” governments that threaten U.S. domination. Neocons advocate U.S. military intervention to reshape the world in accordance with their values, and to preserve America’s hegemony as far into the future as possible.

Is this not the present world view of President Trump?

President Trump and the neocons eschew the existence of a shared vision of development, common to all nations, which should be the cornerstone of foreign policy and diplomacy between nations. It is by example and leadership that the U.S. should intervene. The U.S. Constitution commits the United States to provide for the general welfare of its citizens through their educated participation in our Democratic-Republic. The consequences of neocon instigated regime change, and military intervention are on full display in: Afghanistan twenty-four years later; Iraq twenty-three years later; and Libya fourteen years later.

Neocons Reject America Heritage

Neocons explicitly rejected John Quincy Adams’ prophetic advice. It should be understood that the Monroe Doctrine, also written by Adams, for President Monroe, is antithetical to President Trump’s imperialist like domination in the western hemisphere.

According to journalist Jeffrey Steinberg, (1) leading neocons, William Kristol, and Robert Kagan, writing in the 1996 issue of Foreign Affairs, called for the overthrow of more than 200 years of American anti colonial tradition, singling out John Quincy Adams as their particular nemesis.

Conservative these days, they wrote, succumb easily to the charming old metaphor of the United States as a ‘city on a hill.’

‘They hark back… to the admonition of John Quincy Adams that America not go ‘abroad in search of monsters and destroy.‘ But why not? The alternative is to leave monsters on the loose, ravaging and pillaging to their hearts’ content, as Americans stand by and watch….when America is the giant because the America has capacity to contain and destroy many of the world’s monsters, most of which can be found without much searching, and because the responsibility for peace and security of the international order rests so heavily on American shoulders, a policy of sitting on top of the hill and leading by example becomes in practice a policy for cowardice and dishonor. (emphasis added)

Reshaping the Middle East

in November 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed an historic accord with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was assassinated by an extremist linked to the Likud Party. The neocons seized this moment to develop a strategy for the new Prime Minister, Benjamin  Netanyahu, which would reverse the potential for peace in the Middle East, as a result of the Oslo Accords.

Neocon Richard Perle, presented to Netanyahu in 1996 a new policy called, A  Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm. This six page document was a blueprint to reshape the Middle East under Israel’s control, which including removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and weakening Syria.

President Trump is implementing an updated version of Clean Break today, following his support for Netanyahu’s  genocide of upwards of 100,000 Palestinians and the destruction of the West Bank.

MAGA has been severely fooled. Either President Trump has always been a closet neocon or has been morphed into one. Whichever it is, his policies are dangerous to the world, and he has increasingly become a threat to our American Republic.

1. The ‘Ignoble Liars’ Behind Bush’s Deadly Iraq War

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica