United States President Donald Trump\u2019s second term in office has been defined by the abduction of Venezuela\u2019s left-wing President Nicolas Maduro, joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran that killed the country\u2019s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, among hundreds, and new threats against other leaders from Latin America to even Europe.<\/p>\n
This policy is testing alliances, legal norms, and the idea that shock action abroad yields predictable outcomes at home. At its core is a message Trump repeats in different ways: \u201cWe can reach you \u2013 and we might not protect you if you do not do what we want.\u201d<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Trump talks directly to foreign leaders, promising swift punishment or personal favour, and casts himself as the only US president \u201cwith the gloves off\u201d.<\/p>\n While his supporters see strength and candour, critics underline threats and deals aimed at domestic politics as much as foreign capitals.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s decision to attack Iran has been described as the \u201cbiggest foreign policy gamble of his presidency\u201d, with analysts saying he has pivoted from \u201cswift, limited operations like last month\u2019s lightning raid in Venezuela\u201d to what could be a more protracted conflict that is already morphing into a wider regional war.<\/p>\n His doctrine is anchored in identifying adversaries \u2013 Iran, China, Russia and North Korea \u2013 alongside a cluster of actors such as Venezuela, Cuba, certain Latin American leaders, as well as drug cartels, Hezbollah and Hamas.<\/p>\n Analysts at the Atlantic Council say Trump\u2019s National Security Strategy \u201celevates great power competition with China and Russia while casting Iran and North Korea as rogue regimes\u201d, creating an organising map of enemies reflected in his rhetoric and operations.<\/p>\n The Foreign Policy Research Institute describes Trump\u2019s strategy as \u201ca deeply transactional document\u201d, arguing that security guarantees and pressure on adversaries are framed around what others \u201cpay\u201d or concede to the US.<\/p>\n The Pentagon has named its Iran campaign Operation Epic Fury, with Trump insisting the US \u201cdid not start this war\u201d, but intends to finish it \u2013 a claim rejected by Iran\u2019s foreign minister in an interview with Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Trump said US forces would \u201clay waste\u201d to much of Iran\u2019s military, deny Tehran a nuclear weapon, and \u201cgive Iranians a chance to topple their rulers\u201d. Some media reports said he has privately claimed Iran would \u201csoon have a missile that can hit the US\u201d, even though intelligence assessments do not support that.<\/p>\n Analysts say Trump is hoping the US-Israeli strikes would incite a popular uprising to oust Iran\u2019s rulers, even though outside airpower has never directly achieved government change without ground forces. The Atlantic Council warns the Iran attack risks drawing Washington into a wider regional war \u201cwithout a clear endgame\u201d.<\/p>\n A briefing from the Royal United Services Institute says if Iran\u2019s retaliation causes significant US casualties, Washington will be under intense pressure to expand Operation Epic Fury into a larger military campaign.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, hawks in Washington see an opportunity. A report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies says the attacks on Iran provide \u201ca historic opportunity to help the Islamic Republic fall\u201d.<\/p>\n Trump has told the US media the military operation could take \u201cfour weeks or less\u201d, even as his defence secretary acknowledged it could be shorter or longer, depending on how Iran and its allies respond.<\/p>\n Within days of the Iran strikes on Saturday, the war has spread across the region, with Israel on Tuesday saying it has launched ground operations in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Iran\u2019s retaliatory attacks have targeted US assets and even civilian infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and other Gulf nations.<\/p>\n This is exactly the escalation experts had warned about: strikes framed as targeted decapitation of Iran\u2019s leadership now pulling in a weakened Hezbollah and even Lebanese civilians, reinforcing the perception that the US is willing to put an entire region at risk to prove that it can reach one man or topple one regime.<\/p>\n Like he did in Venezuela by capturing Maduro in an in\u2011and\u2011out raid in Caracas after a CIA tip \u2013 an episode analysts say emboldens similar thinking elsewhere.<\/p>\n The Caracas raid came on the back of a \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d campaign, which saw sanctions, criminal cases and asset seizures in a high\u2011visibility operation.\u00a0Maduro\u2019s abduction gave the US considerable control over Venezuela\u2019s vast oil reserves.<\/p>\n The Center for Strategic and International Studies calls the Maduro operation \u201ca military victory with no viable endgame\u201d, arguing that while the exfiltration of the president was tactically successful, the structural drivers of Venezuela\u2019s crisis remained in place.<\/p>\n A Brookings analysis warned that the raid \u201csets a troubling precedent for US\u2011led regime change by special forces\u201d, suggesting that other Latin American leaders may see it as a potential US \u201ctemplate\u201d rather than a one\u2011off.<\/p>\n Like Colombia, whose President Gustavo Petro was referred to by Trump as \u201csick\u201d, suggesting a Venezuela-like intervention there \u201csounds good to me\u201d, and warning Petro to \u201cwatch his a**\u201d.<\/p>\n Petro in January said the US was behaving like an empire that treats Latin American governments as subjects, warning that Washington risks shifting from \u201cdominating the world\u201d to being \u201cisolated from the world\u201d.<\/p>\n The killing or abduction of leaders or prominent figures from other nations violates international law. Experts say Trump\u2019s expanding \u201ctargeted killing\u201d doctrine erodes the taboo on assassinating political leaders, making reciprocity more plausible.<\/p>\n With allies, Trump\u2019s posture is less kinetic but equally blunt.<\/p>\n Trump once boasted about telling a NATO partner, \u201cYou didn\u2019t pay? You\u2019re delinquent \u2026 No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.\u201d<\/p>\n The comments triggered alarm in European capitals and prompted what analysts described as efforts to \u201cTrump\u2011proof\u201d NATO by locking in higher defence spending and deeper political commitments.<\/p>\n The European Council on Foreign Relations alleges Trump has \u201cexported MAGA to Europe\u201d, turning NATO into \u201ca protection racket in all but name\u201d where security guarantees appear conditional on allies\u2019 political and financial alignment.<\/p>\n A declassified White House memo from 2019 remains the clearest example of how Trump\u2019s transactional logic extends to partners. The memo shows Trump responding to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u2019s request for more weapons.<\/p>\n \u201cI would like you to do us a favour though,\u201d Trump purportedly said before asking Zelenskyy to investigate former US President Joe Biden and his son \u2013 a conversation that led to Trump\u2019s first impeachment.<\/p>\n Put together, the Maduro raid, the Iran attack, threats to Petro and pressure on NATO suggest who could be next: Latin American leaders labelled soft on drug cartels; the Iran\u2011aligned groups in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon; or smaller European nations branded \u201cdelinquent\u201d by Trump.<\/p>\n US media reports say Trump\u2019s advisers have urged him to focus on the domestic economy, warning that a prolonged confrontation with Iran could alienate parts of his \u201cAmerica First\u201d base that are sceptical of open\u2011ended wars.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Trump\u2019s backers cite the rising NATO outlays, the Maduro raid and Iran strikes as proof that Trump \u201cdoes what he says\u201d. Some argue that degrading Iran\u2019s nuclear programme, even without regime change, would still count as a victory for Trump.<\/p>\n Critics, however, worry that the Iran campaign could escalate into the biggest US military campaign since the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, with some of Trump\u2019s stated claims on Iran not backed by intelligence.<\/p>\n Whether the US power produces durable outcomes without blowback \u2013 in Iran, Lebanon, Latin America and inside the US \u2013 is a key test for Trump in the days ahead.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n United States President Donald Trump\u2019s second term in office has been defined by the abduction of Venezuela\u2019s left-wing President Nicolas Maduro, joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran that killed the country\u2019s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, among hundreds, and new threats against other leaders from Latin America to even Europe. This policy is testing alliances, legal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13745,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
A doctrine built around enemies<\/h2>\n
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\u2018Troubling precedent\u2019<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"