Blinken Admits Past 20 Years Of US Regime Change Efforts Abroad Basically A Failure

Now with just weeks to go before the Trump administration takes over the White House, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has issued some interesting and surprising admissions. He told an audience of the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday that Biden's policy on Iran hasn't been more muscular because Washington's regime change efforts in the region over the past two decades have basically been failures. 

It's rare for a top official who is still in office to so bluntly describe that regime change efforts have been doomed. Blinken had been asked specifically of the US supporting Iranian opposition groups to overthrow the government in Tehran.

"I think if we look at the last 20 years, our experiments in regime change have not exactly been resounding successes," he responded. "So, I think we have to have an appropriate degree of humility in focusing in that way on a problem."

He also said at one point, "There’s no doubt this has not been a good year for Iran, and we’re seeing that play out every single day." 

He laid out that Iranian leaders now have to make "fundamental" choices:

"One choice it could make and should make is to focus on itself and focus on trying to build a better, more successful country that delivers for its people … and to stop getting involved in these adventures or misadventures throughout the region."

Foreign media seized on the comments, particularly state media in Russia and China. For example, Russia's RT ran a headline which somewhat stretched Blinken's words to say "US admits attempts at regime-change in Iran."

"US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has publicly admitted that over the past two decades Washington has conducted experiments seeking regime change in Iran," the RT report said. "Efforts to topple the Islamic Republic's leadership, however, have failed, he admitted."

And China's Xinhua had this headline: "Blinken admits failure of decades-long U.S. effort seeking regime change in Iran."

The Chinese state media report also reads a lot into Blinken's words, claiming that he "publicly admitted Wednesday that his country's efforts spanning the last 20 years to seek regime change in Iran did not yield much success."

While it's clear that countries from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya to Syria were all targeted for regime change in the last twenty years, it's uncertain whether Washington ever made a decision to focus efforts on overthrowing the leadership of the Islamic Republic. Certainly, however, there have been efforts to weaken and degrade the country, including Trump's 2020 assassination by drone strike of IRGC Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani.

Blinken also had some interesting words on Iran's nuclear program, saying that it is "not inevitable" that Iran will purse and achieve a bomb. "This is something that may be more a question now because they’ve lost different tools. They’ve lost different lines of defense," he said.

"Sure, you’re going to see more thinking about that, but the costs and consequences for them for pursuing that route, I think, would be severe," he added.