The recent US strike against Venezuela is likely to deepen the Iranian leadership’s concerns about further intervention from Washington but analysts do not expect the leadership will be targeted directly in the same way as Nicolas Maduro.
They pointed to the higher geopolitical stakes in the Middle East compared with Latin America and the greater role played by China, Russia and other countries.
Before the abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, the leadership in Iran had already been grappling with significant nationwide protests and a faltering economy.
Although such demonstrations – directly targeting the leadership’s legitimacy – are not unprecedented in Iran, the strikes in Venezuela may intensify the threat against them.
Just one day before US forces abducted Maduro and his wife on Sunday, Trump warned on social media that Washington “will come to their rescue” if Tehran killed any protesters.
An Iranian official told Reuters that the protests and strikes were “twin pressures” on the government and said Tehran had less room for manoeuvre “with few viable options and high risks on every path”.
Another official said some decision-makers now feared Iran could be “the next victim of Trump’s aggressive foreign policy”.
“Tehran was already on high alert for the possibility of renewed military confrontation with Israel, and what happened to Maduro has clearly heightened its wariness that Washington could pursue a similar course of action against Iran,” said Fan Hongda, director of the China-Middle East Centre at Shaoxing University.
Trump has maintained a consistent hardline approach to Iran throughout his two terms in office and ordered air strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites in June – the first direct US use of force inside Iran in decades.
By the time of the attack, Trump had already claimed that the US had the capacity to target the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” Trump wrote on social media on June 17, describing him as an “easy target”.
John Calabrese, a US foreign policy specialist at American University and the Middle East Institute in Washington, called the current pressure on Tehran “unprecedented”.
“This moment feels unprecedented in its urgency, with the regime forced into survival mode by economic distress, damage to its regional proxies and rising exposure to military strikes and emerging threats.”
He added that Iranian authorities would seek to “contain the protests with minimal violence to avoid further inflaming public anger”, but on the other hand, it was “bracing for the possibility of military strikes”.
Iran’s protests, which started late last month, have swept nearly all major cities, especially in Tehran and the south and west of the country.
Even though the demonstrations, largely driven by economic hardship, are the largest in recent years, they are yet to match the scale of the 2022 protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in custody for violating the hijab law.
Fan said: “Given the sensitive geopolitical factors involved, the likelihood of the United States replicating its actions in Venezuela in Iran appears, to date, to be low.
“The sensitive factors are, firstly, the relationships between the world’s major powers and secondly regional security in the Middle East – after all, this is not the western hemisphere.”
He also said that overthrowing the Iranian leadership might prompt other governments in the region to worry about their own security.
Both Tehran and Beijing denounced the strikes on Venezuela, calling it a violation of the country’s sovereignty.
Beijing sees Iran as a far more critical oil supplier and partner than Venezuela, but Calabrese said: “China is unlikely to intervene directly or publicly on regime-stability issues in Iran, consistent with its preference for political non-interference.
“At most, Beijing may quietly signal concerns about instability through diplomatic channels, framed around economic risk rather than governance.”
China limited its response to calls for dialogue after the strikes in June.
On the other hand, Beijing’s influence in Tehran is also limited, according to Fan.
“It remains unclear to what extent Tehran would be willing to heed Chinese advice … and its political establishment is also marked by pronounced internal divisions,” he said.
However, US military action on Venezuela might offer an opportunity for Tehran to tackle the protests, Calabrese added.
“Venezuela can be instrumentalised rhetorically as a cautionary tale of foreign interference and economic warfare,” he said.
“Iranian authorities often use external examples to justify domestic crackdowns and delegitimise protests as externally manipulated.”