The neocons are back in charge in Washington, and Iran is in the cross-hairs.

In July, in a late-night tweet from the White House, President Trump threatened Iran, in all caps, with "CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED."

Since that rant, Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seem to be taking pages from the Iraq War playbook. They are cherry-picking intelligence and inflating threats. They're making specious connections between Iran and terrorists, including al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. And they're ratcheting up their rhetoric.

Trump himself used his speech before the United Nations on September 25 to, as Mitchell Plitnick noted on this site, "build the case for aggression against Iran and even to add more obstacles to a peaceful resolution of tensions between the United States and the Islamic Republic."

I thought it would be a good time to see how our 17 years of doing regime changes in the Muslim world was working out.

Afghanistan: 17 years
2,412 Americans killed
At least 31,000 civilians killed
At least 120,000 U.S. allies and Taliban killed
Public Opinion

Seventeen years into the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan, Americans remain pessimistic about U.S. efforts in the country. About half of adults (49%) say the United States has mostly failed in achieving its goals there, while about a third (35%) say it has mostly succeeded, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Another 16% say they do not know if the U.S. has succeeded or failed.

Facts on the ground

Since the US-led invasion in 2001, Afghanistan has never been as insecure as it is now. The Taliban control more territory than at any point since the removal of their regime 17 years ago.

The Afghan war has already become the longest war in US history. With the passage of time, the conflict has not only become more intense - it has also become more complicated. The attacks are becoming bigger, more frequent, more widespread and much deadlier.
...
Large parts of provinces like Helmand and Kandahar - where hundreds of US, UK and other foreign troops were killed - are now under Taliban control. Meanwhile, civilian casualties are at an unprecedented level. According to the UN, more than 10,000 civilians were killed or injured in 2017, and the number is expected to be even higher in 2018.

Iraq: 15 years
4,500 U.S. troops killed
Between 110,000 and 1,000,000 civilians killed
Around 150,000 U.S. allies and enemies killed

Facts on the ground

The Americans must have been at a loss in Iraq or too absent such that Iran succeeded in breaking the Sunni bloc and placed Halbousi as speaker of the Iraqi parliament. This is a major achievement by Iran in Iraq. For the first time, there is a Sunni parliamentarian bloc loyal to Iran.

Let’s face it. Iran has beaten the Americans all over the place in Iraq. It has scored too many goals there.

The winners

Across the country, Iranian-sponsored militias are hard at work establishing a corridor to move men and guns to proxy forces in Syria and Lebanon. And in the halls of power in Baghdad, even the most senior Iraqi cabinet officials have been blessed, or bounced out, by Iran’s leadership.
From Day 1, Iran saw something else: a chance to make a client state of Iraq, a former enemy against which it fought a war in the 1980s so brutal, with chemical weapons and trench warfare, that historians look to World War I for analogies. If it succeeded, Iraq would never again pose a threat, and it could serve as a jumping-off point to spread Iranian influence around the region.

In that contest, Iran won, and the United States lost.

Why the war was fought

Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq's domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms.
From ExxonMobil and Chevron to BP and Shell, the West's largest oil companies have set up shop in Iraq. So have a slew of American oil service companies, including Halliburton, the Texas-based firm Dick Cheney ran before becoming George W. Bush's running mate in 2000.

Libya: 7 years
0 Americans killed
10,000 to 20,000 civilians killed in civil war


Facts on the ground

The rise of “super militias,” which last month triggered the worst spasm of violence in the Libyan capital Tripoli in four years, has exposed the weakness of Western efforts to stabilise Libya while creating an opening for Daesh to resurrect itself in North Africa...
Another cease-fire was declared on September 26. But few observers expect the violence to vanish while the militias’ long-standing rivalries and economic ambitions persist. Previous cease-fire agreements have repeatedly broken down.

The recent violence is the starkest evidence yet of how the strategy adopted by the United Nations and Western powers after the ouster and death of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi during the 2011 Arab Spring revolts has faltered.

Facts on the ground #2

Armed groups execute and torture civilians in Libya in almost complete impunity seven years after the revolution that toppled Muammar Gaddafi, the United Nations human rights office said on Wednesday.

Libyans and migrants are often held incommunicado in arbitrary detention in appalling conditions, and reports persist of captured migrants being bought and sold on “open slave markets”, it said in a report to the Human Rights Council.

What's not to love about a regime change record like that?
Bring on Iran!