Easy regime change in Tehran is a nice idea. But look to history: it’s a near-impossible one | Martin Kettle

No one doubts the malignity of the Iranian government, but if we forget the tragedies of interventions past, we’ll make the same mistakes

On the eve of the 1991 Gulf war, a TV reporter asked the US commander Norman Schwarzkopf if he would topple Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Stormin’ Norman replied with a memorable succinctness: “Easy say. Hard do.”

Schwarzkopf knew what he was talking about. The general was a lifelong student of the Middle East region – he spent some of his childhood years in Tehran – and of military history. Indeed his successful ground-war strategy for Saddam’s defeat in Kuwait was consciously modelled on the flanking tactics used to such devastating effect by the Carthaginian commander Hannibal to defeat the Romans at Cannae in 216BC.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

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