Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : By the time Donald Trump completed his first year in office this January, the world he confronted was no longer governed by the language of partnership, multilateralism, or shared rules. The central message of his presidency, delivered repeatedly in speeches, interviews, and policy actions, was direct and unambiguous: the United States would no longer bind itself to international institutions, international law, or collective decision-making if these did not serve American power, American wealth, and American control. Sovereignty, in this view, did not mean equality among nations. It meant the freedom of the strongest to impose outcomes on the rest.
This ideological shift was formalized through the United States’ withdrawal from dozens of international and United Nations–linked organizations. The administration described these bodies as ineffective, biased, or obstacles to American objectives. The practical effect was a blunt rejection of the postwar system built on treaties, arbitration, and multilateral governance. The message to the world was clear: rules would no longer be negotiated in international forums; they would be set by Washington. International law, in this framing, was replaced by national power as the final authority.
This doctrine did not remain theoretical. It was applied openly, most dramatically in the Western Hemisphere. The sitting president of Venezuela was seized and transported to New York and placed in detention. This was not framed as a quiet legal matter. Donald Trump publicly stated that the purpose was to regain control of Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, secure energy supply chains, and redirect those resources toward the economic strength of the United States. The language was explicit: energy and natural resources were strategic assets, and access to them was a matter of American national interest, not international negotiation.
The pressure expanded outward. Warnings were issued to Cuba, Argentina, and Colombia. The terms were simple and direct: align with U.S. policy on trade, security, and resource access, or face economic and political consequences. Cooperation was defined as compliance. Independence was framed as defiance. The Western Hemisphere, once managed through diplomacy and influence, now faced what many governments saw as a return to overt coercion.
This posture was reinforced by continued military action beyond the Americas. U.S. strikes in Somalia, repeated operations in Syria, and the ongoing use of drone warfare extended the same logic into Africa and the Middle East. The pattern was consistent: Washington would act where it judged its interests to be threatened, without waiting for international authorization or consensus.
Europe felt this shift directly. The administration’s stated desire to take control of Greenland, a territory tied to the Kingdom of Denmark, was not presented as a diplomatic proposal but as a strategic objective. European leaders responded with unusually direct language. Governments in Denmark, Germany, France, and across the European Union stated plainly that Greenland’s future would be decided only by Denmark and the people of Greenland. The episode became a symbol of a deeper rupture: the United States was no longer seen as a guarantor of European sovereignty, but as a power willing to challenge it.
Canada experienced a similar break. Its economy had been deeply integrated with the United States, with the majority of its exports flowing south across the border. Energy, automobiles, agricultural products, electricity, and critical minerals formed the backbone of this relationship. Under Trump’s policy, these ties were recast as vulnerabilities. Tariffs and public rhetoric framed Canadian dependence as a weakness that could be exploited for political and economic gain.
Ottawa responded by changing course. Europe became a strategic priority, not just as a trading partner but as a political counterbalance. Canada then moved to strengthen ties with China, focusing on infrastructure, technology, Arctic cooperation, and energy development. This was not an ideological shift. It was a calculation of risk. Reliance on a single dominant partner had become a liability. Diversification became national policy.
In the Gulf, Canada sought large-scale investment from Qatar, inviting capital into its energy and industrial sectors. The objective was direct: reduce exposure to American pressure by embedding Canada in a wider network of global finance and trade. Similar strategies appeared across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where governments began to seek alternatives to U.S.-centered economic systems.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, this global reaction was expressed openly. Leaders described a world fractured by economic coercion and unilateral action. The institutions designed to manage conflict through negotiation—the United Nations, trade bodies, and international courts—were described as weakened by the withdrawal or disregard of their most powerful member. The concern was not abstract. It was practical: without shared rules, global stability would depend on power balances rather than legal frameworks.
France’s clash with Washington over the proposed “Board of Peace” for Gaza illustrated this new reality. When President Emmanuel Macron declined to commit a billion dollars to the initiative, the response from the United States was a threat of heavy tariffs on French exports, including wine and champagne. The signal was clear: political disagreement would be answered with economic punishment.
As these confrontations multiplied, a broader global shift took shape. Countries that felt targeted or marginalized by U.S. policy began to move closer to China. This was not driven primarily by admiration for Beijing’s political system. It was driven by calculation. China offered trade, infrastructure financing, and investment without military intervention or explicit political conditions. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, regional trade agreements, and financial partnerships, Beijing positioned itself as an alternative center of gravity in global economics.
By the end of the first year, the direction of change was unmistakable. The world was moving away from a system organized around shared institutions and toward one shaped by competing power centers. Regional blocs, bilateral deals, and alternative financial systems began to replace global frameworks.
This transformation was neither subtle nor accidental. It was the result of a stated ideology: that strength, not law, should govern international relations; that resources, not agreements, define power; and that alliances exist only as long as they serve national advantage.
The first year of this presidency did not merely adjust the global order. It challenged its foundations. The aftershocks continue to spread. Whether this path leads to a more balanced distribution of power or to a more unstable and confrontational world remains the central question facing nations as they navigate the landscape reshaped by this new doctrine.

Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : Imagine a moment so extreme that it defies the basic logic of national loyalty. Picture American opposition leaders traveling to Moscow, praising Vladimir Putin, and applauding the removal or arrest of a sitting U.S. president. Then imagine them standing before Russian media, thanking the Kremlin for “helping restore democracy” in the United States. Such an act would not be celebrated as dissent. It would be condemned as criminal, as treasonous, as an open assault on the constitutional order and sovereignty of the nation itself.
In this context, Maria Corina Machado’s public gesture toward Donald Trump—offered in appreciation for the economic and financial strangulation of her own country and the abduction of a sitting Venezuelan president by U.S. power during the dark hours of January 3—strikes many as more than political theater. To her critics, it appears as an act of high treason: the symbolic selling of national sovereignty to a foreign power in exchange for political backing to ascend to office.
What makes the moment even more charged is the shadow of the Nobel Prize itself. Donald Trump, once an aspirant for the award and denied by the Nobel Committee, now stands publicly “honored” by a political figure whose rise is seen by some as inseparable from U.S. intervention. To them, this exchange feels less like recognition and more like a taunt—an implicit rebuke of the institution’s decision and a politicization of one of the world’s most revered symbols of peace.
Others interpret it more starkly: as the trading of national dignity for foreign endorsement, a calculated wager that power can be gained without the organic consent of the Venezuelan people. Beneath this view lies an even darker implication—that refusal to comply with Washington’s strategic and economic demands, including Trump’s openly declared ambition to seize Venezuela’s oil wealth for American gain, could invite the same fate that befell Maduro.
She perhaps put the exalted concept as a backburner that democracies breathe through dissent. From mass protests in Israel demanding accountability from Benjamin Netanyahu, to parliamentary resistance in Pakistan, to congressional scrutiny in Washington, internal struggle is the engine of reform. But there is a line—that line is crossed when a political movement steps outside its national ecosystem and invites a foreign state to intervene directly in the destiny of its own people.
This is why the language of treason enters the conversation. To challenge one’s own government is a political right. To applaud a foreign power for economically suffocating one’s own society is, in the eyes of many, a moral rupture. Sanctions do not fall on presidents alone. They fall on hospitals that cannot import medicine, on families whose wages collapse under inflation, on children whose futures are narrowed by scarcity. To praise these tools as instruments of “liberation” is, for critics, to sever political ambition from national responsibility.
The same pattern, many argue, is now being traced in Iran. For decades, Iranians have demonstrated that organic struggle is not only possible but powerful. In 1979, a mass popular movement overthrew one of the most entrenched, Western-backed monarchies in the region. That transformation, whatever its later consequences, was not engineered in foreign capitals. It was carried by millions in the streets of Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz. It was internal, national, and unmistakably indigenous.
Yet today, critics point to the re-emergence of Reza Pahlavi—who left Iran as a child more than four decades ago and has lived his adult life in the West—as a symbol of what they describe as “exiled leadership” being elevated by foreign powers. To them, the idea that someone disconnected from the daily realities of Iranian society can be positioned as a national alternative, while U.S. and Israeli leaders openly signal support for regime change, contaminates the authenticity of domestic protest.
When President Donald Trump issues statements hinting at military action “in support of protesters,” critics argue that the organic nature of Iranian dissent is immediately compromised. What may begin as a homegrown demand for reform becomes vulnerable to being branded—internally and internationally—as a foreign-engineered project. The protester in the street is no longer just a citizen with a grievance. He or she becomes, in the narrative of the state, a potential proxy of external power.
This is not merely a theoretical concern. History is crowded with examples where foreign intervention discredited legitimate internal movements by attaching them to geopolitical agendas. In 1953, Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown in a covert U.S.-British operation after nationalizing the country’s oil industry. The Shah who replaced him ruled for more than two decades with Western backing, until a revolution erupted that reshaped the region and locked Iran and the United States into a cycle of hostility that continues to this day.
For those who view Venezuela and Iran through this historical lens, the pattern appears consistent. Sovereignty is tolerated when it aligns with great-power interests and challenged when it does not. Venezuela’s vast oil reserves—estimated at over 300 billion barrels, the largest proven reserves in the world—are not an abstract statistic. They represent strategic leverage in a global energy system where access to supply shapes diplomacy, alliances, and conflict.
This is why the charge of unpatriotism carries such emotional weight. To fight your own government is a political act. To fight your own society’s economic survival by endorsing foreign coercion is, for critics, something far more severe. It is seen as stepping outside the national tent and inviting an overwhelming external force inside—one that may crush institutions, fracture unity, and redraw the country’s future according to interests that are not its own.
Even the Arctic has entered this conversation. Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark that consistently ranks among the world’s strongest regions for governance, transparency, and human rights, has become a subject of geopolitical attention because of its rare earth minerals, strategic location, and emerging shipping routes. The implication is stark: in an era of intensifying global rivalry, even the most stable and democratic societies can become strategic assets rather than simply sovereign communities.
At its core, this controversy is not about medals, exiles, or speeches. It is about a red line between internal reform and external allegiance. It is about whether political ambition remains rooted in the will of the people or becomes dependent on the pressure of foreign capitals.
Organic struggle carries legitimacy because it is earned at home. It rises from neighborhoods, workplaces, universities, and streets. It persuades before it compels. It mobilizes before it conquers. Imported struggle arrives differently—through sanctions, asset seizures, diplomatic isolation, and military signaling.
History’s judgment on such alliances is rarely kind. Nations may survive bad governments. They rarely emerge whole when their sovereignty becomes a bargaining chip in someone else’s strategic game. The ultimate right to shape a country’s future, this argument insists, must remain in the hands of its own people—not in the applause of foreign leaders, and not in the shadow of global power.

Paris (Imran Y. CHOUDHRY) :- Former Press Secretary to the President, Former Press Minister to the Embassy of Pakistan to France, Former MD, SRBC Mr. Qamar Bashir analysis : The Middle East has been subjected to a destructive and repetitive doctrine that promises peace through regime change but delivers only chaos, fragmentation, and endless war. At the core of this ideology stands Benjamin Netanyahu, whose long-held belief is that Israel’s security and regional dominance require the dismantling of hostile governments rather than coexistence with them. From Iraq to Libya, from Syria to Afghanistan, from Lebanon to Gaza, this toxic philosophy has left entire societies in ruins—yet it is being recycled once again, this time against Iran.
Israel’s current military campaign in Gaza and the West Bank, its permanent occupation of the Golan Heights, its repeated strikes inside Syria, and its confrontations with Lebanon all reveal a broader expansionist vision. However, Netanyahu understands that without neutralizing Iran—the only regional power capable of resisting Israeli military dominance—this vision cannot fully materialize. This is why Iran has been framed as an “existential threat,” and why regime change in Tehran has become a central obsession.
Even before the brief twelve-day escalation in June involving Israel, United States, and Iran, Netanyahu had been relentlessly injecting the idea that once Iran’s leadership is removed, peace will finally descend upon the Middle East. This is the same argument used to push the United States into Iraq, to destroy Libya, to destabilize Syria, and to militarize Afghanistan. Every time this doctrine was applied, conditions worsened—terrorism expanded, refugees multiplied, and regional instability deepened.
At that critical moment, Donald Trump did not endorse regime change in Iran. He resisted plunging the United States into another open-ended conflict. However, Israel did not abandon its objective. Instead, it adopted a two-pronged strategy: destabilization from within and the grooming of a manufactured alternative leadership for Iran.
According to Iranian authorities, the current unrest was not merely spontaneous protest but was instigated, coordinated, and guided by Israeli intelligence networks operating under Mossad. Tehran presented evidence that Mossad-linked operatives were embedded among protest groups, receiving instructions directly from headquarters in Tel Aviv. These instructions allegedly included plans to incite large-scale rioting, burn banks, destroy ambulances, attack police officers, and sabotage mosques and public infrastructure. The objective was not reform but disorder.
Most critically, Iranian officials revealed that even after the country shut down its domestic internet, communications between these operatives and their handlers continued through satellite-based systems, while Iran simultaneously faced hundreds of thousands of cyberattacks targeting its communications infrastructure. This exposed the operation as a coordinated hybrid assault combining street violence, cyber warfare, and psychological pressure.
When this evidence was reportedly shown to President Trump, his initial posture hardened. He openly stated that all options remained on the table. However, the situation shifted when Iran halted scheduled executions and refrained from further mass repression. Trump himself publicly stated that executions had been stopped and that there would be no further oppressive measures against protesters. With that declaration, he effectively poured cold water on Netanyahu’s attempt to maneuver the United States into another Middle Eastern war.
Parallel to the destabilization campaign, Israel simultaneously cultivated a political alternative: Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s former monarch. Pahlavi has lived outside Iran since the age of twelve, spending his entire adult life in the United States. He has no organic political base inside Iran, no demonstrated grassroots support, and no tangible connection to the daily struggles of the Iranian people. For decades, he remained politically irrelevant. Suddenly, amid unrest, he was reintroduced as a “savior.”
Despite living a luxurious lifestyle in the United States without any clearly defined source of income, Pahlavi has been aggressively promoted as a viable leader for Iran. He was invited to Jerusalem, where, in interviews with Israeli media, he openly spoke about historical alignment between Iran, Israel, and the Jewish people. In doing so, he publicly positioned himself as ideologically aligned with Israel’s regional agenda. This appearance confirmed that he has effectively sold himself as a convenient figurehead—offered the illusion of kingship in exchange for political obedience.
This two-pronged Israeli strategy—instigating large-scale unrest while simultaneously presenting a pre-selected alternative ruler—mirrors earlier regime-change playbooks used elsewhere. However, it is fundamentally flawed. Reza Pahlavi does not represent modern Iran. He has no roots in today’s Iranian society, no institutional backing inside the country, and no legitimacy among a population that has lived through revolution, war, sanctions, and resistance. Attempting to impose him as a solution only exposes the artificial nature of the entire project.
More dangerously, an attack on Iran would not resemble Iraq or Libya. Iran controls or influences critical waterways and trade corridors. It possesses strategic depth, hardened military infrastructure, and powerful allies. Any war would immediately draw in Russia and China, turning a regional conflict into a global economic and military crisis. Energy markets would collapse, supply chains would fracture, and the United States would face overstretch and humiliation rather than victory.
While the U.S. mainland may be geographically distant, American military bases across the Middle East and beyond remain well within Iran’s reach. Moreover, if Iran preserves even part of its nuclear infrastructure under such pressure, the eventual consequences for Israel could be far more severe than anything Netanyahu anticipates. A cornered Iran is not a defeated Iran.
At this moment, the United States is already deeply entangled elsewhere—in Venezuela, in the Greenland controversy in the Arctic, amid internal unrest over federal enforcement actions, and as the credibility of NATO and the United Nations continues to erode. Being dragged into another war engineered by Netanyahu would contradict every principle of “America First.”
This is the moment for the United States to free itself from external pressure groups, including AIPAC, and to pursue an independent foreign policy grounded in national interest rather than ideological entanglements. The Middle East does not need another regime destroyed. It needs restraint, realism, and an end to expansionist fantasies that have already devastated an entire region.
History has already judged the regime-change doctrine. The only question now is whether the United States will finally refuse to repeat it.