A senior US diplomat has acknowledged that Washington's decades of attempts to change governments across the Greater Middle East have failed to achieve their intended results.
"We've had 23 regime changes, and none of them have worked," said Tom Barrack, US ambassador to Türkiye and President Donald Trump's special envoy for Syria and Iraq.
His remarks have raised questions about Washington's interventionist foreign policy and whether it has learned from past failures.
In 1953, the CIA helped overthrow Iran's prime minister, strengthening the Shah's increasingly authoritarian rule. Twenty-six years later, Iran's Islamic Revolution transformed the country into one of Washington's principal adversaries.
The 2003 US invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein but was followed by years of insurgency, sectarian violence and the rise of ISIS. NATO's 2011 intervention in Libya helped overthrow Muammar Gaddafi, leaving a country plagued by rival governments and armed militias.
Yet failed interventions did not necessarily mean everyone lost.
According to Brown University's Costs of War Project, US post-9/11 wars have cost an estimated $8 trillion, including future obligations, while major American defense contractors have received enormous Pentagon contracts.
Barrack's admission raises a fundamental question: if regime change repeatedly failed to deliver Washington's objectives, why did the US keep pursuing it?
Related news: US Ambassador: 23 US regime changes in Middle East, none worked
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