Trump ‘reaping bitter fruit’ of thinking Iran intervention as easy as Venezuela, says former diplomat

John Feeley says US president was ‘flush with victory’ of Maduro capture and could make same mistake in Cuba

Donald Trump is “reaping the bitter fruit” of erroneously thinking that the capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, offered a blueprint for toppling the Iranian regime, according to one of the US state department’s most respected former Latin America experts.

John Feeley, a Marine helicopter pilot who later served as the US ambassador to Panama, believed Trump had been “flush with the victory from Venezuela” when he made the ill-fated decision to attack Iran in February, leaving a trail of destruction across the Middle East and dealing a hammer blow to the global economy.