Iran is not Venezuela as much as Trump wants it to be

President Donald Trump had a likely successor in mind when his administration took out former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro in January. He doesn't have that in Iran.
In the runup to the joint U.S.-Israel operation that killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of top Iranian officials, CIA officials worked to make inroads with some members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two people familiar with the matter who like others in this article were granted anonymity to describe sensitive operations.