The United States Senate, once revered as the nation’s most “deliberative” body, is now a far cry from the days of Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun—their anachronistic flaws notwithstanding. Indeed, even the era of Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Sam Nunn, and Malcolm Wallop now feels distant. Today, we suffer the nonsense spoken by Elizabeth Warren, Adam Schiff, Charles Schumer, Roger Wicker, and now Ted Cruz. Yes, conservatives: Ted Cruz, who appeared incompetent and clueless on the subject of the Israel–Iran war in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson.

Cruz has apparently aligned himself with the neoconservatives on foreign policy. He wants the United States to support Israel’s goal of effecting regime change in Iran, despite lacking basic knowledge about the country, such as its total population or ethnic makeup. Nor does Cruz offer any vision of what kind of regime might replace Iran’s mullahs—assuming that toppling the current leadership would not plunge the country into total chaos or anarchy, as it did in Libya.

The recent and apparently successful U.S. strike on three of Iran’s nuclear sites leaves open the possibility that, should Iran reject President Trump’s call for peace and instead retaliate against American interests either in the region or on American soil, regime change may become an official objective of U.S. policy. Thus far, Iran has retaliated by launching missiles at the U.S. air base in Qatar and declared its intention to close the Strait of Hormuz—a move that would affect global energy prices and could result in a clash between American and Iranian warships. The Trump administration has sent mixed signals regarding regime change as a goal of U.S. policy.

We have been here before. President Lyndon Johnson, who sent tens of thousands of Americans to their deaths in Southeast Asia, believed he could win over North Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh by offering him a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)–style development program. “Old Ho just can’t turn that down,” Johnson reportedly said. But Ho wasn’t interested in a TVA program; he wanted to conquer South Vietnam and would not be bought off by the architect of the “Great Society.” Johnson was clueless about Vietnamese culture, history, and the perceptions of its leaders. The notion that an American president thought that he could persuade a committed communist and Vietnamese nationalist to abandon lifelong goals with the promise of New Deal reforms is mind-boggling—but not without precedent.

Johnson’s illusions about Ho Chi Minh were similar to those of President Franklin D. Roosevelt regarding Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union toward the end of World War II. According to the Soviet expert Charles Bohlen, FDR “felt that Stalin viewed the world in the same light as he did. . . What he did not understand was that Stalin’s enmity was based on profound ideological convictions.” Averell Harriman, likewise, noted that FDR had “no conception of the determination of the Russians to settle matters in which they consider that they have a vital interest in their own manner, on their own terms.” FDR supposedly told William Bullitt about dealing with Stalin, “I think that if I give him everything that I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work for a world of democracy and peace.” Robert Nisbet catalogued FDR’s costly illusions about Stalin and Soviet Russia in his indispensable book Roosevelt and Stalin: The Failed Courtship.

Before that, President William McKinley led the United States into a military conflict against Filipino insurgents after pledging to annex the islands in the wake of victory in the Spanish–American War. McKinley claimed that annexing the Philippines was “for the sake of humanity and the advancement of civilization” and would bring “blessings and benefits” to the Filipino people. McKinley told one audience that it was America’s duty to “educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them.” But many Filipinos—some of whom were already Christian and well educated—did not agree, and the result was a brutal war that claimed the lives of more than four thousand American soldiers, more than twenty thousand Filipino insurgents, and as many as two hundred thousand civilians.

That same hubris and ignorance led to the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, when we were told that after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the Iraqi people would welcome the U.S. military as liberators and embrace the opportunity to join the “democratic” world. It did not turn out that way. We misread Iraqi culture and history in our attempt to reshape the country in America’s image. The neoconservatives assured us that things would improve after Saddam’s fall, just as we were later told that ridding Libya of Gaddafi would benefit the lives of that country’s people, and that an “Arab Spring” was bringing democracy to the region. But all of these confident predictions about how other nations and cultures would react to U.S. military intervention faded away like mirages in the desert.

Now, Ted Cruz and other neoconservatives claim that the Iranian people will rise up and overthrow the mullahs if Israel, with American support, continues its air campaign against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and other strategic targets. The goal—for both Israel and the neoconservatives—is not merely the elimination of the nuclear threat but also regime change. This implies an escalation of the conflict beyond just an air campaign. And if that happens, all bets are off.

Politico asked eight experts to predict what would happen if the U.S. bombed Iran. None offered a reassuring forecast. Ryan Crocker warned that Iran would likely retaliate by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, attacking the “energy infrastructure of the Arab Gulf,” and striking U.S. military and diplomatic targets in the region. The war would then escalate with greater U.S. involvement and a deeper “Iranian determination to acquire nuclear weapons, whatever the cost.”

Dennis Ross also believes that U.S. bombing could result in a broader conflict with deeper U.S. involvement—especially if the U.S. and the Israelis make regime change an explicit goal. Ian Bremmer remarks that “it is much easier to start wars than to end them.” Ray Takeyh predicts that the mullahs would likely survive an American bombing of the Fordo reactor and would respond with asymmetrical tactics to inflict harm on Americans. “[B]ombing Fordo,” Takeyh writes, “will not be the final salvo in this conflict.” Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, suggests that a U.S. attack on Fordo would likely expand to include a “much wider set of targets,” such as leaders, communication links, missiles, and military bases. Robin Wright notes that Iran is a much larger place than Gaza, where Israeli operations still continue. It is twice the size of Afghanistan—where America fought its longest war and lost—and three times the size of Iraq, where American troops remain more than twenty years after the war began.

The renowned strategist Edward Luttwak writes in UnHerd that President Trump should resist calls to engage in a ground war with Iran aimed at overthrowing the regime. Such an undertaking would repeat the Bush administration’s failed efforts at nation-building in Iraq and prove even more difficult in a country the size of Iran with its diverse ethnic and ideological political groups.

Underlying all of these previous foreign policy failures is the lack of what the great British geopolitical thinker Sir Halford Mackinder described as the most essential quality of a statesman: “insight into the minds of other nations than his own.” Tucker Carlson exposed Cruz’s ignorance of even basic facts about Iran’s population and ethnic makeup. One can only imagine how little he understands of Iran’s culture and history. And Cruz is not alone. There is a chorus of voices urging the U.S. to escalate its role in the Israel–Iran war, claiming that now is the time to eliminate the nuclear threat and effect regime change. We are told the people of Iran support this goal, but some experts say that’s little more than wishful thinking. Even those who believe the current clerical regime is fragile note that opposition forces within the country are fragmented.

The U.S. has now entered the war directly, perhaps with the limited goal of removing the Iranian nuclear threat. But Congress must debate the wisdom of deeper U.S. involvement in the Israel–Iran war. And if it does, let’s hope that debate is carried out with more knowledge and seriousness than has been shown by the senator from Texas.