New Delhi, March 1 -- President Donald Trump's decision to launch military strikes on Iran while openly urging its citizens to overthrow their government marks a striking departure from decades of American regime-change strategy, signalling a more unpredictable phase in US foreign policy and raising profound questions about how Washington now seeks to reshape adversarial states.

Historians and policy analysts say the approach - combining targeted military force, rhetorical encouragement of uprising and the absence of a clear post-conflict governance plan - diverges sharply from interventions in Iraq and Venezuela, where the United States pursued more direct control over political transitions.

Trump's weekend strikes on Iran, carried out...