what you leave out is the suffering of the Iranian and Venezuelan populations, who, one would hope, deserve better than they are getting or are likely to get under the politics of extremist religious zealotry or exhausted communist ideology

LH has a very good point, robomatic. Why do we only care about the suffering of the Iranian and Venezuelan populations, but not the suffering of the Saudi Arabian population, or the Pakistani population? Or the populations of any number of countries with dictators (past or present) whom we not only support(ed), but helped to install in power in the first place?

I would suggest that it's because we don't really care one tiny little bit about anyone's suffering (our conduct in Iraq is ample enough evidence of this). It's because we, the only super power in the world, the imperialist American empire, can't abide anyone not doing what we tell them to do. The only thing Iran and Venezuela have in common that we care about is that they have maintained their independence from our empire. And they have oil.