We Need A "Hallucination" Group
Trump Claims ‘Regime Change’ in Iran Is Already Complete
Trump on Sunday suggested that “regime change” in Iran had been achieved because so many of its top leaders have been killed in U.S.-Israeli attacks, as he sought to show progress in a war that has entered a second month.
Though Iran’s clerical and military establishment remain in control of the country, and its most hard-line factions may even have emerged strengthened, Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “We’ve had regime change.”
“The one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead,” he said. He suggested that Iran had moved onto its “third regime,” and that American negotiators were speaking to “a whole different group of people,” who have “been very reasonable.”
The president appeared to be referring to Iran’s decision to allow 20 more oil cargo ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz starting on Monday, which he called a “sign of respect” to the United States and an indication that talks on ending the war were underway. In public, however, Iranian leaders have not confirmed that they are participating in talks with U.S. officials, and their de facto blockade of the strait, a vital route for oil shipments, has rattled global markets.
The United States and Israel began attacking Iran on Feb. 28, killing its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and many top Iranian leaders. But a war that Mr. Trump initially predicted would last weeks and would create the conditions for Iran’s elite military forces to “surrender to the people” has shown little sign of letting up as more civilians are killed, and as Iran’s retaliatory attacks disrupt daily life across the Middle East.
Though the United States and Israel have killed a string of Iran’s leaders after Ayatollah Khamenei, its pillars of power — chiefly top clerics and the hardened officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — remain in place.
Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the slain supreme leader, was chosen to succeed him. And there has been no sign of any popular Iranian movement to overthrow the government, as Mr. Trump had once signaled was an objective.
Some Iran experts and politicians from the country’s reformist movement argue that the killings have ushered more hard-line figures into top posts.
The slain head of Iran’s National Security Council, Ali Larijani, was seen as more pragmatic than the man appointed to replace him, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr. The new commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, is also seen as more radical than his predecessor, and the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader was seen as a victory by hard-liners against backers of more moderate candidates.
Mr. Trump’s comments on Sunday appeared to be another sign of him scaling back his objectives in the war. The Iranian leaders the United States was dealing with now, he said, are “different people than anybody’s dealt with before.”
“I would consider that regime change,” he said, adding, “You can’t do much better than that.”
Since the start, Mr. Trump has not laid out a clear objective for the war with Iran, nor has he been explicit about what victory would look like. Weeks before ordering the bombing campaign, he was asked by reporters if he wanted regime change in Iran. He said it seemed “like that would be the best thing that could happen.”
But by mid-March, Mr. Trump did not mention regime change at all when he announced that he was considering “winding down” military operations in Iran.
In recent days, he has appeared to grow frustrated with the extent to which the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign has failed to keep the war from spiraling across the region. One key irritant is that Iranian attacks have all but sealed off the Strait of Hormuz, sending the price of oil climbing by 56 percent since the war began.
Trump on Sunday suggested that “regime change” in Iran had been achieved because so many of its top leaders have been killed in U.S.-Israeli attacks, as he sought to show progress in a war that has entered a second month.
Though Iran’s clerical and military establishment remain in control of the country, and its most hard-line factions may even have emerged strengthened, Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One: “We’ve had regime change.”
“The one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead,” he said. He suggested that Iran had moved onto its “third regime,” and that American negotiators were speaking to “a whole different group of people,” who have “been very reasonable.”
The president appeared to be referring to Iran’s decision to allow 20 more oil cargo ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz starting on Monday, which he called a “sign of respect” to the United States and an indication that talks on ending the war were underway. In public, however, Iranian leaders have not confirmed that they are participating in talks with U.S. officials, and their de facto blockade of the strait, a vital route for oil shipments, has rattled global markets.
The United States and Israel began attacking Iran on Feb. 28, killing its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and many top Iranian leaders. But a war that Mr. Trump initially predicted would last weeks and would create the conditions for Iran’s elite military forces to “surrender to the people” has shown little sign of letting up as more civilians are killed, and as Iran’s retaliatory attacks disrupt daily life across the Middle East.
Though the United States and Israel have killed a string of Iran’s leaders after Ayatollah Khamenei, its pillars of power — chiefly top clerics and the hardened officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — remain in place.
Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the slain supreme leader, was chosen to succeed him. And there has been no sign of any popular Iranian movement to overthrow the government, as Mr. Trump had once signaled was an objective.
Some Iran experts and politicians from the country’s reformist movement argue that the killings have ushered more hard-line figures into top posts.
The slain head of Iran’s National Security Council, Ali Larijani, was seen as more pragmatic than the man appointed to replace him, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr. The new commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, is also seen as more radical than his predecessor, and the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader was seen as a victory by hard-liners against backers of more moderate candidates.
Mr. Trump’s comments on Sunday appeared to be another sign of him scaling back his objectives in the war. The Iranian leaders the United States was dealing with now, he said, are “different people than anybody’s dealt with before.”
“I would consider that regime change,” he said, adding, “You can’t do much better than that.”
Since the start, Mr. Trump has not laid out a clear objective for the war with Iran, nor has he been explicit about what victory would look like. Weeks before ordering the bombing campaign, he was asked by reporters if he wanted regime change in Iran. He said it seemed “like that would be the best thing that could happen.”
But by mid-March, Mr. Trump did not mention regime change at all when he announced that he was considering “winding down” military operations in Iran.
In recent days, he has appeared to grow frustrated with the extent to which the U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign has failed to keep the war from spiraling across the region. One key irritant is that Iranian attacks have all but sealed off the Strait of Hormuz, sending the price of oil climbing by 56 percent since the war began.
