Trump Claims Regime Change in Iran After US Strikes Decimate Leadership
US President Donald Trump declared that recent US-Israel strikes on Iran have effectively achieved regime change by eliminating multiple layers of its leadership.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, March 29, Trump described the war as “ahead of schedule.” He added that the US is now negotiating with a “completely different set of people” who are reasonable, predicting a deal with Tehran “pretty soon.”
Trump suggested Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, may still be alive but is seriously wounded. “The one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead. And the third regime, we’re dealing with different people than anybody’s dealt with before. It’s a whole different group of people. So I would consider that regime change. And frankly, they’ve been very reasonable. So I think we’ve had regime change. We can’t do much better than that. The regime that was really bad, really evil, was the first one. That was done. The second was appointed, and they’re gone. They’re all dead,” he said.
About a possible deal, “I think we’ll make a deal with them, pretty sure…but we’ve had regime change,” he said.
Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of former supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an airstrike at the start of the war on February 28, was tapped to be the country’s third supreme leader since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Ever since the conflict kicked off with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, Tehran has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas transits.
The closure has sent global oil prices soaring, but Trump said that relief was on the way in the form of concessions from Iran, starting with the imminent passage of several tankers through the key waterway.
“They gave us, I think, out of a sign of respect, 20 boats of oil, big, big boats of oil going through the Hormuz Strait,” Trump said, adding that the shipments would be “taking place starting tomorrow morning, over the next couple of days