US President Donald Trump on Sunday questioned the possibility of regime change in Iran following US military strikes against key Iranian military sites over the weekend.
“It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,” but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!” Trump wrote on his social media platform.
A day after the US sent 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs crashing into the mountain above Iran’s Fordow nuclear site, Tehran vowed to defend itself at all costs.
Iran and Israel continued to trade volleys of missile attacks, with an explosion in western Iran claiming the lives of half a dozen military personnel, according to an Iranian media outlet. Earlier, Iran fired missiles that wounded scores of people and flattened buildings in Tel Aviv.
The US State Department ordered employees’ family members to leave Lebanon and advised citizens elsewhere in the region to keep a low profile or restrict travel.
An advisory from the US Department of Homeland Security warned of a “heightened threat environment in the United States.” Law enforcement in major US cities stepped up patrols and deployed additional resources to religious, cultural and diplomatic sites.
Tehran has so far not followed through on its threats of retaliation against the United States – either by targeting US bases or trying to choke off global oil supplies – but that may not hold.
Speaking in Istanbul, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said his country would consider all possible responses. There would be no return to diplomacy until it had retaliated, he said.
“The US showed they have no respect for international law. They only understand the language of threat and force,” he said.
Trump, in a televised address, called the strikes “a spectacular military success” and boasted that Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated.”
But his own officials gave more nuanced assessments and – with the exception of satellite photographs appearing to show craters on the mountain above Iran’s subterranean plant at Fordow – there has been no public accounting of the damage.
The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said no increases in off-site radiation levels had been reported after the US strikes.
In a step towards what is widely seen as Iran’s most effective threat to hurt the West, its parliament approved a move to close the Strait of Hormuz. Nearly a quarter of global oil shipments pass through the narrow waters that Iran shares with Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
Iran’s Press TV said closing the strait would require approval from the Supreme National Security Council, a body led by an appointee of Khamenei.
Attempting to choke off Gulf oil by closing the strait could send global oil prices skyrocketing, derail the world economy and invite almost certain conflict with the US Navy’s massive Fifth Fleet, based in the Gulf and tasked with keeping the strait open.
Security experts have long warned that a weakened Iran could also find other unconventional ways to strike back, such as bombings or cyberattacks.
DIVERGING WAR AIMS
Israeli officials, who began the hostilities with a surprise attack on Iran on June 13, have increasingly spoken of their ambition to topple the hardline Shi’ite Muslim clerical establishment that has ruled Iran since 1979.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli reporters that Israel was very close to meeting its goals of removing the threats of ballistic missiles and the nuclear program in Iran.
US officials, many of whom witnessed Republican President George W. Bush’s popularity collapse following his disastrous intervention in Iraq in 2003, have stressed that they were not working to overthrow Iran’s government.
“This mission was not and has not been about regime change,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon. “The president authorised a precision operation to neutralise the threats to our national interests posed by the Iranian nuclear programme.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
