US President Donald Trump has claimed that the US-Israel conflict has effectively resulted in regime change in Iran, following a series of strikes that eliminated multiple layers of its leadership.
Trump made the remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, March 29.
Reiterating that the war in Iran is “ahead of schedule,” he added that the US is now dealing with a “completely different set of people” who are reasonable, suggesting that a deal with Tehran could be reached “pretty soon.”
Regarding Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, Trump stated that he 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,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
On the prospect of negotiations, he added, “I think we’ll make a deal with them, pretty sure…but we’ve had regime change.”
Mojtaba Khamenei, son of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—who was killed in an airstrike at the start of the war on February 28—was appointed Iran’s third supreme leader since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Since the conflict began with US-Israeli strikes, Tehran has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a critical passage through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil and gas flows.
The closure has driven global oil prices higher, but Trump said relief is forthcoming in the form of Iranian concessions, starting with the passage of several oil tankers through the 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, noting that the shipments would begin “tomorrow morning, over the next couple of days.”
