*Fear Only Language They Understand, Trump Adds
*Operation May Last Weeks
It appears that US President Donald Trump may be eyeing his own type of solutions, previously deemed impossible, to challenges in targeted parts of the world.
For example, on 3 January this year, US Special Forces captured then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flora and renditioned them to the US, where they are in jail and currently facing criminal charges which could fetch them life imprisonment.
Next up, possibly, may be the Islamic regime in Iran led by Ayatollah Khamenei.
As Trump seemed to endorse regime change in Iran, embracing a long-term goal of his ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Reuters reports that the US military “is preparing for the possibility of sustained, weeks-long operations” against Iran’s theocratic government.
When Trump was asked on Friday: “Do you want regime change in Iran?” the President replied: “Well, it seems like that would be the best thing that could happen.”
Trump then pointed out that the US had deployed a large force to the region.
“We have tremendous power has arrived, and additional power, as you know, another carrier is going out shortly, “ he said.
“If we could get it settled for once and for all, that’d be good,” the President said, after describing casualties Iran’s government was responsible for, without saying where.
Reports said over 30,000 protesting Iranians, mostly young people, were killed by security forces on Khameini’s orders recently.
The protests bordered on cost of living crisis, lack of civil liberties, repression of basic human rights and others with several pro-rights groups around the world slamming the regime for its routine resort to state murders in such matters.
Asked, “Who would you want to take over?” Trump said: “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“There are people,” he added.
According to US officials who spoke to Reuters, the US military is preparing for what could become a far more serious conflict than previously seen between the countries, should Trump order an attack.
US and Iranian diplomats held talks in Oman last week in an effort to revive diplomacy over Tehran’s nuclear program, which Trump claimed to have “obliterated” in strikes last year.
During his first term, Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal that barred Iran from making nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief even though his own administration had confirmed that Iran was in compliance.
US officials said yesterday the Pentagon was sending an additional aircraft carrier to the Middle East, adding thousands more troops along with fighter aircraft, guided-missile destroyers and other firepower capable of waging attacks and defending against them.
Trump said in an address to US troops in North Carolina yesterday it had “been difficult to make a deal” with Iran.
“Sometimes you have to have fear. That’s the only thing that really will get the situation taken care of,” Trump said.
Ordering an attack on Iran would cut against the opposition to “regime change wars” in the Middle East Trump voiced during his first campaign for the presidency, in 2016.
But his ally Netanyahu has spent decades trying to convince a US President to attack Iran.
In 2002, Netanyahu, who was then between terms as Israel’s Prime Minister, testified to Congress in support of a US invasion of Iraq, arguing that it would bring about the end of Iran’s theocratic state as well.
“It’s not a question of whether Iraq’s regime should be taken out but when should it be taken out; it’s not a question of whether you’d like to see a regime change in Iran but how to achieve it,” Netanyahu said six months before the Bush administration began the “shock and awe” bombardment of Baghdad,Iraqi capital.
“If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,” Netanyahu said then.
“And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.”
*PHOTO CAPTION: Trump in Air Force One.
