Reuters reported on Sunday that many senior US officials remain skeptical the military operation against the Islamic Republic will lead to a regime change in the near term
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday spoke to widening concerns that the US-Israeli strikes in Iran could spiral into a protracted regional conflict by declaring, "This is not Iraq. This is not endless." Hegseth, along with Air Force Gen Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held the Trump administration's first news briefing since Saturday's strikes. President Donald Trump, while he's conducted a few phone interviews with individual reporters, has not taken questions on camera and only released two videos since the operation began. Hegseth said the operation had a "clear, devastating, decisive mission" to "destroy the missile threat" from Iran, destroy its navy and "no nukes." "This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change and the world is better off for it," Hegseth said. The briefing comes as the conflict has intensified into a wider war in the region. Iran and its allied armed groups have launched missiles at Israel, Arab states and
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The US and Israel pounded targets across Iran on Sunday, dropping massive bombs on the country's ballistic missile sites and wiping out warships as part of an intensifying military campaign following the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Blasts rattled windows across the country and sent plumes of smoke high into the sky above the capital city of Tehran. More than 200 people have been killed since the start of the strikes that killed Khamenei and other senior leaders, Iranian leaders have said. Iran vowed revenge, firing missiles at Israel and Gulf Arab states in a counteroffensive that the US military said resulted in the deaths of three service members - the first known American casualties from the conflict. Israel's rescue services said nine people were killed and 28 wounded in a strike that hit a synagogue in the central town of Beit Shemesh, bringing the overall death toll in the country to 11. Eleven people were still missing after the strike, police ...
President Donald Trump has taken the United States into war with Iran despite decades of self-professed aversion to foreign entanglements, particularly in the Middle East, and repeated pledges to focus primarily on the Western Hemisphere with an "America first" agenda. Trump's predicate for joining Israel in attacks on Iran's leadership, military and critical infrastructure this weekend was that Iran posed unacceptable and imminent risks to US and allied interests. Similar arguments were made in the aftermath of Trump's action last month to remove former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power in a military strike. Yet even his closest advisers have been unable to point to any specific threat to the US from Iran that required urgent action. Trump had said a previous strike on Iran had "obliterated" its nuclear capability and the Defense Intelligence Agency said in a report last year that Iran was probably 10 years away from having a missile that could reach the US With the t
The US and Israel pounded targets across Iran on Sunday, dropping massive bombs on the country's ballistic missile sites and wiping out warships as part of an intensifying military campaign that followed the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. More than 200 people have been killed since the start of the strikes that killed Khamenei and other senior leaders, Iranian leaders have said, as blasts across the country rattled windows and sent plumes of smoke high into the sky above the capital city of Tehran. Iran vowed revenge, firing missiles at Israel and Gulf Arab in a counteroffensive that the US military said resulted in the deaths of three service members - the first known American casualties from the conflict. Israel's rescue services said nine people were killed and 28 wounded in a strike that hit a synagogue in the central town of Beit Shemesh, bringing the overall death toll in the country to 11. Eleven people were still missing after the strike, police said. But
Asked whether his conversation with the Iranians would happen today or tomorrow, Trump responded, "I can't tell you that"
Barely an hour after the first US and Israeli missiles struck Iran, President Donald Trump made clear he hoped for regime change. "Now is the time to seize control of your destiny," he told the Iranian people in a video. "This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass." Doesn't sound complicated. After all, with Iran's fundamentally unpopular government weakened by fierce airstrikes, some of its top leaders dead or missing and Washington signalling support, how hard could it be to overthrow a repressive regime? Possibly very hard. So says history. Washington has a long, complicated past when it comes to regime change. There was Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s, and Panama in 1989. There was Nicaragua in the 1980s, Iraq and Afghanistan in the years after 9/11, and Venezuela just weeks ago. There was also Iran. In 1953, the CIA helped engineer a coup that toppled Iran's democratically elected leader and gave near-absolute power to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. But as with the shah, who
US President Donald Trump warned Iran on Sunday not to escalate its attacks, writing online that America will strike back 'WITH A FORCE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!" Trump's comments on Truth Social follow Iranian threats on Sunday morning after acknowledging the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "Iran just stated that they are going to hit very hard today, harder than they have ever hit before," Trump wrote.
The biggest foreign-policy gamble of Trump's presidency comes after he campaigned for reelection as a "peace president" and after saying he preferred a diplomatic solution to the standoff with Iran
With Saturday's military operation against Iran, President Donald Trump demonstrated a dramatic evolution in risk tolerance, adjusting in just a matter of months how far he was willing to go in using American military might to confront Tehran's clerical rule. Guardrails were tossed aside, as Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered up a battle plan that included targeted strikes on Iran's leadership, including the 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei whose death Trump triumphantly announced in a social media post hours after launching the military operation. For Trump, it was a far cry from where he stood just eight months ago. At Israel's urging during its 12-day war with Iran last June, he agreed to deployB-2 bombers to pummel three key Iranian nuclear sites - but drew a bright red line when Israelis presented his administration with a plan for killing Khamenei. The president peppered the supreme leader with thinly veiled threats back in June that h
President Donald Trump, whose fierce denunciation of military adventurism abroad fuelled his unlikely rise to the top of the Republican Party, risks becoming ensnared by that very type of conflict. The US and Israeli attack on Iran Saturday cemented Trump's decade-long transformation from a candidate who in 2016 called the Iraq War a "big, fat mistake" to a president warning Americans to prepare for potential casualties overseas and encouraging Iranians to "seize control of your destiny." The strikes were also at odds with Trump's warnings during the 2024 campaign that his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, was surrounded by "war hawks" eager to send troops overseas. Trump justified the action as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons or developing missiles capable of reaching the US, less than a year after he said airstrikes "obliterated" their capability. US intelligence has also said Iran's weapons capability was substantially degraded. For Trump, memories of the
US President Donald Trump announced the death of the Iranian leader, but cautioned that the bombing of Iran would continue through the week, perhaps even longer
Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior officials were targeted in the first wave of strikes by the US and Israel on Saturday morning; Iran has not confirmed Khamenei's demise
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the briefers described the operation to the president as a high-risk, high-reward scenario
The DOJ lawyers wrote that a delay wouldn't hurt companies because "monetary loss is a classic harm that can be remedied by payment of money with appropriate interest"
Iran sits on one side of the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping lane for about a fifth of the world's crude from key suppliers including Saudi Arabia and Iraq