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President Donald Trump said Friday that a change in power in Iran “would be the best thing that could happen” as the U.S. administration weighs whether to take military action against Tehran.
Trump made the comments shortly after visiting with troops at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, and after he confirmed earlier in the day that he’s deploying a second aircraft carrier group to the Mideast.
“It seems like that would be the best thing that could happen,” Trump said in an exchange with reporters when asked about pressing for the ouster of the Islamic clerical rule in Iran. “For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking.”
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The president has suggested in recent weeks that his top priority is for Iran to further scale back its nuclear program, but on Friday he suggested that’s only one aspect of concessions the U.S. needs Iran to make.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who traveled to Washington this week for talks with Trump, has been pressing for any deal to include steps to neutralize Iran’s ballistic missile program and end its funding for proxy groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
“If we do it, that would be the least of the mission,” Trump said of targeting Tehran’s nuclear program, which suffered significant setbacks in U.S. military strikes last year.
Iran has insisted its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. Before the June war, Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60% purity, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels.
Trump’s comments advocating for a potential end to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rule come just weeks after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said a potential change in power in Iran would be “far more complex” than the administration’s recent effort to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power.
Rubio, during a Senate hearing last month, noted that with Iran “you’re talking about a regime that’s in place for a very long time.”
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“So that’s going to require a lot of careful thinking, if that eventuality ever presents itself,” Rubio said.
Trump said the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, is being sent from the Caribbean Sea to the Mideast to join other warships and military assets the U.S. has built up in the region.
Trump had suggested another round of talks with the Iranians was planned for this week, but those negotiations didn’t materialize as one of Tehran’s top security officials visited Oman and Qatar and exchanged messages with U.S. intermediaries.
“In case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it,” Trump told reporters about the second carrier. He added, “It’ll be leaving very soon.”
Already, Gulf Arab nations have warned any attack could spiral into another regional conflict in a Mideast still reeling from the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, Iranians are beginning to hold 40-day mourning ceremonies for the thousands killed in Tehran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests last month, adding to the internal pressure faced by the sanctions-battered Islamic Republic.
The Ford, whose new deployment was first reported by The New York Times, will join the USS Abraham Lincoln and its accompanying guided-missile destroyers, which have been in the region for over two weeks. U.S. forces already have shot down an Iranian drone that approached the Lincoln on the same day last week that Iran tried to stop a U.S.-flagged ship in the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump in exchanges with reporters on Friday still offered measured hope that a deal can be struck with Iran.
“Give us the deal that they should have given us the first time,” Trump said about how U.S. military action can be avoided. “If they give us the right deal, we won’t do that.”
President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC can go to trial in 2027, a U.S. judge has said.
Judge Roy K. Altman of the federal court for the Southern District of Florida rejected an attempt by Britain’s national broadcaster to delay proceedings.
He set a provisional start date of Feb. 15 2027 for a two-week trial. Altman’s court order was issued Wednesday.
Trump filed a lawsuit in December over the way the BBC edited a speech he gave on Jan. 6, 2021. The claim seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.
The speech took place before some of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was poised to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.
The BBC had broadcast the documentary — titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” — days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.
The broadcaster has apologized to Trump over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejects claims it defamed him. The furor triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.
