President Donald Trump has committed the United States to regime change in the Middle East, telling TIME magazine he intends to play a role in shaping Iran's next government after the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, "Hvylya" reports.
"One of the things I'm going to be asking for is the ability to work with them on choosing a new leader," Trump said in a phone call with TIME on March 4. "I'm not going through this to end up with another Khamenei. I want to be involved in the selection. They can select, but we have to make sure it's somebody that's reasonable to the United States."
Trump outlined his broader goals for the campaign: eliminating Iran's nuclear threat permanently, dismantling its ballistic-missile program, and installing a Western-friendly government. "We have to be able to deal with sane and rational people," he said. "They can't have a nuclear weapon. That's number one, two, and three. Number four, no ballistic missiles."
Experts have expressed skepticism about whether the U.S. can engineer a successor government more stable than the one it seeks to replace. Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution, argued that Iran's leadership structure runs deeper than any single figure. "This is not a regime of individual leaders. It's a regime of well-entrenched institutions that have a monopoly on coercion," she said. "Other than just a continuous process of assassination, I'm not entirely clear on how the President anticipates he's going to be able to determine the next leader of Iran."
The Trump administration is betting that Iran's young population - more than 40% under 30 - could welcome outside pressure against the clerical regime. Trump's advisers believe that widespread resentment toward the ruling establishment could produce change, particularly if a new government could align with regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Others warn that the fall of the Islamic Republic could fracture Iran rather than reform it, potentially unleashing internal power struggles, proxy conflicts, or civil war.
Also read: Bombs Don't Build Oppositions: Foreign Affairs Analyst Dismantles Trump's Iran Regime Change Logic