Trump floats regime change in Iran after US strikes nuclear sites, muddying the administration's message

Politico

3 hours ago

President Donald Trump's top national security officials spent much of Sunday insisting his administration doesn't want to bring about the end of Iran's government, only its nuclear program. Then Trump left the door open for exactly that.
'It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!' Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
While Trump did not call for the ouster of the regime, or say that the U.S. would play any role in overthrowing the Iranian government, his words undercut what had appeared to be a coordinated message from his top advisers. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth each insisted Sunday that the U.S. was only interested in dismantling Iran's nuclear capabilities.
'We don't want to achieve regime change. We want to achieve the end of the Iranian nuclear program,' Vance told ABC. 'That's what the president set us out to do.'
The others also focused their statements around the idea that the strikes were limited and focused solely on Iran's nuclear program.
The conflicting tones highlight the difficulty the Trump administration faces as it tries to navigate the fallout — both domestically and abroad — of its massive strike on Iran. Officials want to convince Tehran to keep its response limited, and mollify the factions of the MAGA base that didn't want the U.S. to launch the strikes.
But Trump's post makes clear the sense inside the administration that this all may end with the Iranian government toppled.
Rubio was the first to flag the possibility on Sunday. While he reiterated that toppling Iran's theocratic republic was not the goal of the strikes, he said that if the country remained committed to becoming a nuclear power, it could imperil the survival of the regime. 'I think it would be the end of the regime if they tried to do that,' Rubio said, speaking on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures.
Trump's willingness to consider regime change is likely to stoke divisions inside his party.
So far, many of Trump's supporters, many of whom had opposed attacking Iran, have rallied around him, cheering the strike as a limited action, but there were already signs of dissension before his social media post.
In a lengthy post on X, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said she is 'sick of' American participation in foreign wars and feared the knock on effects.
'American troops have been killed and forever torn apart physically and mentally for regime change, foreign wars, and for military industrial base profits,' she said.
Vance was seen as the leader of the GOP's anti-war faction before he endorsed Trump's approach this week.
Vance said in a separate interview Sunday that the U.S. sees a path toward speaking with Iran's current government and integrating it into the international community if it pledges to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons..
'We want to end their nuclear program, and then we want to talk to the Iranians about a long-term settlement here,' he said on NBC's Meet the Press.
Though it will take days to assess the full effect of American strikes, Iran has already vowed to retaliate.
The country's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that the U.S. 'crossed a very big red line' and that it was not the time for diplomacy.
And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long publicly flirted with Iranian regime change, saying that changing Iran's government is not the goal of Israeli operations but could be an effect as the country is weakened.
Inside the administration, Trump and his team still feel confident they can keep the response from spilling into something larger.
'Trump believes he can do this without regime change, and if anyone can, it's going to be him,' a U.S. official said before Trump's social media post, granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking.
Victoria Coates, former deputy national security adviser in Trump's first term and vice president at the Heritage Foundation, said 'the big question' will be whether he can keep the party together but that the initial signs are positive — including Vance's support.
'He is taking the role of asking some tough questions that need to be asked, but if he's satisfied — as clearly he was about the Iran operation — he's going to get on board and support the president, because that's what his job is,' she said. 'It indicates to me that the vast majority of the party is going to come together here — there's always going to be some outliers.'
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Ca.), said the U.S. has learned lessons from past entanglements and like others in his party tried to differentiate Trump's decision from other American wars in the Middle East.
'All of us understand that…you do not go into a country of nearly 90 million people and think that you're going to get out quickly,' Issa said on Fox News. 'The president is not trying to do regime change and made that clear. He is trying to change the regime's way of doing business.'
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Trump ally, said the president is trying to frame the strikes on Iran as similar to his move in his first term to direct the killing of the then top Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, 'which wasn't about regime change.'
'Israel wants regime change,' he wrote on X. 'The only off-ramp now is that Trump might have to (once again) restrain Israel.'
Few within the Republican party have publicly come out in favor of overthrowing Iran's government or backing Israel in doing so. Still, Trump last week mused publicly about killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
And there are Republican hawks pushing to seize the opportunity to topple the government in Tehran.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a hawkish voice in the party, said on Meet the Press Sunday that Israel should have tried to topple Iran's government 'a long time ago.' Graham said he spoke Sunday with Netanyahu, who told Graham, 'this regime is not going to be tolerated by Israel.' After Trump's post, Graham said on X, 'President Trump is spot on with his desire to make Iran great again by changing the regime either through their behavior or new leadership.'
Hegseth said on Sunday that the U.S. had delivered messages publicly and privately to Iran, adding that the regime understands 'precisely' the administration's position.
In hailing the operation as a success at a Pentagon press conference, Hegseth underscored that the goal of the attack 'has not been about regime change' and pledged that the U.S. effort in Iran would not be 'open-ended,' batting away any comparisons to the long running American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that Trump campaigned against.
'Anything can happen in conflict, we acknowledge that,' Hegseth told reporters. 'But the scope of this was intentionally limited. That's the message that we're sending.'
Another longtime GOP national security official with ties to some of the party's more hawkish figures suggested that Iran's military options are 'severely degraded' and that escalation should concern Tehran far more than it would the White House.
'The idea should terrify Khamenei,' said the official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. But if Iran were to retaliate, Trump, as he first teased in his remarks from the White House Saturday evening, could go further.
Eli Stokols, Connor O'Brien and Joe Gould contributed to this report.