“For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking. In the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives,” Trump said, offering one of his clearest endorsements of regime change in Iran. He did not specify who should lead the country, saying only that “there are people” who could take over.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has not responded to the remarks.
Trump said the USS Gerald R. Ford, the U.S. Navy’s newest and largest aircraft carrier, would relocate “very soon” from the Caribbean to the Middle East. The move would place it alongside the USS Abraham Lincoln, already deployed in the region. Trump shared an aerial image of the Ford on his Truth Social platform, appearing to show the ship in transit.
The Pentagon sent the Lincoln earlier this year after Washington threatened strikes to curb a crackdown on mass protests in Iran that killed thousands, one of the most significant upheavals since the 1979 Islamic revolution that installed the clerical system.
While Trump has warned of military action if no nuclear agreement is reached, he said after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week that negotiations with Tehran would continue. Speaking at Fort Bragg on Friday, Trump said Iran should “give us a deal that they should have given us the first time” to avoid an attack.
The United States is pressing Iran to halt uranium enrichment. Netanyahu’s government has also demanded cuts to Iran’s ballistic missile program and support for proxy groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Iran has indicated it is willing to limit its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, but President Masoud Pezeshkian has warned Tehran would “not yield to their excessive demands.”
Trump withdrew the United States from the Obama-era nuclear deal during his first term and reinstated sanctions that sharply strained Iran’s economy. His administration restarted talks last year in an effort to reach a new agreement before a brief war between Israel and Iran.
(jh)
Source: BBC, Reuters, PAP