Several members of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy team have said that the United States isn’t pursuing regime change in Iran after the U.S.’s military strikes against the country this past weekend. But Trump seemed to contradict those claims in a Truth Social post on Sunday, suggesting that the U.S. may seek to overthrow the Iranian government in the future.
Trump ordered the unprovoked attacks against three nuclear sites in Iran on Saturday. In an appearance on ABC News’s “This Week” program on Sunday morning, Vice President J.D. Vance sought to downplay the U.S.’s involvement in Israel’s war with Iran, claiming that the administration wasn’t seeking to overthrow the Iranian government.
“We’re not at war with Iran. We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program,” Vance said.
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The vice president also pushed back on concerns that the U.S.’s strikes were the beginning of a drawn-out conflict, describing the military action over the weekend as a “very targeted effort to eliminate the Iranian nuclear program.”
“We don’t want to achieve regime change,” Vance said. “We want to achieve the end of the Iranian nuclear program.”
Other members of the Trump administration, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, also maintained that the U.S. wasn’t seeking to replace Iran’s leadership.
“This mission was not and has not been about regime change,” Hegseth said on Sunday.
“This wasn’t a regime-change move,” Rubio also said.
But mere hours after those officials said that overthrowing the Iranian government wasn’t a goal of the administration, Trump contradicted those claims in a post on Truth Social.
“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???” Trump wrote in his post.
Trump’s statement doesn’t necessarily indicate that a shift in priorities is happening now, but it does leave open that possibility if Iran retaliates in response to the U.S. attack, or if the country somehow falls short of his ill-defined demand to “make Iran great again.”
The White House’s muddled messaging was widely condemned by political observers.
“What are Trump’s actual goals? Is he now openly calling for regime change? This is how ‘limited’ conflicts become endless ones: shifting justifications, undefined objectives, and a president who contradicts his own administration in real time,” said Political Wire’s Taegan Goddard.
Trump has been hinting at an escalation in U.S. aggression against Iran since before the strikes on Saturday. In a separate post earlier last week, Trump suggested a willingness to order the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying that the U.S. has the ability to “take him out” but wouldn’t do so.
“At least not for now,” Trump added in that post.
A prolonged military conflict with Iran would be deeply unpopular with the U.S. public, as polling prior to the attack showed the vast majority of Americans opposed getting involved in Israel’s attacks against the country. According to an Economist/YouGov poll published last week, only 16 percent of Americans said they would support U.S. military involvement against Iran, while 60 percent said they were against the idea.
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