Trump says Iran has undergone ‘regime change’
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US President Donald Trump talks to members of the media aboard Air Force One en route to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on March 29.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump said on March 29 that the US-Israel war had achieved regime change in Iran, even as he assured that he would “make a deal” with the Iranians.
“I think we’ll make a deal with them, pretty sure... but we’ve had regime change,” Mr Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, citing the number of Iranian leaders killed in the month-long war.
“We’re dealing with different people than anybody’s dealt with before. It’s a whole different group of people. So I would consider that regime change,” Mr Trump said.
Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of former supreme leader Ali Khamenei who was killed in an air strike at the start of the war on Feb 28, was tapped to be the country’s third supreme leader since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Ever since the conflict kicked off with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, Tehran has effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 per cent of the world’s oil and gas transits.
The closure has sent global oil prices soaring, but Mr Trump said that relief was on the way in the form of concessions from Iran, starting with the imminent passage of several tankers through the key waterway.
“They gave us, I think, out of a sign of respect, 20 boats of oil, big, big boats of oil going through the Hormuz Strait,” Mr Trump said, adding that the shipments would be “taking place starting tomorrow morning, over the next couple of days”. AFP
