Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently claimed that under the current Trump administration, America’s regime change wars are over.
At a Bahrain security summit, Gabbard said, “For decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation building, It was a one-size-fits-all approach, of toppling regimes, trying to impose our system of governance on others, intervene in conflicts that were barely understood and walk away with more enemies than allies.”
Along with this, she implied that “America’s former strategy of ‘regime change or nation building’ had ended under President Donald Trump”.
The idea that America’s regime change policy has ended under Trump would be news to Iran and Venezuela, where Trump has attempted/is attempting to carry out regime change.
Last June, Trump joined in on Israel’s bombing of military infrastructure in Iran.
While the bombing was sold as an attempt to stop Iran from getting Nuclear Weapons, Trump’s own annual threat assessment report from the intelligence community from March of this year found no evidence Iran was building or planning on building a nuclear weapon, writing, “We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003” .
In a later interview with The Daily Caller, Trump admitted he carried out the Iran bombing for Israel, saying, “nobody has done more for Israel than I have, including the recent attacks with Iran”.
In a speech to the Israeli Knesset last month, Trump bragged about his Iran bombing, along with a list of other pro-Israel policies and went on to brag that his pro-Israel donor Miriam Adelson was, “responsible for so much”, adding, “I actually asked her once, I said, ‘So, Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more, the United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer. That means, that might mean, Israel”.
As for Israel’s intention behind the Iran bombing, the Israeli paper Times of Israel reported that leaked Israeli transcripts during the bombing, “make it clear that Israel was also looking to destabilize the regime and even to kill Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei”.
The paper reported that, “Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that Israel needed to ‘keep searching for the leader,’ referring to Khamenei, whom (Israeli defense minister Israel) Katz later said Jerusalem sought to kill”.
The paper reported that, “Netanyahu said entire Iranian neighborhoods and districts should be evacuated, and that Israel should work on destabilizing the Islamic regime”, quoting him saying, “if Khamenei reacts to an American strike, it could be the end of the regime”.
One Trump administration official told the Grayzone that “CIA Director John Ratcliffe and US CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael Kurilla have become vehicles for Israel’s Mossad and military as they seek to manipulate the US into attacking Iran.” adding “During the Trump administration’s meetings with Israeli intelligence officials … Israelis have demonstrated a single-minded focus on regime change, clamoring for authorization to assassinate Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei”.
The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab uncovered that during the bombing, Israeli intelligence ran a propaganda campaign in Persian on social media, “promoting regime change in Iran.”
Hellbound and Down 