Jeremy Bowen Debunks Trumps Regime Change Claim In Iran

Jeremy Bowen has dismantled Donald Trump’s claim that America has already achieved “regime change” in Iran.

The US president made the bizarre comment as he said Tehran was ready to make a deal to end the war.

In response, a spokesman for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps accused America of “negotiating with yourselves”.

Trump suggested that because US and Israeli strikes killed Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamanei, as well as other senior officials, his objectives have been achieved.

He said: “We have really achieved change, this is a change in the regime because the leaders are different to the ones that caused all those problems.

“We can say we really have regime change.”

But on Radio 4′s Today programme on Wednesday, Bowen dismissed the president’s claims.

The BBC’s international affairs editor said: “As for regime change, Trump came up with a fanciful suggestion in his remarks in the White House yesterday that because they’ve killed the supreme leader and a lot of the people around him, then it’s regime change. No it’s not. They’re changing some faces.”

He said the US and Israel had “massively underestimated the resilience of the regime”.

Bowen also said the war was now at “a crossroads moment”.

“Pretty soon the president is going to have to face a choice between getting deeper into the war or how does he end this?,” he said.

“Can he present a deal as a victory? He would need to get a concessions out of the Israelis that the Iranians might accept, and then he would have to frame that as a triumph.”