President Trump calls for 'regime change' in Iran, White House internal rebuttal

"It is not politically correct to use the term 'Regime Change', but if the current Iranian Regime cannot MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why not have a Regime Change??? MIGA!!!" Mr. Trump wrote on his social media platform.

Mr Trump's post came after officials in his administration, including US Vice President JD Vance and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, stressed that they were not seeking to overthrow the Iranian government.

“This mission was not and is not about regime change,” Mr. Hegseth told reporters at the Pentagon, calling it “a precision operation” targeting Iran’s nuclear program.

"Our position is very clear that we do not want regime change," Mr. Vance said in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press with Kristen Welker."

"We don't want to prolong or expand this conflict any further. We want to end their nuclear program, and then we want to talk to the Iranians about a lasting solution there," Mr. Vance said, adding that the US "has no intention of deploying troops on the ground."

Operation Midnight Hammer was known only to a handful of people in Washington and at the headquarters of the US military's Middle East Operations Command in Tampa, Florida.

As a diversionary operation, seven B-2 bombers flew for 18 hours from the US into Iran to drop 14 bunker-buster bombs, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine told reporters.

In total, the US launched 75 precision-guided munitions, including more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles, and used more than 125 military aircraft in the operation targeting three nuclear facilities, Mr. Caine said.

The campaign has pushed the Middle East to the brink of a new major conflict in a region that has already been ablaze for more than 20 months with wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria.

Damage to facilities

With damage visible from space after 30,000-pound US bunker-buster bombs slammed into the mountain above Iran's Fordow nuclear facility, experts and officials are closely watching to see how far the airstrikes can push back what they see as Iran's "nuclear ambitions."

Mr Caine said initial damage assessments after the battle showed all three sites had been severely damaged and destroyed, but he declined to speculate on whether any of Iran's nuclear capabilities were intact.

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, was more cautious, saying that while it was clear the US airstrikes had hit Iran's enrichment facility at Fordow, it was not yet possible to assess the damage underground.

A senior Iranian source told Reuters on June 22 that most of the highly enriched uranium at Fordow, which produces most of Iran's uranium refined to 60%, had been moved to an undisclosed location before the US attack.

Mr. Vance told NBC that the US was not at war with Iran but with its nuclear program, and he thought the airstrikes “really set their program back for a very long time.”

Mr Trump said the damage was “tremendous” in another social media post on 22 June, a day after saying he had “obliterated” Iran’s main nuclear facilities, but gave no details.

Tehran has vowed to defend itself and responded with a barrage of missiles into Israel that injured dozens of people and destroyed buildings in the Tel Aviv business district.

However, perhaps in an effort to avoid all-out war with the superpower, they have yet to carry out their main retaliatory threats, which would be to target US bases or choke off the one-quarter of the world's oil shipments that pass through their waters.

Mr. Caine said the US military has increased protection of forces in the region, including in Iraq and Syria.

The US already has a significant force in the Middle East, with nearly 40,000 troops in the region, including air defense systems, fighter jets and warships that can detect and shoot down enemy missiles.

Reuters reported last week that the Pentagon had begun moving some aircraft and warships away from bases in the Middle East that could be vulnerable to any Iranian attack.

Not an open campaign

With his unprecedented decision to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, directly joining Israel's airstrikes on its regional arch-enemy, Mr. Trump did what he has long vowed to avoid — military intervention in a major foreign war.

There were sporadic anti-war protests on the afternoon of June 22 in several US cities, including New York and Washington.

It is unclear why Mr. Trump chose to act on June 21.

At the press conference, Mr. Hegseth said, there was a moment when Mr. Trump "realized that there needed to be a certain action to reduce the threat to us and our military."

After Mr. Trump rejected her initial assessment, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said on June 20 that the United States had intelligence that if Iran decided, it could build a nuclear weapon within weeks or months, an assessment disputed by some lawmakers and independent experts. U.S. officials say they do not believe Iran has decided to build a bomb.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, when asked on CBS's "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" whether the US had seen intelligence indicating that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had ordered nuclear weaponization, said: "That's irrelevant."

Mr. Hegseth, who said the Pentagon informed lawmakers about the operation after the US aircraft left Iran, said the airstrikes against Iran were not an open campaign.

Mr Rubio also said there were no further plans for attacks unless Iran retaliated, telling CBS: "We have other targets we could attack, but we achieved our objective. There is no military action planned against Iran right now - unless they mess up."