Trump sees Iran regime change likely if leaders stay the course, Rubio says
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday the Iranian people may overthrow their rulers if they don't reform but insisted there is no US plan to bring about regime change.
"What the President said is, if the regime in Iran does not wants to keep spending money on terrorism, keep spending money on trying to get nuclear weapons, keep spending money on rockets to attack Israel and not develop their economy or help their people, maybe there will be regime change, because the people of Iran are going to get sick of it," Rubio said.
“The world is filled with regimes I don’t like and the president doesn’t like, and many of us wish didn’t exist. The United States’ job is not to go around and set up governments for every country,” Rubio told Politico in an interview at the Hague.
“Our national security issue with Iran is with a clerical regime that wants nuclear weapons so they can threaten us and Israel today and threaten us tomorrow."
"And the president has made clear that’s not going to happen,” he added.
The UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in Iran has accused the Islamic Republic of carrying out arbitrary arrests, executions, and secretive prisoner transfers since Israeli attacks, warning that due process is being violated.
“I am also concerned about reports of arbitrary arrests and executions of activists, journalists, social media users, and Afghan nationals, and the holding of hasty and improper trials that violate the principles of fair trial since the beginning of the Israeli attacks,” Mai Sato said on Wednesday in a post on X.
These issues were raised in a joint statement with the UN Fact-Finding Mission, according to Sato.
Despite US and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, Tehran may still be able to produce parts for a nuclear weapon within one month, a former deputy director general of the UN nuclear watchdog warned.
"Possibility for ca 1000 centrifuge enrichment facility with a small uranium metal laboratory able to make pieces for the first nuclear weapon in one month exists," Olli Heinonen said in a post on X.
“Not the time for wishful thinking,” he wrote. “The threat remains.”
Mossad’s chief David Barnea said on Wednesday that Israeli agents have been in Iran and will continue their operations in the country despite a US-brokered ceasefire that ended 12 days of fighting.
“We will [continue to] be there, like we have been there," Barnea said in a rare video excerpt to the public of an address to his Mossad agents involved in attacks on Iran.
Mossad has worked for months and years "to do all of the right actions to get to the right moment," he said, describing Mossad's achievements against Iran as "unimaginable".
Ali Shadmani, the newly appointed commander of the Revolutionary Guard's Khatam-al Anbiya Central Headquarters, has succumbed to the injuries he sustained during an Israeli airstrike last week, the headquarters announced on Wednesday
On June 17, the Israeli military said it had killed Shadmani in an airstrike.
Donald Trump on Wednesday cited an Israeli government assessment to support his earlier remark that US strikes totally obliterated the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities, dismissing a conflicting assessment by the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
Early DIA intelligence assessments suggested the US attacks may have only delayed Iran’s nuclear program by a few months, falling short of the administration’s claims of long-term disruption.
President Trump and senior administration officials have rejected that conclusion.
"It is a manmade statement and if you read the document, the document said it could be severely damaged, but they did not take that. They said it could be limited or it could be very severe. You did not choose to put that, because it was soon after," Trump told reporters at a NATO summit in The Hague on Wednesday.
"Since then, we collected additional and we talked to the people who have seen the site, and the site is obliterated, and we think everything nuclear is down there."
Trump said Israel sent agents to Iran’s bombed nuclear sites to confirm their “total obliteration”.
“Israel is doing a report on it now, I understand, and I was told that they said it was total obliteration,” Trump told reporters.
“Iran’s nuclear program had been set back basically decades… It’s gone for years.”
The White House on Wednesday sent to reporters a statement by the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) that said American strikes on Fordow "destroyed the site's critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable."
The move raised eyebrows as the Israeli government had not yet released the statement. However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, on behalf of the IAEC, officially published the assessment an hour later.
"We assess that the American strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran's military nuclear program, has set back Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years," the statement read.
"The achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does not get access to nuclear material."
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt also denied the classified intelligence assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
"The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran's nuclear program," she said in a post on X.
Rafael Grossi, Director General of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, told Fox News on Tuesday that the agency has not yet been able to fully assess the impact of the strikes due to lack of access.
He said Natanz was the first to be hit and sustained “very serious damage” in one of the centrifuge halls where enrichment was being carried out. He added that Isfahan also sustained damage but stressed that “nobody has been inside the halls to assess the damage.”
