Israel not seeking regime change in Iran, foreign minister says
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has denied that Israel is seeking regime change in Iran.
Asked in an interview with CNN whether Khamenei is a potential target of Israeli’s military offensive, Sa’ar said his government is not aiming to topple the Iranian leadership.
“The security Cabinet had decided on the objectives – it was not one of the objectives. This for the Iranian people to decide. We, Israel, do not see the Iranian people as our enemies. We had great relations with Iran until 1979, until the Islamic revolution… when a very barbaric regime came to power. These are the people that chant, ‘Death to America, death to Israel,'” Sa’ar said.
Multiple media outlets have reported that Israel presented a plan to kill Khamenei to the US, but Trump rejected the proposal.
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Do people in Iran support Israel’s plans for regime change?
Jamal Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, says Israel’s attacks have ostracised any Iranians who were sympathetic to its plans for regime change in Iran.
“I think that this is an epic miscalculation by Netanyahu,” he told Al Jazeera from Washington, DC.
“The legitimacy of the Islamic Republic really has been at a low point. The women life, freedom protests in 2022 was really an explosion of calls by Iranians to get rid of the regime. And for decades, Netanyahu has pushed this line that the US should get involved in regime change, and the Israelis have also engaged in what I would call a psyops campaign aimed at creating more and more pressure on Iranians and blaming the Islamic Republic, as they do deserve the blame,” he said.
And for a long time, there were some people in the Iranian diaspora who supported Israeli attacks on Iran, who thought that Israel would only strike “Islamic Republic targets” and not Iranians, Abdi said.
But that view has now changed, he said.
“Netanyahu is now talking about turning Iran into Beirut. The Beirut strategy. Tehran is going to burn. It seems like they are now transitioning to a regime destabilization campaign. And I think for a lot of people, especially people who maybe thought the Israelis are their friends, are now realizing that what we saw in Gaza, what we saw in Lebanon, what we have seen across the region, is now coming for Iranians. And it is not liberation, it is death,” he added.
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