Middle East Crisis Reactions

Report: US unlikely to succeed in overthrowing Iran's regime

Even a large-scale US attack on Iran has little chance of overthrowing the country's regime, according to a secret US intelligence report. The Washington Post reports.

The report was reportedly compiled a week before the US and Israel launched their war on Iran, and concluded that it is "unlikely" that Iran's divided opposition could take over the regime, regardless of how the war is waged from the US side.

- It sounds like a very well-informed assessment of the Iranian system and the institutions and processes that it has established for many years, says Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution, to the newspaper.

The White House has not wanted to answer whether the president was aware of the contents before ordering the initial attacks on February 28.

Democrats: Talk of Christian War on Iran Scandalous

30 Democrats in the US House of Representatives are demanding an investigation into reports that American commanders have used Christian doomsday rhetoric to justify the war on Iran, writes Haaretz.

“Some commanders have reportedly told their soldiers that the American and Israeli attacks will hasten the return of Jesus,” the members wrote in a statement, calling the statements “scandalous.”

They also point to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as at least partly responsible for giving the war on Iran a religious framework.

Donald Trump takes a dig at British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in a post on Truth Social.

The president writes that the US "no longer needs" the aircraft carriers that Britain, according to Trump, is considering sending to the Middle East.

"We don't need people joining a war after we've already won!", he writes in the post.

The post comes after the BBC, among others, reported that Britain had put an aircraft carrier on standby, which could be used if the country were to decide to enter the area with military means.
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