There Are No 'Moderates': Regime Change in Iran Must Again Be a Priority for the Trump Administration
by Con Coughlin
May 3, 2026 at 5:00 am
What would be unpardonable is if US President Donald J. Trump simply replaced a brutal Islamic dictatorship with an equally brutal non-Islamic dictatorship -- as seen in other adversaries of the West such as Russia, China, and North Korea.
At the height of the violence in mid-January, Trump memorably told the Iranian protesters that "HELP IS ON ITS WAY", while calling on the anti-regime activists to "seize control of your destiny."
Iran is still drawing out negotiations as it reconstructs its nuclear and missile sites.
Meanwhile, concerns are growing that Trump is losing interest in the plight of ordinary Iranians. He has recently been stating that he no longer regards regime change in Iran as one of his major objectives. His message has regrettably "gone wobbly"...
Such backtracking on the part of the US president -- the beacon of freedom to the world -- would leave the Iranian people at the mercy of pitiless thugs who would simply replace one form of state-sponsored repression with another, thereby denying the Iranian people their hopes of finally achieving freedom from their oppressors.
The fear now, with the Trump Administration appearing to back away from its original demand of total regime change in Iran, is that... the regime's hardliners will resort to acts of extreme violence to ensure their new dictatorship's survival.
As Trump has assured the hardliners that there will be no regime change, they know their power is secure -- under no threat -- so they are under no pressure to comply with Trump's demands. All they need to do is remove whatever so-called "moderates" might still be around and in their way. There are, in fact, no moderates in the Iranian government, any more than there were in Nazi Germany's government.
The diplomatic standoff between the US and Iran should, at the very least, lead Trump to conclude that, so long as the IRGC and its hardline supporters have a say in the negotiations, the prospect of reaching an acceptable deal remains remote. If the American president is really serious about securing a deal, then he needs to deny the hardliners any say in Iran's destiny and, as he originally promised, to help the Iranian people achieve a true regime change. It is the only way to achieve a peace that will last.
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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22490/iran-regime-change-priority
