President-elect Trump should order the CIA to "overthrow the terrorist Iranian regime," according to a former White House official, who said that the country's efforts to efforts to develop nuclear weapons pose a regional and global threat.
"Mr. Trump's reelection is terribly important to Iran because it means an end to the appeasement it has enjoyed for almost four years from the Biden administration," Jed Babbin wrote in a Sunday column for The Washington Times. "It may mean that Iran will accelerate its uranium enrichment and soon be able to deploy nuclear weapons."
Newsweek has contacted the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a response to Babbin's statements.
Despite a policy of outright denial from the country's leadership, governments and intergovernmental agencies have voiced concerns that Tehran is intent on developing a stockpile of weapons-grade enriched uranium.
A recent report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found that the country had amassed a total enriched uranium stockpile of 6,604.4 kilograms (14,560 pounds), an increase of nearly 2,000 pounds since August, and that the regime had impeded the agency's monitoring activities in violation of its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal.
"The production and accumulation of high enriched uranium by Iran, the only non-nuclear-weapon state to do so, adds to the agency's concerns," the IAEA said.
"Iran has the ability to deploy nuclear weapons soon, and when they do, they will change the strategic equation for the entire world," Babbin added.
Babbin, who served as the deputy undersecretary of defense during the George H. W. Bush administration, also pointed to the assassination attempts targeting the president-elect as further evidence of the threat posed by the "terrorist Iranian regime."
In early November, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had charged an "asset of the Iranian regime" with "surveilling and plotting to assassinate President-Elect Donald J. Trump."
"There are few actors in the world that pose as grave a threat to the national security of the United States as does Iran," Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
Iran has denied the DOJ's claims that it was behind the attempt on the president-elect's life.
The Department said that the plot was likely motivated by the 2020 targeted killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the country's Quds Force, a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) responsible for Tehran's extraterritorial operations.
The 2020 drone strike was one of several actions taken by the first Trump administration aimed at curtailing Iran's regional influence. Trump's first term was also marked by a maximum-pressure strategy when it came to Iran, including the withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear agreement, a reimposition of severe economic sanctions on the country, further isolation through the orchestration of the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab nations, and the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization.
However, Babbin argues, the stakes are now much higher than when Trump first took office.
He said that overthrowing the regime, led by supreme leader Ali Khamenei, would be made possible by the anti-regime forces already present in the country, such as the Balochis, Kurds, Ahwazis and Azeris.
"Given weapons, intelligence and funding, they could topple the Tehran regime," he said.
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