Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted at a possible ground invasion of Iran — while warning that the Islamic Republic must not be able to swap “Hitler with Himmler” with its new supreme leader.
Netanyahu stressed Thursday that a regime change must come from “the Iranian people” rather than the regime simply replacing assassinated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with his son or another hardliner.
“You don’t want to replace one Ayatollah with another. You don’t want to replace Hitler with Himmler,” he said, referring to Nazi SS Chief Heinrich Himmler.
“It’s up to the Iranian people to … choose the moment and to rise to the moment. We can create the conditions, but they have to, you know, they have to exploit those conditions at a certain point,” Netanyahu said, pushing for a more moderate government.
The Israeli PM also stressed that revolutions cannot be imposed just from the air – hinting at possible boots on the ground as the war rages on.
“It is often said that you can’t win, you can’t do revolutions from the air. That is true. You can’t do it only from the air,” he said.
“You can do a lot of things from the air, and we’re doing, but there has to be a ground component as well. There are many possibilities for this ground component, and I take the liberty of not sharing with you all those possibilities.”
His remarks came after President Trump had earlier ruled out putting American troops on the ground in Iran.
“I’m not putting troops anywhere – and if I was, I wouldn’t tell you,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Meanwhile, the US deployed A-10 Warthogs attack jets, Ah-64 Apache helicopters, and 5,000-pound ground penetrator bombs in a bid to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, America’s top general said Thursday.
“We continue to hunt and kill afloat assets, including more than 120 vessels and 44 minelayers,” Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, vowed at a Pentagon news conference.
“And the pressure will continue. We’re flying further to the east now and penetrating deeper into Iranian airspace to hunt and kill one-way attack gear.”
