Retired Gen. Wesley Clark says no matter how successful the joint U.S. and Israeli strikes are in Iran – and he believes they have been – there is little to no chance of regime change in Iran, regardless of how long the fighting goes on.
Clark appeared Wednesday as a guest on the NewsNation show “Cuomo,” hosted by former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, who started the segment by saying “the easy part is over.” Both Cuomo and Clark expressed their belief that the military strikes ordered by President Trump in conjunction with Israel have largely met their tactical objectives after two weeks of bombardment – but that the strategic outcome is wildly uncertain.
“He’s struck all the targets that we had in the target base,” the former NATO supreme allied commander in Europe said. “It looked great, and we’ve probably done a lot of destruction. And I accept the fact that we took out 90% of their missiles and 80% of their drones and so forth, the statistics that he provided. But it’s what you said, Chris: You got to get the Straits of Hormuz open. You got to restore the global economy. And I think that the Iranian government can play rope-a-dope with the United States for a long time on this.”
Clark suggested that Iran has been preparing for this exact scenario for decades, adding that “You’ve just got to imagine they can just say, ‘Go ahead and bomb us.’”
“I don’t think we’re going to get regime change,” Clark continued. “I’d be surprised if we do. The Iranians … know exactly how Israel and the United States will attack, and so they expected casualties in the chain of command.”
Clark is also dispossessed of the notion that the conflict will end anytime soon. “They’re just getting started with this,” he said. Clark said the world economy is dependent on the Straits of Hormuz opening, which is why Trump is beginning to indicate that U.S. military involvement may soon be winding down.
“The Iranians are in the strong position right now of they have the option of getting out of it or not,” Clark said. “They can always come back and fight another day, and that’s the way that they’re probably going to look at it.”
That weakens any regime-change objective, because “you have to convince your adversary that you’re not stopping for anything.”
“Unfortunately Iran’s really tough to isolate — big country, lots of access points, and with the Strait of Hormuz and oil and that sort of thing, you don’t have an indefinite timeline unless you’re willing to secure the Strait of Hormuz.”
Watch the entire exchange in the video above.
