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Trump Calls For Iranian Regime Change As Tehran Revamps Missile Arsenal
President Donald Trump said Friday that regime change in Iran “would be the best thing that could happen,” signaling a markedly harder posture toward Tehran as U.S. military assets continue to flow into the region.
“For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking, and in the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives while they talk,” Trump said. “Legs blown off, arms blown off, faces blown off — this has been going on for a long time. So let’s see what happens. In the meantime … tremendous power has arrived and additional power — as you know, another carrier is going out.”
#BREAKING: President Trump today said regime change in #Iran “would be the best thing that could happen. For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking. In the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives while they talk. Legs blown off, arms blown off, faces blown off. We’ve… pic.twitter.com/SVtF3MDaU8
— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) February 13, 2026
The remarks come as defense analysts say Iran’s strategic position has fundamentally shifted following the recent 12-day conflict, altering longstanding assumptions about both the regime’s durability and its military priorities.
According to senior policy officials at the Jewish Institute of National Security of America (JINSA), Tehran is emerging from the conflict weaker in some respects, but more dangerous in others.
“The clocks have been reversed,” said Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at JINSA, referring to the balance between regime longevity and nuclear breakout timelines. “Their nuclear program is back to zero — and they aren’t reinvesting,” following last year’s Operation Midnight Hammer, that destroyed three vital nuclear enrichment facilities in Iran.
Instead, Misztal and other analysts said, Iran has redirected resources toward systems that proved most effective during the fighting, particularly ballistic missiles.
“Iran’s ballistic missile program has gone leaps and bounds in both quality and quantity,” said Ari Cicurel, associate director of foreign policy at JINSA. “They are getting fuel mixtures from China. They started the 12-day war with 2,500 medium-range ballistic missiles, they are already back to 2,000.”
That figure does not include what Cicurel described as thousands of short-range ballistic missiles currently in Iran’s arsenal.
More concerning to U.S. defense planners, according to JINSA officials, is Iran’s evolving operational doctrine. Rather than relying on single-system attacks, Tehran has increasingly adopted mixed bombardment tactics designed to overwhelm air and missile defenses. Those strikes combine suicide drones, short-range missiles, and medium-range ballistic missile barrages to confuse radar, exhaust interceptors, and complicate targeting decisions.
That strategy appeared to gain traction toward the end of the conflict. The United States alone expended roughly 150 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors during the fighting, according to JINSA estimates.
“That represents about 25% of the American stockpile,” said Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow for American strategy at JINSA. “It could take 18 months to replenish that.”
Ruhe added that War Secretary Pete Hegseth has already pressed manufacturers to expand production, but warned that industrial ramp-ups take time.
Taken together, the assessments paint a more complex picture than traditional regime-change debates. Iran’s nuclear ambitions may have been set back substantially, but its conventional strike capabilities, particularly missiles designed to stress U.S. and allied defenses, are rapidly rebounding.
Iranian officials, for their part, are publicly striking a defiant but conciliatory tone, insisting that Tehran seeks diplomacy even as it prepares for escalation.
In an interview aired Tuesday on PBS NewsHour, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei rejected the idea that Iran is driving the current confrontation, portraying the regime as a long-standing victim of Western aggression.
“No human person of common sense welcomes war. No one wants war,” Baghaei said. “For the past 47 years, we have been facing these threats, which are unlawful, unwarranted, unjustified. We have always lived with these looming threats.”
Baghaei argued that Iranian society has grown accustomed to the prospect of conflict and framed resistance as a matter of national survival rather than ideological choice. “Our people have been courageous,” he said, describing U.S. pressure as an attempt “to impose their will on our people.”
He also sought to shift responsibility for the breakdown in U.S.–Iran relations squarely onto Washington, citing what he described as an “unlawful attack” on Iran’s nuclear facilities during previous diplomatic efforts. “The distrust between the United States and Iran is very deep, and it is not because of Iran’s behavior,” Baghaei claimed, adding that Iran’s decision to reenter talks despite past outcomes was itself an act of restraint.
The divergence between U.S. analysts and Iranian officials is the foundation of the central tension facing U.S. policymakers: Iran publicly speaks the language of negotiation, even victimhood, while investing heavily in the tools of coercion. The United States, meanwhile, confronts an adversary whose nuclear clock may have been reset, but whose conventional strike capacity is recovering faster than Western stockpiles can be replenished.
Trump’s comments suggest a growing impatience with that equilibrium. Whether Iran’s professions of restraint signal genuine diplomatic openness or simply a pause before the next phase of confrontation remains the unresolved question hanging over Washington, Tehran, and the region.
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