'Inappropriate to say': Trump may still be considering CIA-led uprising in Iran

'Inappropriate to say': Trump may still be considering CIA-led uprising in Iran Submitted by Yasmine El-Sabawi on Wed, 09/02/2026 - 20:32 The US president insisted that the Iranian government was becoming 'weaker by the day' An injured victim lies in a hospital bed, following a US attack on a wedding, near Sirik, a coastal area on the Strait of Hormuz, in Hormozgan province, Iran, on 2 September 2026 (Razieh Poudat/ISNA/via West Asia News Agency via Reuters) Off US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said it "wouldn't be appropriate to say" if he would greenlight the CIA arming Iranians to encourage a violent uprising, a day after he asked on his TruthSocial account, "When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?" Trump was taking unscheduled questions in the Oval Office, after the US unleashed a barrage of strikes on Iran's southern coast on Tuesday, killing 18 people, including two children at a wedding. "Will you send the CIA in to arm Iranians?" a reporter asked the president. "I'd love to tell you that, but it wouldn't be appropriate to say," Trump responded. "But I mean, I understand their plight. They're being shot... They have close to 65,000 protesters killed." It remains unclear where that figure is sourced, given Trump has previously floated figures between 25,000 and 80,000 during the anti-government protests in Iran early this year. Iran's own figure is about 3,800 killed. Iran strikes US bases across region after American attack kills 18, including children Read More » Until Trump raised the issue of an uprising on Tuesday, the matter seemed largely settled as implausible, given US and Israeli efforts to arm Kurds and other groups earlier this year were not assessed as viable. Washington's killing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war on 28 February also appeared to unite Iranians rather than divide them further. But Trump insisted on Wednesday that "the regime is getting weaker by the day". "They were trying to rebuild their radar systems and a missile system and a mine drop... They were trying to build a rocket that drops mines," he told reporters of the US attacks on Tuesday. "It was almost finished, so we took it out... We took out some other things, and then we hit them last night because they took a shot at us in Jordan, at our base in Jordan," Trump said. He was not asked about US missiles striking a wedding. The 'Trump Strait' Seven months into a war that was meant to last some two or three weeks, the US president was still assuring reporters on Wednesday that he doesn't think it "will be very much longer". "I don't know how much more they can take," he said of Tehran. A day earlier, he wrote on TruthSocial that he is "not trying to force Iran to the bargaining table... I couldn’t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement". That remark came as Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian offered a form of an olive branch to Trump. Speaking on Monday before travelling to Bishkek for a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, Pezeshkian said Iran was "not looking for war" but would "never sit still in the face of any aggression". US army secretary resigns amid signs of Pentagon unease with Iran war Read More » Iran has since launched missiles and drones at US military facilities across the region in retaliation for the American attacks. Speaking on the Brian Kilmeade Show on Fox Radio earlier in the day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: "We reserve the right... to take military action when necessary." "Iran has continued to fire on commercial shipping in the straits. They’re losing control of the straits - they’ve lost control of the straits," he added. "The straits will remain open, and they will not be under Iranian control. And that’s what you’re seeing the president carrying out right now." Trump had suggested on TruthSocial that the waterway could now be called "the Trump Strait". "I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing. They are just playing out the inevitable," the president wrote. Iran's economic collapse is the goal of the newly launched "Operation Economic Outcast" in Washington. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday announced a new wave of sanctions against Iran and its "enablers", towards what he described as an "asphyxiation of this regime" amid the standoff in the Strait of Hormuz. Using a "zero leakage approach", he said the Treasury had "mapped every node, every facilitator, and every network that Iran has used to smuggle oil and evade sanctions", and that Trump had already made phone calls to counterparts around the world "with specific requests to cease their interactions with the regime". But there were no details publicised about which leaders were involved and on what timeline. "They’re going to continue to feel the squeeze," Rubio told Fox Radio. War on Iran Washington News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0