A former CIA director has told Sky News that Iran made a “big mistake” by attacking US bases and assets in the Gulf, instead of targeting civilians in the region.
Former CIA Director General David Petraeus said Leading world news anchor Yalda Hakim That is Iran By extending the war Hitting airports, seaports, gas and oil loading centers in the Gulf states.
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“It also went after a UK base. I think it was a drone launched by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon against a base in Cyprus,” he said.
“What it’s doing is getting those countries to be kind of neutral, to stay out of it, to not allow the US to use their bases, to (today) be part of it.”
In addition to his role running the US intelligence service between September 2011 and November 2012, General Petraeus was a key military commander in Iraq, where he led the 2007 “Surge” strategy, which significantly reduced insurgent violence after the US invasion four years earlier.
Smoke billows in the air in Tehran after an airstrike
US President Donald Trump He has made it clear that he wants regime change in Iran after launching a wave of strikes with Israel, which he warns has not yet peaked.
But General Petraeus said regime change will not come out of thin air.
“Air power alone is not going to topple a regime. These are not color revolutions, where popular sentiment alone can topple a regime as we saw in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union,” he said.
“There must be some form of ground force. The objective is (…) to try to create conditions in which the major ruling powers are dramatically degraded, capabilities are reduced and leadership is massively disrupted.”
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He questioned whether air defense by US and Israeli forces could create conditions in Iran where some elements of the regime’s forces “could break away and incite people to overthrow the regime”.
“I don’t think that’s the base case yet,” General Petraeus added.
If there is such an emergency in Iran, it should be “guys with guns,” the former CIA chief said, because in those situations “guys with the most guns and the will to be the most ruthless often prevail.”
