Iran’s regime change is “mission impossible,” the country’s foreign minister told NBC News, hours after the US and Israel launched a major attack on the Islamic republic and President Donald Trump called on its citizens to overthrow their leaders.
“You cannot do regime change when millions of people support the so-called regime,” Abbas Araghi said in an interview from the capital, Tehran.
He said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was alive “as far as I know,” although the 86-year-old’s whereabouts were unknown after Israel targeted the country’s political leaders.
On Thursday, a team of Iranian negotiators was holding talks with US special envoys Steve Wittkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Geneva, Switzerland, aimed at averting a possible military strike, and a deal was within our reach, Araghchi said.
“We were able to resolve serious questions related to Iran’s nuclear program. We obviously had differences, but we resolved some of the differences and we decided to move forward to resolve the remaining questions,” he said, adding that he did not know if “they decided to attack us” as the talks progressed.
Other senior officials in the administration survived, Araghi said, including President Massoud Pezheshkian, the head of the judiciary and the speaker of parliament. Two commanders were killed.
The strikes, during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, come weeks after a US military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, and brought them to New York to face federal drug conspiracy charges.
It marks the second time in eight months that the Trump administration has used military force against the Islamic Republic.
In a video announcing “major combat operations,” Trump told the Iranians to “take over your government” once the U.S. is finished. “It will be yours,” he said. “This is probably your only chance for a generation.”
His comments were echoed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said the operation “creates the conditions for the courageous Iranian people to take their destiny into their own hands.”
But Araghi said Iran’s government “is supported by the people” and cannot instigate regime change.
Authorities launched a deadly crackdown on unprecedented nationwide unrest in Iran last month.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency says it has confirmed more than 7,000 deaths and is investigating more than a thousand. The group says it verifies each death with a network of activists on the ground in Iran and that its data goes through “multiple internal checks.”
The Iranian government has admitted that more than 3,000 people died.
“Yes, there are those who complain, but there are strong supporters of the administration,” Araghchi said. “Then we have a well-established political structure.”
Araghchi noted that millions of people took to the streets in cities across the country to mark the recent anniversary of the 1979 revolution.
The US and others have tried to do this in the past and failed, so if they want to repeat the failed experience, “they won’t get any good results,” he said.
Although there is “no communication at the moment” with the US, Araghi said, Tehran is interested in de-escalation and is ready to talk once the US-Israeli joint strikes end.
He said Iran was “obviously interested in de-escalation” and could approach American negotiators if they wanted to resume talks. “This is a war of choice for the United States, and they will pay for it,” he said. “But as far as we’re concerned, we don’t want war.”
Disputing Trump’s State of the Union address statement that the Islamic Republic was building missiles capable of hitting the US, Araghi said Iran had no desire to do so and had deliberately limited the range of its missiles.
“We don’t want to do that because we don’t have any animosity against the people of the United States, you know,” he said. Iran, he said, built weapons “to defend ourselves against our enemies”.
American forces are attacking our people in our cities, “but we are not going to do this. We are attacking American bases, military bases and military installations and facilities in the region, and this is an act of self-defense.”
He cited what Iran said was a deadly strike on a school in the southern city of Minab. Local authorities said that tens of people died in the incident.
In an earlier post on X, he shared a photo of dozens of people surrounding the heavily damaged building with smoke rising from the facility, which he said was “bombed in broad daylight, full of young students.”
