Opinion

MORNING GLORY: I asked Trump if he was prepared to remove Iran’s new leaders

Iranian regime’s third-string leaders must be sweating America's next move

By Hugh Hewitt Fox News

Published July 16, 2026 5:00am EDT

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"Can you or the American military or the Israeli military get to what’s left of their third string and their fourth string and their fifth string? Do you know where they are? Can you kill them?"

I posed those questions to President Donald Trump Monday, July 13.

"Yeah, I do, but we don’t want to talk about that," the president replied.

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"But we certainly are watching, yeah," he added. "I know a lot about that subject. I know a lot, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about it right now."

A satellite image shows damage at the control tower in the port of Chabahar, Iran, July 9, 2026. (2026 PLANET LABS PBC/Handout via Reuters)

Trump’s restraint about clearing the bench of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is interesting.

The public faces of the rump regime in Iran — President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi — don’t have any authority over the killers with the guns. (Trump puts the number of Iranians massacred by the regime over two days in January at 52,000, so we know the ruthlessness of the men in charge.)........

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