WASHINGTON--The United States has yet to spell out a "day-after" strategy for Iran following joint U.S.-Israeli strikes that killed much of the country's leadership, lawmakers from both major political parties said on Sunday.
U.S. President Donald Trump has called for a change in Iran's government, which has entered a period of uncertainty following the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Saturday's attack. The strategy Trump has publicly outlined so far hinges largely on the hope that the Iranian people will rise up and determine their own future after decades of repression.
Republicans expressed optimism about the attacks, while Democrats were skeptical they would lead to a favorable outcome, but lawmakers on both sides were uncertain about the immediate future. Trump told the Daily Mail later on Sunday that the military operation could continue for four weeks.
Lawmakers appearing on Sunday morning talk shows all opposed deploying U.S. ground forces to Iran."There's no simple answer for what's going to come next," Senator Tom Cotton, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from Arkansas, said on CBS News' "Face the Nation".
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a staunch Trump ally and defense hawk, echoed the U.S. president's call for the Iranian people to decide who should lead their government."You know, this idea, 'You break it, you own it,' I don't buy that one bit," Graham said on NBC's "Meet the Press" programme. "This is not Iraq. This is not Germany. This is not Japan. We're going to free the people up from a terrorist regime."
Khamenei's death set off a process under which a three-person council will run the country until a separate clerical body selects a new supreme leader. Asked if the U.S. had identified a leader of the Iranian opposition that Iran's people could rally behind, Cotton said: "The opposition is 90 million Iranians who have suffered under the brutal Islamic Republic Revolutionary regime for the last 47 years."
Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, said he could not see how regime change in Iran could happen with the current operation. "There's no example I know of in modern history where regime change has happened solely through air strikes," Coons said on CNN's "State of the Union" programme.
Before Saturday's air strikes, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency assessed that hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could replace Khamenei if he were killed, two sources briefed on the intelligence said. Trump on Sunday said that 48 leading figures in Iran's government had been killed so far. Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, pointed to the earlier CIA assessment.
"So, we are not going to get a democracy. We are going to get an even worse Iranian leadership," Murphy told the CBS programme. "It's no secret that this administration has no plan for the chaos that is unfolding right now in the Middle East."
