After urging Iranians to rise up against regime, Trump acknowledges overthrow a ‘very big hurdle’

Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief

After urging Iranians to take to the streets once the bombing stops, US President Donald Trump acknowledges that it will be very difficult for them to overthrow the regime.

“I really think that’s a big hurdle to climb for people that don’t have weapons. I think it’s a very big hurdle… It’ll happen, but… maybe not immediately,” Trump tells Fox News Radio.

“Who’s going to do that?” he says of the idea of protesting against the regime. “They literally have people in the streets with machine guns, machine gunning people down if they want to protest.”

“That’s a pretty high standard to say, ‘I want to go and protest.’ So I would understand [them not wanting to], and I would think Bibi would understand that too,” Trump adds, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has been urging Iranians to prepare to soon overthrow the regime.

Trump says the US has footage of armed “thugs” in Iran who have been shooting dead Iranian protesters in the streets.

“We have tapes of some of these people who go around shooting the protesters,” he adds, claiming the perpetrators will be caught, tried and executed.

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