Sorry, I don't buy those narratives, plus Trump can never be taken at his word. Personally, I do not think Trump attacked Iran for one main specific reason. I think his motives were multi layered. In my view, he did it to appease MBS (Saudi Arabia), Bibi (Israel), to try to prevent Iran from possibly becoming a greater military threat in the future, and to specifically target the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family because, after Trump ordered the drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, Khamenei vowed lethal revenge against Trump and his family personally. Of course, a fifth reason, and perhaps one of the biggest, would be the effort to gain greater control over Iran’s oil supplies and reduce China’s access to it. Beyond that, I do not think there is much more to it. I do not think Trump truly cares about regime change one way or the other. It makes no real difference to him. He is purely transactional and not a man motivated by empathy, but purely by personal benefit. And the notion that Iran posed any immediate threat to America or its allies was further dispelled by Joe Kent’s resignation yesterday.
