WASHINGTON—The prepared text of Donald Trump’s Friday speech criticized Hillary Clinton’s support of “regime change” in foreign countries.

Before Trump got there, he ad-libbed an endorsement of regime change in Iran.

In the latest contradiction of his dizzying campaign, the Republican nominee who has been railing against American “intervention” in other nations castigated President Barack Obama for declining to intervene in support of the “Green Movement” protests that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“They were dying a few years ago. The sanctions were choking them. They would have fallen,” Trump said in Washington, seeming to refer to the Islamic clerics who are in charge of the country. “But Obama didn’t support the people that would have taken over, and I think in this case would have taken over the right way. Had no support.”

Seven minutes later, Trump arrived at his prepared line about his Democratic opponent.

“Her tenure has brought us only war and destruction and death. She’s just too quick to intervene, invade, or to push for regime change,” he told the Values Voter Summit of Christian conservatives. He added: “With people — we don’t even know who they are. They take over, they’re far worse.”

Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.

The duelling comments underscored the tension between Trump’s record of interventionist statements and his current platform. Though he has eagerly supported regime change in Egypt and Libya, in addition to the invasion of Iraq and other interventions, he is now running as the candidate of caution, claiming he never actually wanted to intervene.

“For years, I’ve been a critic of this kind of reckless foreign invasions, and, look, let’s face it, interventions,” he said of the Iraq war on Thursday. In a major speech in mid-August, he said, “Our current strategy of nation-building and regime change is a proven failure.”

Obama has been criticized by numerous Republicans for his response to the Green Movement, sometimes called the Green Revolution. Both publicly and privately, he declined to back the opposition.

Obama said he was “deeply troubled” by the regime’s violent crackdown on the protests. But he also took pains to emphasize that he respected Iranian sovereignty, and he argued that the difference between hard-line Ahmadinejad and his reformist rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, “may not be as great as has been advertised.”

It is far from clear that American intervention would have succeeded in toppling Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his clerical allies in the Islamic republic.

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