United States President Donald Trump has declared that he must be personally involved in selecting Iran’s next Supreme Leader, openly rejecting the candidacy of Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the opening strikes of the US-Israeli military campaign on Saturday.
Trump made the remarks in an exclusive interview with Axios on Thursday, his second conversation with the outlet since the war began, in which he acknowledged that Mojtaba Khamenei has emerged as the most likely successor while making clear the outcome was unacceptable to him. “They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy in Venezuela,” Trump said.
Trump went further, stating: “We don’t want them to put anybody in there unless it is approved by us,” and adding that the US did not want a future American president left to deal with the Iran problem again in a decade.
Trump drew a direct comparison to Venezuela, where US forces seized and removed former President Nicolás Maduro in January, after which his vice president Delcy Rodríguez took power and has since cooperated with Washington on key American demands, including oil supply agreements.
The comments drew renewed scrutiny of US war aims, as they appeared to contradict a White House statement made a day earlier suggesting regime change in Iran was not the primary objective of the ongoing military campaign. Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz this week separately stated that any new Iranian supreme leader who continues threatening Israel and the United States would also become a target for elimination.
Iran’s 88-member Assembly of Experts holds constitutional responsibility for choosing the next supreme leader, but Israel bombed the building in Qom housing the clerical body while it was in the process of counting votes for Khamenei’s replacement earlier this week. No formal succession announcement has yet been made, though Iranian politicians on Thursday signalled one could be imminent.
The war has killed at least 1,230 people in Iran, more than 100 in Lebanon and around a dozen in Israel. Six US troops have been confirmed dead. The conflict has escalated daily and is now affecting 14 countries across the Middle East and beyond, with Iran launching retaliatory strikes against Israeli targets, American military bases and Gulf states hosting US forces.
