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U.S. President Donald Trump has said he must be personally involved in the process of selecting a new leader for Iran.
The comments came in an interview with Axios on Thursday as Iran remains in political turmoil following the death of its Supreme Leader.
Trump acknowledged that Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is widely seen as the likely successor.
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“They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodríguez] in Venezuela.
“Khamenei son is unacceptable to me. We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran.”
Trump drew a comparison to Venezuela, where Delcy Rodríguez became leader after U.S. strikes led to the removal of then‑President Nicolás Maduro.
It is still unclear who is officially in charge in Iran.
Days after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death, a building housing members of the clerical council responsible for choosing the next supreme leader was bombed while votes were being counted, according to reports.
The situation in Iran remains highly unstable, and Trump’s comments could affect ongoing efforts to stabilise the country and end conflict in the region.
Five days into a military campaign that has reshaped the strategic landscape of the Middle East, the White House sought on Wednesday to draw a firm line around what the United States is actually trying to achieve in Iran — and, just as pointedly, what it is not.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the operation carried four defined objectives: the destruction of Iran’s ballistic missile programme, the elimination of its naval presence in the region, the dismantling of proxy networks that Washington holds responsible for attacks on American and coalition forces, and the permanent foreclosure of any Iranian nuclear weapons capability.
Regime change, she said, was not on that list — even as the death of senior Iranian officials, including the country’s Supreme Leader, has become a documented feature of the campaign.
“Do we want to see Iran being led by a rogue terrorist regime? No, of course not,” Leavitt said. “So any day the United States of America is taking out a terrorist is a good day for our country and a good day for our people.” The formulation was careful — framing the killing of Iranian leadership figures as an acceptable consequence rather than a primary aim, and stopping short of committing the administration publicly to any particular vision of what post-war Iran should look like.
That question — what comes after — is already under active discussion inside the administration. Leavitt confirmed Trump was weighing the question of America’s role in Iran once the fighting stops, consulting with advisers on a range of possibilities.
She gave no indication of what options were on the table, and said the president’s immediate priority was the effective prosecution of the current operation.
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The administration named the campaign Operation Epic Fury and, by Leavitt’s account, it has gone well. “It’s safe to say that thus far, Operation Epic Fury has been a resounding success,” she told reporters. That assessment came on the same day the White House separately signalled that American forces expected to achieve unchallenged control of Iranian airspace within hours — a claim Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth had echoed earlier in the day, describing a tempo of continuous day-and-night operations targeting missiles and military production infrastructure.
The clarification of war aims appeared driven at least partly by a messaging problem. Since the first strikes landed in the early hours of Saturday, allies had found it difficult to track where Washington’s red lines were and what endpoint, if any, had been defined.
Leavitt’s Wednesday briefing was notably more structured in its presentation of objectives than earlier White House communications had been, though it left unresolved the question of what success in each of those four areas would actually require.
In Tehran, the human texture of the conflict looked different from how such moments are typically described. A resident of the Iranian capital, speaking to CNN on condition of anonymity, described a city that was quiet but not paralysed — and, in some quarters, cautiously expectant. Most shops remained closed, the exceptions being groceries, food stalls, and bakeries keeping basic supply lines open for a population of more than eight million. But the emotional register on the streets, the resident said, had shifted since the Supreme Leader’s death. “The atmosphere of sadness has been broken, and people are hopeful,” the source said.
