UNITED States President Donald Trump has again promised to exert influence over who is selected as Iran’s next Supreme Leader, saying that, without Washington’s approval, whoever is picked for the role is “not going to last long”.
The statement on Sunday came hours before Iranian state media reported the Assembly of Experts had selected a new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the hours after the US and Israel launched the war with Iran on February 28.
Trump did not immediately responded to the younger Khamenei’s selection, but broadly said earlier that any individual would need US approval. Iranian officials have denied the Trump administration had any influence in the decision.
“He’s going to have to get approval from us,” Trump told ABC News, referring to a possible new supreme leader. “If he doesn’t get approval from us, he’s not going to last long.”
Trump added that he didn’t want future administrations to have “to go back” in the years ahead, an apparent reference to future military action.
“I don’t want people to have to go back in five years and have to do the same thing again, or worse, let them have a nuclear weapon,” he said.
Officials in Iran, which has launched retaliatory attacks across the Middle East, have repeatedly rejected the notion of Washington asserting influence over the selection.
Earlier on Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi again vowed “we will allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs”.
“This is up to the Iranian people to elect their new leader,” he said, adding that Iranians had elected the Assembly of Experts, which will select the next supreme leader.
Trump’s comments came shortly before the Pentagon confirmed that a seventh US soldier had died since the war began.
In a statement, the US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the unidentified soldier had been wounded “at the scene of an attack on US troops in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on March 1” and died on Saturday.
Further details were not immediately available.
Meanwhile, the death toll in Iran had risen 1,332, with at least 11 killed across the Gulf, and 11 killed in Israel.
The US president has offered shifting justifications for the war, repeatedly pointing to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, its ballistic missile programme, as well as the totality of Iran’s actions in the region since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Critics, including the majority of Democratic US lawmakers, have said Trump has provided scant evidence to prove Iran posed an immediate threat.
On Sunday, Oman Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi, who had been overseeing indirect US-Iran talks on Iran’s nuclear programme, again rejected US officials’ claims that Tehran had not entered into the negotiations in good faith.
Speaking during a ministerial meeting of the Arab League, Albusaidi said diplomatic initiatives seeking a “fair and honourable solution were making progress” when the US-Israeli attacks began.
He further warned that the region is facing “a dangerous turning point” as fighting escalates.
Attacks from both sides appeared to have widened, with the US and Israel for the first time striking oil storage and refining facilities in Tehran, and Iran launching more strikes across the Gulf, including a drone attack that caused material damage to a desalination plant in Bahrain.
Both Bloomberg and Axios news have reported that the US and Israel have considered a special ground operation to seize Iran’s enriched uranium, with Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter telling CBS’s Face the Nation news programme that securing the nuclear fuel is “on our radar screen and we’re going to take care of it”.
For their part, top Trump administration officials spent Sunday seeking to alleviate concerns over the war’s knock-on effects on global oil and gas prices.
Rapidly rising prices represent a particular political vulnerability for Trump as his Republican Party faces legislative midterm elections in November.