United States President Donald Trump has again asserted that he would exert influence over Iran’s next supreme leader, saying that whoever is picked for the role without Washington’s approval is “not going to last long”.
The statement on Sunday came hours before Iranian state media reported that 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 a war on Iran on February 28.
Trump did not immediately respond to the younger Khamenei’s selection, but broadly said earlier that any individual would need US approval. Iranian officials have denied that the Trump administration has had any influence on 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 did not 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 Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi again said that “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, the body that selects the supreme leader.
Mojtaba Khamenei’s selection was announced shortly after the Pentagon confirmed that a seventh US soldier had died since the war began.
In a statement, 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 to 1,332, with at least 11 people killed across the Gulf, and another 11 killed in Israel. (Al Jazeera)