The president of the United States, Donald Trump, insisted on Thursday that he should have a role in electing Iran’s next supreme leader after the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose son, he said, seems to him an unacceptable candidate.
Trump wants to ‘elect’ the new Ayatollah
“Khamenei’s son (who died on the first day of the war in an attack) is a lightweight. I have to participate in the appointment, like with Delcy,” Trump told the outlet. Axiosdrawing a comparison with Venezuela, where the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, has cooperated with him under threat after the United States overthrew Nicolás Maduro.
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Trump told Axios that the United States would likely return to war within five years if there was no pro-Washington leader in Iran.
“Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me. We want someone who will bring harmony and peace to Iran,” Trump declared, according to that medium.
It is not clear how Trump could play a role in the selection of a new supreme leader of the Islamic republic, a decision made by an assembly of senior Shiite Muslim clerics mostly firmly opposed to the United States. Trump was raised Presbyterian.
But his comments imply a willingness to work with someone from within the Islamic republic rather than seeking to overthrow the government, which has been a sworn enemy of the United States since the 1979 Islamic revolution toppled the pro-Western shah.
Son of the shah, wants to enter the transition
The late shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, has proposed returning as a transitional figure before Iran drafts a new constitution as a secular democracy.
Pahlavi said earlier on Thursday that any new supreme leader within the Islamic republic would be illegitimate.
Ali Khamenei, who ruled Iran since 1989 with hardline policies that included internal repression and confrontation with neighboring countries, died on Saturday in an Israeli attack, at the beginning of the war unleashed by that country and the United States against Tehran.
His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, is considered one of the contenders to succeed his father, who was only the second supreme leader after revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
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