BEIRUT: Donald Trump said on Thursday he should have a say in selecting Iran’s next supreme leader, as the war sparked by the US-Israeli campaign that killed Ali Khamenei spread across the Middle East and beyond.
Trump earlier rejected the possibility of Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, replacing his slain father as supreme leader, dismissing the younger man as a “lightweight”.
“I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy,” Trump told Axios in an interview, drawing a comparison to Venezuela, where interim president Delcy Rodriguez has cooperated with him under threat of violence after the United States ousted her boss, Nicolas Maduro.