Iran’s new supreme leader may already be a marked man after the U.S. took out late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in its initial attack on Iran.
On Monday, Majtaba Khamenei, son of the late leader Ali Khamenei, was named the new ruler of Iran, but President Donald Trump immediately voiced his displeasure over the announcement.
The elusive 56-year-old has close ties to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and is believed to hold even harder-line views than his father.
“I think they made a big mistake,” Trump told NBC News in a phone interview. “I don’t know if it’s going to last. I think they made a mistake.”
In a separate phone interview with the New York Post on Monday, Trump said he was “not happy with” Khamenei being named his father’s replacement.
However, he held off on directly threatening the new, much younger supreme leader.
“Not going to tell you,” Trump said about his for Khamenei. “Not going to tell you. I’m not happy with him.”
The president, 79, has told aides he would back the killing of Iran’s new leader if he proves unwilling to agree to U.S. demands, according to current and former U.S. officials, to the Wall Street Journal.
The U.S. and Iran had been in talks to reach a new nuclear agreement before the U.S. accused the Iranians of not being serious and launched “Operation Epic Fury.”
Before negotiations stalled, the U.S. had been demanding Iran end its pursuit of a nuclear weapon and insisted that any deal also address the country’s missile capabilities.
In an interview over the weekend before the younger Khamenei was named the new supreme leader, Trump warned that Iran’s next leader “is not going to last long” if the Iranians didn’t get his approval first.
“If he doesn’t get approval from us, he’s not going to last long,” Trump told ABC News on Sunday. “We want to make sure that we don’t have to go back every 10 years, when you don’t have a president like me that’s not going to do it.”
The president last week also told Axios that he believed Khamenei’s son “is a lightweight” and that he would “have to be involved in the appointment,” comparing it to the operation in Venezuela to take out former President Nicolas Maduro.
Maduro was replaced with his deputy Delcy Rodriguez, who has been working closely with the U.S. ever since her boss was captured in early January.
