U.S. President Donald Trump is not happy. Two days after he told the ayatollahs not to choose the son of the murdered Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as the next supreme leader of Iran, they did just that. “I am not happy,” Trump told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade on March 8.
Hours before the Iranian announcement, Trump had said that any individual would need U.S. approval. “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.
“It’s a real finger in the eye to Donald Trump,” Barbara Slavin, a fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. told Al Jazeera of the choice of Mojtaba Khamenei. She added that the replacement of the elder Khamenei with his son would not be well received by a U.S. public that polls show is already wary of the war. “It’s going to increase the sense in the United States that this war was a mistake,” she said.
Even David Blair, Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator for The Telegraph, fears that the choice of Mojtaba Khamenei shows the folly of Trump’s war. “Having assumed the leadership in personally tragic circumstances”—most of Mojtaba Khamenei’s family died in the same decapitation strike that killed his father—"it seems unlikely that Mr. Khamenei will be prepared to do America’s bidding or retreat in any way,” Blair writes. “If the transfer of power takes place without a popular uprising, then the outcome of Mr. Trump’s war may be that Iran’s regime survives under a still more extreme and obdurate leadership that could, for example, decide that only a nuclear weapon would assure its grip on power."March 9, 2026 (EIRNS)—U.S. President Donald Trump is not happy. Two days after he told the ayatollahs not to choose the son of the murdered Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as the next supreme leader of Iran, they did just that. “I am not happy,” Trump told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade on March 8.
