Iran's New Leader Appointed – Trump: 'Won't Last Long'

On Sunday, Mojtaba Khamenei was appointed to succeed his father Ali Khamenei as Iran’s Supreme Leader. The choice is said to signal that the hardliners still remain in power. However, U.S. President Donald Trump does not believe he will remain in the position for long.

Mojtaba is a cleric with influence over Iran’s security forces and extensive business networks under his father, and had been seen as a favorite ahead of Sunday’s vote by the Assembly of Experts, a group of 88 clerics responsible for choosing Ali Khamenei’s successor.

In a statement, the group stated that Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei was chosen as the third leader of the “Islamic Republic of Iran’s sacred system” through a vote. The position gives Mojtaba the final say in all state matters in the country.

Iranian state media reported that the leadership of Iran’s armed forces had sworn allegiance to Mojtaba Khamenei, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement that they are ready to follow the new Supreme Leader.

The appointment is not popular with U.S. President Donald Trump, who said Sunday that Washington should have influence in the choice of the new leader. Before the announcement, Israel also threatened to target whoever was chosen.

– If he doesn’t get our approval, he won’t last long. We want to make sure we don’t have to go back every ten years, when you don’t have a president like me who isn’t going to do it, Trump told ABC News.

– I don’t want people to have to go back in five years and do the same thing again, or even worse, let them have nuclear weapons.

Paper Tiger

According to Trump, Iran today is “a paper tiger.”

– They weren’t a paper tiger a week ago, I’ll tell you that. And they were going to attack. Their plan was to attack the whole Middle East, to take over the entire region.

Trump also has not ruled out sending in special forces to seize Iran’s enriched uranium.

– Everything is on the table. Everything.

Oil Price Increase

In an interview with Times of Israel after the new Supreme Leader was appointed, Trump declined to comment, saying only, “We’ll see what happens.”

In a social media post, Trump wrote that oil prices “will drop quickly once the Iranian nuclear threat is eradicated,” saying the recent price increase was “a very small price to pay for the U.S., world security, and peace.”

Sunday marked the ninth day of joint American and Israeli strikes. Israel continued targeting high-ranking Iranian figures, including Abolqasem Babaian, the newly appointed chief of the Supreme Leader’s military office, claiming he was killed in a strike on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu states that his government will continue the attacks and strike against Iran’s rulers “without mercy.”

– We have an organized plan with many surprises to destabilize the regime and enable change, he said in a statement.

At the same time, Trump has expressed dissatisfaction with the British government and Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s hesitation to join the fight against Iran. In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that sending two aircraft carriers so far after the fact is no longer necessary, and that you don’t need people joining a war after it has already been won: