Photo caption: US President Donald Trump speaks during a Working Breakfast with Governors at the White House in Washington, DC on February 20, 2026. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)
United States President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Iran’s next supreme leader “is not going to last long” if the Middle East country does not get his approval first.
“He’s going to have to get approval from us,” Trump told ABC News. “If he doesn’t get approval from us, he’s not going to last long.”
His comments came as Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, dismissed a similar threat by Trump, saying the Iranian people, not the US president, will elect their new leader and demanded that Trump apologise for starting the war with Iran.
“We allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs. This is up to the Iranian people to elect their new leader,” Araghchi told NBC’s Meet the Press.
Trump had previously asserted that he should have a role in picking Iran’s next supreme leader following Ali Khamenei’s death in the opening salvos of the US-Israeli attack that began nine days ago.
He also rejected the possibility of Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, succeeding his father.
This comes as the Iranian clerical body responsible for choosing the successor to the slain supreme leader was reported to have voted and is expected to announce a name soon.
