{"id":203463,"date":"2026-03-09T10:41:39","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T10:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-vows-control-over-iran-leader-as-death-toll-of-us-soldiers-rises-al-jazeera\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T10:41:39","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T10:41:39","slug":"trump-vows-control-over-iran-leader-as-death-toll-of-us-soldiers-rises-al-jazeera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trump-vows-control-over-iran-leader-as-death-toll-of-us-soldiers-rises-al-jazeera\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump vows control over Iran leader as death toll of US soldiers rises – Al Jazeera"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump says new supreme leader will \u2018not last long\u2019 without US approval hours before Mojtaba Khamenei selected.<\/em>
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United States President Donald Trump has again asserted that he would exert influence over Iran\u2019s next supreme leader, saying that whoever is picked for the role without Washington\u2019s approval is \u201cnot going to last long\u201d.
The statement on Sunday came hours before Iranian state media reported that the Assembly of Experts had selected a new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei<\/a>, the son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the hours after the US and Israel launched a war on Iran<\/a> on February 28.
Trump did not immediately respond to the younger Khamenei\u2019s selection, but broadly said earlier that any individual would need US approval. Iranian officials have denied that the Trump administration has had any influence on the decision.
\u201cHe\u2019s going to have to get approval from us,\u201d Trump told ABC News, referring to a possible new supreme leader. \u201cIf he doesn\u2019t get approval from us, he\u2019s not going to last long.\u201d
Trump added that he did not want future administrations to have \u201cto go back\u201d in the years ahead, an apparent reference to future military action.
\u201cI don\u2019t 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,\u201d he said.
Officials in Iran, which has launched retaliatory attacks across the Middle East, have repeatedly rejected the notion of Washington asserting influence over the selection.<\/p>\n

Earlier on Sunday, Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi again said that \u201cwe will allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs\u201d.
\u201cThis is up to the Iranian people to elect their new leader,\u201d he said, adding that Iranians had elected the Assembly of Experts, the body that selects the supreme leader.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Barbara Slavin, a fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, pointed to Trump\u2019s previous statements to US media in which he said he would not accept Mojtaba Khamenei as the next supreme leader.
\u201cIt\u2019s a real finger in the eye to Donald Trump,\u201d said Slavin, adding that the replacement of the elder Khamenei with his son would not be well received by a US public that polls show is already wary of the war.
\u201cIt\u2019s going to increase the sense in the United States that this war was a mistake,\u201d she said.
Mojtaba Khamenei\u2019s selection was announced shortly after the Pentagon confirmed that a seventh US soldier had died since the war began.
In a statement, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said the unidentified soldier had been wounded \u201cat the scene of an attack on US troops in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on March 1\u201d, and died on Saturday.
Further details were not immediately available.
Meanwhile, the death toll<\/a> in Iran had risen to 1,332, with at least 11 people killed across the Gulf, and another 11 killed in Israel.
The US president has offered shifting justifications for the war, repeatedly pointing to Iran\u2019s nuclear ambitions, its ballistic missile programme, as well as the totality of Iran\u2019s actions in the region since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Critics, including the majority of Democratic US lawmakers<\/a>, have said Trump has provided scant evidence to prove that Iran posed an immediate threat.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, Omani Minister of Foreign Affairs Badr Albusaidi, who had been overseeing indirect US-Iran talks on Tehran\u2019s nuclear programme, again rejected US officials\u2019 claims that Tehran had not entered into the negotiations in good faith.
Speaking during a ministerial meeting of the Arab League, Albusaidi said diplomatic initiatives seeking a \u201cfair and honourable solution were making progress\u201d when the US-Israeli attacks began.
He further warned that the region is facing \u201ca dangerous turning point\u201d as fighting escalates.
Attacks from both sides appear to have widened<\/a>, with the US and Israel for the first time striking oil storage and refining facilities in Tehran, and Iran launching more strikes across the Gulf, including a drone attack that caused material damage to a desalination plant in Bahrain.
Both Bloomberg and Axios have reported that the US and Israel have considered a special ground operation to seize Iran\u2019s enriched uranium, with Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter telling CBS\u2019s Face the Nation programme that securing the nuclear fuel is \u201con our radar screen, and we\u2019re going to take care of it\u201d.
For their part, top Trump administration officials spent Sunday seeking to alleviate concerns over the war\u2019s knock-on effects on global oil and gas prices.
Rapidly rising prices represent a particular political vulnerability for Trump, as his Republican Party faces legislative midterm elections in November.
Speaking to Fox News, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the administration was responding to what she called a \u201cshort-term disruption\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said the administration was \u201ctapping into our newfound market in Venezuela\u201d, referring to access that US companies have gained to the South American country\u2019s oil industry in the wake of the January 3 US abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.
Energy experts have said that rebuilding Venezuela\u2019s oil industry would likely be a multi-year process, and have questioned what immediate impact it could have in offsetting current shortages.
Speaking on Face the Nation, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright also maintained that the war would not drag on and that any economic fallout would be fleeting.
Trump, who came into office on a pledge to end so-called \u201cendless wars\u201d, has said the operations against Iran could last \u201cfour to five weeks\u201d, but he also said the conflict had \u201cno time limit\u201d.
Wright pointed to \u201ca temporary period of elevated energy prices\u201d, but denied there was an energy shortage \u201cat all in the Western Hemisphere\u201d.
He also underscored that the US has 400 million gallons\u00a0of oil in the strategic oil reserves, and the administration is \u201cmore than happy to use that if it\u2019s needed\u201d.
\u201cWhat you want is emotional reactions and fear that this is a long-term war,\u201d Wright said. \u201cThis is not a long-term war; it\u2019s a temporary movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow Al Jazeera English:<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trump says new supreme leader will \u2018not last long\u2019 without US approval hours before Mojtaba Khamenei selected.ShareSaveUnited States President Donald Trump has again asserted that he would exert influence over Iran\u2019s next supreme leader, saying that whoever is picked for the role without Washington\u2019s approval is \u201cnot going to last long\u201d.The statement on Sunday came […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":203464,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-203463","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}