Donald Trump says he ‘must be involved’ in choosing Iran’s next supreme leader, reports say – US politics live | US news
Trump says he must ‘be involved in’ choosing Iran’s next leader
Donald Trump has said he must “be involved in the appointment” of Iran’s next leader as he was in Venezuela, and dismissed the idea of the assassinated ayatollah’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, succeeding his father as supreme leader as “unacceptable”.
“They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodriguez] in Venezuela,” Trump told Axios today. You will remember that Rodriguez took over after US forces captured president Nicolás Maduro in January.
Trump added that he could not accept a new Iranian leader who would continue Khamenei’s policies.
“Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me. We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran,” he said.
Selecting a leader who followed the policies of the former supreme leader could force the US back to war “in five years”, he added.
It comes a day after Trump’s defense secretary Pete Hegseth insisted that regime change was not the primary goal of the US military operation in Iran. Other Trump administration officials have made the same claim since the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran last Saturday, which killed the former supreme leader Ali Khamenei .
This, even though Trump himself has pushed for Iranian regime change previously. His administration has pivoted its messaging in recent days to focus on destroying Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities.
Since the US-Israeli military assault began, Trump has suggested several times that he had a good idea who he wanted to succeed Khamenei in Iran.
But these latest comments to Axios come after he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday:
double quotation mark Most of the people we had in mind are dead.
No formal announcement has been made from Iran regarding the selection of a new leader, though Mojtaba Khamenei is considered the frontrunner.
Key events
Was Trump ever in control of the Iran war? – podcast
This week on Politics Weekly America, my colleague Rachel Leingang speaks with foreign policy expert Ali Vaez – who discusses what it was like to take part in war game exercises for the Pentagon, and how they compare with what he has seen play out this week.
Then the Guardian’s Andrew Roth talks us through the inner chaos in the Trump administration and Congress over Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran.
Trump denies Noem’s claim that he signed off on $220m border security ad campaign
Donald Trump has said that he did not sign off on a $200m border security advertising campaign featuring his embattled homeland security secretary Kristi Noem.
“I never knew anything about it,” the president told Reuters in a phone interview today.
NBC News also reported on the denial today, citing a White House official as saying: “POTUS did not sign off on a $220 MILLION dollar ad campaign. Absolutely not.”
Noem – who has been overseeing Trump’s aggressive and highly contentious immigration crackdown – was questioned by both Democrats and Republicans before a Senate panel yesterday about the contract and process to select the companies.
It was also the first time she addressed members of Congress since federal immigration officers fatally shot two US citizens – Renee Good and Alex Pretti – during a surge of law enforcement in Minneapolis in January. Several Democrats have called for Noem to resign or risk impeachment.
In response to questions from GOP senator John Kennedy, Noem claimed that Trump did know about her decision to approve the contract for the border security ads, in which she is prominently featured, including a scene filmed on horseback at Mount Rushmore in the former South Dakota governor’s home state.
As Shrai reported on Tuesday, Kennedy also noted that the contract to make the ads was awarded to a strategy group run by the husband of Noem’s former spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin.
Noem said on Tuesday that the contract was awarded through “a competitive process” and that no political appointees were involved. Yesterday, she said the contract was “all done correctly, all done legally”.
Further to that, Donald Trump has said the same thing to Reuters today.
He said that the US must have a role in choosing Iran’s next leader and that while it was very early in the process of picking a new leader, Ali Khamenei’s son Mojtaba was an unlikely choice.
double quotation mark We want to be involved in the process of choosing the person who is going to lead Iran into the future. We don’t have to go back every five years and do this again and again … Somebody that’s going to be great for the people, great for the country.
Trump says he must ‘be involved in’ choosing Iran’s next leader
Donald Trump has said he must “be involved in the appointment” of Iran’s next leader as he was in Venezuela, and dismissed the idea of the assassinated ayatollah’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, succeeding his father as supreme leader as “unacceptable”.
“They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodriguez] in Venezuela,” Trump told Axios today. You will remember that Rodriguez took over after US forces captured president Nicolás Maduro in January.
Trump added that he could not accept a new Iranian leader who would continue Khamenei’s policies.
“Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me. We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran,” he said.
Selecting a leader who followed the policies of the former supreme leader could force the US back to war “in five years”, he added.
It comes a day after Trump’s defense secretary Pete Hegseth insisted that regime change was not the primary goal of the US military operation in Iran. Other Trump administration officials have made the same claim since the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran last Saturday, which killed the former supreme leader Ali Khamenei .
This, even though Trump himself has pushed for Iranian regime change previously. His administration has pivoted its messaging in recent days to focus on destroying Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities.
Since the US-Israeli military assault began, Trump has suggested several times that he had a good idea who he wanted to succeed Khamenei in Iran.
But these latest comments to Axios come after he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday:
double quotation mark Most of the people we had in mind are dead.
No formal announcement has been made from Iran regarding the selection of a new leader, though Mojtaba Khamenei is considered the frontrunner.
State department says almost 20,000 citizens have returned to US from Middle East
Almost 20,000 American citizens have returned to the US from the Middle East, according to state department spokesperson Dylan Johnson.
“These figures do not include the many Americans who have safely relocated to other countries or those who have departed the Middle East but are still in transit back to the United States,” Johnson said in a statement.
This comes after the Trump administration received questions over whether it should have done more, in advance of the weekend strikes on Iran, to evacuate more Americans in the Middle East.
Major airlines have canceled flights to and from the region since Saturday, and several airports paused flights and scaled back operations, leaving thousands stranded. There have also been reports of Americans calling the state department hotline and being receiving no guidance on how to return to the US.
Congress to vote on funding bill to reopen DHS
Both the US House and Senate are set to cast votes on a funding bill to reopen the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The department shuttered three weeks ago, after lawmakers failed to pass the necessary appropriations amid a reckoning over aggressive tactics by federal immigration officers.
The House is set to vote on the measure at 4pm ET, while the Senate will attempt to advance the legislation at 1:45pm ET. The upper chamber needs to clear a 60-vote threshold to move funding forward. It seems all but certain to fail, as Democrats remain resolute that any bill must include stronger guardrails on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Their demands have largely been dismissed by GOP members of Congress.
While several agencies, like the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), have been affected, immigration enforcement is able to continue, thanks to the billions of dollars conferred by the sweeping tax policy bill that Donald Trump signed into law last year.
On Truth Social today, Donald Trump has spent much of his time on the platform urging lawmakers to take up the SAVE America Act – legislation which requires a photo ID in order to cast a ballot, proof of citizenship at voter registration and significantly curtails mail-in voting.
The House passed the bill, but faces an uphill battle in the Senate.
Hannah Harris Green
Experts say that the Trump administration has failed to take obvious steps to contain the spread of measles, which is continuing to accelerate in the United States as the number of cases has climbed past 1,000.
The administration has revealed a relaxed attitude toward the highly contagious virus both in terms of messaging and funding allocation, experts said.
“One of the leaders at [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)] referred to this dramatic and tragic increase in the cases of measles, and, in some states, deaths, as just the ‘cost of doing business’,” noted Alonzo Plough, who has worked in multiple senior public health positions and is currently chief of science at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Plough was referencing a quote from Dr Ralph Abraham, who served as CDC principal deputy director beginning in December 2025, and who resigned in late February. To Plough, hearing that from CDC leadership suggests “that they do not believe that this is a significant issue to track”.
Andrew G Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said it’s “entirely inaccurate” to suggest that the CDC had deprioritized measles.
“The CDC’s focus remains on measles prevention and treatment education and targeted public health interventions to protect communities and provide clear, accurate information to all Americans,” Nixon said.
Florida’s former surgeon general and a current professor at Brown University’s school of public health, Dr Scott Rivkees, said that current messaging on public health is causing “tremendous confusion to the public”, with “individuals in senior positions who are advocating for things that the medical community will take issue with”, like “alternatives” to the measles vaccine, which is known to be safe and effective.
Trump vows to endorse a Republican candidate in Texas runoff
Donald Trump said that he would endorse a candidate in the heated Texas GOP runoff “soon”.
This comes as neither the four-term incumbent, senator John Cornyn, or the state attorney general, Ken Paxton, received 50% of the votes in Tuesday’s primary.
Throughout campaigning, Trump abstained from weighing in, and heaped praise on all candidates during a visit to Texas last week.
However, in a post-election post on Truth Social, the president said that after he makes his endorsement he will ask the other candidate “to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE!”, noting the importance for his party to fend off a Democratic triumph in the Lone Star State and inch closer to reclaiming the US Senate.
A reminder that no Democrat has won a statewide election in Texas since 1994.
During a press conference at Downing Street today, Keir Starmer fielded questions about the state of Britain’s “special relationship” with the US. This comes after Donald Trump scolded the UK prime minister for refusing to let US forces use British military bases for the ongoing military operation on Iran. This week, Trump said that Starmer was “no Churchill” at a meeting with German chancellor Friedrich Merz.
“The special relationship is in operation right now,” Starmer said. “It’s for the president to take decisions that he considers in the national interest the right decisions for the US … but equally, it’s for me as the British prime minister to take decisions that I consider to be in the best interest of the United Kingdom.”
My colleague, Tom Ambrose, is covering the latest.
A reminder that my colleague, Vivian Ho, is covering the latest developments out of the Middle East as the US-Israel war on Iran enters its sixth day.
She notes that the World Health Organization (WHO) said it has verified more than a dozen attacks on health infrastructure in Iran.
Four healthcare workers have been killed and 25 others injured, according to the organisation.
“WHO has verified 13 attacks on health care in Iran and one in Lebanon,” the organisation’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference, without attributing blame.
Sara Braun
As hundreds of civilians and some US service members have been killed in the aftermath of the 28 February strike against Iran by the United States and Israel, the Guardian asked readers in the US what their thoughts are on the latest military action in Iran.
Their responses were largely disapproving, with some acknowledging that the Iranian regime needed to be toppled, even with a high cost.
“I don’t have any love lost for the ayatollahs,” said Iraj Roshan, a 66-year-old retired cardiologist and US citizen who was born in Tehran, in an interview with the Guardian. “But these wars are won by narrative.”
Roshan fled to Turkey after the Iranian revolution, making his way to Austria and later the US, where he has lived since 1983.
On the campaign trail – in 2016, 2020 and 2024 – Donald Trump and his allies spoke against foreign intervention, painting Democrats as enablers of war. In a series of social media posts days before the 2024 election day, Trump adviser Stephen Miller repeatedly warned that a win for Kamala Harris, the then vice-president, would lead to young men being “drafted to fight” in a “3rd World War”.
Roshan argues that the US government does not have a strategy in the Middle East.
“I don’t see any way this war is going to end in a way that the US can declare victory without putting boots on the ground or without arming the Iranians themselves,” he said.
Read more about how Americans are reacting to the US-Israel war in Iran.
US gas price continues to rise, highest in almost a year
According to the latest reading by AAA, the average gas price is $3.25 a gallon – the highest in 11 months. This is also 27 cents higher than a week ago, before the US launched its first strikes against Iran.
The ongoing surge in oil prices comes as shipments passing through a crucial waterway, the strait of Hormuz, have been disrupted as the US-Israel war on Iran continues. Around 20% of the world’s crude oil travels through the choke point.
Department of Defense identifies names of final two US soldiers killed in drone strike
The Pentagon has released the names of the final two of the six service members who were killed during a recent drone strike in Kuwait.
The two soldiers were identified as Chief Warrant Officer Robert Marzan, 54, and Maj Jeffrey O’Brien, 45. They were from Sacramento, California, and Indianola, Iowa, respectively.
Earlier in the week, the Department of Defense named the first four soldiers killed in the attack. The White House said that Donald Trump plans to attend the ‘dignified transfer’ of the bodies of the six US service members who have been killed since the war with Iran began.
Donald Trump is in Washington today. We won’t hear from the president until 4pm ET, when he welcomes the Inter Miami FC, the 2025 Major League Soccer Champions, to the White House.
We’ll be listening out for the latest lines on the US-Israel war in Iran.
Moderate Democrats plot path to victory by winning the middle
George Chidi
Joe Walsh half jumped out of his seat when discussion at the Third Way conference in Charleston turned to how Democrats sound to voters.
“Tone! My God!” the former Republican congressman shouted. “The Democrats come across as, like, professors, academics, elites. I mean, my God, rip off your freaking sport coat and talk to me! Listen to me like a regular human being.”
Walsh, who left the Republican party last year over Donald Trump, vibrated with the frustration of Democratic operatives and funders and elected officials who had gathered over the weekend in Charleston, South Carolina, to discuss how to win moderate voters. Many were alumni of the Clinton administration, or Biden’s White House, who fear that the provocations of Donald Trump will push candidates to the left, when they believe that progressive policies cost Kamala Harris the 2024 election.
The Democratic National Committee has refused to publicly release its autopsy of the 2024 election, calling it a “distraction” when Democrats appear poised to win big midterm gains. A progressive group, RootsAction, released its postmortem in December, arguing that courting the middle while failing to forcefully admonish the Israeli government for its actions in Gaza turned off liberal and working-class voters, leading to a historic collapse in turnout among those groups.
Moderate activists at the invitation-only conference, titled “Winning the Middle”, also highlighted the loss of support among voters without college degrees and the working class. But they disagree sharply about what caused them to withhold support from Harris, and what it takes to get it back.
More here:
Fetterman on Iran’s leadership: ‘Just keep killing them until they’re gone’
The Senate vote on a war powers resolution broke down along party lines on Wednesday, 47-53 – John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the sole Democrat to vote against the measure, while Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only member of the Republican majority to support the resolution.
On Wednesday, prior to the vote, Fetterman went on CNN News Central to voice his support of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran and say that this was a situation of “country over party”.
“What I’m trying to establish is that every single senator in the Congress says we should never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. That now has made that possible after that. And now they’ve eliminated this leadership,” Fetterman said. “Now, do you really want those things? Does it really matter? Were you really serious about that? Because if you were, why can’t we just acknowledge – I’m not with all of it – but this was a great development for the region.”
Anchor Kate Bolduan asked Fetterman if he thought the US and Israel were aligned in their war goals, specifically in regards to comments made by Israeli defense minister Israel Katz that “any leader appointed by the Iranian terror regime” would become “an unequivocal target for elimination”.
“Yeah just keep killing them until they’re gone,” Fetterman said. “I mean, absolutely. I’ve read that they’re (Israel is) going to target who they (Iran) ever elect to be their next leader and kill them. Absolutely. I fully support it. So, that’s what’s entirely appropriate.”
When Bolduan pushed further on the issue, asking Fetterman who should decide the leader of Iran, “if you think the United State should take part in taking out every next leader going forward” if the leader doesn’t meet the right measure, he responded by saying he “absolutely” supports killing the leadership of Iran.
“Hey, I’m sorry, I absolutely support killing, you know, the leadership of the Iranian. Absolutely. I absolutely support that,” Fetterman said. “I think that’s entirely appropriate until hopefully they’ll pick someone that realizes that they need to live and coexist in peace in the region and stop trying to destroy Israel and to stabilize the region.”
House to vote on war powers resolution after Senate measure fails
Welcome to our coverage of US politics today as the conflict as Iran continues to dominate the agenda.
The House is preparing to vote on Thursday on a war powers resolution that would require Donald Trump to seek congressional permission before continuing the war with Iran – a sign of unease in Congress over the rapidly widening conflict.
It’s the second vote in as many days, after the Senate defeated a similar measure along party lines on Wednesday.
The tally in the House is expected to be tight, but the outcome will provide an early snapshot of the political support, or opposition, to the US-Israel military operation and the president’s rationale for bypassing Congress, which alone has the power to declare war.
“Donald Trump is not a king, and if he believes the war with Iran is in our national interest, then he must come to Congress and make the case,” said Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Meanwhile Republicans are invoking the war in Iran and the prospect of retaliatory terrorist attacks as they tee up votes on Thursday on a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security.
The House already approved a DHS spending bill in January, but it faltered in the Senate as Democrats insisted on changes to immigration enforcement operations following the fatal shooting of ICU nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents in the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. As a result, funding for the department lapsed on 14 February.
Republicans are calling on Democrats to reconsider their vote in the wake of the conflict in Iran. Both the House and the Senate are expected to hold votes on the matter.
“The military action in Iran makes it all more urgent and crucial to have a fully funded, fully staffed DHS across all its departments,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said.
It appears unlikely this strategy will win over Democrats but stay with us to see how it plays out.
In other news:
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Defense secretary Pete Hegseth told Israel to “keep going until the end” on Iran, saying the US stood with the country, in overnight talks with his counterpart, Israel Katz.
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The Pentagon has released the names of the final two of the six soldiers who were killed during a recent drone strike in Kuwait. The two soldiers were identified as Chief Warrant Officer Robert Marzan, 54, and Maj Jeffrey O’Brien, 45. They were from Sacramento, California, and Indianola, Iowa, respectively.
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Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana dropped his bid for a third term on Wednesday in a surprise withdrawal just minutes before a filing deadline for candidates. Daines, 63, said in a statement that he wrestled with the decision for months before deciding to retire. Montana US Attorney Kurt Alme entered the race shortly before the state’s deadline for major party candidates. Donald Trump has endorsed Alme and praised Daines.
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Former President Barack Obama is promoting a Democratic effort to redraw congressional lines in Virginia, the latest front in a nationwide redistricting battle ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The announcement on Thursday comes a day after the state Supreme Court allowed the redistricting question to go to voters for an April 21 election. Early voting begins Friday.
