Trump signals willingness to talk to new Iranian leadership as strikes continue
Washington — President Trump said Sunday he was ready to speak with Iran’s new leaders following the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei diesthe country’s longtime leader, killed in Israeli airstrikes on Saturday.
“They want to talk, and I agreed to talk, so I’m going to talk to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given sooner which was very convenient and easy to do. They waited too long,” Mr. Trump told The Atlantic in a phone call Sunday morning.
A senior White House official said later in the day that the president would “eventually” speak with the Iranians, but “[f]or now, Operation Epic Fury continues unabated”, referring to the ongoing bombing campaign by the United States and Israel.
Khamenei’s death has raised questions about who will now take power, with no clear successor in place. Dozens of other senior Iranian officials have also been killed in strikes, further complicating the way forward. Mr. Trump and other officials have urged the Iranian people to completely overthrow the regime, but the likelihood of a mass uprising succeeding is far from certain.
Sen. Tom Cotton, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that “I don’t think anyone can give you a simple answer” about who will succeed Khamenei, who has been in power since 1989.
“There’s probably a lot of prevarication going on in Iran right now. They have a very consultative, deliberative process to replace the supreme leader. There’s a reason he didn’t want to have a clear succession plan in place. It’s hard to do that when the United States is hitting its leaders every moment of the day,” Cotton said.
“I’m sure, however, that there are also leaders in Iran who might rush to audition for the role of Iranian Delcy Rodriguez,” Cotton added, referring to the interim president of Venezuelawho took power with U.S. support after Nicolas Maduro was captured by U.S. forces in January.
The United States and Iran had been engaged in negotiations over the country’s nuclear program for weeks before Saturday’s strikes began. U.S. officials, including the president, have expressed frustration with the Iranians’ refusal to accept demands to abandon their nuclear program and engage in negotiations over their ballistic capabilities and support for proxy groups in the region.
In his conversation with The Atlantic, the president said many officials involved in the negotiations had been killed.
“Most of those people left. Some of the people we dealt with left, because it was a big success,” he said. “They should have done it sooner… They could have made a deal. They should have done it sooner. They played so cute.”
