Over the past week, Trump has given all kinds of reasons to justify the attacks, including an unprecedented claim yesterday that if the operation had not been launched right now, with a two-week margin, Tehran would have obtained a nuclear weapon, while simultaneously boasting of having annihilated its nuclear program in last June's attacks. The American president has also outlined various scenarios for the future: from a citizen uprising to a possible civil war with the arrival of the Kurds. He indicated that his country had identified potential candidates to succeed Ali Jamenei, who died on the first day of the attacks, but most of them had also died. However, he has now made it clear that the most likely successor, Jamenei's own son, is not acceptable. And that he will be the one to decide who rules in Iran.
"They are wasting their time. Jamenei's son is insignificant. I have to participate in the appointment, as with Delcy [Rodríguez] in Venezuela," Trump told Axios in a brief interview on Thursday. "Jamenei's son is unacceptable to me. We want someone who brings harmony and peace to Iran," he added, stating that this would simply be a continuation of Jamenei's same policies, who has been in power since 1989. According to him, these policies would force the United States back into war "in five years."
On Tuesday, during a joint appearance with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the American president had indicated that "the worst-case scenario would be if we did this and the person who took office was as bad as the previous one, right? That could happen. We don't want that to happen (...) It would probably be the worst. You go through this and then, in five years, you realize that you put someone who is not better."
Similarly, the White House seems to have completely ruled out, at least for now, the option of Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah who has been exiled in the US for 40 years, very close to Washington, and who in recent weeks has mobilized all his followers to try to convince the Trump administration that he is the best possible candidate to lead a transition to democracy.
The government is not convinced and seems to lean, as Trump has said several times, towards someone similar to Delcy Rodríguez. Someone from within, who controls the levers, the natural resources, and who agrees to remain in power but obeying all instructions from Washington. "Some people like him," Trump said about Pahlavi on Tuesday as well, before adding: "We haven't thought much about that. It seems to me that someone from within, perhaps, would be more appropriate." The MAGA leader stated that he would prefer a moderate, "someone who is there, who is popular at the moment, if such a person exists."