Trump ‘not happy’ with Iran’s new supreme leader, but talks with Tehran officials ‘possible’

US President Donald Trump told Fox News on Tuesday that he was “not happy” with the selection of Mojtaba Khamenei as Iran’s new supreme leader, as a top US envoy said he may visit Israel next week for talks on the war.

“I don’t believe he can live in peace,” Trump said of the new Iranian leader.

Iran tapped as its new supreme leader this week hardliner Mojtaba Khamenei to replace his father, who was killed on the first day of US-Israeli strikes. Trump previously called the younger Khamenei a “lightweight” and said that he himself should be involved in choosing Iran’s next leader.

But Trump on Tuesday still left open the door to potential negotiations with Iran, saying he’d heard officials in Tehran badly want to talk, and “It’s possible, depends on what terms.”

“We sort of don’t have to speak anymore… but it’s possible,” Trump added.

In the weeks before the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28, Washington and Tehran held three rounds of talks mediated by Oman aimed at reaching a deal on Iran’s nuclear program, but US negotiators said the sides were at an impasse.

The US president said Tuesday that America would have been attacked if he had waited three more days to strike Iran: “If we had waited three days, I believe we would have been attacked.”

“When we attacked them first, we knocked out 50% of their missiles,” he added. “And if we didn’t, it would have been a much harder fight.”

Trump has also previously pushed back against the claim that Israel dragged the US into a war against Iran.

Last week, the US president told reporters that “we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they [the Iranians] were going to attack first.”

Meanwhile, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said Tuesday that he and Jared Kushner may visit Israel next week, while clarifying that such a plan is not yet finalized.

Witkoff denied in a CNBC interview that the visit initially planned for this week was canceled due to anger over Israel’s targeting of Iran’s oil production sites. He said the visit is aimed at coordinating with Israel on Iran.

“We’ll probably make that trip next week, but we’re not sure about it as of now,” Witkoff said.

Asked if Israel’s end goals for the war are the same as Washington’s — given that Jerusalem has been more insistent on the need for regime change — Witkoff insisted that the countries are aligned.

Witkoff also said Iran has not shown any interest in returning to negotiations since the US and Israel launched the war on February 28.

“I’m sure the president would be open to it, but right now, peace through strength matters. People like the Iranians only understand one thing — a bad alternative if they don’t do as the president has asked them to do,” he claimed.

He said Iran has created an “offensive missile shield” to protect its nuclear program and is wreaking havoc across the region, losing all of its allies in the process by targeting them since the war’s outbreak.

Pressed on the US justification for the war, after it claimed to have obliterated Iran’s nuclear program last year, Witkoff said the US has “destroyed almost all of their enrichment capability and conversion capability” — an apparent acknowledgement that Iran’s program had not, in fact, been completely obliterated.

He pointed out that Iran has barred UN monitors from accessing its nuclear sites since the US and Israeli strikes on Iran last June.

“If everything was just for civil purposes, as they said, why would they not allow observers into their country? They won’t allow them in because there are bad things going on there,” Witkoff said.

He also noted that Iran has 460 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% — a level not needed “unless you’re pursuing a weapon.”

“They could easily have taken the 60% enriched material and made a dirty bomb out of it,” Witkoff said, something that would ostensibly require sites that the US had claimed it had completely destroyed last year.

As for reports that Russia is sharing intelligence with Iran against the US, Witkoff said that Moscow has denied this.

“Let’s hope that they’re not sharing… We can take them at their word,” he said.

Agencies and Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.