Trump points chilling warning to Iran’s new Supreme Leader… as he backs off troops on the bottom
Donald Trump has issued a stark warning to Iran‘s new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei just weeks after ordering the strike that killed his father.
Trump said he was ‘not happy with’ Khamenei as the Islamic regime’s new dictator, the New York Post reported.
When asked what he would do to the Islamic leader, Trump responded: ‘Not going to tell you…Not going to tell you. I’m not happy with him.’
The President has previously vowed that he would kill any successor of Iran’s leadership who assumed power without his permission.
Trump also backed off his earlier threat to send US troops to destroy Iran’s uranium stockpile at a secret nuclear facility near Tehran.
‘We haven’t made any decision on that. We’re nowhere near it,’ Trump said of deploying ground troops to the underground Uranium stockpile in Isfahan.
His latest remarks directly contradict earlier statements in which he said he was considering deploying soldiers as the war with Iran spiraled across the Middle East.
‘I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t think it’s an appropriate question. You know, I’m not going to answer it. Could there be? Possible, for very good reason,’ Trump said.
Trump said he was ‘not happy with’ Khamenei as the Islamic regime’s new dictator
Trump also walked back claims that he would send US ground troops to overthrow the regime
The President has previously said that he would kill any successor of Iran’s leadership who assumed power without his permission
The phrase ‘boots on the ground’ is ‘not the same as what it means for the media,’ a senior official told Axios last week.
Discussions in the White House have centred on a potential special operations raid, not a large-scale military operation involving tens of thousands of troops, the official said.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has refused to rule out whether Trump would send US troops into Iran.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also noted during a 60 Minutes interview Sunday that he and Trump are ‘willing to go as far we need to go’ to destroy Iran’s regime.
Mojtaba, 56, the second son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was announced as his successor on Sunday after being appointed by the regime’s 88-person assembly – despite previous opposition from his father.
The ‘vengeful’ hardline cleric is already marked for assassination by Israel after it vowed to ‘eliminate’ whoever succeeded the slain Ayatollah, having killed him and Mojtaba’s wife Zahra Haddad-Adel in strikes on the first day of the conflict.
Mojtaba is described as a hardline fundamentalist with close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
He has been injured during the war, Iranian state TV reported, with an anchor describing him as ‘janbaz’ – wounded by the enemy – during what the regime’s media calls the ‘Ramadan war.’
A smoke cloud erupts from the site of an Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs on March 9
State TV did not elaborate on the nature of his injuries, although his wife and father were both killed in Israeli strikes on Tehran.
Trump has described the new leader as a ‘lightweight’ and said ‘I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodriguez] in Venezuela.’
Seven American troops have been killed and more than a dozen others injured in an Iranian drone attack.
Trump previously warned that US troops could lose their lives, adding that ‘we may have casualties.’
