The initial attacks on Iran wiped out all of the United States’ main choices to take over the regime, Donald Trump has claimed.
The US President said the White House had shortlisted several preferred successors to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei before his death.
But he claimed the military operation was ‘so successful’ that it not only killed Washington’s main contenders but also its ‘second or third’ options.
Iran is thought to be considering its top security chief Ali Larijani as a choice for leader, along with Khamenei’s second eldest son Mojtaba Khamenei and Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, speaker of the country’s parliament.
‘The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,’ Mr Trump told ABC News.
He said 48 Iranian leaders had been killed in the bombings over the weekend, wiping out much of the country’s leadership.
The President has not revealed who was earmarked for the successor but among the dead were one of the regime’s top advisers Ali Shamkhani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard General Mohammad Pakpour and hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
In a separate interview with the New York Times, Mr Trump said he had ‘three very good choices’ for the next potential leader for Iran, but did not reveal who these were.
On Monday night Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi told state TV that the killing of the supreme leader was a ‘religious crime’ that will have serious consequences.
Tehran has vowed to stand firm in the face of continuing attacks, with Mr Larijani saying Iran ‘will not negotiate with the United States’.
But Mr Trump claimed he had been contacted by someone within the regime who wanted to make a deal.
Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, is also likely to figure prominently in the deliberations of clerics over who will be named supreme leader.
Following Khamenei’s death, Iran is being led by a temporary council made up of its president Masoud Pezeshkian, chief justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei and senior cleric Alireza Arafi.
