Donald Trump: Iranians wanted me to be their supreme leader

❐ International Desk

US President Donald Trump has made a sensational claim that Iran’s leadership offered him the role of the country’s next supreme leader, but he turned it down.

Trump made this claim in a speech at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s (NRCC) annual fundraiser in Washington on Thursday, March 26.

He said he was informally offered the position by Tehran after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a joint US-Israeli military operation.

Trump joked, “No head of state in the world would want a less attractive job than being the head of Iran. They told me they wanted me to be the next supreme leader, but I said, ‘No thanks, I don’t want that.'”

According to an NDTV report, contrary to Trump’s claim, Iran has already replaced Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, as the country’s new supreme leader after his death.

However, Trump stressed in his speech that Tehran is currently negotiating desperately with Washington behind the scenes to stop the war, although they deny it in public.

According to Trump, Iranian officials are very keen on the deal but are afraid of being killed by their own people or a coup. At the same time, Trump claimed, they are also afraid of losing their lives at the hands of US forces.

Meanwhile, the White House has also claimed that peace talks with Iran are still ongoing, although Tehran has publicly rejected all American proposals and imposed new, tough conditions on its own to resolve the conflict.

According to Iran’s state-run Press TV, Tehran has sought several guarantees to end the war, including assurances that the US and Israel will never attack again in the future, compensation for war damages, and recognition of Iran’s absolute sovereignty over the strategically important Strait of Hormuz.

However, Iran shows no signs of backing down from the war until these demands are met.

Despite relentless US and Israeli bombing in the past month of this horrific war, Iran has maintained its military posture. According to Trump, there is currently a major power vacuum in Iran and the country’s leadership is in utter chaos.

However, political analysts believe that Trump’s claim to be the “supreme leader” is mainly a tactic to create psychological pressure on Iran and incite internal discord. The future of this war, which has spread across the Middle East and the instability in the global oil market, now depends on the cold war between Washington and Tehran.