Trump: Iran's Next Supreme Leader 'Not Going to Last Long' Without US Approval

US President Donald Trump escalated his intervention in Iran's succession crisis, telling ABC News that the incoming supreme leader would need White House approval to remain in power. 'He's going to have to get approval from us,' Trump said. 'If he doesn't get approval from us he's not going to last long. We want to make sure that we don't have to go back every 10 years, when you don't have a president like me that's not going to do it.' Trump directly tied the succession demand to the nuclear question: 'I don't want people to have to go back in five years and have to do the same thing again, or worse let them have a nuclear weapon.' The statement goes further than Trump's earlier dismissal of Mojtaba Khamenei as a 'lightweight' — it is a direct threat that the US will take military action if the new leader does not meet American conditions. For Iran, the demand that a foreign power approve its supreme leader — the highest office of the Islamic Republic — is constitutionally and ideologically unacceptable. The statement also clarifies Trump's strategic objective: not simply to degrade Iran's military, but to achieve a fundamental change in the nature of the Iranian state, including its nuclear programme and its leadership structure. This represents the most explicit articulation of US regime-change objectives in the war.