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Trump wants to pick Iran’s new leader – will a hostile regime under fire agree?published at 02:39 GMT
Lyse Doucet
Chief international correspondent
Image source, EPAThe US president who likes to keep the world guessing about his endgame in Iran is now telling the world what he wants.
In a war widely described as his “war of choice”, Donald Trump says he also wants to choose who will rule Iran now that its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and dozens of others clerics and commanders, have been assassinated.
That seems unthinkable for a clerical regime rooted in deep distrust of America – among its most ideological elements there is burning hostility towards the country they labelled long ago as the “great Satan”.
Whether Iran’s embattled leadership would be mindful of choosing a top cleric willing to work in a different way with Washington is not clear.
There has long been division between factions known as reformers and pragmatists, and the hardliners who call themselves Principlists in their defence of their revolution.
But they are united on one goal: the survival of the system which keeps them in power.
There are reports that the Assembly of Experts – a grouping of some 88 senior clerics tasked with this responsibility – could chose a council of leaders rather than one person to preside in this perilous time.
However, it is not even clear that the successor will be announced, since Israel has made it clear that whoever emerges will also be an “unequivocal target”.
The only person speaking often and openly about this highly sensitive choice is Trump, who has remarked: “Most of the people we had in mind are dead.”
- You read more of BBC chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet’s analysis here
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