Abbas Araghchi has dismissed President Trump’s claims of U.S. authority over Iran’s leadership succession as illegal interference while defending Iran’s military strikes against regional U.S. bases as necessary self-defense.
In a tense exchange highlighting the geopolitical stakes of the ongoing conflict, Iranian official Abbas Araghchi used a Sunday appearance on “Meet the Press” to reject U.S. influence over Iran’s leadership transition following the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Araghchi’s comments served as a direct rebuttal to President Trump’s assertion on ABC News that any successor “is going to have to get approval from us. If he doesn’t get approval from us he’s not going to last long,” with Araghchi counter-claiming that “we allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs. This is up to the Iranian people to elect their new leader.”
While Araghchi maintained that the final decision rests with the Assembly of Experts and that “we have to wait for the Assembly of Experts to convene and vote for the new supreme leader,”he also took the opportunity to defend retaliatory missile strikes against U.S. bases in neighboring Gulf countries, stating, “it is Americans who started this war against us, attacking us, and we are defending ourselves.” Demanding an apology for the “killings and destruction” caused by the U.S.-Israeli military assault, Araghchi justified the regional strikes by noting that “our missiles cannot reach US soil, so what we can do is attack American bases and installations around us.”