Trump demands 'to be involved' in picking Iran's new leader

The president said he must personally be involved  in selecting Iran's next leader and that choosing  

the son of the late supreme leader is unacceptable  to him. Quote, they are wasting their time. Kamy's  

son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the  appointment just like Deli Rodriguez in Venezuela.  

Comedy's son is unacceptable to me. We want  someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran.  

Let's bring in Axios global affairs correspondent  Barack Rave who just spoke with President Trump to  

break that story. Barack, as we expect to hear an  update from the defense secretary today, President  

Trump told you that he needs to be personally  involved in selecting Iran's next leader just as  

he was in Venezuela. What is his reasoning? What  more did he say? So first uh one very interesting  

thing that he said is that he he basically sort of  confirmed the fact that uh the leading candidate  

at the moment to be Iran's next supreme leader is  uh the former supreme leader's son Muchaba Kami  

and Trump called Kamay's son Muchaba a lightweight  and said that it's unacceptable for him that he  

will be the next supreme leader of Iran and  Trump said I want to be involved D in picking  

next the next leader of Iran like I was involved  in Venezuela and one of the reasons that he gave  

for this is that he said I don't want to be to  have there somebody that will uh have the same  

policy as uh as the former leader had that will  only get the US in 5 years to a place where it  

has to go again to war against Iran because they  will rebuild their nuclear facilities. they will  

rebuild their uh missile launchers. So, I think  that when Donald Trump says that he wants to get  

involved, I it's I don't think he thinks that he  will be able to point at somebody and say, "Okay,  

you're the next leader of Iran." But I think  he definitely says that he wants uh the system  

in Iran to be very very different than the one at  the moment. I want to get straight to CNN's chief  

international security correspondent Nick Pton  Walsh who is live in Tel Aviv. What do you make  

of those comments Nick? I think it's interesting  because it potentially informs us as to one of the  

reasons perhaps that the process of selecting the  successor to the Supreme Leader Ayat Ali Hami has  

been slow. There have been suggestions we might be  seeing infighting internally despite a lot of the  

publicity that was given around the succession  plans Ham put in in the event of his death. We  

are still day five now. not clear who is in charge  of Iran, but I think there's also possibly here,