Iran’s foreign minister has said that the Iranian people, not Donald Trump, will elect their new leader and demanded that the US president apologise for starting the war with Iran, AFP reported.

“We allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs. This is up to the Iranian people to elect their new leader,” Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Trump has reiterated his demand to have a say in picking Iran’s next supreme leader after Ali Khamenei was assassinated in the opening salvos of the US-Israeli attack that began nine days ago.

“He’s going to have to get approval from us,” the president told ABC News. “If he doesn’t get approval from us, he’s not going to last long.”

Iranian state media has reported that the clerical body responsible for doing that had voted and that a name would be announced soon.

“We have to wait for the Assembly of Experts to convene and vote for the new supreme leader, and the one who is elected by them,” Araghchi told NBC.

“It is Americans who started this war against us, attacking us, and we are defending ourselves. So it is obvious that our missiles cannot reach the US soil.”
“What we can do is to attack American bases and American installations around us, which are unfortunately in the soil of our, you know, neighbouring countries.”

Trump has asserted that Iranian missiles could “soon” be able to strike the United States, although a US intelligence assessment as recently as 2025 stated Tehran did not have intercontinental ballistic missiles, and that it could take until 2035 for it to develop 60 such weapons.