President Trump’s self-deification has reached a new level. On March 5, during an interview with Axios, he said Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Iran’s assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, will not be his father’s successor.

“The president compared the situation to Venezuela, saying he was personally involved in leadership decisions there and intends to be similarly engaged with Iran,” Newsweek reported.

“They are wasting their time,” Trump said of Iran’s 88-member Assembly of Experts, a deliberative body responsible for appointing and supervising the Supreme Leader. “Khamenei’s son is a nobody. I should be involved in the appointment process, just like Delcy Rodriguez was in Venezuela. Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me. We want someone who will bring harmony and peace to Iran.”

Trump said this after telling the American people his administration is not interested in regime change. In late January, as the US and Israel instigated riots and acts of terrorism inside Iran, Trump instructed Iranians to take over the government. He declared “help is on the way.”

While a president publicly declaring he will personally install the leader of a foreign country is rare, the act of regime change by the United States is not. Since the 19th century, the US has been actively involved in the overthrow of numerous foreign governments, both openly and secretly. Following World War II, the US intervened, either directly or covertly, in the internal affairs of numerous foreign governments, including: China, Italy, Greece, the Philippines, South Korea, Albania, Germany, Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Guyana, Vietnam, Cambodia, Zaire, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Chile, East Timor, Nicaragua, Grenada, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti, Yugoslavia, and others.

“The men who run the American Empire are not easily embarrassed,” writes William Blum.

However, in the case of Trump, it is not simply the absence of embarrassment, but rather the enlargement of his elephantine ego. Trump is not unlike the Roman emperor Caligula in that he prioritizes his personal interests (and grift behavior) over governance and the wishes of the American people. In addition, similar to Caligula, Trump has surrounded himself with obsequious sycophants.

In Venezuela, Trump likes to think he picked Delcy Rodríguez to lead the country after the US abducted Nicolás Maduro. Rodríguez is cooperating with the United States for a very simple reason—she does not want her country destroyed and, in addition, she believes, probably naively, that cooperation with Trump will translate into corporate investment and the lifting of economic sanctions. As of this writing, the only sanctions lifted are related to Venezuela’s oil industry. In addition, Rodríguez has allowed foreign corporations to exploit the country’s gold and rare earth minerals. Transnational petroleum corporations, however, are “risk-averse” and unlikely to invest in Venezuela’s broken oil infrastructure and work around its political instability.

In January, Trump fantasized about real estate deals in Iran. Since taking office, he has engaged in real estate deals with the UAE, Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. However, considering Iran’s drone and missile attacks on these GCC nations, Trump’s deals are likely to fall through. The Persian Gulf monarchies are increasingly wary of his unpredictability and aggressive foreign policy.

As of this writing, the Assembly of Experts remains divided on Mojtaba Khamenei’s succession. According to the corporate media in the West, Mojtaba is a “hardliner” who shares a close relationship with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Trump dispatched fighter jets in a failed attempt to murder the Assembly of Experts convening in Qom before they could decide on a new Supreme Leader.

Mojtaba Khamenei will undoubtedly be more “radical” than his father, especially after Trump murdered his wife, Zahra Haddad-Adel, their son, and his father in an airstrike. As a reminder that Netanyahu and Trump are determined to murder the probable next Supreme Leader of Iran, on March 5 Iran’s state TV was hacked and an image of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was displayed surrounded in flames with gunsight crosshairs over his face.

“Whoever follows Mojtaba Khamenei will meet the same fate,” a message warned.

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Kurt Nimmo is a journalist, author, and geopolitical analyst, New Mexico, United States. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Visit the author’s blog.

Featured image is from the author

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