President Donald Trump put a question to an Arizona audience on Wednesday: who wants to be president of Iran?
Speaking in Bullhead City, he then supplied the answers himself. In his telling, the people he would negotiate with keep turning the position down.
“Who would like to be the president of Iran? Please raise your hand. ‘No, I don’t want to be…’ I probably went a little too far, I’m sorry, because I don’t know who the hell we’re dealing with anymore,” he said.
Trump said the war has stripped Tehran of the officials he would otherwise talk to, which makes peace negotiations hard to conduct.
He said the absence of a central figure is the obstacle.
“Their leaders are gone. That’s one of the problems, I might have gone too far. I don’t know who the hell to deal with,” Trump mused.
He then described how Iran has tried to fill the vacancies.
“Their first level leaders are gone. They picked a second level. Their second level leaders are gone. They picked a third level. Half of them are gone. They made me promise not to take out anymore, and I did, I promised them,” he continued.
He added that the presidency itself has no volunteers. “But nobody wants to be the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. We have conversations, we hear them,” the president added.
The Bullhead City speech was one of many appearances Trump is making for Republican candidates.
Midterm races across the country are expected to be tight, and the GOP is trying to keep its congressional majority. The Iran war has come up repeatedly in his remarks.
Back in Washington, some of the administration’s top national security figures spent hours at Camp David earlier this month.
They met to discuss the Iran war and a fast-growing clash in Yemen, where Iran-backed Houthi forces are fighting the Saudi-backed government.
The White House had not announced the gathering ahead of time. Vice President JD Vance led it, as Conservative Brief previously reported.
CBS News reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine took part.
Reports did not place Trump in the room.
The group weighed what to do next in the Iran war. It also considered whether the United States should back a large Saudi-backed push against the Houthis, and if so, how.
Events over the weekend raised the stakes.
The Pentagon said the U.S. military pulled a dozen B-1 bombers out of RAF Fairford, an airbase in the United Kingdom. A U.S. official said Iran posed an attack threat to the base.
Rubio spoke to reporters about the move on Monday.
He said the Air Force routinely rotates its aircraft around the world and that the bombers’ departure was not directly linked to the Iranian threat.
“We have confidence in the security of all of our bases.
All of our bases could be threatened theoretically at any moment and that is why there is so much security built around them,” he said.
Rubio said American officials have worked closely with the British government on an investigation into the threat “and they couldn’t be more cooperative.”
Last week, British security forces arrested several dual British-Iranian citizens. Authorities suspected them of planning an attack on the base.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has asked Washington for more military help. Yemen’s internationally recognized government is attempting to take back territory the Houthis hold.
Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman briefed Hegseth on the planned offensive in a Thursday conversation, according to Axios.
He also renewed the kingdom’s request for direct American airstrikes on Houthi targets.
The Trump administration has so far declined to approve U.S. combat operations.
Officials said the United States is providing intelligence and targeting assistance to Saudi and Yemeni forces, but is not carrying out direct strikes against the Houthis in the new offensive.
