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US President Donald Trump speaks at a roundtable on energy ratepayer protection at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House compound on March 4, 2026. (AP/Yonhap)

After the US and Israel assassinated Iran’s supreme leader in an airstrike, US President Donald Trump warned that all those seeking to take over as Iran’s new leader “end up dead.”

“Everybody that seems to want to be a leader, they end up dead,” Trump commented at an energy ratepayer protection roundtable on Wednesday at the White House, which was attended by executives from a number of Big Tech companies. “Their leadership is just rapidly going.”
 
Trump’s remarks were made as Iran endeavors to select a successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a decades-long ruler of Iran who was killed in a US-Israeli strike on Feb. 28. The comments insinuate that if Iran’s future leadership remains hostile to the US or continues to pursue the development of nuclear weapons, the US won’t hesitate to carry out another decapitation strike.
 
Regarding the US’ major air operation, Trump said that the US was “doing very well,” saying that, on a scale of 10, he would rate America’s war effort at “about a 15.” 

“[Iran’s] missiles are being wiped out rapidly. Their launchers are being wiped out,” he explained.
 
Trump was also quick to defend the military operation. 

“If we didn’t do it first, they would have done it to Israel and give us a shot if that was possible,” he said. “Forty-seven years they’ve been killing our people and killing people from all over the world.”
 
Trump slammed the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, reached during the Barack Obama administration, as “one of the worst deals ever made,” arguing that it was “a road to a nuclear weapon.”
 
“The B-2s hit [Iran] — it was a complete obliteration of their nuclear potential. [. . .] If we didn’t do the B-2 attack a number of months ago, they would have a nuclear weapon,” Trump claimed. 

“When crazy people have nuclear weapons, bad things happen,” he said. 

By Kim Won-chul, Washington correspondent 

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