President Trump told The Atlantic that Iran’s new leadership wants to talk with him, and he has agreed to do so.

“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long,” Trump told the outlet.

Trump’s comments follow Operation Epic Fury, which led to the death of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of other top officials.

Iran Confirms Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Dead After Strikes

More from The Atlantic:

Asked whether his conversation with the Iranians would happen today or tomorrow, Trump responded, “I can’t tell you that.” He noted that some of the Iranians involved in negotiations in recent weeks were no longer alive. “Most of those people are gone. Some of the people we were dealing with are gone, because that was a big—that was a big hit,” he told me. “They should have done it sooner, Michael. They could have made a deal. They should’ve done it sooner. They played too cute.”

Fox News explained further:

As the White House confirmed on Sunday, the Islamic Republic of Iran's leadership has contacted the U.S. asking for talks. The list of potential successors to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on Saturday by an Israeli airstrike, includes his son and former advisers.

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Since the establishment in 1979 of the Islamic Republic, led by the fiery anti-American Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, this will be only the second time that a new supreme leader has been selected.

The potential successors to Khamenei include a list of hard-line anti-Western extremists who, like Khamenei, are set on the destruction of Israel and the continued export of the Islamic revolution.

One possible successor is regime loyalist Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, who reportedly implemented Khamenei’s plan to massacre over 30,000 Iranians who protested against his regime in January.

On Saturday, he threatened a response in a statement on X on Saturday, writing, "We will make the Zionist criminals and the vile Americans regret it," adding, "The brave soldiers and the great nation of Iran will deliver an unforgettable lesson to the hell-bound oppressors of the international order."

In January, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Larijani as one of "the architects of the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown on peaceful demonstrators." The statement added, "Larijani was one of the first Iranian leaders to call for violence in response to the legitimate demands of the Iranian people."

 

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