{"id":43615,"date":"2026-03-30T21:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T21:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/43615\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T21:10:09","slug":"us-figuring-out-whos-in-charge-in-iran-after-trump-hails-talks-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/43615\/","title":{"rendered":"US \u2018figuring out who\u2019s in charge\u2019 in Iran after Trump hails talks progress"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US is \u201cfiguring out exactly who\u2019s in charge\u201d in Iran, the White House has said, after Donald Trump insisted \u201cgreat progress\u201d had been made in talks to end the war now in its second month.<\/p>\n

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt told a news conference Tehran\u2019s leadership had been \u201cvery fragmented\u201d by the conflict, which has seen key figures in the regime killed, including the country\u2019s former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.<\/p>\n

Earlier on US TV, secretary of state Marco Rubio said there were \u201csome fractures going on there (in Iran) internally\u201d.<\/p>\n

And while there were individuals \u201csaying some of the right things privately\u201d, according to Mr Rubio, they would have to \u201csee if these people end up being the ones in charge, seeing if they\u2019re the ones that have the power to deliver\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"POLITICS<\/p>\n

(PA Graphics)<\/p>\n

(PA Graphics)<\/p>\n

The US president has threatened the destruction of Iran\u2019s energy sites and possibly its water desalination plants unless Tehran agrees to a ceasefire and ensures the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping route is \u201copen for business\u201d.<\/p>\n

At the same time as building up US combat forces in the region and raising the prospect of military action to seize Iran\u2019s Kharg Island, a crucial facility for oil exports, Mr Trump also indicated headway had been achieved with a \u201cmore reasonable\u201d Iranian regime to end the war triggered by the US-Israeli strikes.<\/p>\n

However, Iran has denied any direct talks.<\/p>\n

\"Marco<\/p>\n

US secretary of state Marco Rubio says they will have to see if people the US is talking to \u2018end up being the ones in charge\u2019 (Brendan Smialowski\/Pool photo\/AP)<\/p>\n

(BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI)<\/p>\n

The president wrote on his Truth Social platform: \u201cGreat progress has been made but, if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately \u2018open for business\u2019, we will conclude our lovely \u2018stay\u2019 in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinisation plants!), which we have purposefully not yet \u2018touched\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pressed over who Washington was in negotiations with, Ms Leavitt said: \u201cAs secretary Rubio said today, the leadership is very fragmented.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have really neutered their intercommunication systems, and that\u2019s part of this process of diplomacy to continue figuring out exactly who\u2019s in charge.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know they appointed a new ayatollah. Haven\u2019t seen or heard much from him, and so that\u2019s part of this diplomatic process that\u2019s under way right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Donald<\/p>\n

The US president has raised the prospect of striking Iran\u2019s desalination plants (Mark Schiefelbein\/AP)<\/p>\n

(Mark Schiefelbein)<\/p>\n

She previously told reporters: \u201cOf course, anything that they say to us privately will be tested, and we will ensure that they are being held accountable to their word.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if they are not, the president has laid out the military consequences that the Iranian regime will see if they don\u2019t hold true to the words that we are hearing privately behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the president says, more reasonable.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, these folks are appearing more reasonable behind the scenes, privately in these conversations than perhaps some of the previous leaders who are now no longer on planet Earth because they lied to the United States and they strung us along in negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Rubio was also tackled over who the US was in talks with after branding members of the Iranian regime \u201clunatics\u201d and \u201cinsane\u201d in an interview with ABC.<\/p>\n

Mr Rubio said: \u201cWell, I\u2019m not going to disclose to you who those people are because it probably would get them in trouble with some other groups of people inside of Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, there\u2019s some fractures going on there internally.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd at the end of the day, I think that if there are people in Iran who now, given everything that\u2019s happened, are willing to move in a different direction for their country, that would be great.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cObviously they\u2019re not going to put it out in press releases, and what they say to you or put out there for the world doesn\u2019t necessarily reflect what they\u2019re saying in our conversations.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut at the end of the day, we have to see if these people end up being the ones in charge, seeing if they\u2019re the ones that have the power to deliver.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Ms Leavitt also said the president would be interested in calling on Arab countries to help pay for the cost of the Iran war.<\/p>\n

Responding to a question on whether nations in the region should be asked to stump up cash, she said: \u201cI think it\u2019s something the president would be quite interested in calling them to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an idea that I know that he has and something that I think you\u2019ll hear more from him on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US is \u201cfiguring out exactly who\u2019s in charge\u201d in Iran, the White House has said, after Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[5530,38,34,196,3591,2601,210,18332,4493,101],"class_list":["post-43615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-desalination-plants","tag-donald-trump","tag-iran","tag-iran-war","tag-iranian-regime","tag-kharg-island","tag-marco-rubio","tag-mr-rubio","tag-press-secretary","tag-strait-of-hormuz"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116320182195324895","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}