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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would be willing to meet Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei “at some point,” if diplomatic efforts advance.
In an interview with the New York Post, Trump was asked whether he would sit down with the Iranian supreme leader.
“Yeah, I’d like to meet him. I’d love to meet everybody,” Trump said. “I would like to meet him and we probably will meet at some point, depending on how it all works out.”
Trump added that he expects to meet Iran’s leader eventually and said the two sides are “getting along quite well” despite faltering peace efforts.
“I haven’t had the privilege of meeting him … If you believe the stories, he’s missing a lot of different parts,” Trump said. “They say he is giving approval, because that’s the way it has been for a long, long time. His father and then him, I guess it’s a succession. But we seem to be getting along quite well.”
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, became Iran’s supreme leader after his father, Ali Khamenei, was killed on Feb. 28 in the opening U.S.-Israeli strikes that triggered the regional war. He has not appeared in public since the conflict began.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told senators Tuesday that the younger Khamenei is alive and “increasingly engaging at some level,” though his communications have come only in writing or through intermediaries.
“We haven’t seen him publicly, and I would imagine, given what’s happened to multiple leaders in that system, being very public is probably not something that’s recommended for them internally,” Rubio said at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
Rubio described Iran’s decision-making as tightly centralized, with negotiators sending messages to a governing council for approval—a process that can take three to five days.
Although Trump and Rubio insist talks continue, Iranian media reported Tuesday that message exchanges between Washington and Tehran have paused for several days.
Iranian authorities say more than 3,000 people have been killed since the war began, while at least 13 U.S. service members have died in Iranian retaliatory attacks. Tehran’s response included strikes on Israel and U.S. allies in the Gulf and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
A ceasefire brokered by Pakistan took effect on April 8, but follow-up talks in Islamabad failed to produce a lasting agreement. Efforts to build on the truce have continued.
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