Trump says he would be honored to meet Iran's new Leader

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he would be "honored" to meet Iran's new Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei. "I'd be honored to meet him," he told reporters in the Oval Office, adding, "If we make a deal, it's possible that I would meet… I'd be okay with that."

The remarks come weeks after Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei was elected Leader of the Islamic Revolution by Iran's Assembly of Experts, following the martyrdom of his father, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, in a US-Israeli strike targeting his residence in Tehran on February 28. The Assembly convened in an emergency session three days later and elected Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei — a senior cleric long active in religious and political affairs — in a vote that drew widespread support across Iran.

Trump's expression of willingness to meet the new Leader marks a notable shift in tone, even as Washington continues to impose an illegal naval blockade on Iranian vessels and ports. Tehran has repeatedly slammed the act as a violation of a ceasefire which took effect on April 8 in Islamabad, according to Press TV.

Also on Thursday, Trump claimed that he had considered and ultimately rejected a covert special operations mission to seize Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile, citing the risks of a prolonged presence in a war zone. "There was a time at the very beginning when we thought about doing that, because they would have not been watching, but they would have found out," he said. Trump invoked the memory of the 1980 failed US mission in Iran — widely associated with President Jimmy Carter's political downfall — as the reason he stepped back.

According to Mehr News Agency, the report highlighted these developments amid ongoing tensions between the US and Iran.