Iran's top diplomat says Iran, not Trump, will elect new leader

Agence France-Presse·8 March 2026, 11:04 pm·1 min read

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Iran's top diplomat says Iran, not Trump, will elect new leader — Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi (C) gives a statement during his visit to the mausoleum of slain Lebanese Hezbollah's Leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in September 2024, in Beirut's southern suburbs on 3 June 2025.
Anwar AMRO / AFP

Iran's foreign minister said Sunday that the Iranian people, not Donald Trump, will elect their new leader and demanded that the US president apologize for starting the war with Iran.

"We allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs. This is up to the Iranian people to elect their new leader," Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC's "Meet the Press," after Trump on Thursday asserted he should have a role in picking Iran's next supreme leader.

Araghchi also said Trump "should apologize to people of the region and the Iranian people for the killings and destruction they have done against us."