As Iranian regime leadership is killed off, POTUS says it’s hard to find someone to talk to

Operation Epic Fury has rained fire and destruction upon the Iranian regime, and according to President Trump, there’s scarcely any Iranian leaders left to talk with.

by Summer Lane | March 20, 2026

President Donald Trump suggested on Friday that any potential negotiations with Iran were tricky because most of the Iranian regime’s leadership is now dead.

“Their Navy’s gone, their Air Force is gone, their anti-aircraft is all gone, it’s all gone,” President Trump said on Friday, during remarks at the White House. “Their radar’s all gone. Their leaders are all gone. The next set of leaders are all gone. And the next set of leaders are mostly gone. And now, nobody wants to be a leader there anymore. We’re having a hard time. We want to talk to them, and there’s nobody to talk to! …And you know what? We like it that way.”

The war against Iran has indeed been a violent one, and although the president has declared a preemptive military victory for the United States in the conflict, Iran continues to lash out at neighboring countries like Kuwait and Qatar – as seen in the regime’s recent strikes on integral LNG facilities just this week. Their strikes were a retaliatory action after Israel, without seeking the approval of its joint partner, the United States, targeted and destroyed the Iranian South Pars oil and gas field.

The move greatly frustrated President Trump, who has been very careful to preserve energy infrastructure in the Middle East thus far. “The United States knew nothing about this particular attack, and the country of Qatar was in no way, shape, or form, involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen,” President Trump declared on Wednesday evening. “Unfortunately, Iran did not know this, or any of the pertinent facts pertaining to the South Pars attack, and unjustifiably and unfairly attacked a portion of Qatar’s LNG Gas facility.”

The president’s suggestion that there is “nobody” to talk to in Iran, as it pertains to leadership, seems to suggest that wrapping up the fighting could be difficult if there is no pertinent leadership body to negotiate with.

During comments made this week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard discussed the possibility that Iran’s leadership had essentially fallen into chaos following the slaying of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His named successor, Mojtabe Khamenei, is broadly thought to be incapacitated.

“It is unclear of his status or his involvement, he was injured very severely through one of the Israeli strikes, and so the decision-making is unclear regarding what’s happening in the Iranian leadership,” Gabbard said.

It remains to be seen how the U.S. government will be able to negotiate an end to this conflict if there is nobody left in Iran to speak with.