Senator Tom Cotton says there is “no simple answer” to who will lead Iran now

Senator Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Sunday that there is “no easy answer” to who will lead Iran. Death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a large-scale US-Israeli military operation a day before.

“I don’t think anyone can give you a simple answer to that,” Cotton said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan”. “There’s probably a lot of friction going on inside Iran right now; they have a very consultative, deliberative process to replace the supreme leader. That’s why he didn’t want to have a clear succession plan.”

The US and Israel launched a major military operation inside Iran on Saturday, which continued on Sunday. Iranian state media said at least 200 people were killed in the country, while Iran retaliated with attacks on Israel and allies in the Middle East, killing at least six people in Israel and one in Abu Dhabi and wounding dozens of others.

President Trump said Saturday that 86-year-old Khamenei, who had ruled Iran as supreme leader since 1989 and was only the second person to hold the role, was among those killed. The Israel Defence Forces said at a news conference on Saturday that seven Iranian officers and commanders were killed, including Khamenei adviser Ali Shamkhani.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in January that “I don’t think anyone can give you a simple answer to what happens next in Iran if the supreme leader and the regime fall, other than the hope that they have someone within their system who has the ability to work toward an equitable transition.”

Cotton said Sunday that Rubio was “right.”

Asked about Rubio’s comments, Cotton said Sunday that Rubio is “right”, but also said he expected there to be a situation like Venezuela, where Delsey Rodriguez was sworn in as president shortly after the U.S. captured then-President Nicolas Maduro.

Cotton said the US would continue to attack Iran’s “military capabilities, and we will continue to attack the senior leadership, the Ayatollahs.”

But when pressed by Brennan to identify who the new leadership would be, Cotton responded by saying it should come from “the opposition,” which he defined as “the 90 million Iranians who have suffered under the brutal Islamic Republic’s revolutionary regime for the past 47 years.”

Cotton insisted there would be no “large-scale ground forces” inside Iran, despite Mr Trump saying on Saturday there could be American casualties as part of the military operation.

“The president has no plans for any kind of massive ground force inside Iran,” Cotton told Brennan.

Cotton underlined that “one risk” of an “extended air and naval operation” is that “a plane could be shot down, and the President would never leave a pilot behind. So there is no doubt that we have combat search and rescue assets in the area ready to go in and extract any downed pilots.”