WASHINGTON — President Trump said Tuesday that he doesn’t have a favorite to replace Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — saying he’s comfortable with “somebody from within” after America and Israel finish obliterating the country’s naval, nuclear and missile assets. 

Trump said he’s confident of the near-term success of his joint war with ally Israel — though he remains concerned about ensuring there’s a less bellicose leader in the long haul to turn Tehran around.

“We’re hitting them very hard, and the big-scale hitting goes now. They no longer have air protection. They no longer have any detection facilities at all left. And so they’re gonna be in for a lot of hurt,” Trump said in the Oval Office as he hosted German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

“These are bad people.  These are people that killed, I guess, it’s 35,000 [protesters in January]. The leader of the pack is gone. And as you know, 49 [officials] were taken out in the first hit. And I guess there was another hit today on the new leadership, and it looks like that was pretty substantial also.”

Trump insisted — without naming any names — that “a lot of the people you would least suspect want to quit. They want to have immunity. They’re asking for immunity, and probably at some point they’ll be dropping — as you would say, laying down their guns.”

But Trump said that he believes the “worst case” scenario could manifest years from now after he leaves office if someone “as bad as” Khamenei takes power.

“I guess the worst case would be we do this, and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person,” Trump told reporters.

“That could happen. We don’t want that to happen,” the president said.

“That would probably be the worst: You go through this, and then in five years you realize you put somebody in that was no better. So we’d like to see somebody in there that’s going to bring it back for the people.”

Both Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have said the US is concerned about taking out the threat Iran poses to the US and its allies, and is less focused on nation building. 

Vance said on Fox News’s “Jesse Watters Primetime” on Monday that the Trump administration would prefer “a friendly regime in Iran [and] a stable country … that’s willing to work with the United States.” But as long as Iran “can’t build the bomb,” then Trump “will be happy with the outcome.”

Rubio said the US will “defang” Iran, but it’s up to the people to overthrow the regime.

“If there’s something we can do to help them down the road, we’d obviously be open to it, but that’s not the objective,” Rubio said. “The objective of this mission is the destruction of their ballistic missile capability.”

Trump has been less concerned about who will lead Iran — as long as the new leader doesn’t have nuclear power and military capability to inflict damage. 

Trump said exiled crown prince Reza Pahlavi, 65, isn’t at the top of his list, despite his prominence in the opposition movement.

“Some people like him, and we haven’t been thinking too much about that,” Trump said.

“It would seem to me that somebody from within, maybe, would be more appropriate,” the president said.

“I’ve said that [Pahlavi] looks like a very nice person, but it would seem to me that somebody that’s there that’s currently popular, if there’s such a person — but we have people like that. We have people that were more moderate.”

Merz told Trump that “we are on the same page in terms of getting this terrible regime in Tehran away, and we will talk about the day after, what will happen then, if they are out.”

Follow live updates on the US and Israel’s war with Iran

The president told The Post on Monday that the war was “going to go pretty quickly” after the US and Israel attacked on Saturday.

Trump on Monday laid out four key war objectives: destroying Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, sinking its navy and ensuring it stops supporting regional proxies, such as the Houthi movement in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon. 

Trump and Rubio, who briefed House and Senate lawmakers on Tuesday, have not stated that regime change is a specific war goal — though both have celebrated Khamenei’s demise and expressed hopes that the theocracy he led will crumble.

Rubio said on Capitol Hill Tuesday, before briefing lawmakers, that the US was preparing to escalate the intensity of bombing to “take apart this terroristic regime and defang it.”

“Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. It therefore it cannot have the things it was hiding behind to have a nuclear weapons program,” Rubio said.

“You’ll see in the days to come, we will systematically take apart the missile program. We will destroy their ability to sponsor terrorism, by the way. We will destroy their factories. We will destroy their navy. Those objectives are going to be met. We’re well on our way to meeting them.”

Trump said that the bombing campaign has been so successful that there’s a risk that he is “not going to know anybody” who could serve as a viable and more pliable successor to Khamenei.

The assassinated supreme leader had ruled Iran since 1989 and it was not immediately clear who might replace him atop the theocracy.

A three-man council is now leading Iran, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, Ayatollah Alireza Arafi and Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei.

Pezeshkian took office in 2024 as a reformer, beating out a more hardline opponent — but his name hasn’t been floated publicly by Trump as a possible new frenemy.

Arafi, a member of the country’s Guardian Council that weeds out candidates before elections, and Mohseni-Ejei are viewed as hardline clerics. 

Hours before Trump spoke, Israeli airstrikes hit a building in the Shiite holy city of Qom where clerics reportedly gathered to choose the next supreme leader. It was unclear how many casualties, if any, resulted from that attack.

Trump said that he wants Iranians currently inside the country to play a role in choosing their next leader.

“We’ll see what happens with the people. You know, they have their chance, and we’ve said, ‘Don’t do it yet. If you’re going to go out and protest, don’t do it yet’,” he said.

“It’s very dangerous out there. A lot of bombs are being dropped.”

The president went on to say that the looming succession is complicated by the fact that many more moderate Iranian government officials have been killed.

 “Most of the people we had in mind are dead. And now we have another group. They may be dead also, based on reports,” Trump said.

“So I guess you have a third wave coming in. Pretty soon we’re not going to know anybody.”

Trump compared the situation to the aftermath of his Jan. 3 raid on Venezuela that captured Caracas President Nicolas Maduro and brought him to the US to face federal weapons and drug-smuggling charges.

“Venezuela was so incredible because we did the attack and we kept the government totally intact. And we have [interim president] Delcy [Rodriguez], who’s been very good. We have the whole chain of command,” Trump said.

“We paid for the war many times over, and we’re going to be running the oil, and Venezuela is going to make more money than they ever made, and that’s great for the people. The relationship has been great. It’s been seamless.”