ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Iran’s new leadership “want to talk” and he has agreed, a day after US and Israeli strikes on Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 

“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long,” Trump told The Atlantic’s Michael Scherer in a phone call. 

Asked when the talks might take place, Trump said, “I can’t tell you that.” 

He further said that “most” of the Iranians involved in negotiations with the US in recent weeks were no longer alive, “because that was a big – that was a big hit.” 

“They should have done it sooner, Michael. They could have made a deal. They should’ve done it sooner. They played too cute,” Trump told the journalist. 

The US and Israel on Saturday morning launched a large-scale military offensive across Iran. The strikes have killed Khamenei, in addition to several other top Iranian officials. The offensive came following months of escalating tensions between the two sides. 

Iran has retaliated with missile and drone bombardments primarily targeting US military bases in the Middle East, giving rise to myriad diplomatic protests by regional states on whose territory the US installations were bombed.

Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani said Sunday that the United States and Israel have “set the heart of the Iranian nation ablaze,” after Khamenei was killed, vowing that Tehran will strike its enemies “with a force never seen before.”

On Sunday, the US army announced that three service members had been killed and five others were seriously wounded in the recent escalations with Iran. 

Earlier on Sunday, Trump told Fox News that the strikes had killed at least 48 Iranian leaders. "Nobody can believe the success we're having, 48 leaders are gone in one shot," he said.

Iran has declared 40 days of mourning for the supreme leader.

Khamenei, 86, from Mashhad, was Iran’s highest political and religious authority for nearly 37 years, marking the longest-serving leader since the Islamic Revolution.

He was a leading opponent of the US and Israel, advancing the Islamic Republic’s ideology by supporting regional proxies against both countries, and calling for their elimination.