By AAMER MADHANI and SEUNG MIN KIM

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that “someone from within” the Iranian regime might be the best choice to take power once the U.S.-Israel military campaign is completed — but said “most of the people we had in mind are dead.”

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The president, who four days ago had emphatically called on Iranians to “take over your government” once the U.S.-Israel bombardment ends, appeared to drift further away from the idea that the war presents an opportunity to end the theocratic rule that has been in place since the country’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

Trump said that many Iranian officials his administration had viewed as potential new leaders for the country had been killed in the U.S.-Israeli campaign that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and many other top officials.

Trump has not publicly identified anyone whom he views as a credible future leader for Iran. And it’s unclear what, if any, outreach the White House had with Iranian officials since the war started.

“Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” he said in an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office. “Now we have another group, they may be dead also, based on reports. So you have a third wave coming. Pretty soon we’re not going to know anybody.”

Trump said Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince of Iran’s last shah who is trying to position himself for a return should Iran’s Shiite theocracy fall, is not someone that his administration has considered in depth to take over leadership in Iran.

“It would seem to me that somebody from within maybe would be more appropriate,” Trump said, adding that it may make sense for “somebody that’s there, that’s currently popular, if there is such a person” to emerge from the power vacuum.

Trump’s comments came as he hosted German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for his first in-person engagement with a foreign leader since the U.S. and Israel launched the war against Iran.

Trump said he wanted to avoid a “worst case” scenario where “somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person.”

“That could happen. We don’t want that to happen,” Trump added. “You go through this, and then in five years you realize you put somebody in who was no better.”

The White House is trying to counter criticism

The White House has stepped up its push to counter criticism that it moved unnecessarily quickly to launch a war of choice against Iran.

Trump’s decision to strike last week followed lengthy negotiations by the president’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner with the Iranians — talks the U.S. increasingly viewed as an effort to stall any progress.

After the most recent round of discussions in Geneva, Switzerland, last week, Witkoff and Kushner told Trump that reaching a nuclear agreement similar to one that former President Barack Obama struck in 2015 was possible, according to a senior administration official.

The official, who briefed journalists on condition of anonymity, described it as a potential “Obama-plus deal” and Witkoff and Kushner believed such an agreement would take months, but was possible.

Still, even as they expressed their willingness to pursue diplomacy and “fight for every point that we can” if that’s what Trump wanted, the negotiators stressed to the president that the Iranians were not willing to make a deal that would be satisfactory to the U.S.

Trump snaps at the UK, Spain over lack of support

Meanwhile, Trump sharply criticized Britain and Spain for their reluctance to aid the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.

“This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with,” Trump fumed about British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Starmer had initially blocked American planes from using British bases for the attacks on Iran that started on Saturday. He later agreed to let the United States use bases in England and on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to strike Iran’s ballistic missiles and their storage sites, but not to hit other targets.

Trump also said he was going to “cut off all trade with Spain,” the day after Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said his country would not allow the U.S. to use jointly operated bases in southern Spain in any strikes not covered by the United Nations’ charter.

Trump disputes that Israel forced his hand

The president also sought to push back on criticism from some of his staunchest allies over the decision to go to war — questions that grew louder after Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday that the U.S. had decided to strike because “we knew that there was going to be an Israeli action.”

“And we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio said.

But Trump rejected the notion that the White House had been dragged into the conflict by Israel. “We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack,” Trump said. “If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.”

Rubio on Tuesday echoed Trump’s insistence that the decision to attack Iran was made independent of Israel.

Merz said during his visit with Trump at the Oval Office that Germany is “looking forward to the day after” the Iran war is over.

He said Berlin wants to work with the U.S. on a strategy for when the current Iranian government no longer exists.

“We are having a high interest in common approach and common work and what we can do,” Merz said. “And this is this is important not just for the Americans,” he said. “This is extremely important for Europe and extremely important for Israel and their security.”

Merz also noted surging oil prices were damaging the world economy, laying down an argument for finding a quick endgame to the conflict.

The president acknowledged that oil and gas prices were going to rise as the U.S. remains engaged in the strikes — yet argued it would be fleeting.

“We have a little high oil prices for a little while, but as soon as this ends, those prices are going to drop, I believe, lower than even before,” Trump said.

The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. jumped 11 cents overnight Tuesday to about $3.11 in the United States, according to the AAA.

AP writers Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin, Fatima Hussein and Michelle L. Price in Washington, and Jill Lawless in London contributed reporting.

It’s almost hard to describe how astonishingly bad “Scream 7” is — though it isn’t entirely surprising considering the circumstances surrounding the film and the lead-up to its production. In 2023, Spyglass Media Group summarily dismissed franchise reboot star Melissa Barrera, who anchored 2022’s “Scream” and “Scream VI,” for posting on social media in support of Palestinians. Shortly after Barrera’s firing, co-star Jenna Ortega departed the film, as well as new director Christopher Landon.

In the wake of the shake-up, Spyglass eventually lured original “Scream” queen Neve Campbell (who had co-starred in the 2022 “Scream” but sat out the New York City-set “Scream VI”) back to the franchise in which she has played Sidney Prescott for three decades. Also returning is Kevin Williamson, the original film’s writer, who was tapped to co-write (with Guy Busick and James Vanderbilt) and direct, his first directorial effort since 1999’s “Teaching Mrs. Tingle.”

Usually all of this extra production context isn’t necessary to explain how and why a film doesn’t work, but here it seems relevant in grappling with why “Scream 7” is such an incoherent mess. Perhaps they were stuck scrapping for parts, or rushed, or working under the dark cloud of the backlash to Barrera’s firing (there have been calls to boycott the film). Whatever the case, the result is easily the franchise’s worst effort, riddled with muddled motivations, inconsistent characters and a serious identity crisis.

The fifth and sixth installments are loosely connected to this seventh film by the presence of the unusually tenacious twins Chad and Mindy Meeks-Martin (Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown), who are inexplicably interning for Sidney’s longtime frenemy, journalist Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox). There are also several references to Sid “skipping New York,” and questions if a Ghostface attack even counts if she’s not there.

Because Sidney Prescott, now Evans, exists only in relationship to Ghostface, the costume worn by many different knife-wielding maniacs over the years, starting with her high school boyfriend. Much like Laurie Strode in “Halloween,” who shapes her existence around surviving Michael Myers, who is Sidney without the Halloween mask donned by so many of her nearest and dearest? She doesn’t seem to know. Her day-to-day life is defined by her trauma — she’s a heat-packing woman with a high-tech home security system married to a cop (Joel McHale) — but oddly enough, she doesn’t talk about her past with her teenage daughter Tatum (Isabel May). That doesn’t seem like Sidney at all.

Instead, she tries to live a semblance of a “Gilmore Girls” life in the bucolic town of Pine Grove, where she runs a cutesy coffee shop and is a wife and mom to three kids, whom she wants to protect from the world and her pesky ghosts. Still, it makes little sense that Tatum (named after Sidney’s best friend, played by Rose McGowan in the first film) would know so little about her mom’s past. But there’s very little about this film that makes sense.

It doesn’t help that Campbell and May have all the chemistry of two colleagues who met right before cameras started rolling, and the rest of the cast feels like a hastily assembled group of random actors tapped for their turn on the “Scream” ride. McHale, Ethan Embry, Timothy Simons, Mark Consuelos and Anna Camp are the familiar faces as various teachers, neighbors and news reporters; May, Celeste O’Connor, Mckenna Grace, Sam Rechner and Asa Germann make up the new generation of high school screamers that we barely get to know or care about before Ghostface’s blade starts swinging.

Legasequels often try to contend with the larger ideas and evolutions of these iconic properties, and “Scream 7” half-heartedly attempts that. An opening salvo featuring Jimmy Tatro and Michelle Randolph as a horror-obsessed couple seems to set up a cautionary tale about murder tourism, but that theme is quickly abandoned. In the series’ characteristic — yet now obligatory — bit of self-reflection on the genre, characters thumb their noses at “nostalgia” and the “retconning” of the Sidney Prescott story, only for the script to toy with just that, introducing a deepfake AI subplot. For such a self-conscious series, “Scream 7” doesn’t manage to impart any kind of insight about itself. It’s nothing more than an episode of “Scooby-Doo.”

Distracting from the void at its core are the extremely gory kills, splashed with pixelized blood and guts that are indeed successful in making an audience squirm. But there’s no escaping the nagging feeling that it seems like Williamson fed “Scream” into an AI chatbot and the machine spat this wretched thing out — it has all the familiar components but doesn’t move right, sound right or feel right; it’s not funny, or scary, or suspenseful. “Scream 7” is an unfortunate tarnish on this otherwise sturdy franchise’s legacy.

‘Scream 7’

1 star (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for strong bloody violence, gore, and language)

Running time: 1:54

How to watch: In theaters Feb. 27

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By LISA MASCARO

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tensions flared as questions mounted at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday over the Trump administration’s shifting rationale for war with Iran as lawmakers demand answers over the strategy, exit plan and costs to Americans in lives and dollars in what is quickly becoming a widening Middle East conflict.

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Trump officials arrived at the Capitol for a second day of closed-door briefings, this time with all members of the House and Senate as the administration tries to stave off a looming war powers resolution vote intended to restrict Trump’s ability to continue the joint U.S.-Israel campaign against Iran.

“The president determined we were not going to get hit first. It’s that simple,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a testy exchange with reporters at the Capitol.

Rubio pushed back on his own suggestion a day earlier that Trump decided to strike Iran because Israel was ready to act first. Instead, he said Trump made the decision to attack this past weekend because it presented a unique opportunity with maximum chance for success.

“There is no way in the world that this terroristic regime was going to get nuclear weapons, not under Donald Trump’s watch,” he said.

The sudden pivot to a U.S. wartime footing has disrupted the political and policy agenda on Capitol Hill and raised uneasy questions about the risks ahead for a prolonged conflict and regime change after the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. At least six U.S. military service personnel have died so far.

The turn of events has intensified the push in Congress for the war powers resolution — among the most consequential votes a lawmaker can take, with the war well underway — as administration officials are telling lawmakers it will need supplemental funds to pay for the conflict. It comes at the start of a highly competitive midterm election season that will test Trump’s slim GOP control of Congress.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer left the closed hearing said he was concerned of “mission creep” in a long war.

Senators demand answers, and some cheer Trump on

Senators spent the morning grilling Trump officials during an Armed Services Committee hearing over Rubio’s claim Monday that the president, believing that Israel was ready to act, decided it was better for the U.S. to launch a preemptive strike to prevent Iran’s potential retaliation on American military bases and interests abroad.

Sen. Angus King, the independent from Maine, said it’s “very disturbing” that Trump took the U.S. to war because Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to bomb Iran. Past U.S. presidents, he said, “have consistently said, ‘No.’”

Defense official Elbridge Colby told senators the president directed the military campaign to destroy Iranian missiles and deny the country nuclear weapons.

Trump himself disputed the idea that Israel had forced his hand. In his own Oval Office remarks, he said, “I might might have forced their hand.”

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Trump ally from Oklahoma, said the president “did the world a favor.”

“How about we say, ‘Thank you, Mr. President, for finally getting rid of this nuisance,’” he said.

But Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., demanded to know how this fits into Trump’s “America First” campaign promise not to commit U.S. troops to protracted military campaigns abroad.

Trump has suggested the war could drag on, and has not ruled out sending American troops into Iran.

“’America First’ and ‘peace through strength’ are served by rolling back — as the military campaign is designed to do — the threats posed,” Colby responded. “This is certainly not nation-building. This is not going to be endless.”

What’s next for the Iranian regime and its people

Questions are growing over who will lead Iran after the death of Khamenei, who has ruled the country for decades, as are worries of a leadership vacuum that creates unrest.

Democrats warned against sending U.S. military troops into Iran after more than two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“I am more fearful than ever we may be putting boots on the ground,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., after the closed briefing.

“The reason why there’s so much consternation on our side is because President Trump has not given us a clear reason why he is in Iran,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. “If he wants to declare war on Iran, that is the job and responsibility of Congress under the Constitution.”

Republicans insist it’s not for the Americans to decide the future of Iran.

“That’s going to be largely up to the Iranian people,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican.

Sen. Tom Cotton, the GOP chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, pointed to the aftermath of the U.S. attacks on Venezuela in January that ousted President Nicholas Maduro and elevated his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, to power.

Cotton said on CBS over the weekend that he imagines “some leaders inside of Iran who might be jockeying to audition for the role of Iran’s Delcy Rodriguez.”

Trump, in calling for Iranians to use this opportunity to take back their country, has acknowledged the uncertainty.

“Most of the people we had in mind are dead,” Trump said Tuesday. He also panned the idea of elevating Reza Pahlavi, the exiled crown prince of Iran’s last shah, to take over in Iran.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump confidante, said over the weekend, “It’s about the threats, not about who’s in charge. If the next group in Iran continues to threaten America, they will meet the same fate.”

War powers resolutions become a consequential vote

Both the House and Senate are preparing to vote on war powers resolutions that would restrain Trump’s ability to continue waging war on Iran without approval from Congress.

Under the U.S. Constitution, it’s up to Congress, not the president, to decide when the country goes to war. But lawmakers often shirk that duty, enabling the executive branch to amass more power to send the military into combat without congressional approval.

“Why are we spending billions of dollars to bomb Iran?” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who said there would be strong support from Democrats for the resolution.

But House Speaker Mike Johnson has said it would be “frightening” to tie the president’s hands at this time, when the U.S. is already engaged in combat.

Other lawmakers have suggested that if Congress does not vote to restrain Trump, it should next consider an Authorization of the Use of Military Force, which would require lawmakers to go on record with affirmative support for the Iran operation.

Former President George W. Bush sought, and received, authorization from Congress to launch the post-9/11 wars.

Associated Press writers Stephen Groves and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

The Gophers gained a commitment from a second skill-position player from Moorhead, Minn., on Tuesday.

Receiver David Mack joined the U’s class for 2027, following high school teammate Taye Reich, a running back who pledged to the U last week. Minnesota has also offered Moorhead quarterback Jett Feeney, but he has yet to make a decision.

“I’m home! All the Glory to God!!” Mack wrote on X. “After great visit and conversation with (head coach P.J. Fleck), I’m extremely blessed and proud to say I am COMMITTING to the University of Minnesota!”

Mack, who is listed at 6 foot and 175 pounds, posted 121 receptions for 1,607 yards and 26 touchdowns last season. The Spuds reached the Class 6A state championship game, falling to Edina.

Mack, who does not yet have a star rating, had other offers from Kansas, Colorado State and South Dakota State. The Gophers were his first offer in March 2025, with other interest from Wisconsin, Iowa State and Iowa.

The Gophers now have five players in next year’s class.

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