President Donald Trump said Thursday that he should have a role in choosing Iran’s new leader, and that Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the former leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who appeared to be the leading candidate to succeed his father, was an “unacceptable” choice.

Trump’s comments, in interviews with Reuters and Axios, were the most specific he has been about his vision of a U.S. role in creating a new government in Tehran. They made clear that Trump’s model for Iran, as he told The New York Times in an interview Sunday, was to replicate the installation of a new president in Venezuela after a U.S. Army Delta team seized Nicolás Maduro and sent him to a federal prison in Brooklyn, New York, where he is awaiting trial.

Trump’s insistence that he needed to have a role in the selection of Iran’s future leadership added to the confusion over the question of what his ultimate goals are in military action against the country.

His top aides, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have insisted that regime change is not on the list of U.S. objectives. They have spoken about ending the nuclear program and destroying Iran’s arsenal of missiles that can reach Israel, the Arab states of the Middle East and parts of Europe.

Hegseth said Wednesday that the United States was using “twice the air power of ‘shock and awe’ of Iraq in 2003,” but insisted the administration would not engage in the kind of nation-building efforts that President George W. Bush did. He specifically mentioned the work of Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, who was deeply involved in helping set up the Iraqi government.

But Trump has repeatedly returned to the topic of selecting new leadership in Iran, even if he has not explained how, and has avoided the term “nation building.” He is determined to make sure American troops are not deployed inside Iran, though that will sharply diminish his ability to influence events.

Asked about Trump’s goals, Karoline Leavitt, the president’s press secretary, repeated what Trump told Axios.