Donald Trump, the U.S. president, said the Islamic Republic now even has no leader and senior officials, and Washington is facing a problem in identifying who to negotiate with in Iran.

Trump said: “The problem is this. Maybe we went too far in dealing with their leaders, because now we don’t even know who we’re dealing with.”

He also said: “Nobody wants to become the president of Iran. They call out names one by one and ask, who wants to be president of Iran? Nobody wants to. I don’t want to.”

Trump, referring to the difficulty of finding a negotiating partner, added: “To be honest, because for us to understand who we should even be negotiating with, we’ve run into a big problem.”

Continuing, the U.S. president said: “I think we overdid it. We could have stopped at the first level. Going to the second level and the two-and-a-half level probably was overdoing it.”