President Trump told Axios' Barak Ravid in an interview today that he needs to be personally involved in selecting Iran's next leader.

• Trump revealed this exclusively in an eight-minute phone call — his second conversation with us to explain his war planning.

🇮🇷 Trump confirmed that Mojtaba Khamenei, son of assassinated supreme leader Ali Khamenei, is the most likely successor — while making clear that he finds that outcome unacceptable.

• Trump told Axios: "They are wasting their time. Khamenei's son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodríguez] in Venezuela."

🪖 He added that he refuses to accept a new Iranian leader who would continue Khamenei's policies, which he said would force the U.S. back to war "in five years."

• "Khamenei's son is unacceptable to me. We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran."

🇺🇸 Trump's comments represent an extraordinary claim of American power over Iran's political future, further muddying the objectives of the massive U.S. military campaign.

🇮🇱 Trump also told Axios that Israeli President Isaac Herzog must pardon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "today" — calling Herzog "a disgrace" for failing to act over the last year.

• Trump said: "Every day I talk to Bibi about the war. I want him to focus on the war and not on the f*cking court case. I want the only pressure on Bibi to be the fighting against Iran."

Trump has been pushing for a Netanyahu pardon since last June, arguing that Netanyahu's trial on corruption charges is a "witch hunt" akin to his own legal troubles.

• But today's comments — which Trump raised himself, unprompted — marked a dramatic escalation and direct intervention in Israel's legal system at a moment of active war.

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After a year of bad press, the U.S. dollar is strengthening against other currencies since the Iran war began, Axios' Emily Peck reports.

• Robin Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, tells Axios: "This is completely normal price action, and it does mean that people still think of the U.S. dollar as a safe haven."

🛢️ A spike in oil prices tied to the war sparked a global market disruption that's only just beginning to play out.

• Investors are selling holdings in overseas stocks and assets in Europe and Asia, and they're cashing out into U.S. dollars.
• That dynamic increased demand for the greenback, pushing up its value.

💸 Another factor: Oil trades in dollars.

• Higher prices mean you need more dollars to buy it, again pushing up demand.

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1. 🌸 Washington, D.C.'s iconic cherry blossoms will hit peak bloom March 29–April 1 this year, the National Park Service announced today. Go deeper.
2. 🏛️ Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other House GOP leaders called on Rep. Tony Gonzales to drop his reelection bid after Gonzales admitted to having an affair with a former staffer. Go deeper.
3. ⚓️ An Iranian warship sunk by a U.S. submarine near Sri Lanka was engaged in naval exercises hosted by India before the attack, India said. The incident marked the first time a U.S. sub fired a torpedo in combat since World War II. Keep reading.
4. 🎯 Target is expanding its store footprint, opening its 2,000th location this month and outlining plans to add more than 30 more this year. Go deeper.

Pizza Hut Classic locations take the chain's fans "on a time trip back to a simpler, warmer era," The New York Times reports.

• The retro-themed restaurants have everything you remember from the Pizza Huts of the '80s and '90s: red checkerboard tablecloths, branded hanging lamps, original menus.

🤷 Pizza Hut parent Yum Brands "does not promote or even acknowledge their existence," per The Times.

• But "retrologist" Rolando Pujol has assembled a list of about 80 locations.

Pujol tells The Times: "I did feel like I was giving people a passport to find a piece of their personal history that they had lost track of."

• "I am doing a public service."

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