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.”

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.”