Kathmandu. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has said that Israel would have killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei if the United States had allowed it.
“If he was our target, we would have killed him,” Katz told Israel’s public radio station Kan on Thursday evening, noting that the military had “searched a lot.” “Khameni understood this, went very deep underground, cut off contact with commanders… so in the end it was not realistic.”
He told Israeli television Channel 13 on Thursday that Israel would stop its assassination attempts, saying that the situation before and after the ceasefire would be different. Days after reports emerged that Washington had vetoed an Israeli plan to assassinate him, Katz said Khamenei “cannot be allowed to exist any longer” during the war.
But Katz advised Khamenei to stay in the bunker. “He should learn from the late Nasrallah, who spent a long time in the depths of the bunker,” he said, referring to Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Nasrallah was killed by Israel in an airstrike in Beirut in September 2024.
The activities of the supreme leader, who has not left Iran since taking power, are subject to tight security and secrecy. Katz said on Thursday that Israel maintained its air superiority over Iran and was ready to strike again.
“We will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons and threaten Israel with long-range missiles,” he said. In his Channel 12 interview, Katz acknowledged that Israel does not know the location of all of Iran’s enriched uranium. But he said the Israeli airstrikes destroyed the Islamic Republic’s uranium enrichment capabilities.
“The material itself was not something that needed to be neutralized,” he said of the enriched uranium. The impact of the Israeli and US strikes on Iran’s nuclear program has been a matter of debate. Leaked US intelligence assessments estimate that the program has set Iran back by months, while Katz and other Israeli and US public figures have said it will take years to repair the damage.
Both Israel and Iran claim victory in the 12-day war that ended with a ceasefire on June 24. The war began on June 13 after Israel launched a bombing campaign.
Israel has said the attack was aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Iran has consistently denied any ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons.
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