Defence Minister Israel Katz told media that Israel would have killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during the war between the two countries if the opportunity had presented itself.
“If he had been in our sights, we would have taken him out,” Katz told Israel’s public radio station Kan on Thursday evening, adding that the military had “searched a lot.”
“Khamenei understood this, went very deep underground, broke off contact with the commanders… so in the end it wasn’t realistic,” Katz told Kan.
He told Israeli television Channel 13 on Thursday that Israel would cease its assassination attempts because “there is a difference between before the ceasefire and after the ceasefire.”
Katz had said during the war that Khamenei “can no longer be allowed to exist,” just days after reports that Washington vetoed Israeli plans to assassinate him.
But on Kan, Katz advised Khamenei to remain inside a bunker.
“He should learn from the late Nasrallah, who sat for a long time deep in the bunker,” he said, referring to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah’s former leader Hassan Nasrallah, who Israel killed in a Beirut air strike in September 2024.
