Controversial Iranian leader’s fate as Trump ‘believes’ Khamenei has been killed – National
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested on Saturday that Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may be dead, following an earlier statement urging Iranians to “take to the streets and finish the job.”
There have been many indications that Khamenei is “gone,” Netanyahu said in a televised address Saturday evening, without confirming the Iranian leader’s death, but said Khamenei’s compound had been destroyed and that the commanders of the Revolutionary Guard and senior nuclear officials had been eliminated.
Earlier, Iran’s foreign minister told NBC News that the country’s supreme leader and president are alive “as far as I know,” the AP reported.
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Iran’s Al-Alam television said Khamenei would speak, but the speech was not televised.
Asked if Khamenei had died in a telephone interview with NBC News on Saturday, US President Donald Trump said, “We feel that’s a good story.”
A political reporter at ABC News, Rachel Scott, wrote in X that Donald Trump told him that he “believes” the supreme leader of Iran is dead, but did not give him a definite answer.
“I don’t want to say something for sure until I see things, but we believe it’s him,” said Scott.
Iranian media, quoting a source close to Khamenei’s office, wrote that, I can tell you with certainty that the revolutionary leader firmly and firmly controls the field, Reuters reported.
Meanwhile, the UN Secretary General said he was not in a position to confirm reports of Khamenei’s death in Iran, Reuters said.
Netanyahu’s update on Saturday afternoon followed the release of a recorded message on Saturday morning in which he said Israel’s launch of a US-led operation in Iran would be “much stronger” than the June conflict led by the US military.
He called on the Iranian military to lay down their weapons and encouraged the Iranian people to bring down their government.
The authorities in Tehran have condemned the strikes that started this morning and attacked different areas of the country, without reason and illegal.
— This is a developing story; check back for updates.
–– Via files from Reuters and the Associated Press
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