Netanyahu says report false on 'Trump rejecting Israel move to kill top Iranian leader'

United News of India

8 hours ago

Washington/Tel Aviv, June 16 (UNI) US President Donald Trump had reportedly rejected Israel's move to kill Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rebuked the statement, calling it a false report.
The IDF operation, which was called a 'pre-emptive attack' on Iranian nuclear infrastructure by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, resulted in the deaths of several members of the Islamic regime's top brass, including IRGC commander General Hossein Salami, and Iranian Army COAS General Mohammad Bagheri, deliberately left out Khamenei.
According to Politico, despite Trump's own hostility towards the Iranian leader, he was still willing to bring him to the negotiating table to reach a deal, which was both practical and mutually agreeable, and end the deadly Israel-Iran conflict through diplomacy.
He had also issued an ultimatum to Khamanei after the Israeli strikes, writing on his social media platform Truth Social on Friday 'Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.'
However, Netanyahu has rebuked the report, calling it a false news. 'There are so many false reports of conversations that never happened, and I'm not going to get into that,' he told Fox News on Sunday.
'But I can tell you, I think that we do what we need to do, we'll do what we need to do, and I think the United States knows what's good for the United States.'
Simultaneously, the Israeli PM did not deny that a regime change was a part of its goal, in Tel Aviv's war with Tehran.
'It could certainly be the result, because the Iran regime is very weak. I think it's basically left with two things, its plans to have atomic bombs and ballistic missiles.'
Yechiel Leiter, Israel's ambassador to the United States, also refused to rule out going after Khamenei on Sunday.
'I think it's fair to say that nobody who's threatening the destruction of Israel should be off the target list,' Leiter told ABC. 'But we're not going to discuss specific individuals, you know, online.
'The idea is to neutralise and terminate the Iranian intention of destroying Israel through nuclear weapons and through ballistic missiles. And anybody who gets in the way of that, or is actually advancing that cause of destroying Israel, is obviously somebody we're going to have to deal with.'
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