President Donald Trump reportedly in the last few days vetoed a proposal from Israel to assassinate Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“We communicated to the Israelis that President Trump is opposed to that,” an unnamed U.S. official told Axios. “The Iranians haven’t killed an American and discussion of killing political leaders should not be on the table.”
The president reportedly wanted to prevent further escalation of the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict and continue talks with Iran about a nuclear deal.
Some Jewish influencers were unhappy about this report:
Dear Donald Trump,
You don’t get to decide when or how Khamenei goes.
— 𝗡𝗶𝗼𝗵 𝗕𝗲𝗿𝗴 ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) June 15, 2025
Another “senior” administration source who spoke with Reuters also stressed that there will be no direct U.S. involvement so long as the Iranians aren’t targeting Americans.
“Have the Iranians killed an American yet? No,” the source said. “Until they do, we’re not even talking about going after the political leadership.”
Should Trump keep the U.S. military out of the Israel-Iran conflict?
When pressed about this reporting during a Sunday appearance on Fox News’ “Special Report,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested to Fox News host Bret Baier that it may be false.
“There’s so many false reports of conversations that never happened, and I’m not going to get into that,” he said. “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 is good for the United States.”
Netanyahu also accused Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of having been behind last year’s assassination attempts on President Trump.
“Do you have intel that the assassination attempts on President Trump were directly from Iran?” Baier asked him.
“Through proxies, yes,” the Israeli PM replied. “Through their intel, yes. They want to kill him. Look, he’s enemy number one.”
Israeli Prime Minister @netanyahu on intel of Iranian attempts to assassinate President @realDonaldTrump— “he’s enemy number one..” and on when he let President Trump know of the plans for launching the strikes #FoxNews #SpecialReport #Israel pic.twitter.com/l2xX10ZwfH
— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) June 15, 2025
Meanwhile, speaking this Sunday on ABC News‘ “This Week,” Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter didn’t rule out Khamenei being a potential target of assassination.
“Nobody who’s threatening the destruction of Israel should be off the target list,” he said. “The idea is to neutralize 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 — or is actually advancing, that cause of destroying Israel is obviously somebody we’re going to have to deal with,” he added.
Trump for his part told ABC News on Sunday that “it’s possible” the United States might “get involved” in the Israel-Iran conflict sometime going forward.
“We’re not involved in it. It’s possible we could get involved. But we are not at this moment involved,” he said.
🚨Trump to ABC: We’re not currently involved in a war. But it’s possible we could get involved pic.twitter.com/zrFPmmCRUv
— Raylan Givens (@JewishWarrior13) June 15, 2025
The president also said he’d be “open” to Russian President Vladimir Putin serving as a mediator between Iran and Israel.
“I would be open to it,” he explained. “[Putin] is ready. He called me about it. We had a long talk about it. We talked about this more than his situation. This is something I believe is going to get resolved.”
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