'Khamenei should not continue to exist': Israeli Defense Minister Katz on Iran's top leader

In the clearest threat yet, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “should not continue to exist”.

The declaration came after an Iranian missile struck Soroka Medical Center, the main hospital in southern Israel. At least 40 people were injured in the attack.

Katz compared Khamenei to Hitler and said that said, for the first time, that killing the Supreme Leader of Iran, was among the objectives of the Israeli military. He said that killing Khamenei was “without question” among the military objectives.

The stark admission came days after a report said that US President Donald Trump had vetoed Israel's plan to assassinate Khamenei . In the war so far, Israel has assassinated nearly the entire military leadership of Iran. It has also assassinated some of the top Iranian nuclear scientists.

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Israel would kill Khamenei just like it would’ve killed Hitler, says Katz

Katz said that Israel would kill Khamenei today just like it would have killed Germany’s Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in the World War II if the State of Israel were in existence at the time. He called Khamenei the present-day Hitler.

“A dictator like Khamenei, who heads a country like Iran and has made the destruction of the State of Israel his declared goal, this horrific goal of destroying Israel, cannot be allowed to continue or materialize. I compare it to the scenario in which, during the horrific Holocaust, if the State of Israel had existed and a strong Israel Defense Forces had existed, and we knew we could send the IDF into a bunker to capture the enemy of the Jewish people, Hitler, in order to thwart his plan to annihilate the Jews, we would have done it,” said Katz.

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Hitler presided over the Holocaust in the World War II. It was the systemic killing of Jews and other social and ethnic groups. Jews were the overwhelming victim of the killings at around 6 million. Khamenei’s predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had formally committed the Islamic Republic of Iran to the destruction of Israel. Khamenei has reiterated the commitment publicly since then, including in a post on X in which he called Israel a cancerous tumour that must be removed.

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Katz said that Khamenei had given orders for strikes on Iran personally.

Katz further said, “The objectives of the war are to remove the nuclear threat, eliminate sources of destruction, and neutralise missile threats. Within this framework, the IDF has been instructed and knows that to achieve all the objectives, without question this man should no longer continue to exist.”