ALBAWABA - People in the area say that Esmail Khatib, Iran's intelligence minister, has said that the US and Israel are trying to hurt Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei or cause trouble in the country.
ISNA, Iran's Student News Agency, said Saturday night that Khatib had said the Supreme Leader is "the pillar" of the country. He added, "That's why the enemies want to target him and do things that threaten this axis of unity."
At first, it wasn't clear if the minister was talking about a specific event or plan. However, Iranian officials often talk about plans by other countries, most of the time involving the US and Israel. But people rarely talked about threats to Khamenei's safety in public until after the war between Iran and Israel last summer.
There had never been an attack like the one Israel did on June 13. They went to war for 12 days, and for a short time, the US joined by attacking three major Iranian nuclear targets.
The president of Iran, Masoud Pezeshkian, said on November 11 that he thought Khamenei might die in the war. He said that this might have made things worse in Iran. State media showed a video of Pezeshkian saying, "I wasn't afraid for myself." "I was afraid that something bad would happen to the Leader and that we would fight with each other."
Ayatollah Khomeini gave Ali Khamenei the job of Supreme Leader in 1989. He is now 86 years old. Besides being the leader of the Islamic Republic, he is also its most powerful person. The US and Israel have both threatened to kill him many times.
There are charges that the International Criminal Court wants to bring against Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel. Bloomberg told ABC News during the war that killing the Supreme Leader "would not make the conflict worse; it would end it."
Trump also said that Khamenei was a "easy target" and that the United States "will not kill him—at least for now."
