President Donald Trump opposed an Israeli plan to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to two sources, amid ongoing waves of tit-for-tat strikes between Israel and Iran as the US president is making publicly and privately clear he prefers to keep the United States out of the fray for now.
Over the weekend, one senior US official told CNN, the Israelis had an opportunity to kill Iran’s supreme leader. The US communicated to Israel that Trump opposed that plan, the senior official said, and the plan was not executed. Trump is eager to de-escalate, wary of becoming bogged in another Middle East war and highly attuned to the changing politics of his party.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday morning that there are “so many false reports of conversations that never happened and I’m not going to get into that” when asked about reports of the plan by Fox News’ Bret Baier on “Special Report.” A spokesperson for Netanyahu told CNN that the reports of Trump rejecting an Israeli plan are “FAKE.”