Donald Trump on Saturday said he believes reports that Ali Khamenei has been killed in air strikes on Iran are likely true, but stopped short of officially confirming the development.
Speaking to NBC News and ABC News, Trump said the United States had reason to believe the reports were accurate, although verification was still ongoing.
“We feel that that is a correct story,” Trump was quoted as saying, adding: “I don’t want to say anything definitively until I see things, but we believe he is. And many of their leaders are gone.”
Earlier, Benjamin Netanyahu had said there were “many signs” indicating that the Iranian Supreme Leader was killed during strikes on his compound as part of the ongoing joint military operation by the United States and Israel.
Trump also declared that U.S. bombing operations in Iran would continue for as long as necessary, describing the reported death of Khamenei as a potential turning point for the Iranian people.
“The country has been, in only one day, very much destroyed and, even, obliterated. The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
He added that the death of Khamenei — which Iranian authorities have yet to confirm — represents “the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their country.”
The comments followed a wave of coordinated U.S. and Israeli air strikes that hit multiple targets in Tehran and other Iranian cities, triggering retaliatory missile and drone attacks across the region.
The U.S. military said its forces successfully intercepted hundreds of Iranian missiles and drones, noting that there were no American casualties and only minimal damage to U.S. installations.
