Katz directly threatens to assassinate Khamenei, shake Iranian regime

( JPost )

Defense Minister Israel Katz on Thursday directly threatened to assassinate Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in response to Iranian ballistic missiles striking Beersheba's Soroka Medical Center.

Katz said, "Khamenei will pay for his crimes."

The defense minister added that Israel will now start attacking new kinds of strategic targets in Iran "in order to remove the threats hanging over the State of Israel and to shake the ayatollah's regime."

It was not clear whether this meant the government has now given the order to actually Khamenei, with US President Donald Trump so far wanting to hold off on such a measure to still try to reach some kind of a deal with the regime. Or, whether Katz was simply raising the level of rhetoric to the threshold of being ready to assassinate Khamenei and giving him a last chance to cut a deal with Trump, while still leaving some amount of time for that kind of diplomacy.

Likewise, while the threat to "shake" the regime was an escalation of rhetoric closer to regime change, most experts do not believe Israel has sufficient military power to topple Iran's regime the way it has Hamas's regime in Gaza.

Further, even in Gaza after 20 months, Hamas still maintains itself as both a military and political entity, though much weaker than before.

In contrast, the Iranian regime is much stronger and is backed by millions of ultra loyal followers as part of a country of 90 million people.

Netanyahu's vows response to Iranian attack 

Also on Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to "extract the full price from the tyrants in Iran" following the morning Iranian missile barrage.

"This morning, Iran's terrorist tyrants launched missiles at the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba and at a civilian population in the center of the country. We will exact the full price from the tyrants in Tehran," Netanyahu wrote in an X post.