Tel Aviv [Israel], June 19 : Israel Defence Minister Israel Katz while visiting the site of a missile strike at a hospital in Holon, said that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is "the modern Hitler" and "cannot continue to exist," The Times of Israel reported.
Katz said that under the IDF's war goals, "without question this man should not continue to exist."
"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," The Times of Israel quoted him as saying.
"I compare it to the scenario in which, during the horrific Holocaust, if the State of Israel had existed and a strong Israel Defence 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," he said.
"We would have sent the IDF, extracted him, and eliminated him. And just like that, correspondingly, I see the current situation -- Khamenei is the modern Hitler."
In a post on X, he called Khamenei a coward and said that he was accountable for war crimes.
"The cowardly Iranian dictator sits in the depths of the fortified bunker and fires aimed shots at hospitals and residential buildings in Israel. These are war crimes of the most serious kind - and Khamenei will be held accountable for his crimes. The Prime Minister and I have instructed the IDF to increase the intensity of attacks against strategic targets in Iran and against government targets in Tehran in order to remove threats to the State of Israel and undermine the ayatollahs' regime."
https://x.com/Israel_katz/status/1935588198505173249
Katz further said, "This is a man who has stood at the head of a powerful nation for decades and has great ideological influence. He uses it and openly says he supports the destruction of Israel. He mobilizes all available resources, even at the expense of his own people, for this purpose. And today we see proof that he is personally giving the order to fire on hospitals and residential buildings. These [repeated missiles strikes on civilian targets] are not a statistical deviation that can be explained away -- he sees this as part of the mission to destroy the State of Israel."
Asked then whether eliminating Khamenei falls under the war's goals, Katz said, "The objectives of the war are to remove the nuclear threat, eliminate sources of destruction, and neutralize 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."
US officials said this week that President Donald Trump previously vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Khamenei. Trump later said there were no plans to kill him, "at least not for now."