ST PETERSBURG, Russia: President Vladimir Putin on Thursday refused to discuss the possibility that Israel and the United States would kill Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and said the Iranian people were consolidating around the leadership in Tehran.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly speculated that Israel’s military attacks could result in regime change in Iran while US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the US knew where Khamenei was “hiding” but that Washington was not going to kill him “for now.”
Asked what his reaction would be if Israel did kill Khamenei with the assistance of the United States, Putin said: “I do not even want to discuss this possibility. I do not want to.”
When pressed, Putin said he had heard the remarks about possibly killing Khamenei but that he did not want to discuss it.
“We see that today in Iran, with all the complexity of the internal political processes taking place there...that there is a consolidation of society around the country’s political leadership,” Putin told senior news agency editors in the northern Russian city of St. Petersburg.
