Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks in a televised message, after the ceasefire between Iran and Israel, in Tehran, Iran on Jun 26, 2025. On Thursday, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz told media that the military would have killed Khamenei during the war if the opportunity had presented itself.
“If he had been in our sights, we would have taken him out,” Katz told Israel’s public radio station Kan, adding that the military had “searched a lot”.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has re-emerged after the war with Israel but faces a struggle to maintain the authority he has wielded over the Islamic Republic for over three-and-a-half decades of rule, analysts say.
After days of silence, Khamenei appeared on Thursday (Jun 26) in a video address to proclaim “victory” and prove he is still alive following the 12-day conflict with Israel, which ended with a truce earlier this week.
But Khamenei, appointed Iran’s number one and spiritual leader for life in 1989, spoke softly and hoarsely in the address, without the charismatic oratory for which he is known.
Whereas his regular interventions before the war usually took place in public in front of an audience, this message was filmed against a plain backdrop of curtains and a picture of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
This may indicate he could still be in hiding after Israel refused to rule out seeking to assassinate him.
On Thursday, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz told media that the military would have killed Khamenei during the war if the opportunity had presented itself.
“If he had been in our sights, we would have taken him out,” Katz told Israel’s public radio station Kan, adding that the military had “searched a lot”.
But in the end, the conflict did not trigger the removal of the system that has ruled Iran since the 1979 revolution.
Still, it enabled Israel to demonstrate military superiority and deep intelligence penetration of Iran by killing key members of Khamenei’s inner circle in targeted strikes.The war was also the latest in a series of setbacks over the last year for Khamenei.