Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set the goal of assassinating Iran’s late supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, back in November, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday night.

He added that the timeline for the strike was sped up due to the mass anti-regime protests in the Islamic Republic, which also created conditions for a joint US-Israeli operation in the country.

Katz made the statements during a round of interviews with Hebrew-language media outlets. Speaking to Channel 12, Katz said that in November 2025, a select group of officials held talks with Netanyahu “in a very small forum” on the possibility of assassinating Khamenei, who was killed on Saturday, the first day of the current US-Israeli campaign against the Iranian regime.

Initially, Katz said, it had been decided that an operation targeting the supreme leader would be launched in mid-2026, possibly in June.

Israel did not immediately share its plans with Washington, the defense minister said, as Jerusalem was operating “under the assumption that we might have to carry it [the assassination] out on our own.”

But this changed soon afterward, he said, as a “kind of dialogue” emerged on the matter between Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump when the anti-government protests erupted in the Islamic Republic at the end of December.

The protests threw the Islamic Republic into chaos. Thousands of protesters were reported killed at the hands of regime forces, with activist groups putting the true toll in the tens of thousands.

Israel and the US were taken aback by the protests, Katz added, explaining that their magnitude created a concern within Israel that the domestic unrest could provoke the regime to launch a preemptive strike on Israel, before Israel could take advantage of the strategic window that had opened up.

“It surprised everyone. The unrest didn’t just create an opportunity — there was also serious concern at the time that, because of the pressure on the regime from the protests, the........

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