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Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on August 11 renewed his threats to the Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei, causing more tensions.
The new threat to the Islamic Republic was a response to what Katz said was a Hebrew-language graphic circulated by Tehran marking senior Israeli officials as assassination targets, including “Terror Minister Israel Katz.”
The same graphic included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom it accuses of crimes against humanity; Israeli Air Force chief Tomer Bar, whom it brands a “murderer of children”; and many other senior officials.
“I suggest to Iranian dictator Khamenei that when he leaves his bunker, he occasionally lift his eyes to the sky and listen carefully to every buzz,” Katz wrote on X, apparently referring to Israeli drone activity.
The Iranian graphic appeared to be heavily inspired by one used by the Israeli military during the 12-day war on Iran earlier this year.
Israel started the war on June 13, stating that its goal was to cripple Iran’s nuclear program. The war ended when a ceasefire was suddenly announced on June 24, just two days after the United States joined the war by attacking three key nuclear sites in Iran.
More than 30 senior Iranian military officials and around a dozen of the Islamic Republic’s leading nuclear scientists were assassinated during the war. It was later revealed that these killings were a part of an operation codenamed “Red Wedding” , the infamous scene in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” book series and HBO series “Game of Thrones,” in which several main characters were slain in a surprise attack.
In his post on X, Katz warned the Iranian Supreme Leader that the “participants of the ‘Red Wedding’ are waiting for him.”
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Khamenei amid the war, posting on Truth Social: “We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there — We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”
Katz revealed later in July that Israel sought to assassinate Khamenei during the war with Iran, but couldn’t locate the leader.
“If he had been in our sights, we would have taken him out,” he said at the time, adding that Israel “searched a lot” for Khamenei, but the operational opportunity did not arise.
The assassination of Quds Force commander Qassim Suleimani by the U.S. in 2020 and the later death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a 2024 suspicious accident, left Khamenei as the last hardline figure with major influence in the Islamic Republic.
While Israel claims that at no point it was trying to topple the Iranian government during the recent war, Katz’s previous and new threats suggest otherwise. The Islamic Republic is taking these threats seriously. In June it was reported that Khamenei appointed three potential successors.
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