Reuters reported on the 23rd (local time) that U.S. President Donald Trump gave final approval for a joint operation to assassinate Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, after persistent persuasion by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is said to have strongly stoked Trump's desire for revenge by reminding him that Iran had run a so-called "Trump assassination team."
Reuters, citing multiple sources that day, said President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu held a hotline phone call on Feb. 26, 48 hours before the airstrikes began. The two countries' intelligence agencies obtained key intelligence that Khamenei and his closest aides would gather at his Tehran residence, and learned that the originally scheduled meeting had been moved up to the morning of the 28th.
According to Reuters, in the call that day, Netanyahu specifically brought up the 2024 attempted assassination of Trump, for which Iran was identified as the mastermind when Trump was a presidential candidate, arguing that they "must launch a retaliatory strike immediately." Although Trump had approved the military operation against Iran itself, he had kept weighing the exact timing of execution; the very next day, on the 27th, after this call, he issued the final strike order. From the moment the two leaders closely shared sensitive information and made last-minute adjustments, the operation to behead Khamenei began.
The militaries of the two countries spent months on advance preparations for this attack. Earlier, in June last year, the United States and Israel carried out a first joint airstrike that focused on Iranian nuclear facilities and missile bases. Israel was not satisfied with the results, which fell short of completely annihilating Iran's nuclear facilities, and asked the United States for additional operations.
Coincidentally, the Trump administration had gained significant confidence in large-scale overseas military operations after successfully completing in January this year a mission to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro without U.S. casualties. In the same month, massive anti-government protests spread like wildfire across Iran, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps carried out a brutal crackdown that killed thousands, further sharpening the justification for armed intervention. The United States and Israel are said to have repeatedly held secret meetings around this time and refined operational plans, including destroying ballistic missile production facilities.
Netanyahu kept trying to persuade Trump that if Khamenei died, a large-scale popular uprising would erupt inside Iran and the regime could naturally be replaced. But reality is moving in a completely different direction. After Khamenei's death, his son Mojtaba, who holds an even more hard-line anti-U.S. stance, rose to the position of supreme leader. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps still controls the streets of the cities, and Iranian citizens have not staged an uprising, citing reasons such as fear of retaliation.
Meanwhile, as a series of Iranian retaliatory strikes increasingly becomes reality, U.S. military casualties are steadily rising. As the war enters its fourth week, a total of 13 U.S. service members have lost their lives.