{"id":322,"date":"2025-06-17T18:21:06","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T18:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=322"},"modified":"2025-06-17T18:21:06","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T18:21:06","slug":"trump-says-the-us-knows-where-irans-khamenei-is-hiding-and-urges-irans-unconditional-surrender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/?p=322","title":{"rendered":"Trump says the US knows where Iran’s Khamenei is hiding and urges Iran’s unconditional surrender"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0said Tuesday the U.S. knows where Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is hiding during\u00a0the Israel-Iran conflict<\/a>\u00a0but doesn\u2019t want him killed \u201cfor now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump urged, in a social media posting, Iran’s \u201cUNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER\u201d as the five-day conflict continues to escalate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know exactly where the so-called \u2018Supreme Leader\u2019 is hiding,\u201d Trump added. \u201cHe is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don\u2019t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump’s increasingly muscular comments toward the Iranian government come after\u00a0he urged Tehran\u2019s 9.5 million residents to flee<\/a> for their lives as he cut short his participation in an international summit to return to Washington for urgent talks with his national security team.<\/p>\n

The comments about Khamenei and calls for surrender came shortly after Trump in a separate posting touted complete control of the skies over Tehran.<\/p>\n

Trump in the opening days of the conflict\u00a0rejected a plan<\/a>\u00a0presented by Israel to kill Khamenei, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to comment on the sensitive matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

The Israelis had informed the Trump administration that they had developed a credible plan to kill Khamenei. But White House officials informed the Israelis that Trump opposed such a move. Administration officials were concerned that the plan to kill Khamenei could enflame the conflict and potentially destabilize the region.<\/p>\n

Trump returned to the White House from his abbreviated trip to\u00a0the Group of Seven summit<\/a>\u00a0in the Canadian Rockies early Tuesday at a moment of choosing in his presidency.<\/p>\n

Israel, with five days of missile strikes, has done considerable damage to Iran and believes it can now deal a permanent blow to Tehran’s nuclear program \u2014 particularly if it gets a little more help from the Republican president.<\/p>\n

But deepening American involvement, perhaps by providing the Israelis with bunker-busting bombs to penetrate Iranian nuclear sites built deep underground or offering other direct U.S. military support, comes with enormous political risk for Trump.<\/p>\n

Trump, as he made his way back to Washington, expressed frustration with Iranian leaders for failing to reach an agreement. He said he was now looking for \u201ca real end\u201d to the conflict and a \u201ccomplete give-up\u201d of Tehran’s nuclear program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey should have done the deal. I told them, \u2018Do the deal,\u2019\u201d Trump told reporters on Air Force One. \u201cSo I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m not too much in the mood to negotiate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iran has insisted that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, and U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that\u00a0Tehran is not actively pursuing a bomb<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump, who will hold a Situation Room meeting with advisers on Tuesday, has been gradually building the public case for a more direct American role in the conflict. His shift in tone comes as the U.S. has\u00a0repositioned warships<\/a> and military aircraft in the region to respond if the conflict between Israel and Iran further escalates.<\/p>\n

Trump made an early departure from G7<\/p>\n

The White House announced Monday that Trump was cutting his participation in the G7 summit so he could return to Washington to focus his attention on the Mideast crisis. Trump, while at the summit, also raised alarms when he urged Iranians with a social media posting to \u201cimmediately evacuate Tehran.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about his evacuation comment, Trump told reporters: \u201cI just want people to be safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump said he wasn’t ruling out a diplomatic option and he could send Vice President JD Vance and\u00a0special envoy Steve Witkoff<\/a>\u00a0to meet with the Iranians.<\/p>\n

He also dismissed congressional testimony from National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, who told lawmakers in March that U.S. spy agencies did not believe Iran was building a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t care what she said,” Trump said. “I think they were very close to having it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gabbard on Tuesday\u00a0brushed off the inconsistency,<\/a>\u00a0blaming the media for misconstruing her earlier testimony and asserting that \u201cPresident Trump was saying the same thing that I said.”<\/p>\n

Speculation grows that Trump may be tilting toward more direct involvement<\/p>\n

The Israelis say their offensive has eviscerated Iran’s air defenses and they can now strike targets across the country at will. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says\u00a0the Israeli bombardment<\/a>\u00a0will continue until Iran’s nuclear program and ballistic missiles are destroyed.<\/p>\n

So far, Israel has targeted multiple\u00a0Iranian nuclear program sites<\/a>\u00a0but has not been able to destroy Iran\u2019s Fordo uranium enrichment facility.<\/p>\n

The site is buried deep underground \u2014 and to eliminate it, Israel may need the 30,000-pound GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which uses its weight and sheer kinetic force to reach deeply buried targets and then explode. But Israel does not have the munition or the bomber needed to deliver it \u2014 the penetrator is currently delivered by the B-2 stealth bomber.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s own defenses remain largely intact in the face of Iran’s retaliatory strikes, but some of Tehran’s missiles are getting through and having deadly impact.<\/p>\n

A widening schism over Iran among Trump’s MAGA supporters<\/p>\n

Trump bristled when asked about some of his MAGA faithful, including conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, who have suggested that further U.S. involvement would be a betrayal to supporters who were drawn to his promise to end U.S. involvement in expensive and endless wars.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that,\u2019 IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!\u2019\u201d the president wrote on social media.<\/p>\n

Other prominent Trump supporters have also\u00a0raised concerns<\/a>\u00a0about how far the president should go in backing Israel.<\/p>\n

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk are among prominent Trump World allies who have noted that voters backed Trump because he promised not to entangle the nation in foreign clashes and to be wary of expanding U.S. involvement in the Mideast conflict.<\/p>\n

He ran on a promise to quickly end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine but has struggled to find an endgame to either.<\/p>\n

In a Tuesday posting on X, Vance said he wanted to address \u201ca lot of crazy stuff on social media\u201d about Trump\u2019s approach to Iran.<\/p>\n

Vance made the case that Trump has been consistent that \u201cIran cannot have uranium enrichment\u201d and has said \u201crepeatedly that this would happen one of two ways \u2014 the easy way or the \u2018other\u2019 way.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are also Trump backers, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who are making the case that this is Trump’s moment to deliver a decisive blow to Iran. Graham is calling for Trump to “go all-in\u201d in backing Israel and destroying Iran\u2019s nuclear program.<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Josh Boak, Tara Copp, David Klepper, Darlene Superville and Will Weissert contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0said Tuesday the U.S. knows where Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is hiding<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cedritech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}