Israel's defence minister Israel Katz called Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei "marked for death" and "a dead man" on 1 July, in remarks first carried by the Israeli outlet Ynet1. Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi warned of an "immediate and powerful response" if Israel acted on the threat2.
Mojtaba, 56, took office on 8 March and has not appeared in public since, governing through handwritten notes carried in sealed envelopes. His father Ali Khamenei, killed in the opening Israeli strike of 28 February, is to be buried over six days from 4 July, and the funeral offers the first occasion on which the son might appear in person3. That would place the man Israel says it wants dead at a known location and hour, in front of crowds in the tens of millions, on a date printed weeks ahead.
On 1 July the Qom seminary and the Assembly of Experts, the clerical body that installed Mojtaba in an emergency online vote, both faulted the emerging US deal for falling short of his father's red lines. Israel wants him dead; his own clerics say he has already conceded too much.
The colder calculation cuts the other way. Israel gains little from killing a reclusive figurehead whose real authority already runs through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran's ideological military force, rather than his own office, and a great deal from the retaliation Araghchi has promised.
