Donald Trump vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Iran’s supreme leader, according to American officials.
Details of the plan to kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei emerged on Sunday night after Mr Trump warned Iran not to target American interests and car bombs rocked Tehran, the Iranian capital.
The White House has made clear it is intent on limiting Israel’s actions to degrading Iran’s nuclear weapons programme and does not want a wider regional war.
World leaders were due to meet in Calgary, Canada, on Monday at a G7 summit where conflict in the Middle East is expected to dominate the agenda.
Sources said Israel had briefed the Trump administration on its plan to kill Iran’s supreme leader but Mr Trump refused to approve the operation.
“Have the Iranians killed an American yet? No. Until they do we’re not even talking about going after the political leadership,” said a senior US administration official.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, shrugged off questions about the plan during a TV interview.
“There’s so many false reports of conversations that never happened, and I’m not going to get into that,” he told Fox News.
“But I can tell you, I think that we do what we need to do. And I think the United States knows what is good for the United States.”
Killing the elderly supreme leader could topple the Iranian regime or, conversely, allow a more hardline leader to take his place and race to build a nuclear bomb.
Mr Trump has been holding out for more talks with Iran to resolve the conflict.
“Iran and Israel should make a deal, and will make a deal,” he wrote on his Truth Social site. “We will have PEACE, soon, between Israel and Iran! Many calls and meetings now taking place.”
He offered no further details but in an interview with ABC News, he said he had talked with Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, about acting as a mediator.
Officials were primed for a back channel approach via Russia, sources said.
Israelis woke on Sunday to scenes of devastation. Authorities said at least 10 people were killed and more than 35 people were wounded by missiles that hit homes in northern and central parts of the country.
A total of 13 people have been killed since Iran launched its retaliatory strikes against Israel, and more than 370 injured, including nine seriously, according to the Israeli government.
Rescue workers combed rubble in Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv, where a missile hit an eight-storey building. Local media said at least 35 people were missing.
Israel widened its strikes on Sunday, with reports of explosions in residential areas, fuel depots and ministries.
It claimed its “most distant strike since the beginning of the operation” by bombing an Iranian refuelling plane at Mashhad airport in north-east Iran, almost 1,500 miles from Israel.
“The air force is working to achieve air superiority throughout Iran,” the IDF said.
Air raid sirens and explosions could be heard over Tel Aviv and Jerusalem as Iran continued its response. The IDF said several sites had been hit.
Families of British diplomats in Iran left the country shortly before Israel’s attack on Tehran on Friday, The Telegraph understands.
The UK has so far opted not to evacuate its embassy staff in the Iranian capital, despite direct threats to British assets in the Middle East.
Iranian officials have said they will not hesitate to strike Britain directly if it assists in either defending Israel from Iranian attacks or attacking Iran itself.
Five car bombs rocked on Sunday. The improvised explosives were detonated simultaneously close to government buildings, a state news outlet reported, as images emerged of dark smoke rising from a flaming vehicle.
Iranian officials blamed the wave of blasts on an Israeli attack, which was later dubbed “Beepers 2.0” – a nod to the thousands of booby-trapped pagers used in an operation to kill and maim Hezbollah’s top fighters.
The Islamist regime’s police force had earlier claimed to have arrested two Mossad agents in the Alborz province, west of Tehran, “who were making bombs, explosives, booby traps and electronic equipment in a safe house in Savojbolagh”. However, Israel denied any involvement in explosions across the Iranian capital.
It came as both Israel and Iran traded long-range strikes for a third day, provoking fears the conflict could spread beyond the two countries’ borders.
Israel said it also mounted attacks against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen in the hope of killing one of the militant group’s most senior officials. It was unclear whether they succeeded.
Reports from Iran suggested Brigadier General Mohammad Kazemi, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s spymaster, and his deputy were trapped beneath the rubble of the organisation’s intelligence branch after it was hit in an Israeli strike.
Mr Netyanahu told Fox News: “I can tell you we got their chief intelligence officer and his deputy in Tehran.”
Iranian opposition figures also claimed Brigadier General Hamid Vahedi, commander of Iran’s air force, had been killed, along with his probable successor.
“We struck the site with IRGC air force Commander Hajizadeh and the Iranian armed forces chief of staff—both of whom were killed in the opening strikes,” Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, an IDF spokesman, told reporters on Sunday.
“The IDF is operating simultaneously in multiple arenas, some thousands of kilometres away from Israel. This is unprecedented. It reflects the scale of the threat and the scale of our commitment to defend ourselves and our people,” he added.
The aftermath of the mounting Israeli operation started to take its toll on Tehran, with streets flooded with raw sewage spewing from broken pipes and gridlocked roads as civilians attempted to flee the city.
The IDF had issued an unprecedented warning to residents, urging them to stay clear of weapons production sites.
Russia announced on Sunday that it was evacuating its diplomats from the country’s embassy in Tehran because of the mounting violence.
The Iranian regime has claimed that Israel’s strikes have killed at least 128 people, including seven senior military officials.
Iran promised to step up its retaliatory strikes and Brigadier General Effie Defrin, an IDF spokesman, said his comrades would not cease assaults “for the moment”.
In Israel, intelligence officials accused Tehran of trying to plunge their country into darkness through attacks on energy infrastructure, a tactic similarly deployed by Iran’s ally Russia against Ukraine. There was confirmed damage to Israel’s largest oil refinery in the northern port city of Haifa.
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