Visiting the site of this morning’s missile strike in Holon, Defense Minister Israel Katz says Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is “the modern Hitler” and “cannot continue to exist.”

He says that under the IDF’s war goals, “without question this man should not continue to exist.”

“A dictator like Khamenei, who heads a country like Iran and has made the destruction of the State of Israel his declared goal, this horrific goal of destroying Israel, cannot be allowed to continue or materialize,” he tells media.

“I compare it to the scenario in which, during the horrific Holocaust, if the State of Israel had existed and a strong Israel Defense Forces had existed, and we knew we could send the IDF into a bunker to capture the enemy of the Jewish people, Hitler, in order to thwart his plan to annihilate the Jews, we would have done it,” he says.

“We would have sent the IDF, extracted him, and eliminated him. And just like that, correspondingly, I see the current situation — Khamenei is the modern Hitler.”

Katz goes on: “This is a man who has stood at the head of a powerful nation for decades and has great ideological influence. He uses it and openly says he supports the destruction of Israel. He mobilizes all available resources, even at the expense of his own people, for this purpose. And today we see proof that he is personally giving the order to fire on hospitals and residential buildings. These [repeated missiles strikes on civilian targets] are not a statistical deviation that can be explained away — he sees this as part of the mission to destroy the State of Israel.”

Asked then whether eliminating Khamenei falls under the war’s goals, Katz replies: “The objectives of the war are to remove the nuclear threat, eliminate sources of destruction, and neutralize missile threats. Within this framework, the IDF has been instructed and knows that to achieve all the objectives, without question this man should no longer continue to exist.”

US officials said this week that President Donald Trump previously vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Khamenei. Trump later said there were no plans to kill him, “at least not for now.”