US President Donald Trump had vetoed an Israeli plan in recent days to kill Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, two US officials said on Sunday.
“Have the Iranians killed an American yet? No. Until they do, we’re not even talking about going after the political leadership," said one of the senior US administration officials, as per a Reuters report.
However, Israel's 'Operation Rising Lion', a series of pre-emptive strikes on Iran over the latter's nuclear policies, saw more than 20 military commanders and nuclear scientists killed. The two nations greatly escalated conflict overnight into Sunday, with Israel reporting a death toll of 13, and Iran declaring that at least 60 people had died on Saturday alone.
The unnamed sources added that top US officials had been in constant touch with Tel Aviv since the beginning of the Israel-Iran conflict.
US President Donald Trump has used the conflict to push Iran towards nuclear disarmament, declaring on Sunday that he would be ending the conflict soon by leveraging trade deals with the two nations, “just like I got India and Pakistan” to agree to a ceasefire, a claim that India has long denied.
However, he has also denied American involvement in the conflict, warning Iran of devastating consequences if it were to attack the US. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has also only provided vague remarks about US involvement in the conflict so far.
Yet, he also claimed in a Reuters interview that he “knew everything” all along, and yet “tried to save them very hard because I would have loved to have seen a deal worked out"—all at a time when he had been publicly urging Israel not to attack Iran due to the ongoing nuclear talks in Oman.
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With the US-Iran nuclear negotiations in Oman—which were to take place on Sunday—cancelled for the time being, the G7 summit is another opportunity for world leaders to make progress on the conflict.