Regime change in Tehran Putin says Iran is consolidating around its leaders

ST PETERSBURG, Russia - President Vladimir Putin on June 19 refused to discuss the possibility that Israel and the United States would kill Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and said the Iranian people were consolidating around the leadership in Tehran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly speculated that Israel’s military attacks could result in regime change in Iran while US President Donald Trump said on June 17 that the US knew where Mr Khamenei was “hiding” but that Washington was not going to kill him “for now”.

Asked what his reaction would be if Israel did kill Mr Khamenei with the assistance of the United States, Mr Putin said: “I do not even want to discuss this possibility. I do not want to.”

When pressed, Mr Putin said he had heard the remarks about possibly killing Mr Khamenei but that he did not want to discuss it.

“We see that today in Iran, with all the complexity of the internal political processes taking place there ... that there is a consolidation of society around the country’s political leadership,” Mr Putin told senior news agency editors in the northern Russian city of St Petersburg.

Mr Putin said all sides should look for ways to end hostilities in a way that ensured both Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear power and Israel’s right to the unconditional security of the Jewish state.

Mr Putin was speaking as US President Donald Trump kept the world guessing whether the US would join Israel’s bombardment of Iranian nuclear and missile sites and as residents of Iran’s capital streamed out of the city on the sixth day of the air assault.

Mr Putin said he had personally been in touch with Mr Trump and with Mr Netanyahu, and that he had conveyed Moscow’s ideas on