On June 15, Trump rejected an Israeli plan to kill Ali Khamenei, a senior U.S. official told USA TODAY. The U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, confirmed that Israel was presented with an opportunity to kill Khamenei but Trump objected to the plan and steered it off.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has spent almost four decades as Shi'ite Iran's supreme leader building a regional power to rival the Sunni states across the Gulf and implacably hostile to the U.S. and Israel - while crushing repeated unrest at home.