Democrats leader Yair Golan said killing Iran\u2019s supreme leader Ali Khamenei did not serve Israel\u2019s interests, arguing that the operation left more extreme figures in power.<\/p>\n
Yair Golan on the hot seat after comments made during an interview with N12<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that, without a doubt, eliminating Khamenei senior was a mistake. Not because he didn\u2019t deserve to die, but because it did not serve Israel\u2019s interests,\u201d he said at a Friday Culture event in Rishon LeZion.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a certain advantage to having an elderly, long-standing leader like Khamenei. He was 86, after all,\u201d Golan said. Of Khamenei\u2019s son and successor, he added: \u201cIf he is even functioning at all, I get the impression that he is controlled by Iran\u2019s ultra-extremist security leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iran confirms Khamenei killed in precision strike on Tehran compound<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter we wiped out the top tier of leadership across so many key areas, we were left with individuals who are more extreme and more violent,\u201d he said, arguing that Israel\u2019s achievements against Iran peaked with Operation Rising Lion in June 2025.<\/p>\n
Golan said the subsequent Operation Roaring Lion \u201cdid not improve our position,\u201d accusing Netanyahu of setting \u201can unrealistic war objective \u2014 overthrowing the Iranian regime \u2014 which ultimately failed and was never achieved.\u201d<\/p>\n
Khamenei was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his Tehran compound on February 28, in the opening wave of the joint U.S.-Israeli offensive against Iran.<\/p>\n
Golan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff, heads the left-wing party formed by the merger of Labor and Meretz. His remarks came ahead of Israel\u2019s October 27 election, with his party among the opposition factions seeking to oust Netanyahu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Democrats leader Yair Golan said killing Iran\u2019s supreme leader Ali Khamenei did not serve Israel\u2019s interests, arguing that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-641301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}