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President Donald Trump has indicated that he would support the killing of Iran’s newly installed supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, if the Iranian leader refuses to comply with U.S. demands, including halting Iran’s nuclear program, according to American officials who spoke to The Wall Street Journal.

The White House declined to comment on the report. However, Trump told the New York Post that he is “not happy” that Khamenei was selected to lead Iran after previously calling his potential leadership “unacceptable.” Trump wrote last week on social media that he wants to be involved in choosing a “great and acceptable” leader for Iran following what he described as the country’s “unconditional surrender.”

“I’m not going through this to end up with another Khamenei,” Trump told Time magazine last week.

A current and a former U.S. official said Israel is expected to carry out an operation aimed at eliminating Khamenei, who was appointed supreme leader on Sunday. The officials noted that Israel has taken the lead in targeting Iranian leadership figures. When recently asked on CNN whether Khamenei was a target for Israel, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar responded: “You’ll have to wait and see.”

Younger Khamenei is viewed in Washington as a hardline successor to his father, carefully chosen by Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to current and former U.S. officials. American officials said they do not expect Khamenei to abandon Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons or to enter negotiations to end the conflict under terms favorable to the United States.

French President Emmanuel Macron also addressed the war with Iran, saying that airstrikes alone will not be enough to bring down Iran’s political regime and warning that the conflict is likely to continue for some time.

“I don’t think we can achieve profound change in a regime or political system through bombing alone,” Macron said in a television interview aboard France’s aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, which arrived in Cyprus on Monday.

The war “will certainly continue in an intense phase for several days, perhaps several weeks,” he added.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel estimates roughly 7,000 members of Iran’s security forces have been killed since the start of the war, according to a senior Israeli security official.

Iran maintains more than one million security personnel across various organizations, including the regular army (Artesh), the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the Basij resistance militia.

{Matzav.com}

Pete Hegseth on Operation Epic Fury: Where we are is in a very strong place, giving the President of the United States maximum options… The President has set a very specific mission to accomplish and our job is to unrelentingly deliver.

The IDF says the Israeli Air Force identified several operatives from Iran’s ballistic missile array in western Iran on Monday as they prepared to launch missiles toward Israel. Minutes before the launch, an Israeli Air Force aircraft struck the launcher and eliminated the operatives, dismantling the launch cell before the missiles could be fired.

Gen. Dan Caine on Operation Epic Fury: To date, we’ve struck more than 5,000 targets. Iranian ballistic missile attacks are down 90% and one-way attack drones are down 83%. We’ve struck more than 50 Iranian naval ships.

Pete Hegseth: Today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran — the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes… On the other hand, the last 24 hours have seen Iran fire the lowest number of missiles.

A special simchah was celebrated today in the city of Modiin Illit, where a local family welcomed their 21st child, bli ayin hara. Even more unusual is the fact that all of the children were born as single births, with no twins among them.

According to sources, the oldest child in the family, who lives in Kiryat Sefer, is just 22 years old. This means that nearly every year the family merited to welcome a new baby boy or girl.

At present, all 21 children are still single and living in their parents’ home.

The extraordinary story even surpasses a previously known “record” of a family in Bnei Brak that also had 21 children, though in that case one of the births was a set of twins.

The baby was born today at Maayanei HaYeshua Hospital in Bnei Brak.

News of the home blessed with 21 children quickly spread throughout the neighborhood, and neighbors have already begun enthusiastically organizing assistance for the mother and her husband.

Oif simchos!

{Matzav.com}