US sources tell Reuters that Israel had a plan to assassinate Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Trump reportedly said no.

The Reuters news agency cites two unnamed, but official, sources as saying that Trump rejected Israel's plan.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (86) has been Iran's supreme leader since 1989. His full name is Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei.

A source tells Reuters that Israel and the United States are in ongoing contact and that it emerged in this contact that Israel had the ability to kill Khamenei.

Has Iran killed an American yet? No. And until then, we're not even talking about going after the political leadership, according to a source Reuters spoke to.

The Associated Press news agency also reports the same plan, and that the United States said no.

Khamenei was a key figure during the 1979 Iranian Revolution and a close confidant of then-leader Ayatollah Khomeini. When Khomeini died in 1989, Khamenei succeeded him as Iran's Supreme Leader. Prior to that, Khamenei served as President of Iran from 1981 to 1989.

Khamenei narrowly escaped a bomb attack in 1981, when a bomb hidden in a tape recorder exploded next to him during a press conference.

Netanyahu would not comment

On Sunday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared in an interview with Fox News. When asked about Trump's alleged rejection of a plan to kill Khamenei, Netanyahu responded:

– I'm not going to answer that.

Earlier Sunday evening, an Israeli defense spokesman said that regime change in Iran is not Israel's goal in the war.

But Netanyahu said in the interview that regime change could be the result of the war.

A number of Iranian leaders are among the several hundred killed so far, including the leader of the powerful Revolutionary Guard, Hossein Salami, defense chief Mohammad Bagheri and several nuclear scientists.