🇺🇸🇮🇱⚔️🇮🇷 Axios: The negotiations were a ruse, never intended to actually produce any results! The decision to assassinate Sayyed Ali Khamenei was taken at Mar-a-Lago back in December 2025

The joint U.S.-Israeli operation that killed Khamenei was the culmination of two months in which President Trump pursued both diplomacy and war — on parallel tracks. On Friday, he chose war.

The seeds of Saturday's operation were planted in late December, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Netanyahu used the meeting to discuss a follow-up to last year's joint strikes — mostly focused on Iran's ballistic missile capabilities — tentatively planned for around May.

On Jan. 14, Trump was on the verge of ordering strikes but pulled back. Instead, he ordered a massive military buildup in the Middle East, and began secretly planning a joint operation with Israel.

Over the following weeks, the Mossad director visited D.C. twice, followed by the Israeli military intelligence chief and the IDF chief of staff — all coordinating what would become Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion.

At the same time, Trump explored whether military leverage could produce a deal with Iran on his terms.

Trump wanted to try to reach an agreement, and the Iranians were told explicitly that military strikes "would occur if we did not see real progress on a real deal very quickly," a U.S. official said.

A week before the Geneva meeting, the U.S. and Israel agreed on a potential window for launching the attack — the coming Saturday, when Khamenei held a routine meeting with his top aides at his government compound.

But they faced a specific challenge: keeping Khamenei from suspecting anything and retreating to his underground bunker.

On Saturday morning, Khamenei convened his aides as U.S. and Israeli planners had anticipated.

Two other gatherings of Iranian security and intelligence officials were taking place above ground in Tehran at the same time. Minutes later, all three were struck simultaneously.

🔗 https://archive.ph/AnziZ