Name: Iran's Supreme Leader says he will never compromise with Israel | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T17:05:57.000Z
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Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says Iran will never compromise as Israel and Iran continues to trade strikes.

Adverbs of manner

President Donald Trump called for Iran's leaders to unconditionally surrender.

Posting on his social media platform Truth Social, President Trump said the U.S. knows where the Supreme Leader is, but they are not going to kill him, at least not yet.

Our North America correspondent Jake Kwon has this report.

President Donald Trump is considering whether the U.S. should get directly involved in the war against Iran, a question that may define his presidency.

He rushed back to Washington, leaving the G7 meeting a day early.

The French President Emmanuel Macron tried to explain the sudden exit, wishfully suggesting it was to negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Iran.

In fact, there is something bigger in the works.

I didn't say I was looking for a ceasefire.

That was Emmanuel, nice guy, but he doesn't get it right too often.

We're looking for better than a ceasefire.

What specifically is better than a ceasefire?

Americans have been helping Israel shoot down Iranian missiles, but resisted joining the attack.

But in an emergency meeting at the White House yesterday, he discussed striking deeply buried Iranian nuclear sites, like the one at Fardo that Israeli bombs cannot reach.

The meeting also came with a flurry of social media posts, each more aggressive than the last.

In this post, he said, we know where the so-called Supreme Leader is hiding, but we're not going to take him out, at least not for now.

But we don't want missiles shot at civilians or American soldiers.

Next one simply says, unconditional surrender.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wrote on social media, Iran will never compromise with Zionists, and we will show the Zionists no mercy.

And in another post, he wrote, the battle begins.

Americans have been moving its fighter jets to the Middle East, as well as moving to Europe dozens of tanker aircrafts used to refuel fighter jets and bombers.

They should have done the deal, I told them, do the deal, so I don't know, I'm not too much in a mood to negotiate.

It's unclear how much of this is stepping up to fight, or the art of the deal.

But President Trump appears to have lost his taste for diplomacy.

It's quite a turn for a president who promised no new war on his watch.

Well Mohammed Taha is our correspondent with BBC Arabic and has been following the developments in the region for us.

This is day six in this unprecedented war in the Middle East.

Overnight there were strikes from Iran on Tel Aviv.

We have these two cities, big cities in the Middle East, Tehran and Tel Aviv, nearly on hold because of these strikes.

Around 30 missiles from Iran to Israel in 20 minutes.

We don't know exactly what have been hit, but we heard that at least an automotive factory was hit in the area of Tel Aviv.

Israel does not announce exactly what's been hit.

And in terms of the latest on Tehran itself and the damage there, of course this time yesterday we were talking about President Trump posting on social media that everyone in Tehran should evacuate.

As you mentioned the evacuation, the Israeli army issued an evacuation order at 2.30am Tehran time to quarter number 18, is a residential area, 2.30am in the morning.

At 3.00am the Israeli aeroplane hit that quarter, which is astonishing to see a warning being issued at that early time of the day.

We understand also that the Israeli aeroplane hit the Imam Hussein University, that is including a nuclear physics faculty and an aviation engineering faculty as well.

Mohamed Taha there, well I also talked to Niamat Ibrahimi who is from the University of Melbourne.

I asked for his assessment on what the US might do next.

On the sixth day of war, which was quite unexpected in many levels, there are many things we really do not know, the details of the planning for the attack and in terms of how it is unfolding because there are civil restrictions on freedom of information and reporting in Iran, there are also similar restrictions in Israel.

However, we do know that there are some important aspects of this war.

One that this is, I think, another incidence of a major power attacking another power in another state-to-state conflict, which is not sending a good signal for international peace and security.

And Israelis are citing, the reason is that they are preempting a future development of nuclear weapons by Iran, however, this is going against many of the reports of international agencies, including IAEA, and in fact, US intelligence agencies have been reporting that Iran, even though they were enriching Iran at a significant level, but they were not getting any close to developing weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons.

So now I think Iran has very limited options.

There are significant disparities in terms of military capabilities and power between Iran and Israel, especially if the United States also joins in the confrontation against Iran.

And the Iranian regime has tried to fight back, and as you reported, the Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei has said that they are escalating, but we really don't know much in terms of how far they can go in terms of escalating and fighting back and how far they can sustain that level of confrontation with both Israel and the United States if they also join the war.