Trump demands ‘unconditional surrender’ from Iran, says patience is growing ‘Thin’

U.S president Donald Trump has called for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and warned that US patience was wearing thin, but said there was no intention to kill Iran’s leader “for now”, as the Israel-Iran air war raged for a fifth day.

Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said meanwhile that Iran’s supreme leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei could face the same fate as Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, who was toppled in a US-led invasion and hanged in 2006 after a trial.

“I warn the Iranian dictator against continuing to commit war crimes and fire missiles at Israeli citizens,” Katz told top Israeli military officials.

Explosions were reported in Tehran and the city of Isfahan in central Iran, while Israel said Iran had fired more missiles towards it late on Tuesday, and air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and southern Israel.

The Israeli military said it had conducted strikes on 12 missile launch sites and storage facilities in Tehran.

Trump’s increasingly muscular comments toward the Iranian government come after he urged Tehran’s 9.5 million residents to flee for their lives as he cut short his participation in an international summit to return to Washington for urgent talks with his national security team.

The comments about Khamenei and calls for surrender came shortly after Trump in a separate posting touted complete control of the skies over Tehran.

Trump in the opening days of the conflict rejected a plan presented by Israel to kill Khamenei, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.

Trump returned to the White House from his abbreviated trip to the Group of Seven summit in the Canadian Rockies early Tuesday at a moment of choosing in his presidency.