US President Donald Trump on Saturday called for an end to Ali Khamenei's reign in Iran, responding to comments by the Supreme Leader who blamed Trump for the protest deaths in Iran.
“It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran,” Politico quoted Trump as saying.
Trump said Iran’s rulers rely on repression and violence to govern, after reading the hostile X posts by the Supreme Leader who called Trump a criminal and accused him of inciting "sedition" in Iran.
“What he is guilty of, as the leader of a country, is the complete destruction of the country and the use of violence at levels never seen before,” Trump said. “In order to keep the country functioning — even though that function is a very low level — the leadership should focus on running his country properly, like I do with the United States, and not killing people by the thousands in order to keep control.”
“Leadership is about respect, not fear and death,” Trump added.
“The man is a sick man who should run his country properly and stop killing people,” Trump said. “His country is the worst place to live anywhere in the world because of poor leadership.”
Soheil Zilabi, a resident of Yazdanshahr, was killed on Friday, January 9, 2026, after security forces opened fire on protesters in the street, an informed source told Iran International.
The source said that Zilabi was present at the Yazdanshahr protests on January 9 when security forces shot him in the head on Motahari Boulevard.
He was taken later that night to Fatemeh Zahra Hospital, where he died, the source said.
According to the source, security forces handed over only Zilabi’s bloodstained clothes to his family and told them to go to the Bagh-e Rezvan cemetery in Isfahan to receive his body.
The family went to Bagh-e Rezvan for days and Zilabi’s body was handed over five days later, the source said.
“Soheil was an extremely kind and lovable young man,” the relative said. “His mother raised Soheil and his two sisters with great hardship,” the source said.
The source added that Zilabi had returned from military service about a year and a half earlier and worked as a car paint color-matching assistant, leaving for work at 5 a.m. and working until 5 p.m.
