Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a high-ranking member of the Iranian theocracy who sits on several of its highest governing bodies, on Friday demanded the execution of protesters and made threats against President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Khatami is a belligerent hardline cleric and close associate of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who personally appointed him to several important positions. Khatami holds seats on the Assembly of Experts, the 88-member clerical body that elects the Supreme Leader, and the Guardian Council, the 12-member body that controls who is allowed to run in Iran’s sham “elections.”
Khatami also holds the prestigious perch of leading Friday prayers in Tehran. His sermon on Friday, broadcast by Iranian state media, was a fiery rant that demanded the death penatly for anti-government demonstrators.
“Any threat against the Supreme Leader is waging war on God, which carries a death sentence,” he proclaimed.
Khatami sneeringly dismissed the protesters as Netanyahu’s “butlers” and Trump’s “soldiers,” denouncing the thousands who have filled Iran’s streets as pawns in an Israeli-U.S. effort at “disintegrating” Iran.
“They should wait for hard revenge from the system. Americans and Zionists should not expect peace,” he railed in a threat to Netanyahu and Trump.
Khatami claimed some 350 mosques, 126 prayer halls, 80 homes of prayer leaders like himself, and 20 other “holy sites” were damaged by the demonstrations. He also complained of damage to 400 hospitals, 106 ambulances, 71 fire department vehicles, and 50 other emergency vehicles.
The throng of worshipers attending Khatami’s prayer service reportedly responded to his fulminations with chants of “Armed hypocrites should be put to death!”
Other officials of the Iranian regime have dismissed the massive demonstrations that erupted in December after the collapse of the Iranian currency as a U.S. or Israeli “plot” to destabilize the country. The demonstrators are frequently characterized as “terrorists” and foreign operatives in regime propaganda.
Thousands were killed by the regime’s brutal crackdown on the demonstrations this week, which appears to have succeeded in quelling the movement, at least for the time being. Reuters relayed unverified reports of a nurse killed by government security forces, rioters setting fire to an education office, and “sporadic protests” in a smattering of cities and towns on Thursday.
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