Leading Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami called for the execution of President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a sermon in Tehran on Friday.
Khatami accused Trump and Netanyahu of “murdering” tens of thousands of people in Gaza, as well as Iran’s top terrorism coordinator Qasem Soleimani, who was liquidated in Baghdad by a 2020 airstrike ordered by President Trump.
The Iranian regime has commanded its subjects to regard Soleimani as a religious “martyr,” but many Iranians refuse to show the mandatory respect to the slain Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general.
The crowd at Khatami’s sermon, however, seemed to be on the same page as the fire-breathing cleric, chanting “Death to America,” “Death to England,” and “Death to Israel” as he called for Trump and Netanyahu to be executed. “Death to England” is a hardy perennial in Iranian murder chants.
“You are murderers, you need to be punished,” Khatami railed, aiming his diatribe at the American and Israeli leaders and pronouncing them both guilty of capital offenses under Islamic law, including “sowing corruption in the land” and “fighting Allah and his messenger.”
“The ruling regarding Trump and Netanyahu, according to sharia, is that the pair of them should be executed,” he declared.
Last week, a group of senior Shiite clerics in Iran issued fatwas, or religious edicts, condemning both Trump and Netanyahu. The fatwas damned them as moharebs, or warlords who fight against Allah, the same charge Khatami leveled in his sermon calling for their execution. The earlier religious orders said it was a crime for Trump and Netanyahu to discuss targeting Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iranian dissidents denounced the fatwas as clear incitement for terrorist attacks against the United States and Israel. The regime in Tehran has long threatened revenge for the death of Soleimani, at a “time and place of its own choosing,” as governments that sponsor terrorism are prone to saying.
Iranian state television sought to put an $80 million bounty on Donald Trump’s head during Soleimani’s funeral in 2020, and then tried to crowdsource the blood money by encouraging 80 million Muslims to chip in one dollar apiece.
In December 2023, an Iranian court “ruled” that Trump, his former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, the CIA, the Pentagon, and various other U.S. government entities and defense contractors should pay Iran $50 billion to “compensate” for the death of Soleimani and “deter future violations.” The case was ostensibly brought to court as a class action by over 3,000 Iranian nationals.
Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites, during the finale of Israel’s 12-day Operation Rising Lion to take out Iran’s illegal nuclear weapons program, will doubtless be added to Iran’s threats of revenge.
Ayatollah Khatami and the mullahs who issued the fatwas claimed to be more upset about Netanyahu declaring Supreme Leader Khamenei to be a legitimate target during Operation Rising Lion, and Trump chiding Khamenei to show a little gratitude for talking the Israelis out of killing him.
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