Senior Shiite Muslim clerics in Iran have issued religious edicts, or fatwas, condemning President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The fatwa issued by Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi on Sunday reportedly damned Trump and Netanyahu as “warlords” using the term mohareb, which Islam defines as a supreme heretic and blasphemer, someone who wages war against Allah. Iranian law specifies various horrific punishments for a mohareb, including torture and execution.
Dissident Iranian journalist Niyak Ghorbani, who supported Israeli airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear program as “everything the Iranian people have dreamed of for the past 46 years,” said on Sunday that Shirazi’s fatwa was a very thinly disguised call for assassinating the American and Israeli leaders.
“This is a clear act of state-backed incitement to international terrorism,” Ghorbani said.
As Ghorbani noted, Shirazi’s religious edict accused Trump and Netanyahu of “threatening the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution” — Iran’s current theocratic dictator, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — and other religious authorities with “assassination,” and strongly suggested “Muslims around the world” had a religious duty to deliver a “harsh punishment” in return.
“It is necessary for all Muslims across the world to recognize these enemies and avenge them with strength and fury. If they are not punished severely, the reward for jihadi retaliation is with Allah. This is certain,” the fatwa stated.
The fatwa was signed by several other top Iranian clerics. The National noted on Sunday that some other Shiite clerics have issued their own fatwas with wording similar to Shirazi’s, instructing Muslims to consider threats against Khamenei as an “insult to the essence of Islam.”
The ire of the Iranian theocracy appears to have been particularly inflamed by Trump and Netanyahu publicly discussing whether Ayatollah Khamenei would be targeted by American or Israeli airstrikes.
Netanyahu responded to a question on June 19 about whether Khamenei was a target by saying, “I gave instructions that one is immune.”
“All the options are open. It’s best not to speak about this in the press,” he told reporters.
On the same day, after an Iranian missile struck an Israeli hospital, Defense Minister Israel Katz said the ayatollah should be considered a legitimate target.
“Khamenei openly declares that he wants Israel destroyed. He personally gives the order to fire on hospitals. Such a man can no longer be allowed to exist,” Katz told reporters.
Senior American officials told reporters that President Trump had “found out that the Israelis had plans to hit Iran’s supreme leader,” and “told the Israelis not to” — at least, “for now.”
Trump wrote a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday in which he said he had prevented the Israelis from eliminating Khamenei and he was disappointed by the ayatollah’s lack of gratitude. He also chastised Khamenei for lying about the outcome of the 12-Day War with Israel, which the ayatollah improbably claimed Iran had won.
“I SAVED HIM FROM A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH, and he does not have to say, ‘THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP!’” Trump wrote.
“In fact, in the final act of the War, I demanded that Israel bring back a very large group of planes, which were heading directly to Tehran, looking for a big day, perhaps the final knockout! Tremendous damage would have ensued, and many Iranians would have been killed,” he continued.
“They are always so angry, hostile, and unhappy, and look at what it has gotten them — A burned out, blown up Country, with no future, a decimated Military, a horrible Economy, and DEATH all around them. They have no hope, and it will only get worse!” Trump said of the attitude of the Iranian theocracy.
“I wish the leadership of Iran would realize that you often get more with HONEY than you do with VINEGAR. PEACE!!!” he concluded.
The Iranians predictably went for vinegar with their religious edicts. Fatwas have sometimes been characterized as assassination orders because the most infamous of them explicitly called on Muslims around the world to murder author Salman Rushdie who has been living in hiding ever since it was issued decades ago.
“I am informing all brave Muslims of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses, a text written, edited, and published against Islam, the Prophet of Islam, and the Quran, along with all the editors and publishers aware of its contents, are condemned to death,” read the fatwa issued by Khamenei’s predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei in 1989.
“I call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill them without delay, so that no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth. Whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr,” Khomeini wrote.
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