Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said Tuesday that “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” would become the Islamic republic’s rallying cries.
Ayatollah Khamenei said in a written statement commemorating the Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, that the phrases would become “common slogans” for Muslims and “the oppressed of the world,” adding “especially the youth.”
In his declaration calling for unity across the Muslim world, he invited Islamic countries to resolve the issues facing them, while decrying the U.S. and Israel’s influence in the region.
Ayatollah Khamenei is reportedly holed up in an undisclosed location with little outside access. U.S. intelligence says he was injured — the severity of which was disputed by his officials — in the initial U.S. and Israeli strikes on Feb. 28 that killed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. There has been no image or audio recording of him since the war began.
The ayatollah said Middle East countries would no longer be “shields” for U.S. bases, adding that the U.S. and Israel had been missile and drone targets.
“The region will not return to past conditions, and Washington will no longer have a safe place to station military bases in the region,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.
U.S. Central Command has a permanent presence in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
The ayatollah said the region’s countries share capacities and interests that could help shape “a new order in the region and the world,” while the U.S. is losing its influence in the region and “moving further and further away from its former status with each passing day.”
His message called Israel the “shaky Zionist regime and cancerous tumor,” adding that Iran had succeeded in “making the Zionist regime helpless under its severe blows during the second imposed war” while foiling attempts to force the country into submission.
He also said Iran “delivered a harsh slap to the aggressor America, and thwarted the enemy in its goal of forcing Iran’s surrender.”
Ayatollah Khamenei echoed a “prescient statement” of his father and predecessor from about a decade ago that said Israel would no longer exist in 25 years and Israelis have “drawn near to the final stages of their cursed demise.”
The remarks came as President Trump and U.S. officials sounded optimistic that a deal to end the conflict would come sooner rather than later, even teasing an end to the war over the weekend.
Mr. Trump said Monday that his administration is “not rushing into a deal” with Iran to end the war, tempering his previous statements after the emerging peace framework faced pushback over Tehran’s nuclear program.
