Iranian supreme leader’s representative calls 'destruction of Zionist regime' an 'important issue'

While the West is rushing toward a revival of the nuclear agreement with Iran, the nation’s leaders are blaming America for seeking to delay the destruction of the Jewish state.

On Friday, the representative for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei openly called for the Jewish state’s elimination during a sermon in Shiraz and said the U.S. is trying to stall the inevitable.

“The global arrogance led by America with complicity of Israel seeks to delay the realization of an important issue, which is the destruction of the Zionist regime,” Lotfollah Dezhkam said, as reported in several Iranian news outlets.

This is not the first time the firebrand cleric has said something like this. In a sermon in February, he said Iran would rather attack than negotiate with the new U.S. administration which was eager from the start to get back into the Iranian nuclear deal that former President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018.

“Then they say that they want to start new negotiations. We say to them: in your dreams! There will be no negotiations this time. This time it will be your warships that will sink in the ocean one after the other,” he said at the time.

While covered by some Israeli media, the ayatollah regime’s repeated calls for Israel’s destruction are not always reported by the international media.

However, the threat of a nuclear bomb in the hands of the ayatollah can only be fully understood in context of the regime’s anti-Semitic and genocidal intention towards the world’s only Jewish state, home of almost half of the world’s 15 million Jews.

In an era of moral relativism, some pundits argue that the Iranian regime should have the same right to acquire nuclear weapons as does the U.S., Russia, China, India, Britain, France and, of course, Israel. This worldview treats Tehran as a pragmatic and responsible actor comparable to other governments.

However, the current regime’s policymaking – unlike other nations – is heavily influenced by an apocalyptic ideology that awaits the eventual return of the Mahdi, or the 12th imam. According to this ideology, the return of the Mahdi requires the destruction of the Jewish state, which the regime refers to as “Little Satan.” It also demands that Islam defeats America, which the Iranian regime refers to as the “Great Satan.”

This fundamentalist ideology that combines Islamic world domination with an explicit call for genocide is what potentially makes Iran so dangerous – a fact largely overlooked by Western pundits.

While Israel is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons for defensive purposes, the Jewish state has never threatened to use them. Even the U.S. and the former Soviet Union never threatened the other’s destruction during the Cold war.

By contrast, Iran’s regime openly states that Israel’s destruction is a central component of its radical ideology, making “moral equivalence” a moot argument.

This doesn’t sit well with many Iranian citizens who view this approach as a threat to their nation’s future. One Iranian dissident who had to flee the country said she views Israel as a friend and the ayatollah regime as an enemy of the Iranian people.

“The more the mullahs spread hate speech against the Jewish State of Israel, the more Iranian people realize that Israel is our friend, because the regime in Iran is the only enemy that we have,” Sheina Vojoudi said. “His hate speech against Israel is not surprising.... Ali Khamenei as the leader of the Islamic Republic calls for the annihilation of Israel and Dezhkam is his representative.”

“We are tired of their anti-Semitism. We have a long history with the Jewish people and we want to be able to revive that 2,700 years of friendship. The Islamic Republic’s antisemitism is lethal and endangers both Iranians and Israelis. The regime accuses Iranian dissidents of being Israeli spies, and calls the protesters against the regime’s corruption Israeli agents, and considers them against the national security. We want to normalize relations with Israel like other normal countries.”