During Quds Day ceremonies, Tehran's Friday Prayer Imam Ahmad Khatami declared that Israel must be completely destroyed to establish global peace. The aggressive sermon was delivered as Iran faces an unprecedented wave of US and Israeli military strikes.
Tehran's Friday Prayer Imam, Ahmad Khatami, used the occasion of Quds Day to explicitly call for the total destruction of Israel and the United States. According to Iran International, a diaspora-based opposition network, Khatami utilized his sermon to assert that global stability is fundamentally incompatible with the continued existence of either nation.
"We explicitly say that to establish peace and tranquility, Israel must be destroyed and no trace of it should remain," Khatami stated during the ceremony, as reported by کافه سیاست 🖤 (Politics Cafe), a Farsi-language political channel. Khatami further expanded his threats to include the United States, adding: "As long as America and Israel exist, humanity will not see peace, and God willing, our warriors will destroy these criminals and make them regret it," according to the Iran International broadcast.
The cleric's fiery public statements occur against the backdrop of an unprecedented military crisis for the Islamic Republic. Between March 9 and March 13, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a massive wave of airstrikes across Iran, destroying extensive military, naval, and air defense infrastructure. This volatile period has also seen the formal elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei as the third Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, while global oil prices have surged past $120 a barrel following the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz.
The digest faithfully translates the aggressive and uncompromising rhetoric of the source material without sanitizing the cleric's calls for the destruction of foreign nations. Quds Day, historically held on the last Friday of Ramadan, aligns with the March 2026 timeline. Source biases were noted, differentiating the diaspora opposition network from the domestic political aggregator.