A leading ayatollah of Iran’s Islamic regime is promising that Western leaders will be executed by the Islamic messiah, the state-owned media outlet Mehr news reported Saturday.
“When Imam Zaman [‘Mahdi,’ the last Shiite Imam] comes, he will behead the Western leaders,” warned Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani, the interim Friday prayer leader of Tehran and a member of the Assembly of Experts, the body that chooses the supreme leader. “However, Imam will not harm the oppressed nations,” he said.
The Shiite clerical establishment in Iran believes that at the end of times, the 12th Imam, Mahdi, a ninth century prophet, will reappear with Jesus Christ at his side, kill all the infidels and raise the flag of Islam in all four corners of the world.
A video revealed in 2011, “The Coming Is Upon Us,” showed regime intentions: change in the Middle East, destruction of Israel and the coming of Mahdi. The video, produced by the regime, was to be distributed in the Middle East.
Kashani compared the Western leaders as “tag rags” and criticized Europe’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, for her recent visit to Tehran in which she met with female dissidents. The purpose of Ashton’s visit was to discuss with regime officials the ongoing negotiations over Iran’s illicit nuclear program. However, in a sign of support for human rights, she met with several dissidents.
“They come to Iran, and in the name of human rights, they meet with this and that,” Kashani said. “However, they commit the most heinous crimes in the region and the world.”
U.N. human rights officials recently raised an alarm about violence against women, torture and at the pace of execution in Iran. In two and a half months of this year alone, 176 people have been hanged.
Meanwhile, the chief commander of the regime’s Quds Forces, Gen. Qasem Soleimani, has called the Islamic Republic the only country capable of leading the Islamic world.
“From a long time ago, countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan claimed leadership of the Islamic world and tried very hard in that pursuit, but none of these countries except Iran is capable of accepting this great responsibility,” Soleimani said. “None of these countries is able to lead the Islamic world due to two key elements: support of fighters and Islamic movements, and defense of Muslims and Islam in the face of aggression on the Islamic world.”
Soleimani called the fall of Quds (Jerusalem) in 1967 the zero point of the Islamic world in its weakness and boasted of Iran’s power today and how it has changed the equation of power in the region and the world.
Soleimani had previously stated that President Barack Obama was not after regime change, but only because the U.S. can’t topple Iran.
“America in the last 35 years has committed the most cowardly and worst practices against the… Islamic Republic,” he said.
After his speech, the outlet of the Quds cyber forces officers posted an image of Obama wearing a Nazi field marshal’s uniform and surrendering with his hands on his head. The caption reads, “In the not too distant future… One [Gen. Qasem] Soleimani is enough for all the enemies of this country.”
Soleimani, called by a former CIA officer the “most powerful operative in the Middle East today,” directs all terrorist activities of the Islamic regime throughout the world and commands much of the behind-the-scenes operations in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria to protect the Assad regime.
Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and author of the award-winning book “A Time to Betray” (Simon & Schuster, 2010). He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI).
