A senior Iranian cleric has issued a fatwa against US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, declaring the pair as “enemies of God”.
Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi issued an order condemning the two leaders for their threats against Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Fatwas are rulings from senior Islamic scholars on how to interpret points of religious law. They are used regularly for everyday purposes, such as instructing Muslims how to apply secular laws to their religious lives.
Indeed, a notable fatwa was issued in the US after the 9/11 attacks allowing Muslims serving in the military to participate in conflict against majority-Muslim nations.
However, they can – and have – also be used to encourage violence. For example, Khamenei himself issued a fatwa against author Salman Rushdie for his book, The Satanic Verses, sentencing him to death in 1989.
Since then, Rushdie has received a flood of death threats, was placed on an Al Qaeda “hit list” and has had several attempts made against his life. Indeed he has been left blind in one eye since an attacker rushed the stage during a lecture in 2022, stabbing Rushdie in the face, neck and hand.
Issuing the decision against Trump and Netanyahu, Shirazi declared: “Any person or regime that threatens the Leader or Marja (May God forbid) is considered a 'warlord' or a 'muḥārib'.”
A muḥārib is someone who “wages war against God”, referencing a passage in the Quran which defines the punishment for such an offence, known as muḥāribah, as “execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land”.
Muḥāribah is punishable by death under Iranian law, so it would appear that Shirazi’s fatwa is calling on Muslims worldwide to execute the two leaders.
The move comes after the US launched a series of airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities while Israel was waging a short-lived war against the Islamic Republic.
During the conflict, Trump posted on social media suggesting that the US could have Khamenei assassinated, labelling the Ayatollah an “easy target”.
However, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog has now suggested that the strikes caused “severe, but not total” damage to the sites and that Iran could restart its uranium enrichment in “a matter of months”.
IAEA director Rafael Grossi told CBS News: “The capacities they have are there. They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that.
“Iran has the capacities there; industrial and technological capacities. So if they so wish, they will be able to start doing this again.”
His comments would appear to contradict the White House’s claim that the facilities had been “obliterated”. Since the strikes, there have been conflicting reports on the severity of damage caused, while roughly 400kg of enriched uranium is still unaccounted for.
And, discussing whether the IAEA agreed with the US and Israel’s assessment that Iran was attempting to build a nuclear weapon, Grossi said: “We didn’t see a programme that was aiming in that direction, but at the same time, they were not answering very, very important questions that were pending.”
Latest reports suggest that Iran has ended its cooperation with the agency, banning Grossi from entering the country and disconnecting monitoring cameras at its remaining nuclear sites.
