In Tehran, IRNA news agency cites Iran Supreme Leader as urging Muslim world to resist control by ‘hegemonic powers.’

The main issues the Muslim world is faced with are the fate of Jerusalem and of “oppressed Palestine,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said on Sunday, adding that Muslim nations must avoid inner conflict and stand united against Israel and the control of “hegemonic powers.”

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivering a speech in Tehran, Iran. – Photo by AP

Khamenei’s comments came following a series of recent back-and-forth comments between Israeli and Iranian officials, coming amid continuing debate on the possibility that Israel may initiate military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

On Friday, the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah said it could kill tens of thousands of Israelis by striking specific targets in Israel with what it described as precision-guided rockets.

“I tell the Israelis that you have a number of targets, not a large number … that can be hit with precision rockets … which we have,” Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said in a broadcast speech.

He said he would not name the targets and did not say whether the rockets were newly acquired weapons.

Addressing worshippers at Tehran University after nationwide pro-Palestinian rallies, an annual event marking Quds (Jerusalem) Day on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said confronting Israel is an effort to “protect the dignity of all human beings.”

Ahmadinejad added that Israel’s existence is an “insult to all humanity.”

Speaking on Sunday, Khamenei was cited by the official Iranian news agency IRNA as telling foreign envoys and officials in Tehran that the “main issues of the world of Islam are Noble Quds and oppressed Palestine, which have become more important thanks to the Islamic Awakening.”

“All Muslim governments and nations as well as political and cultural elites should be watchful of the dangerous plot to cover up the main issue and the attempts aiming to blur realities through fanning differences in Muslim Ummah,” the Iranian Supreme Leader said, in an apparent reference to the ongoing debate concerning Iran’s nuclear program.

According to the IRNA report, Khamenei accused Muslim states of allowing “hegemonic powers” to determine their fate, accusing those powers of creating what the report called “the cancerous tumor of Zionism in heart of Muslim world.”

In what he said was an attempt to counter the western attempt to cover up Jerusalem and Palestine as the key issues in the Muslim world, the Iranian Supreme Leader said Muslim governments and nations, especially the political and cultural elites as well as intellectuals and religious Ulimas should define facts and realities for Muslims.”

The Iranian Supreme Leader’s comments came after, last week, Khamenei said that the “light of hope will shine on the Palestinian issue, and this Islamic land will certainly be returned to the Palestinian nation, and the superfluous and fake Zionist [regime] will disappear from the landscape of geography.”

View original HAARETZ publication at: http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/iran-supreme-leader-muslim-world-must-unite-to-fight-israel-free-palestine-1.459247