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Khamenei: Koran prohibits ties with Israel

Iran’s supreme leader condemns Muslim countries that “compromise with the U.S. and the Zionists.”

By World Israel News Staff

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told participants in an international Koran competition in Tehran that maintaining ties with Israel is prohibited.

According to various Iranian and regional media reports, Khamenei told the “masters, reciters and memorizers” who took part in the competition that the Koran says that Muslims must be “stern to the disbelievers.”

“Some Muslims forget, like those Muslim countries which compromise with the U.S. and the Zionists [Israel] to shed the blood of Palestinians and violate their rights. They abandoned being ‘stern to the disbelievers’ and they became servants of the disbelievers. Today, the officials of many Muslim states represent examples of that,” said Khamenei in his comments on Monday.

The Iranian leader Khamenei also criticized Muslim states that engage in wars against their Muslim brethren.

“Another group has forgotten the principle [from the Koran] of ‘compassionate among themselves’  They reject and excommunicate the believers in Allah, the Koran… When ‘compassionate among themselves’ is abandoned, internal wars may arise,” he cautioned, according to the reports.

“You see the current situation in Yemen and Syria; Yemen has been bombarded for four years now,” he said. “Those who bombard Yemen are Muslims in appearance, but they do not show mercy to Muslims.”

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In an apparent reference to sanctions imposed on Tehran for its nuclear and terror activity, the supreme leader warned that “what the enemies do against Iran today are their last resorts of enmity. The sterner they become against us, the stronger our willpower will become; the more they intensify their measures against us, the more powerful we will become.”

The Iranian threat has paved the way for closer ties between Israel and a number of Arab states.

After the Obama administration forged a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, together with five other world powers, U.S. President Donald Trump pulled Washington out of the pact last May and intensified sanctions against Tehran.