The leader of the Iranian clerical regime, Mojtaba Khamenei, called on Muslim nations across the region and the Persian Gulf on Sunday to “unite against the real enemy,” issuing a public statement via his Telegram channel. Khamenei claimed that “the enemy seeks to sow discord out of our differences.” Speaking in the context of “Islamic Unity Week,” Mojtaba addressed the Arab-Muslim world directly: “Iran has always sought to unite the Islamic Ummah, and I will not permit any division among the sons of the nation. The enemy relies on our cultural, social, economic, political, and geographical differences to divide the nation and erode its strength.”
1+He added: “Accordingly, any person in any role who takes any action that leads to division among Muslims is aiding the enemies of Islam. Iran has always strived to unite the Islamic nation, and as a servant of the people, I will not tolerate strife among its members.”
According to Reuters, these remarks follow decrees issued earlier this week in which Mojtaba banned actions that disrupt domestic social cohesion and called for an end to any rhetoric undermining public and national morale.
1+The regime’s appeals for regional unity arrive against a backdrop of severe domestic vulnerability. As reported two weeks ago by Channel 14 Iran affairs correspondent Dror Balazada, sources close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) indicated that top regime leadership recognizes that runaway inflation, cash shortages, mounting unemployment, and public rage in the streets are compounding into an existential threat to the regime’s grip on power.
According to those sources, certain factions within the Iranian leadership believed that manufactured escalation against the United States could serve their interests, attempting to redirect an acute domestic economic crisis into an external nationalist rallying cry to unite the public against a foreign adversary.