The Iranian Supreme Leader’s representative in Britain has told Muslim servicemen and women to quit the Armed Forces, saying that their involvement in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is forbidden by Islam, The London Times reported.

The cleric, personally appointed by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to be his special envoy to the U.K., also urged Muslims to defeat the opposition to the Iranian regime and keep the 30-year-old Islamic Republic alive, according to the paper.

In his first interview with an English language newspaper, Ayatollah Abdolhossein Moezi, director of the Islamic Centre of England, said he regretted that protesters were killed by the Iranian security forces after the presidential election in June but that their deaths were “unavoidable,” the paper reported.

Ayatollah Moezi, the most senior Iranian spiritual leader in Britain with thousands of followers from the Shia sect, said that it was wrong for followers of Islam to serve in the Armed Forces, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq where Muslims were being killed.

“Not only do I not accept it for Muslims to go there, I don’t accept non-Muslims to go there as well,” Ayatollah Moezi told The London Times through an interpreter provided by him.

“We say that Muslims are not allowed to go and kill Muslims. Do you think that Christians are allowed to go and kill Muslims?”

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