Iran's Mojtaba Khamenei frames war with US, Israel as ‘jihad,’ analyst says

Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei used a series of posts on X Tuesday to frame Iran’s war with the United States and Israel in ideological and religious terms, invoking what one counterterrorism analyst described as “jihad — sacred religious war.”

Khamenei’s defiant remarks came after President Donald Trump called off a planned strike on Iran on May 18, and as Washington indicated it would not soften its stance on Tehran’s nuclear program.

“Among the most valuable achievements of the Third Sacred Defense [against the American and Zionist invasion] is the emergence of Iran at the level of a major, influential power,” Mojtaba said in one post on X.

“Strip the euphemism away, and what Khamenei is invoking here is jihad — sacred religious war,” Dr. Omar Mohammed, a counterterrorism analyst with the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Fox News Digital.

“‘Sacred Defense’ is the Islamic Republic’s preferred term for jihad against an aggressor; it carries the full weight of religious obligation in Shia jurisprudence,” he added.

“By framing the war with America and Israel this way, Khamenei is not describing a geopolitical conflict. He is declaring a holy war and casting it as a religious duty,” Mohammed added.

Mohammed also said the messaging explicitly identifies “America and the Zionists” as the enemy.

“That is not loose phrasing. The Islamic Republic, under Mojtaba’s father, made hatred of America and hatred of Jews the twin pillars of its ideology for more than 30 years,” he said.

In another post, Khamenei wrote, “By earnestly pursuing the correct, necessary policy of population growth, the great Iranian nation will be able to play a major role and experience strategic leaps in the future, taking long strides toward building the new Islamic-Iranian civilization.”

“The fact that he is now speaking publicly as supreme leader — and that this substantive message is a call to jihad against America and the Jews — tells you what kind of leader he intends to be,” Mohammed added.

Mohammed also noted the irony that the supreme leader was delivering his message on X — a platform the Iranian government has “blocked inside Iran for nearly two decades” — while ordinary Iranians endure what he described as the country’s longest and most severe internet blackout.

“Over four months now, costing the Iranian economy a quarter of a billion dollars a day,” Mohammed said before stating that the supreme leader is “speaking to the world on a platform his own people are forbidden to read, in a country he has cut off from the outside.” 

Yesterday's Fox News Digital liveblog has additional coverage of the Iran conflict.