Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, one of Iran’s most senior clerics, has issued a religious ruling declaring U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “enemies of God.” In a fatwa released Monday, the Tehran-based Shiite authority accused the two leaders of waging war against God — a crime under Islamic jurisprudence known as mobārebeh — and called on all Muslims to withhold support from them.
The fatwa, which was published on Shirazi’s official website, states that “any cooperation or support for that enemy by Muslims or Islamic states is haram” (forbidden). Shirazi urged believers worldwide to “make these enemies regret their words and mistakes,” and he promised divine reward to those who suffer harm or loss in resisting “God’s adversaries.”
Shirazi’s decree comes in the wake of the so-called “12-Day War,” an unprecedented round of airstrikes by Israeli forces against Iranian nuclear, military and civilian sites, which was swiftly joined by U.S. attacks on three additional facilities in Iran. That campaign followed Israeli claims that Iran’s uranium enrichment program was nearing weapons grade — charges Tehran firmly denies, insisting its nuclear efforts are exclusively peaceful.
While the precise extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure remains unclear, the Pentagon’s early assessments suggest that key elements of Iran’s enrichment capacity survived last week’s bombardment. In the United States, President Trump has repeatedly boasted that his administration “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear ambitions and set back Tehran’s program by decades. Shirazi’s fatwa appears designed both to rally domestic support and to delegitimize any claims of victory by the United States and Israel.
Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, told the BBC late Sunday that Tehran will not return to nuclear negotiations unless Washington categorically rules out further military strikes. “We have not agreed to any date, we have not agreed to the modality,” Takht-Ravanchi said. He warned that Iran would reinterpret its obligations under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — which Trump abandoned in 2018 — and insisted that “it is our inalienable right to enrich uranium for peaceful uses.”
Takht-Ravanchi also noted that U.S. officials had signaled they did not seek regime change in Tehran, an apparent reassessment after earlier American statements. Nevertheless, he characterized threats of continued bombardment as akin to “the law of the jungle,” arguing that instructing Iran to cease enrichment entirely under threat of bombing was fundamentally illegitimate.
International reaction to Shirazi’s fatwa has been muted, in part because senior Iranian clerics routinely issue such rulings on geopolitical affairs. However, the declaration underscores the deep ideological chasm between Iran’s theocratic leadership and its regional adversaries, and it will likely harden domestic resistance to any further external pressure.
Diplomatic channels remain stalled. Following last week’s strikes, reports suggest that direct talks between U.S. and Iranian negotiators have ground to a halt, with both sides demanding preconditions for any resumption. Trump, writing on his Truth Social platform Monday morning, declared he would offer Iran “NOTHING,” insisting that the earlier JCPOA had enriched Tehran to no benefit for the United States.
As tensions continue to simmer, Shirazi’s fatwa marks a significant escalation in the religious and political rhetoric surrounding the crisis. By labeling Trump and Netanyahu “mobārebs,” the cleric has invoked one of the most serious charges under Shiite Islamic law — a step that, while largely symbolic outside Iran, signals the regime’s determination to resist any further attempts at coercion.
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