Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Photo: IRNA.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani issued a vitriolic call to Muslims across the world on Friday to violently confront Israel, as millions of Iranians attended “Al-Quds Day” rallies across the Islamic Republic.

“The message of Quds Day is that of hatred towards the occupying and usurping regime (Israel) as well as support for the oppressed nation of Palestine,” Rouhani declared in remarks reported by the Tehran regime’s English-language mouthpiece, Press TV. 

Iranian Ghadr missiles — which are capable of reaching Israel — were on prominent display at the rallies.

Rouhani’s message was built around Iran’s newest propaganda theme — its conspiratorial accusation that Israel controls the Sunni Islamist terrorists of ISIS.

This year’s Al-Quds Day rallies were of special importance, Rouhani said, “given the presence of terrorists in the region, who are backed by Israel,” emphasizing his determination “to cleanse the region of Tel Aviv-backed terrorists.”

During a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi on Wednesday in advance of Al-Quds Day, Rouhani told reporters that “combating terrorism must not make us forget the issue of Al-Quds and the threats the Zionist regime poses to the region.”

Rouhani is widely perceived as a moderate in Europe and the United States because of his prominent role in pushing through the 2015 nuclear deal agreed with the Obama administration and five other world powers. But as Iran has escalated its military intervention in Syria, the Iran president’s rhetoric towards the US has become more hardline — only this week, Rouhani said, “We need missiles and the enemy should know that,” in a barb directed at US President Donald Trump.

A masked demonstrator at the 2017 Al Quds Day rally in Tehran. Photo: Tasnim

Friday’s rallies in Tehran and other cities left little doubt that Iran’s primary objective remains the physical elimination of the State of Israel. A report from the official Tasnim news agency trumpeted the final declaration issued after the rallies had ended, which praised “the attempts to eliminate and destroy Israel — the region’s cancerous tumor — as ‘the Muslim world’s top priority,’ and slammed any move aimed at sidelining the issue of Palestine.”

Other Iranian officials used Al Quds Day as an opportunity to warn of a “new intifada” if the US relocated its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“The current situation in the Islamic world is the result of plots hatched by the axis of United States and the Zionist regime and the negligence of some regional leaders toward the problems of the Muslim world and the oppression of the Palestinian people,” said Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who serves as  Secretary General of Iran’s “Palestine Intifada Conference.”

Al-Quds Day was launched in 1979 by the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, following the Islamist seizure of power during the Iranian Revolution.