Demonstrators took to the streets of Tehran on Friday to show support for Palestinians as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged the Iranian people to protest against ‘the enemies’ tricks’.
Crowds waved Iranian and Palestinian flags as well as those of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
Many held placards demanding ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Israel’, and chanted anti-US and anti-Israel slogans, an AFP journalist said.
Similar rallies were held across the country, state TV images showed.
‘Your march on Quds Day will nullify all the enemies’ tricks and false words,’ Khamenei said in a video message on Thursday. He has the final say in major state policies.
Quds [Jerusalem] Day commemorations were launched in 1979 by the Islamic republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The marches call for Jerusalem to be returned to the Palestinians and are traditionally held on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
State television also reported naval movements off the Gulf coast and in the Caspian Sea on Thursday.
‘We will fight to the last against anyone who carries out aggression against us and we will destroy them,’ said Alireza Tangsiri, naval commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideological arm of Iran’s military.
The authorities called on Iranians to come out in force for the demonstrations against Israel, Iran’s arch-nemesis which it does not recognise and which it refers to as ‘the Zionist regime’.
‘The resistance will continue until the liberation of holy Quds and the destruction of the Zionist regime,’ a statement from the armed forces general staff said Thursday.
‘The only solution to the Palestinian issue ... requires continued resistance and global solidarity to fight the Zionist regime,’ a separate statement from the army said.