‘The Fall of the Zionist Regime … Will Certainly Come Soon’

Iran has for decades made its genocidal intentions toward Israel abundantly clear. As far back as Aug. 2012, Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s civil defense organization and a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, declared that “no other way exists apart from resolve and strength to completely eliminate the aggressive nature and to destroy Israel.” Jalali was by no means the first to say this, and Iranian leaders continued to boast of Israel’s imminent destruction.

In a September 2013 interview with NBC News, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani labeled Israel “an occupier and usurper government” and claimed that it committed “injustice to the people of the region, and has brought instability to the region, with its warmongering policies.” These were not idle words. The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, claimed in Nov. 2014 that “the range of (our) missiles covers all of Israel today. That means the fall of the Zionist regime, which will certainly come soon.”

In May 2015, Iran’s state-run Fars News Agency falsely charged that former Israeli Defense Forces General Staff Chief Moshe Ya’alon had threatened that the IDF would target Lebanese civilians. In response, General Yahya Rahim Safavi, military adviser to Khamenei, issued a new threat: “Iran, with the help of Hezbollah and its friends, is capable of destroying Tel Aviv and Haifa in case of military aggression on the part of the Zionists. I don’t think the Zionists would be so unintelligent as to create a military problem with Iran. They know the strength of Iran and Hezbollah.”

Since he became the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader in 1989, the Ayatollah Khamenei has repeatedly reiterated the necessity of utterly destroying Israel. On December 4, 1990, he said, “Regarding the Palestine issue, the problem is taking back Palestine, which means disappearance of Israel.” He made it clear that this didn’t just mean the Israeli land commonly termed “the occupied territories,” but the entire state of Israel: “There is no difference between occupied territories before and after [the Arab-Israeli war of] 1967. Every inch of Palestinian land is an inch of Palestinians’ home. Any entity ruling Palestine is illegitimate unless it is Islamic and by Palestinians. Our position is what our late Imam [Khomeini] said, ‘Israel must disappear.’”

Jews could still live in Palestine, though, if they accepted Islamic rule, which for them would mean second-class status as dhimmis, the “protected people” of the Islamic state. Khamenei continued: “The Jews of Palestine can live there, if they accept the Islamic government there. We are not against Jews. The issue is the illegal ownership of Muslims’ homes. Muslim leaders, if they were not influenced by the world powers, could solve this important problem, but unfortunately have not been able to.”

Again on August 19, 1991, Khamenei emphasized that Israel must be destroyed: “Solving the Palestinian problem entails destroying and eliminating the illegitimate government there, so that the true owners [of the land] can form a new government; Muslims, Christians, and Jews can live side by side…. Our view regarding the Palestine issue is clear. We believe the solution is destroying the Israeli regime. Forty years has passed [since establishment of the state of Israel], and if another forty years passes, Israel must disappear, and will.”

One of the Supreme Leader’s favorite terms for Israel was “cancerous tumor.” In March 1994, Khamenei complained that “the United States and others support this cancerous tumor in the heart of Islamic nations.” Four months later, he again referred to Israel as “this cancerous tumor” and said that it had a “a terrorist government.” In June 2013, he ascribed the phrase to the Ayatollah Khomeini: “our magnanimous Imam is the person who never changed his mind about the Zionist regime; that ‘the Zionist regime is a cancerous tumor that must be removed’ are the Imam’s words.” And as recently as May 17, 2025, Khamenei declared: “The Zionist regime, which is the dangerous and lethal cancerous tumor of this region, must undoubtedly be removed, and it will be.”

On Jan. 15, 2001, Khamenei made it clear: “It is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map of the region.” On April 22 of the same year, he called for Muslim nations to support the jihad against Israel, predicting “that if even a portion of the Islamic world’s resources is devoted to this path, we will witness the decay and eventual disappearance of the Zionist regime.” Muslim nations should be willing to use their resources for Israel’s destruction because the Jewish state was created, in Khamenei’s view, in order to undermine them: on Jan. 31, 2002, Khamenei complained that “the cancerous Zionist tumor” had been built by the U.S. and its allies “to use it against Islamic nations.”

In a Feb. 3, 2012, Friday sermon, Khamenei made a promise: “From now on we will also support any nation, any group that confronts the Zionist regime, we will help them, and we are not shy about doing so. Israel will go, it must not survive, and it will not.” In Aug. 2012, Khamenei reiterated that Israel would soon vanish: “the fake Zionist (regime) will disappear from the landscape of geography. The light of hope will shine on the Palestinian issue, and this Islamic land will certainly be returned to the Palestinian nation.” In 2014, he returned to the same theme: “This barbaric, wolflike and infanticidal regime of Israel which spares no crime has no cure but to be annihilated.”

Particularly after Oct. 7, Israel had no choice but to pay careful attention to all this, and act accordingly.