Iranian Clerics Offer 100 Billion Tomans to Whoever Can Kill Trump

If death doesn’t come from above by a mini-drone while President Trump is sunbathing at Mar-a-Lago, he faces a new threat from Iranian clerics — they are offering 100 billion tomans to whoever completes the hit.Two senior Iranian clerics have issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for the assassination of Mr. Trump and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Another 10 state-appointed clerics have voiced their support for the effort.“We will give 100 billion tomans to anyone who brings the head of Trump,” the provincial director of the official Islamic Propagation Organization in West Azerbaijan, Mansour Emami, said, according to the Iran International news agency. A toman is a superunit of the official currency of Iran, the rial. One toman is equivalent to 10 rials, so the offer to murder the two leaders amounts to a bit more than $1.1 million, the website said.In an open letter to Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu, the clerics labeled the leaders “infidel combatants,” a term in Islamic jurisprudence used for non-believers perceived to be at war with Muslims and deserving of death. The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, however, is distancing his government from the clerics’ discourse. Speaking with a media personality, Tucker Carlson, Mr. Pezeshkian said, “They have not issued decrees or fatwas against any individual or against Donald Trump, to the best of my knowledge. It has nothing to do with the Iranian government or the supreme leader of Iran.”The clarification comes amid heightened rhetoric following a series of contentious events, including threats made against Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during the 12-day conflict involving Israel, Iran, and the United States last month.The latest fatwa isn’t an isolated phenomenon. Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi and Ayatollah Hossein Nouri Hamedani, both senior clerics, previously issued separate fatwas against Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu. Ayatollah Shirazi’s statement read, “Any regime or individual threatening the leaders of the Islamic [nation] and acting on those threats qualifies as a mohareb,” or enemy of God.In another development, an Iranian website claims to have collected some $40 million from the public that “will be delivered by the committed individuals to every free person who carries out the verdict of justice.”Mr. Trump faces other threats. A former senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Mohammad-Javad Larijani, told Iranian state TV on Wednesday that Mr. Trump “can no longer sunbathe in Mar-a-Lago — a small drone might hit him in the navel.”Mr. Trump didn’t take the threat too seriously. During a White House event hours later, a Fox News reporter asked him about the last time he went sunbathing, and the president said it had “been a long time.” He added, “I guess it’s a threat. I’m not sure it’s a threat actually, but perhaps it is.”

Iranian Clerics Offer 100 Billion Tomans to Whoever Can Kill Trump

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