Although his opinions on the Jews get little attention in the mainstream press, Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has been preaching anti-Semitism for much of his career. Indeed, write Ali Alfoneh and Reuel Marc Gerecht, his “near-pathological obsession” with Israel and the Jews has a long history:
Khamenei . . . thrived on Western literature in his youth, only to become a devoted admirer of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), the Egyptian theorist of jihad, in his adulthood. The roots of his antipathy for Jews and Israel lie in the crisscrossing religious and political currents in his hometown, Mashhad, in the 1950s and 60s. In the literary salons that Khamenei frequented, Marxist and nationalist currents depicting Israel as an instrument of Western imperialism were common; concurrently, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini [Khamenei’s predecessor], a rising star among the religiously militant, attacked “Jewish influence” in the royal court. Khomeini also railed against Western imperialism, Israel, and Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s ambitious reform program. . . .
The young Khamenei was not a member of the close circle around Khomeini, but he claims that in May 1963 he carried a handwritten letter from Khomeini to religious authorities in Mashhad. The message read: “Prepare for the fight against Zionism. . . . Israel is in control of the country’s economic and political affairs.”
Read more on Weekly Standard: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/our-iranian-interlocutor_1032488.html