Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi declared a fatwa against President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on June 29. A fatwa is a religious decree on a matter of Islamic law that is issued by a senior Islamic jurist.

Shirazi holds the rank of a Marja’a-e Taqlid, the highest level of the Iranian Shiite Twelver clergy, meaning one whose theological scholarship has earned him the right to be followed and emulated by acolytes, seminarians, and common people alike. The Twelver sect of Shiite Islam dominates among the senior clerical, juridical, and military ranks of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s leadership and refers to those who follow the Twelfth Imam of Shia Islam, identify him as Islam’s messianic figure of the Mahdi, but who also believe they can hasten his return to Earth by instigating chaos and warfare on Earth.

While Shirazi issued the original fatwa against Trump and Netanyahu, the following day, on June 30, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Noori Hamedani, also from Qom, issued a similar fatwa that essentially supported Shirazi’s. Since then, more than 400 Shiite clerics in the theological seminary city of Qom have backed those two decrees.

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