Israel can "never" be allowed to feel safe, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Friday, speaking during a mass rally marking Iran's Quds (Jerusalem) Day, which this year coincided with the last Friday of the Ramadan holiday.
Iranian media said millions of Iranians marched in hundreds of cities across the country in solidarity with the Palestinians and in protest against Israel. The march has taken place annually since the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Iran relentlessly calls for the destruction of Israel, and finances, arms and trains terrorist groups on Israel's borders, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Marchers burned Israeli and American flags, as well as effigies of U.S. President Donald Trump. In Tehran, an effigy of Trump draped in an Israeli flag was torched as protesters chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to America."
Demonstrators in Tehran expressed solidarity with the two-month-old Hamas-orchestrated riot campaign on the Gaza-Israel border, holding posters reading "Jerusalem belongs to us" and chanting, "Palestine, Palestine, war until victory."
Similar protests were held in Baghdad and in Damascus.
Speaking with reporters in Tehran, Rouhani said, "Israel can never feel that it is in a safe place. Today, nations declare that freedom of Quds and the entire Palestinian territories is the cause and wish of all of us and they will never forget this cause. God willing, the Palestinian people will return to their territories one day."
Gen. Rahim Safavi, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's senior adviser on military affairs, said armed struggle is the only way to liberate Jerusalem.
"The results of the great rallies on Quds Day are becoming increasingly evident every year," he said. "The occupied territories have turned into an unsafe place for the Zionists, and Israel's dream to make those lands a safe haven for Jewish European migrants and other occupiers is just an illusion."
Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani said the Gaza protesters "would not compromise" and railed against Israel, Saudi Arabia and the U.S., calling them the "triangle of evil," a reference to U.S. President George W. Bush's 2002 declaration calling nations that sponsor terrorism an "axis of evil."
Larijani said Israel and Saudi Arabia are responsible for the chaos in the Middle East, and the region could be further destabilized if the U.S. and Saudi Arabia keep pressuring Iran.
Ahmad Khatami, a firebrand cleric who delivered a sermon after the rally in Tehran, said the demonstrators had carried out "a verbal jihad" against the United States and Israel.
"Jihad is not solely done militarily, but anything done in the path of God is called jihad," he said.
