An Iranian student organization has put out a cash offer for anyone who destroys the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
The call for an attack came just one day after the Embassy’s inauguration, an event attended by a large number of world leaders and high-ranking diplomats, the Washington Free Beacon reported this week.
The group, known as the Iranian Justice Seeker Student Movement, distributed posters in Farsi, Arabic and English that said: “Justice Student Movement supports anyone who destroys the building of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.”
IRGC “Justice Student Movement” sets a $100,000 award for those who destroy US Embassy in Jerusalem; reports Fars News. https://t.co/1cPUVPid2X pic.twitter.com/Relkqkq68M
— Kaveh Taheri 🕊 (@TaheriKaveh) May 14, 2018
The posters said there would be a “$100,000 dollar prize for the person who destroys the illegal American embassy in Jerusalem.”
Iranians and Palestinians have opposed the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, which has led to criticism from some Middle East leaders toward President Trump.
The Iranian regime has also grown increasingly hostile toward the U.S. after the President’s announcement to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. The decision was met with chants of “death to America” in Iranian parliament.
The Embassy move and declaration of Jerusalem as the true capital city of Israel was a campaign promise followed through by the Trump Administration.
Former Pentagon advisor Michael Rubin, an expert on rogue regimes, said that outlandish threats and terrorism of this sort are simply just a part of the Iranian regime’s hardline stance.
“Unfortunately, terrorism directed toward diplomats and embassies has become a central pillar of the Islamic Republic’s culture,” Rubin said. “Terrorism is lionized in Iranian schools. This bounty is more the rule than the exception. To blame Washington or Jerusalem is to blame the victim and give terrorists a veto over U.S. policy.”
Behnam Ben Taleblu, an research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, denounced the poster and explicitly blamed the Iranian regime for encouraging such an attitude.
“This is nothing short of an invitation to a heinous act of an international terror by a student group that looks up to the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror — the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said.
