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Khamenei urges Muslim unity against Israel and US

August 30, 2026

Iran's supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, called on Muslim countries, especially Gulf states, to unite against Israel and the United States and to identify their real enemy.

AP News reports an appeal from Khamenei to Muslim countries to close ranks against Israel and the United States, telling them to "know your real enemy." NBC News carries a longer version of the same instruction, aimed at rulers across the Islamic world and at Gulf and West Asian governments in particular, telling them to work out who the adversary is, read his intentions, and stand against him. Al Jazeera's coverage frames the appeal the same way, as a call to the wider Muslim world. The audience is the awkward part. The Jerusalem Post reports Iranian fire directed across the region at Gulf states and at American bases there, and AP News reports that the fighting has opened rifts within the Muslim world since Iran hit sites in neighbouring Gulf Arab countries and constrained shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Khamenei is asking for solidarity from governments Iran has been shooting at.

Money occupies most of the reporting. CNBC reports a steep drop in Iranian trade under American sanctions and a naval blockade, a decline President Masoud Pezeshkian himself describes, alongside Khamenei's push to lean less on the dollar. CNBC also reports that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent opened a sanctions drive on Monday meant to cut Iran off commercially everywhere. Treasury has tied Banque Misr UAE to roughly $1.8 billion handled across two years for 103 companies it links to Iranian workaround finance, CNBC reports, and the same reporting quotes Bob McNally of Rapidan Energy saying the Trump administration expects Tehran to be starved of cash until it gives in. Tehran answers in that same reporting, with CNBC carrying the Ministry of Petroleum's position that its reserves will cover sales sufficient for the 2026-2027 budget even around a blockade. NBC News reports talks stalled six months into the war and sales of about 90 million barrels of oil during the brief June memorandum of understanding, and it describes a government agenda built on prices, market management, employment, investment at home, and a slow retreat from the dollar.

One split in the record concerns delivery rather than content. One account has the appeal arriving as a letter to clerics gathered for a Tehran conference, citing Iran's official IRNA news agency; another puts it on Khamenei's Telegram account during Islamic Unity Week, which falls on the Prophet Muhammad's birthday. Since the wording of the appeal is consistent either way, the message and its intended audience are settled. The channel and the occasion are not.

Still developing

The form of the message is unresolved, with the accounts placing it variously as a letter to clerics gathered in Tehran and as a post timed to Islamic Unity Week. The effect of the sanctions campaign on Iran's finances is also unresolved, with Tehran's petroleum ministry projecting enough oil sales to cover its 2026-2027 budget while outside analysis expects the pressure to force a reckoning.

How settled the reporting is

Reported 90% · Contested 2% · Developing 8%

Sources