Iran’s Top Clerical Body Just Demanded Trump and Netanyahu Be Killed — the Same Week Washington Was Trying to Save the Ceasefire.

Dozens of members of Iran’s Assembly of Experts — the roughly 88-seat clerical body that selects and supervises Iran’s supreme leader — signed a statement on June 29 and 30, 2026 branding President Donald Trump (R) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “mahdour al-dam” — those “deserving of death” — and calling for their assassination. Yahoo News, citing wire reporting, put the signatory count at 63 of the assembly’s 88 members; other outlets have used slightly different counts of the same statement, a reminder that even the basic facts here are still being reconciled across sources.

The stated motive is revenge. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed on February 28, 2026, during an earlier U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was installed as Iran’s new supreme leader in a March 3–9 Assembly of Experts process that outside analysts say was pushed through under IRGC pressure. The clerics who signed the June statement frame killing Trump and Netanyahu as payback for the father’s death.

The timing is what makes this more than rhetoric to be shrugged off. The same week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and envoy Steve Witkoff were briefing Congress on the fragile U.S.-Iran ceasefire memorandum — the subject of this site’s companion report, Rubio and Witkoff Brief Congress on the Iran Deal. Senior, sitting clerics publicly demanding the deaths of the American president and the Israeli prime minister — the two men the ceasefire itself depends on — is, on its face, incompatible with the good-faith diplomacy Tehran’s own negotiators were simultaneously conducting in Doha.

• 63 of 88 (per Yahoo/wire) — members of Iran's Assembly of Experts reported to have signed the June 29-30 statement branding Trump and Netanyahu 'deserving of death' — other outlets cite different counts of the same document · Source: Yahoo News; NJ Today
• “Mahdour al-dam” — “those deserving of death” — the designation the Assembly of Experts statement applied to Trump and Netanyahu · Source: Mediaite; The Nightly
• Feb. 28, 2026 — date Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during an earlier U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, the stated motive for the assassination call · Source: Al Jazeera
• One year, at least 4 clerics — senior Iranian clerics who have separately issued fatwas or public rulings calling for Trump's/Netanyahu's death since June 2025 · Source: FDD; MEMRI; Iran Intl.
• €50 million bounty bill — reported in Iran's parliament in May 2026, targeting Trump, Netanyahu, and CENTCOM commander Gen. Brad Cooper · Source: The Jerusalem Post; Fox News
• H.R. 6230 (pending) — the Tehran Incitement to Violence Act, introduced by Rep. Keith Self (R-TX), would direct State Department review of named clerics for terrorism sanctions — not yet enacted · Source: Congress.gov

The Assembly of Experts statement named specific senior figures behind it. Per wire reporting collected by NJ Today, Alireza Arafi, vice-president of the Assembly of Experts, and Mohsen Araki, a member of both the Assembly and the Expediency Council and a former Khamenei representative to the United Kingdom, were among the signatories. Araki put it bluntly: “Their lives and property are no longer protected.” Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani, a senior Assembly member, went further, charging Trump and Netanyahu with “moharebeh” — waging war against God, a capital offense under Iran’s own criminal code.

This is not a fringe clerical council issuing a symbolic gesture. The Assembly of Experts is the body that elected Mojtaba Khamenei supreme leader four months earlier. A majority-plus of its own sitting members publicly demanding the assassination of a sitting U.S. president and a sitting Israeli prime minister is, functionally, an institutional position — not the freelance opinion of a single hardline preacher.

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The June 2026 Assembly of Experts statement is the latest entry in a pattern stretching back more than a year, involving clerics who are senior figures in Iran’s religious and political establishment, not marginal voices. On June 29, 2025, Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi and Ayatollah Hossein Nouri Hamedani issued fatwas declaring Trump and Netanyahu “mohareb” — enemies of God, or warlords — a designation that carries a death sentence under Iranian jurisprudence. The next day, cleric Alireza Panahian echoed it on state media: “Every Muslim anywhere in the world must be willing to give their life and take action to kill them,” he said, adding, “No one will delay or hesitate anymore in eliminating them.”

On July 4, 2025, Ahmad Khatami — a Guardian Council member, an Assembly of Experts member, interim Tehran Friday Prayer Leader, and an official the European Union has sanctioned for human rights abuses — ruled in a Friday sermon, translated by MEMRI, that Trump and Netanyahu “must be executed” under Sharia for “murder, oppression, and sowing corruption.” Later that month, Mohammad-Javad Larijani, an adviser to the supreme leader, made a specific and bizarre threat on Iranian state television: “When his stomach is facing the sun, a drone can hit his navel. It’s very simple,” describing a micro-drone strike on Trump while sunbathing at Mar-a-Lago, before adding, “But we fight as men. MAVs and the likes are for cowards.” Trump’s on-camera response was characteristically dismissive: “It’s been a long time… I guess it’s a threat, I’m not sure it’s a threat actually, but perhaps it is.”

Alongside the religious rulings, Iran has produced a stream of bounty talk of varying credibility. Iran’s parliament worked in May 2026 on a €50 million bounty bill, sponsored by National Security Council chairman Ebrahim Azizi, targeting whoever kills Trump, Netanyahu, or CENTCOM commander Gen. Brad Cooper. Separately, cleric Abdolmajid Kharghani floated a $10–20 million bounty on state television in 2025.

One figure requires an explicit caveat rather than a flat citation: a crowdfunding site called thaar.ir claims, according to Iran International, to have raised $40,286,867 toward assassinating Trump. Newsweek is explicit that this figure comes from an unauthenticated, self-reported claim on an obscure site — not a verified transaction record, a government account, or an audited fund. We report the number here only because Iran International and Newsweek both flagged it, and only with that same caveat: it is an unconfirmed claim, not a documented fact.

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In Washington, Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) introduced H.R. 6230, the Tehran Incitement to Violence Act, which would require the State Department to review the named clerics for designation as Specially Designated Global Terrorists. The bill is pending; it has not been enacted. Separately, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a private advocacy watchdog and not a U.S. government body, publicly demanded sanctions. UANI CEO Amb. Mark Wallace and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said in a joint statement: “Each of these individuals and entities should be sanctioned, indicted, and banned from travel — along with their families.” That is an advocacy group’s demand, not a confirmed U.S. sanctions action.

Tehran’s own government, notably, tried to put distance between itself and the clerical statement. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said publicly: “To the best of my knowledge, they have not issued decrees or fatwas against any individual or against Donald Trump. It has nothing to do with the Iranian government or the Supreme Leader of Iran.” It is a useful, fair-minded data point: Iran’s pragmatic wing is visibly trying to keep the Doha diplomatic channel alive against pressure from its own hardliners and clerics — even as members of the body that installed the current supreme leader openly call for assassinating the two men that channel depends on.

“To the best of my knowledge, they have not issued decrees or fatwas against any individual or against Donald Trump. It has nothing to do with the Iranian government or the Supreme Leader of Iran.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, distancing the government from the Assembly of Experts statement

Netanyahu himself has said flatly that Iran “wants to kill” Trump — telling Fox’s Bret Baier during the earlier war that “they want to kill him. He’s enemy number one,” while disclosing that a missile had been fired at his own bedroom window. That is the backdrop against which a majority-plus of Iran’s Assembly of Experts — the body that just installed Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader — signed a statement in June 2026 calling the American president and the Israeli prime minister “deserving of death.”

None of this happened in a vacuum. It came the same week Rubio and Witkoff were briefing Congress on the fragile ceasefire memorandum detailed in our companion report, Rubio and Witkoff Brief Congress on the Iran Deal. A year of fatwas, a bounty bill, an unauthenticated bounty-fundraising claim, and now an institutional assassination call from the clerical body that anoints Iran’s supreme leader — set against a president’s own negotiators trying to hold a 60-day truce together — is the story here: not a single unhinged sermon, but a documented, repeated pattern from people who are not fringe.

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Last updated July 1, 2026