Iran’s Supreme Leader, who also occasionally covers up rape crimes, Ali Khamenei took to Twitter to share his views on women’s rights and claimed that objectification of women is a “Zionists’ plot” to destroy humanity.
On Sunday, during the Iranian Mother’s day, which honors the birthday of Fatimah Zahra, the daughter of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, Khamenei tweeted: “Designating women as goods & means of pleasure in western world, most probably, is among Zionists’ plots to destroy human community.”
The Supreme Leader began his thread of tweets claiming that Fatimah’s positive traits like “grandeur & stature beyond human’s understanding and imagination” make her the “perfect role model for Muslim women,” adding “one of [Fatimah’s] roles was being a “mother, wife & housewife.”
“Men & women are no different in some aspects”, he wrote in another tweet before quickly adding “but they are different in aspects like ‘duties in handling life.'”
“Some unaware deceived people humiliate housewives, while it means raising humans & producing highest product in universe i.e. human being,” he added. Khamenei linked all of this is to a Zionist conspiracy that tries to “destroy human community.”
The Iranian leader concluded his twitter rant attacking Western culture, saying: “In west, concepts like ‘gender justice’ or ‘gender quality’ are promoted while justice is realizing & nurturing capabilities God has gifted,” implying that being traditional housewife must take a priority for a woman to fulfill her role in the community.
While Khamenei berates “the West”, the Supreme Leader intervened last year in an investigation of prominent Quran authority Saeed Toosi, an ally of Khamenei, who was accused of raping multiple children.
According to an audio recording released by Last Page on the Persian voice of America, Toosi is heard saying that the Supreme Leader Khameini was well aware of the accusations of child rape and had agreed with head of the judiciary Sadek Larijani to bury the scandal for the sake of preserving the reputation of the “Quranic institution” within the country.