Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei urged Muslim countries, particularly those in the Gulf, to unite against what he called their “real enemy” and said divisions among Muslims served the interests of their adversaries.

The message was published on Mojtaba’s Telegram account for Islamic Unity Week, which marks the birth anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

It called for Muslim unity, cooperation in various fields and mutual defence, saying anyone who creates divisions among Muslims, “knowingly or unknowingly,” helps Islam’s enemies.

“And how, in these times, can anyone attribute such an act to ignorance or negligence, when the tyrants of the world, led by the criminal US, have now cast aside the deceptive and flimsy masks concealing their ugly colonial aims and their hegemonic and domination-seeking schemes, removed their deceptive velvet gloves, and revealed their bloodstained claws to the entire world?” the supreme leader said, according to Iran’s Press TV.

He asked whether Palestinians would have been left “so helpless” and “subjected to the oppression and crimes of the occupiers” if Muslims had been united.

Mojtaba has not been seen in public since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran, in which his father, the previous supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Mojtaba, was assassinated.

His call for unity echoes a statement he made on Friday to Iranians, when he said he had banned actions that harm social cohesion and urged authorities to avoid “discouraging statements” that weaken national and public morale.

Mojtaba specifically asked Gulf Arab rulers whether “rogues without identity” would have dared to covet their lands and possessions if the peoples and governments of the Gulf had been “united under the flag of Islam.”

“My emphatic and repeated recommendation to the rulers of Islamic countries, especially the countries of West Asia and the Gulf, is to identify your real enemy, understand his plan and confront it,” Mojtaba said.

Mojtaba, according to Iranian media, said that “unity among Muslims is the fundamental cornerstone for achieving a proud and dominant Islamic civilisation”.

“This conceptual and intellectual framework, which embodies our aspirations for the Muslim world, has itself been realised to a considerable extent in our beloved Iran.”