Ahmad Alamolhoda, the Friday Prayer leader in Mashhad, said: “The enemy will not stop until it removes our religion from us, and we must stand with all our might and resist. The idea that if we give in, we will give everything and hand all things over to the enemy, and then the matter will be over and the war will be over—that is a wrong notion.”

Alamolhoda added: “It is a wrong notion to think that if we fulfill many of the enemy’s demands and give it many of the things we have, the enemy will then stop. This is not how it is; rather, the more you give, the more he will increase his pressure.”