Israel is an artificial “outgrowth” in the Middle East that “will disappear,” Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Wednesday, August 15, ahead of rallies on Friday against the Jewish state, Agence France Presse reported. The annual Quds Day marches were started in 1979 after the founding of the Islamic republic. Khamenei, in a speech late Wednesday, said the “star of hope” that shined on Iran during its Islamic revolution, and in its 1980-1988 war with Iraq “will also shine for Palestine and its Islamic land will definitely be returned to the Palestinian nation.” He railed against Israel, saying: “This bogus and fake Zionist outgrowth will disappear off the landscape of geography.” Friday’s rallies, he said, would be “a blow to the enemies of Islam and Palestine” and added that Iran views supporting the Palestinian cause “a religious duty.”