The idea of celebrating Quds Day every year on the last Friday of the month of Ramadan dates back to the era of Imam Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolution in Iran. Tehran and its allies in the region believe that celebrating this day is one of the most important occasions in the Iranian agenda on the Arab scene. Over the past few decades, it became clear that solidarity with the Palestinian cause is the fastest and most guaranteed way for any party to gain the support of the Middle East’s citizens. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan succeeded in this respect.

Erdogan’s positions in support of the Palestinian cause attracted ​​Arab Muslims to him, and caused them to mentally block out the Ottoman repression against numerous Arab peoples that lasted even after World War I. This is also the case for the Islamic Republic of Iran since the end of the 1970s until today. Immediately following the Islamic revolution’s victory, Iran lowered the Israeli flag that used to flutter on the Israeli Embassy in Tehran — which had opened during the era of the shah — and raised the Palestinian flag instead. This event was the most important Iranian passport to the hearts of hundreds of millions of Arab and Islamic peoples.

There is no doubt that the Islamic revolution in Iran exploited the Palestinian cause to increase its influence within the Arab region. It created Hezbollah in Lebanon in the early 1980s, after having supported the Fatah movement. Then it built a strategic relationship with Hamas as the Palestinian Islamic resistance. Moreover, Iran had raised its tone in its official political discourse, addressing Israel as a “cancerous tumor that must be removed.” In brief, the most important pillar of the Iranian strategy to extend its influence in the Middle East and to gain acceptability among the Arab peoples is its declaration of its extreme support for the Palestinian cause and its manifest hostility towards the Jewish state.

Hezbollah, which has achieved more than one striking achievement over the history of its continuous war with Israel for about a quarter of a century now, was deemed Iran's most prominent example of success in proving Tehran’s hostility toward Israel, and not only its verbal belligerence towards it. Moreover, it is no secret that Hezbollah is one of the most important emanations of Khomeini's Islamic Revolution in the Arab arena.