A D.C.-area mosque pledged its loyalty on Sunday to “Our Leader Shaheed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,” mourning his “martyrdom” after the Iranian dictator was killed in a U.S.-Israeli operation.

The Manassas Mosque is a sponsor, alongside left-wing groups like CodePink and the D.C. chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, of a “Stop the war on Iran” march on the White House planned for Monday night.

On its Instagram page, the mosque calls Iran’s dictator — not America’s elected representatives — its leader, and demands to “end US-Zionist aggression.” The picture was deleted after The Daily Wire captured it.

Screenshot via Manassas Mosque Instagram

The mosque, about 30 minutes from the Pentagon in D.C.’s Virginia outskirts, is funded by the Alavi Foundation, which has spent tens of millions of dollars in America. The U.S. government has alleged that the foundation is a front for the Iranian regime.

In 2023, nine GOP congressmen wrote to the Biden administration’s attorney general and director of national security, saying that the Manassas mosque received $200,000 from the Alavi Foundation and “a recent video inside the Mosque showed it is adorned with pictures of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps … This appears to be part of a network of regime-sponsored mosques acting as agents for a foreign adversary.”

After the October 2023 Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, the Manassas Mosque issued a newsletter that said, “We stand firmly with the Palestinian Resistance (Hamas),” according to InfluenceWatch.

It has used racial divisions in the U.S. to infiltrate the Left, saying in 2020 that the death of George Floyd “exposes the facade of freedom and justice for all.”

In 2009, the then-head of the Alavi Foundation, Farshid Jahedi, was indicted for “allegedly destroying documents subpoenaed by a grand jury investigating the Alavi Foundation’s relationship with Bank Melli Iran and the ownership of a Manhattan office building,” the Department of Justice said. In 2010, during the Obama administration, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to only three months in prison and a $3,000 fine on two felony counts.

“They really have no idea what they’ve unleashed upon themselves. It is exactly in moments like this that resistance fighter are born.”

The group built a skyscraper at 650 Fifth Avenue in New York using a loan from Iran, and Alavi, for years, used front groups to hide the forbidden relationship, the DOJ said in a 2008 forfeiture action against the Assa Corp., which the DOJ said was an offshore front group used by Alavi. In 2019, a jury verdict to seize the entire building for violating Iranian sanctions was overturned on appeal.

Its 2025 IRS filing includes buying land in Virginia. It has also given loans for Muslims to study at U.S. colleges, and mortgages to establish new mosques in places like Beaverton, Oregon, and San Diego, California.

The Manassas Mosque’s imam is Abolfazl Bahram Nahidian, who in 2010 said that Israel was behind 9/11.

His daughter-in-law, Atefeh Rokhvand, has been a major player in high-profile, left-wing-adjacent advocacy against Israel.

A D.C. court ordered Rokhvand and others to pay a rabbi $182,000 for abusing the U.S. court system by attempting to have him prosecuted for “stalking” for coming to the Israeli embassy to pray, where they had staked out in a constant protest. A lawyer for Rokhvand previously replied to The Daily Wire’s questions by implying the rabbi was greedy, saying the $182,000 was for “over-inflated legal fees.”

Rokhvand was the “governor” of the around-the-clock stakeout of former Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s home, which involved throwing fake blood on his vehicle as he returned home. She previously taught third grade at a school affiliated with the mosque, and founded Teachers Against Genocide.

Hazami Barmada (center) and Atefeh Rokhvand (right) protesting the Israeli embassy / Instagram

On Instagram, Rokhvand this week posted a screenshot of a tweet saying, “they just canonized Kahmenei [sic]. And they really have no idea what they’ve unleashed upon themselves. It is exactly in moments like this that resistance fighter are born.”

Radical Islamists in the D.C. area have often used their daughters to embed in local Democrat politics. Several of the 9/11 hijackers worshipped at a different mosque, whose imam was later drone-struck by Barack Obama as a member of Al Qaeda. The daughter of a board member who hired that imam was later elected to the Fairfax County school board, where she opposed a moment of silence honoring the victims of 9/11.

Several members of Congress, in response to The Daily Wire’s flagging of the mosque aligning with an enemy during wartime, called for members of the mosque to be denaturalized and deported.

“The enemy is inside the gates,” Rep. Keith Self (R-TX), a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said.

“Deport all who refuse to pledge allegiance to the United States of America,” Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) said.

“We need to get them the hell out of our country,” Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) said.

“Deport them. Now,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said.