The commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy said on January 7 that the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia were actually Jewish, and that their conflict with Iran harkens back to 7th century battles between Muslim and Jewish tribes. The speech was aired on Iran's Bushehr TV and translated by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute. “We cannot bear to see injustice in a Muslim country that is perpetrated by the Zionists and the seed of the Jews,” the commander, Gen. Alireza Tangsiri, says in a video recording of the speech. “[We cannot bear to see] that Muslims are being slaughtered by people who call themselves Christians but are not,” he added, seeming to refer to the US's assassination of former IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani. “These are the very same Jews — and I’d better say Zionists — whose hearts have never aligned with Islam, and even with the Prophet in his time,” he then said, probably in reference to Saudi Arabia.