The Dalai Lama, the Pope and the Ayatollah Khameini walk into a press conference …

The Dalai Lama re-affirms his mission to help individuals find happiness and commit themselves to global compassion. He will redouble his efforts to call us all to altruism.

The Pope too re-affirms a message of compassion. His is a more practical call – we should all open our homes to refugees and displaced persons from the Middle East and Africa. He will direct dioceses around the world, and especially in Europe, to have Catholic parishes provide the exemplary charity that will lead the way.

The Ayatollah also brings a re-affirmation of religious mission – and he wants to be even more real-world than the Pope. He wishes and prays for the destruction of the State of Israel. He will redouble the efforts of his Quds Force and its leader, the brilliant strategist and tactician, Major General Qasem Soleimani, to ensure that Israel does not exist in 25 years.

It’s jarring to our modernist sense of what a significant religious leader should be, to have one so openly committed to the complete destruction of a neighbouring nation. The moral enormity of the first communiques regarding Hitler’s campaign against the Jews in Europe led many to dismiss them as preposterous. Just so, many dismiss Khameini’s statements on Israel as either misreported or exaggerated. Surely the head of one State founded on religious identity is not praying that another State should be extinguished just because of its national religion?

Some accept that the statements may be accurately reported, but they tell themselves that his religious fervour will surely be tempered by a rational assessment of the likely catastrophe that would result from any action to fulfil his apocalyptic hope. Not for them the possibility that an adherent of the Twelver sect of Shia Islam might actually believe he has some role to play in an Islamic end-time.

It’s easier to deal with self proclaimed religious nutters from the Islamic State enslaving minorities, raping captured women, crucifying, beheading, or burning people alive. Clearly they are an aberration, psychopathological. And so long as we get to them before they can deploy the mechanisms of a State (and boy, have we left that a little too close for comfort!), there’s little pain involved in dealing with them.

But the Head of a State with thousands of years of culture and civilisation? The leading theological figure in the second most significant tradition in one of the world’s major religions? Surely he doesn’t really go to bed and get up in the morning praying for the destruction of the Jewish State? Surely he doesn’t spend time between those prayers scheming with the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution on how to make it so?

We might expect that such a figure would be ostracised by the United Nations, the subject of special resolutions condemning genocidal incitement against another member State. Alas, he is not, and the subject of what condemnatory resolutions are occasionally passed is the very object of his fanaticism – Israel.

We might expect that, at the least, democratic states would be resolute in their containment of the economic and military capacities of the State he leads. Alas, again, at the very moment the Ayatollah is reiterating his deadly intent for Israel, the US, Europe and, indeed, our own State, Australia, are removing economic sanctions, seeking trade deals, and legitimising the nuclear infrastructure that could very easily deliver this leader nuclear weapons.

The Ayatollah’s comments on the State of Israel last month come less than a year after he released his ‘nine questions on the elimination of Israel’. They are his ‘thank you’ to President Obama for pushing through a deal to lift the very sanctions that were necessary to prevent him one day acting effectively on his religiously malevolent impulses.

One might have expected an outcry against a religious leader and head of State envisaging the destruction of a member State of the United Nations. We did not. You see, every one is used to this man’s sanctified statements of evil intent. It will be hard to express surprise when the State he heads executes his wishes.