The Yemen branch of Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command, Saeed al-Shehri, purportedly issued the call in an audio message, the Daily Beast said.

In the message, Al-Shehri ordered jihadists to exploit a future war between the Jewish State and Iran.

Iran’s Shia government will blame Saudi Arabia for helping Israel attack its nuclear installations and will use this as an excuse to seize the holy Saudi cities of Mecca and Medina, he predicted.

Israel will seize fresh territory in the Middle East to establish “the greater state of Israel,” he claims.

The “Shura Council of the Mujahadeen in the Arabian Peninsula” has held a meeting to prepare for such a war, al-Shehri said.

He urged followers to assassinate Arab leaders, citing the example of the “tyrant Anwar Sadat,” the Egyptian president murdered by Islamic radicals.

Shehri was held in the US prison camp at Guantanamo for six years after being caught in Pakistan in December 2001. After being sent back to his native Saudi Arabia, he fled to Yemen and helped set up Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

He has been a strategist for AQAP and terrorism experts say he was behind the plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s deputy interior minister, Muhammad bin Nayef last year which only narrowly failed.