After Friday prayer services on 22 June 2007, prominent cleric Hojatoleslam Ahmad Khatami spoke to worshipers by broadcast on state radio from Tehran. He addressed the death sentence issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against Rushdie, saying "In the Islamic Iran that revolutionary "fatwa" of Imam is still alive and cannot be changed." He went on to say that "The old and decrepit government of Great Britain should know that the era of their empire is over and today they are a valet in the service of the United States." While in 1998 the Iranian government (under British diplomatic pressure) declared it would "neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie," many clerics like Khatami rejected the move. Even soon after the government's disavowal, the Iranian press reported three clerics calling on their followers to kill Rushdie, stating that the "fatwa" was irrevocable. As late as January 2005, Khomeini's successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced that "he still believed the British novelist was an apostate whose killing would be authorized by Islam."