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Typically jihadist denotes a militant sunni-salafist tendency, who are even more hateful against shia than non-believers.

This is reflected in e.g. Aaron Y. Zelin separating his surveilling of islamic militancy respectively into a jihadology and a muqawamology web site.

It is common for people in the occident to project the ideas they have about sunni-salafists onto the islamic republic, even though it is absurd. Same goes for the view that Khamenei supposedly were the one trying to achieve nuclear weapons, while his office has been the main blocker for this and secular nuclear researchers and political analysts in Iran has been the main proponents.

A year ago Ali Larijani said that if Iran was attacked they'd have no choice but to build deterrence through nuclear weapons, a proposal the US and Israel apparently thought was jolly good and since have crashed diplomatic alternatives to by the crime of aggression, not once but twice. The second time they also removed Khamenei, to really rub it in that they'd prefer for their allies in the region to have yet another nuclear armed neighbour.