"By God, America will be defeated in Iraq," the man identified as Zarqawi warned in the video message. "America will be chased out of the Land of Two Rivers defeated and humiliated," he vowed.
The video appeared just two days after a new audiotape recording of Osama Bin Laden surfaced, in which Al Qaeda's founder accused the West of waging war against Islam.
It also came as Iraq named Shia politician Jawad Al Maliki its designate prime minister in a bid to quickly form a national unity government and end the country's violence.
"Beware those of you who join these collaborator agencies - the [Iraqi] army and police. By God, all they will get from us is a sharp sword, and we will have ... battles that will turn children's hair white," the man said, in a warning to Iraqis.
The shadowy Jordanian-born Zarqawi, who is blamed for numerous large-scale attacks during the insurgency in Iraq since the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, has taken a low profile in recent months.
The US military has claimed that it has captured a number of his top aides, raising speculation about whether the noose was finally tightening on Iraq's enemy number one, or if in fact the militant had died.
But his first known video message demonstrated to the world that the Al Qaeda leader was alive and well.
A bearded, beefy Zarqawi, with a black scarf wrapped around his head, was shown gripping an automatic rifle and meeting with fighters briefing him on events in the restive Iraqi town of Ramadi.
The insurgents explained what one described as a major operation during which they reportedly seized control of the town center for several hours in response to an April 2 visit to Iraq by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her British counterpart Jack Straw.
The fighter said that the mujahideen (holy warriors) in Ramadi's western Anbar province had developed two rockets that they would use soon - one was dubbed "Qaeda 1", with a range of 40 kilometers (25 miles), while the other was an armor-piercing rocket dubbed "Quds (Jerusalem) 1".
In the message, Zarqawi, who said that the video was filmed on April 21, also vowed to carry on his fight against the Americans across the Middle East.
"To the US administration, starting with the banner of the cross [President George W.] Bush, we tell him and the Jews, crusaders, rawafidh [a derogatory term for Shias] and apostates that you will not enjoy [peace] in the land of Islam," Zarqawi said.
"Our emir Osama Bin Laden offered you a long-term truce, but your arrogance prevented you from taking it up," he told Bush.
The man also set the liberation of Jerusalem as his goal.
"We are fighting in Iraq while our eyes are set on Jerusalem, which will not survive except through a Koran that guides and a sword that makes justice."
Zarqawi also announced the formation of an umbrella group for anti-US fighters, which he named as the Mujahideen's Consultative Council.
There had previously been only audiotapes of Zarqawi, while the US military obtained photos of Zarqawi in February 2005 when the rebel purportedly fled a car by a US checkpoint outside Ramadi.
In his Jordanian homeland, Zarqawi has been sentenced to death three times for the murder of a US diplomat in 2002 and two conspiracy plots. He has also claimed several attacks on the country, including hotel suicide bombings in November that killed 60 people.
The US military earlier this month was forced to deny that it had exaggerated the importance of Zarqawi as part of a propaganda campaign to turn Iraqis against the insurgency.
The Washington Post reported that some military intelligence officials believe that the campaign had overstated Zarqawi's importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war in Iraq to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Also this month, the son of Bin Laden's mentor Abdullah Azzam said that Iraq's resistance has replaced Zarqawi as political head of the rebels, confining him to a military role.
Born Fadel Nazzal Al Khalayleh, Zarqawi was a poor student who never graduated from high school. People in his hometown of Zarqa remember a hotheaded youth, always armed with a penknife and a tattoo on his arm.
He became a radical after being shocked by the social openness that emerged in conservative Jordan with the arrival of tens of thousands of Palestinians who fled Kuwait after Iraq invaded the Gulf emirate in 1990.
© 2006 Agence France-Presse
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