The 15,000 Jews living in Iran have been plunged into what community members describe as a state of existential dread following Israel’s recent strikes in the country. According to sources familiar with the situation, Jewish life in Iran has come to a standstill.
“People have vanished from the streets,” said one source. “They’re staying inside their homes, terrified. They’re not going to work. There are no gatherings, no prayers in synagogues — nothing. They’re simply afraid to show their faces.”
The main fear among Iranian Jews, according to multiple accounts, is not of the regime but of vigilante violence — angry citizens taking revenge for the Israeli attacks. The concern is that mobs could carry out lynchings in retaliation.
Iran’s Jewish population is concentrated mainly in Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan — all of which were targeted by Israeli airstrikes. The city of Hamadan, believed by tradition to be the burial site of the biblical Mordechai and Queen Esther, was also struck, though only a few Jews still reside there.
Iran’s Jewish community is one of the oldest in the world, dating back to the Babylonian exile after the destruction of the First Temple. Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, an estimated 80,000 Jews lived in Iran but the vast majority fled after the rise of the ayatollahs, many resettling in Israel and the U.S.
In the wake of the Israeli strikes, the Jewish community leadership in Iran issued two strongly worded statements condemning Israel. The denunciations are seen as attempts to shield the community from accusations of disloyalty to the regime.
Homayoun Sameh, the Jewish representative in Iran’s parliament, circulated a message within the community saying: “Israel is committing war crimes — crimes against humanity. Iranian Jews are part of the Iranian people. I offer condolences to the families of the victims.”
Sameh has made past public declarations in support of the Palestinians in Gaza and has spoken of the “return of the Palestinian people to their land.” He emphasized that Iranian Jews participate annually in Quds Day rallies and declared “deep disgust at the Zionist regime.”
Another prominent figure, Younes Hamami Lalehzar, a senior leader in the Iranian Jewish community, published a similar letter condemning Israel.
In parallel, the Iranian state-run Fars news agency published a fiery joint statement from representatives of various religious minorities in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, Iran’s parliament. The statement denounced “the Zionist regime’s criminal attack on the sacred soil of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
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The signatories, including Sameh, warned that “Iran’s response will be swift and calculated and will bring defeat and regret to the illegitimate regime.” The statement claimed that Iran’s armed forces are “more united and resolute than ever” and would soon “put an end to the tyranny of the usurping Zionist regime.”
“The aggressive and criminal face of the Zionist regime has been exposed,” it added. “Cowardly, they have dragged some of our honored countrymen to their deaths. There’s no language to address such a predatory regime except the language of force.”
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Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
(Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS)
The signatories expressed condolences to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and to the Iranian people for the deaths of military commanders, nuclear scientists and civilians in what they called “an inhuman attack.” They described the casualties as having “reached the highest level of martyrdom.”
“We believe that, with God’s help, the powerful forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran will remain united and committed, with faith, empathy and above all loyalty to His Holiness the Supreme Leader,” the statement concluded.