Among the slogans chanted by protesters flooding Iran’s streets is this: “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran.” It is more than a repudiation of the regime’s foreign policy. It is a reminder that antisemitism, when elevated to state ideology, has a way of destroying the antisemite. Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the regime has had a singular obsession with Jews. Its hatred of Israel flows directly from that fixation.
The regime’s foundational political text, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Governance of the Jurist, is steeped in antisemitism. “From the very beginning,” Khomeini wrote, “the historical movement of Islam has had to contend with the Jews, for it was they who first established anti-Islamic propaganda.” Iran’s current leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is an avowed Holocaust denier. Though Iran officially tolerates its dwindling Jewish community, most Iranian Jews have fled, often under perilous circumstances.
Iranian foreign policy freely mixes anti-Israel fury with anti-Jewish conspiracy. Tehran has supported Hezbollah — sworn to Israel’s destruction — to the tune of billions of dollars over four decades. It ordered antisemitic terrorist attacks abroad, including the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. It supplied Hamas with weapons and training, provided ballistic missiles to Yemen’s Houthis, and repeatedly courted global outrage by hosting conferences of Holocaust deniers and antisemitic cartoon contests.
The regime also spent decades assembling the elements needed to build a nuclear weapon. One motivation was deterrence. Another was revealed in a chilling cost-benefit analysis offered by Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, in 2001: “The use of one atomic bomb in Israel leaves nothing left, but in the Islamic world, there will only be damage.”
All of this might be intelligible if Iran and Israel had ancient grievances or territorial disputes. They do not. Iran was among the first predominantly Muslim states to de facto recognize Israel, and Tehran and Jerusalem enjoyed close ties under the Shah. Even today, ordinary Iranians are markedly less antisemitic than people in many other Middle Eastern countries, according to surveys by the Anti-Defamation League. The regime’s obsession is ideological, not strategic.
That is what animates the chant in the streets.
This month, the regime attempted to mollify protesters by offering most citizens a paltry $7 monthly stipend amid soaring inflation and a collapsing currency. At the same time, it managed to send an estimated $1 billion to help Hezbollah rebuild its military capabilities, while refusing meaningful concessions on its nuclear program — prompting European sanctions that further crippled the economy. What Iranians are revolting against is not only corruption and mismanagement, but a regime that would rather wage perpetual jihad against Zionism than feed its own people.
For years, the cruelty of this policy was obscured by apparent success. Iranian proxies entrenched themselves across the Middle East, building a so-called ring of fire around Israel. But after the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, Israel systematically dismantled that ring — in Gaza, Beirut, Damascus, Sanaa, and ultimately Tehran itself, whose skies the Israeli air force dominated during a 12-day war in June.
In a stroke, decades of Iranian investment were reduced to rubble. The regime’s military incompetence was laid bare. And Iranians were reminded that another path exists for Muslim states: like the United Arab Emirates, they can be prosperous, moderate, and at peace with Israel — just across the Persian Gulf.
The regime’s newfound brittleness is surely part of what is driving people into the streets despite a mounting death toll — at least 2,000 by the regime’s own count, likely far higher. Iran’s leaders appear to sense how close their rule is to fracture, which explains their mix of ferocity at home and tactical flexibility abroad. It may buy them time.
But when the regime collapses — as sooner or later it will — its antisemitic politics will have played a central role. That is the historic paradox, given what Khomeini and Khamenei intended. It is also a historic fulfillment: Jews have owed a debt to Persians since Cyrus the Great ended the Babylonian Captivity 2,564 years ago and restored them to Zion.
It need not be so forever. A regime that projected its own malevolence onto Jews may soon face its long-overdue reckoning. And the Iranian people who reclaim their freedom as individuals may yet reclaim their reason as a nation.
The New York Times