Notable among the slogans being chanted by the protesters flooding Iran’s streets is this one: “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran.” That’s more than a repudiation of the regime’s foreign policy. It’s a reminder that a policy of antisemitism has a way of eventually destroying the antisemite.
Since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the regime has had a singular obsession with Jews. The suppurating hatred of Israel is downstream from that.
The foundational political text of the regime, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s “Governance of the Jurist,” is shot through with antisemitism. As in: “From the very beginning, 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, the vast majority of Iranian Jews have fled the country, often under perilous circumstances.
Iranian foreign policy freely mixes anti-Israel furies with anti-Jewish ones. It has supported Hezbollah, sworn to Israel’s destruction, to the tune of billions of dollars over four decades. It has ordered antisemitic terrorist attacks at long range, including the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. It has supplied weapons and training for Hamas, along with ballistic missiles for Yemen’s Houthis. It has repeatedly courted international outrage by hosting a conference 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 and self-defense. Another was given away by this chilling cost-benefit analysis from Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, in a 2001 speech: “The use of one atomic bomb in Israel leaves nothing left, but in the Islamic world, there will only be damage.”
All this might at least be intelligible if Iran and Israel had ancient grievances or territorial disputes. There are none. Iran was among the first predominantly Muslim states to de facto recognize Israel, and Jerusalem and Tehran maintained close ties while the Shah was in power. Even today, ordinary Iranians themselves are markedly less antisemitic than people in other Middle Eastern states, according to surveys published by the Anti-Defamation League. The current regime’s obsession is purely a function of Islamist ideology, not national interest.
That’s what’s at the root of that anti-regime chant.
Earlier this month, the regime tried to mollify protesters by offering most of its citizens a pathetic $7 monthly stipend amid skyrocketing inflation and a collapsing currency. Yet the same regime managed to send an estimated $1 billion to help Hezbollah rebuild its military capabilities while refusing to make meaningful concessions over its nuclear portfolio, leading to European sanctions that have further crippled the economy. What ordinary Iranians are revolting against isn’t just economic mismanagement and corruption. It’s also a regime that would rather pursue a perpetual jihad against the Zionist enemy than feed its own people.
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For years, the cruelty of the policy was disguised by its apparent success, as Iranian proxies entrenched themselves across the Middle East and built a so-called ring of fire around the Jewish state. But after the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, Israel systematically dismantled that ring in Gaza, Beirut, Damascus, Sana and ultimately Tehran, whose skies the Israeli Air Force dominated throughout a 12-day war in June.
At a stroke, it turned decades of Iranian investment in its efforts to destroy Israel to rubble and ash. It exposed to the Iranian people the regime’s military incompetence and helplessness. And it reminded Iranians that there’s a different path for Muslim states — like the United Arab Emirates, they can be moderate, prosperous, at peace with Israel and just across the Persian Gulf.
The knowledge that the regime is brittle is surely part of what is driving Iranians into the streets despite the mounting toll in lives — at least 2,000 so far, according to the regime itself, though possibly much higher. Iran’s leaders seem to realize that their rule is close to being shattered, which is why they’re responding to the protests with a mix of ferocity and diplomatic flexibility. Maybe it will work for a while.
But when the regime collapses, as sooner or later it will, its antisemitic politics will have played a large role in its demise. It’s a historic paradox, given what Khomeini and Khamenei intended. It’s also a historic fulfillment: Jews have owed a debt to Persians ever since Cyrus the Great ended the Babylonian Captivity 2,564 years ago and restored Jews to Zion.
There’s a broader lesson here in an era when anti-Jewish politics are gaining broad purchase. Antisemitism is wicked for many reasons, but it’s also wickedly dumb: for fostering a mind-set of lurid conspiracy theories; for seeking scapegoats for national failures rather than taking responsibility; for stigmatizing and suppressing a productive and educated minority. Societies that have expelled or persecuted their Jewish communities, from Spain to Russia to the Arab world, were all destined for long-term decline. The same has been true for modern-day Iran.
It needn’t be like that forever. A regime that sought to project on Jews its own malevolence may soon have its long overdue comeuppance. And an Iranian people who reclaim their freedom as individuals can also reclaim their reason as a nation.
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