The Telegram channel for “Islam World Resistance”—a group affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—announced on Saturday that it seeks to murder Israeli LGBTQ community members in response to the annual LGBTQ parade in Jerusalem.
The IRGC-linked group wrote on Telegram: "March of homosexuals in the occupied holy Al Quds city. After killing these impure [homosexuals], where should we bury them on the earth to not make the earth dirty?”
Al Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem and is by the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Jerusalem gay pride parade attracted 30,000 people on Thursday.
The account of “Islam World Resistance” has 15,735 subscribers and it reports on the IRGC-controlled militia Basij. The United States government sanctioned the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization.
Thousands have been executed by the Iranian regime
Iran’s regime has executed between 4,000 and 6,000 members of the gay community since the 1979 Islamic revolution, according to a 2008 British WikiLeaks cable.
The Iranian-born Israeli Beni Sabti, an expert on Iran from the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told the Jerusalem Post that the Iranian regime's lethal homophobia “is a common thing. Of course, they hate homosexuals like they hate Jews or other minorities. It is kind of part of their policy. They don’t even hide it. They really talk about the destruction and extermination of homosexuals.“
He added that the regime does tolerate thinking of minorities. “It is such a Nazi thing. The regime makes a lot of propaganda about these things. There are so many channels by the IRGC or other conservative establishment and if you don't know the Iranian regime well, you cannot know it comes from the regime itself. It is all like a concert by the regime.
The Iranian-American human rights activist Lawdan Bazargan, who is the director of the Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists (AAIRA), told The Jerusalem Post that the “Islamic Republic of Iran is the only regime in the world that uses all of the power of the state to disgrace and humiliate its enemies (or dissidents) even after death. We still don’t know the burial places of thousands of the political prisoners executed in the 1988 massacre or the Chain Murders of 1988 to 1998. The world must take the threats of this brutal oppressive gender-apartheid regime seriously and cut all ties with it.”
Sheina Vojoudi, an associate fellow for the Gold Institute for International Strategy, told the Post that “To the IRGC and its affiliates, whoever is out of the circle of their ideology is impure. Homosexuality is very common at the seminaries in Iran. There are leaked footages of the mullahs’ pedophilia and homosexuality at these seminaries but these mullahs become ayatollahs and holy.”
Prof. Jessica Emami, an Iranian-Italian-American sociologist with expertise in gender, Iranian antisemitism, told the Post "There are thousands of LGBTQ + Palestinians whom they also treat viciously but they only speak out publicly against Israel because Israel protects LGBTQ+ human rights."