In the late 1970s, Uri Lubrani, Israel’s last ambassador to the Iranian court, and the legendary historian Prof. Bernard Lewis predicted the fall of the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Prof. Lewis recounted that the shah, in a state of agitation, referring to the Jewish-dominated Western media, demanded that Lewis “tell your people to stop writing negatively about me.”
Lewis, with a historian’s lens, saw the Shah’s antisemitic outburst as a signal of desperation that would foreshadow his downfall and the emergence of the Islamic regime.
Lewis was correct, then and now. Forty-five years later, the Islamic regime’s desperation to survive has fueled an unprecedented antisemitic discourse targeting Jews inside Iran. Previously, the regime had limited its antisemitic statements to Zionism and Zionists, avoiding attacking the Iranian Jewish community. However, his growing desperation, especially after the fall of its regional flagship terror proxy Hezbollah in November 2024, has fueled official regime Jew-hatred.
Today, the regime spreads anti-Jewish tropes methodically. Over the past year, imams in several Iranian cities have delegitimized “the Jewish nation” in weekly Friday mosque sermons. Mosque hate speech has transferred into mainstream television programming. Religious leaders, military officials, intellectuals, artists, and celebrities have moved beyond “anti-Zionist” invective to anti-Jewish slander. The regime seeks to create a perception that the Iranian people as a whole support their anti-Jewish agenda.
Examples abound. Mohammad Khazali, the son of a prominent ayatollah, in a recent debate, blamed Jews for regime woes. In another instance, the imam of the city of Qazvim, a Khamenei appointment, excoriated Jews on a regime prime-time television talk show, Throraya. He offered Koranic references to prove that Jews love money, are greedy, and should live in fear of their Muslim overlords.
In yet another example, senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) member Gen. Mohammed Jafar Assadi said on the regime news station that the “cursed Jews” had wronged the entire Middle East since October 7.
When the interviewer asked, “Don’t you mean Zionists?” He replied, “No, there is no difference between them, they have done the worst things to their own prophets, it’s known (from Koranic sources).”
Iranian author Mohammed Tarizahedi further declared on prime-time television that the Jewish Purim holiday is “against Iranians and the Aryan race” and was “created to fabricate Jewish history and victimhood.”
Perhaps most consequentially, professional eulogizers – who traditionally perform before official speeches – referred to Jews as “infidels,” and said they should “expect a plague from Ali’s followers.” This was before a major speech by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Iran's implosion
As in 1979, regime antisemitism again appears as a predictor of its disintegration. The Iranian economy is crumbling. The rial has become one of the world’s weakest currencies. Poverty and hunger abound, with food and medical production facilities shut down. Massive fuel shortages and power outages plague the country, with 17 electricity plants shut down. The presidential compound is blacked out. Businesses, schools, colleges, police stations, and government offices are shuttered.
Iran’s implosion is largely the result of its overextended one billion dollar per year proxy program for Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, now mostly neutralized. Iran’s Syrian vassal in the Assad regime has collapsed. The Israeli military destruction of Iran’s air defense system and other sensitive sites has added to regime vulnerability and desperation.
Internally, public dissent has taken a toll on regime confidence. The regime’s brutal crackdown on the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement following its murder of Mahsa Amini in September 2022 increased its repression, jailing, torture, and hangings of dissidents, indicating its fear of losing control.
Khamenei has admitted as much.
He took to social media to mask regime failures and vulnerabilities, stating “They say that the Islamic Republic has lost its proxies in the region. Islamic Republic doesn’t have proxy forces. Yemen fights due to their faith. Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad fight because their beliefs compel them to do so.”
Khamenei, opining over his loss of Syria, also posted on X, “The #Syrian youth have nothing to lose. Their universities, schools, homes, and lives aren’t safe. What can they do? They must stand with firm determination against those who have orchestrated and brought about this insecurity and God willing, they will prevail over them.”
Domestically, the mullahs continue to play on the public’s deepest fears. They charge Israel and the United States with plotting to break up Iran into ethnic cantons. The regime has threatened its people, predicting that a denuded Iran would share the fate that befell the Libyans after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi and that of the Iraqi public after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Regime manipulation and antisemitism signal a last-ditch effort to mobilize the Iranian public against its vulnerable Jewish community. Iran is today naked, vulnerable, and more desperate than at any time since its rise to power in 1979. The Arab world views Israel and the incoming Trump administration as the strong horses of the Middle East. A resurgence of a US maximum pressure campaign can help tip the scale.
Now is the time for the Iranian people to topple the regime and pave a new pathway to a free, democratic, and unified state.
The writer is the president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs and a research fellow at the Institute for CounterTerrorism at Reichman University. He thanks Ephi Dardashti for his keen insights and assistance.