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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/opinion/iran-ayatollah-antisemitism.html
The Ayatollahs' Antisemitism Has Undone Iran
(New York Times) Bret Stephens - 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. Iran's current leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is an avowed Holocaust denier. The vast majority of Iranian Jews have fled the country. Iran has supported Hizbullah, sworn to Israel's destruction, with billions of dollars over four decades. It ordered 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 hosted a conference of Holocaust deniers and antisemitic cartoon contests. All this might 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 are markedly less antisemitic than people in other Middle Eastern states. What ordinary Iranians are revolting against is a regime that would rather pursue a perpetual jihad against the Zionist enemy than feed its own people. After the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, Israel systematically dismantled the ring of fire around the Jewish state built by Iran and its proxies. At a stroke, it turned decades of Iranian investment in efforts to destroy Israel to rubble and ash. It exposed to the Iranian people the regime's military incompetence and helplessness. The knowledge that the regime is brittle is surely part of what is driving Iranians into the streets. When the regime collapses, it will also signal 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.