For decades, Israeli government officials — chief among them, Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — have accused Iran of plotting a new
Holocaust against the millions of Jews who call the Zionist state
home. Netanyahu has said Iran is “planning another genocide against
our people,” and wants to “destroy another six million plus Jews.”

Western journalists are quick to quote these claims, yet slow to
publicize contradictory evidence — such as the fact that Iran is home
to the Middle East’s second-largest population of Jews, who freely
practice their faith, peacefully coexist within the Islamic republic
and even have a seat in the legislature.

It’s said that “charity begins at home.” If we’re to believe Netanyahu
and his confederates in America, wouldn’t an Iranian genocide against
Jews begin there too?

Having long been subjected to the genocidal-Iran narrative, the
average American probably assumes there’s no such thing as an Iranian
Jew. However, according to varying estimates, there are 9,000 to
20,000 of them in a land where the Jewish presence goes back nearly
3,000 years.

That’s well lower than the 100,000 or more Jews who lived in Iran in
the years leading up to the 1979 revolution. The uncertainty of what
life would be like in an Islamic republic — culturally, economically
and in terms of personal safety — prompted tens of thousands to leave
for Israel, the United States and other countries.

Many of them were alarmed when Habib Elghanian, a prominent Iranian
Jewish industrialist with ties to the deposed Shah, was arrested just
a few weeks after the revolution and charged with corruption and
spying for Israel. Prosecutors also accused him of soliciting money
for the Israeli Defense Forces, and thus being complicit “in murderous
air raids against innocent Palestinians.” In May 1979, he was executed
by firing squad.

Though Elghanian’s execution shook Iranian Jews, it also precipitated
a critical development that has helped assuage their fears ever since.

The day after the execution, two rabbis and four younger intellectual
Jews arranged a visit with the Ayatollah Khomeini. By conveying that
Iran’s Jews considered themselves Iranian first and would support
their fellow citizen’s choice of a new system of government, they
hoped to elicit a guarantee against Jews being targeted.

To their surprise, Khomeini welcomed them as VIPs. After a literal
standoff that saw the Jewish delegation and the ayatollah both
deferentially waiting for the other to take a seat first, they all sat
on the floor in a circle.

Khomeini lauded Moses as one of three prophets sent by God to guide
humanity. Then, to the great relief of his guests, he drew a sharp
distinction between the Israeli government and Iran’s Jews, declaring:

“Moses would have nothing to do with these pharaoh-like Zionists who
run Israel. And our Jews, the descendants of Moses, have nothing to do
with them either. We recognize our Jews as separate from those
godless, bloodsucking Zionists.”

Khomeini then issued a fatwa — an Islamic religious leader’s formal
decree — asserting that Jews are a protected minority and forbidding
violence against them.

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https://starkrealities.substack.com/p/irans-jewish-population-belies-claims