Twenty-four Iranian Jews remain in prison as government launches internal crackdown, sources say

JTA – Twenty-four members of the Jewish community in Tehran and Shiraz remain in prison as of Sunday, 29 June, after being arrested along with hundreds of others in a sweeping government crackdown in Iran that began as fighting ended with Israel.

The arrests took in 35 Jews originally, according to a report put out on Saturday by HRANA, (the Human Rights Activist News Agency), an affiliate of the Human Rights in Iran NGO. Mass arrests began early on the morning of 23 June, according to the report. Eleven Jews have been released since the original arrests, according to a former senior Iranian communal leader, who would speak only on condition of anonymity due to concerns for his contacts in Iran.

The charges filed against those being held – having contact with Israel – have the potential to ensnare many members of the Jewish community, he said. Iranian officials have been hunting alleged collaborators with Israel following Israel’s recent attacks on Iran and the United States’ bombing of the country’s most fortified nuclear facility.

The former Iranian communal leader, who remains in close touch with the community, said Iranian authorities are checking the cellphones of those they arrest, looking for records of any calls to the Jewish state.

“Most Iranian Jews have family in Israel,” said the former high-ranking communal leader, who today lives in Los Angeles. “That’s why they call” the country. During the military conflict earlier this month, as each side targeted the other side’s cities with missiles and drones, many Iranian Jews reached out to check on the safety of their relatives.

“They are completely prohibited from any connection to Israel,” he said. But such communication was quietly tolerated over the years given the reality of Jewish family connections. In the wake of the war with Israel, the authorities are now drastically tightening their policies. Under the new rules, he said, “They can accuse anyone of being a spy for Israel.”

The arrests of the Jews, who reportedly include several rabbis, appear to be part of a crackdown in which more than 700 people have been taken in since 13 June, when Israel initiated its attacks on Iran. Jerusalem described the attacks as an effort to stop Tehran’s development of a nuclear programme building toward Iranian nuclear weapons capabilities.

Tehran denies this. But Israel views Iran, which has vowed to destroy the Jewish state, as an existential threat.

Minorities are especially concerned about the detentions. Last Wednesday, Iran announced that it had executed three men from Iran’s ethnic Kurdish population who were convicted of aiding Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, in the 2020 assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent nuclear scientist.

The sweep comes as Israeli authorities themselves have boasted about the deep penetration into Iran their intelligence agencies achieved as part of Israel’s planning for its attack. In mid-June, Mossad even released footage purporting to show agents within Iran laying the groundwork for air strikes.

But Israel has no known record of recruiting assets from within Iran’s closely monitored Jewish community, which today numbers about 10 000 people. The community, which was more than 80 000 strong before the 1979 Revolution that brought Iran’s Islamic regime to power, has generally remained free to practice its religion and organise itself communally, including maintenance of its own schools and social welfare institutions. Its members remain free to emigrate, though taking their assets out with them can be a problem.

Those who remain live with various forms of legal discrimination that sharia, or Islamic religious law, imposes on all non-Muslims in Iran, and social discrimination that prohibits their rising above certain levels in government or military positions. But a 1979 fatwa, or religious ruling, issued by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founding leader, forbade physical attacks on the community. Under Iran’s constitution, they are also accorded an official representative in Iran’s Parliament.

Nevertheless, in 1999, 13 members of the Shiraz Jewish community were arrested on charges of spying for Israel. Most of them were haredi Orthodox, which set them apart to some extent from the mainstream of the community. Evidence used against the accused, who included local merchants, teachers, and rabbis, included allegations of contacts the group had with people in Israel.

An intense international campaign on their behalf included the United States, France, and Russia, whose governments challenged the fairness of their trials. Local Jewish leaders in Iran also protested their innocence. Ten of the 13 were convicted and sentenced to up to 13 years in prison. But they were eventually all freed early, in stages, with the last prisoners released in 2003.

“Really, it was very bad,” the former senior Iranian communal leader now in Los Angeles said, voicing hope that the community wouldn’t face the same situation again.