In an interview with NBC last month, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif boasted that Iran has “a history of tolerance and cooperation and living together in coexistence with our own Jewish people, and with Jews everywhere in the world.” Shahrzad Elghanayan, whose grandfather, a prominent Iranian-Jewish businessman, was executed by the nascent Islamic Republic in 1979, begs to differ:

In the 16th century, conservative Shiite scholars and clergy under the Safavid dynasty placed restrictions on all minorities, including Jews, to bar them from economic activity and to prevent them from passing their “ritual impurity” to Muslims: don’t open shops in the bazaar; don’t build attractive residences; don’t buy homes from Muslims; don’t give your children Muslim names; don’t use Muslim public baths; don’t leave your house when it rains or snows; don’t touch anything when entering Muslim shops. Jews weren’t protected by the legal criminal system, but they could convert on the spot to save their lives if attacked by Muslims. There were short periods of reprieve here and there but as a whole, life was pretty grim for the next several centuries. . . .

After Reza Shah founded the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925, he started a modernizing spree in which Jews participated and prospered [until the 1979 revolution]. . . . [After seizing power, Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini’s government instituted measures ensuring that from the earliest days in school, children were programmed into the party line. Salman Sima, a self-described moderate Muslim [who spent his childhood in Iran], says that every morning, beginning in grade school, he had to chant “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” He says his religion teachers would say things like, “if you do something wrong, you will die a Jew.” . . .

[Foreign Minister] Zarif points to what he says are Iran’s 20,000 Jews, who he says constitute the largest population of Jews in the Middle East outside Israel. (Iran’s latest census counted only 8,756 of them, and Turkey claims to have 20,000, as well.) What he omits is that . . . the Jewish population has plummeted from its estimated 80,000-100,000 in 1979.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”