In May 2003, U.S. troops in Baghdad searched the headquarters of Saddam Hussein’s notorious secret police and found something quite unexpected. Joe Samuels—born in Baghdad in 1930—describes their discovery and reminisces about his own flight from Iraq:

[W]hat they discovered in the heavily damaged and flooded basement of the building were Iraqi Jewish artifacts. These included 2,700 books, some dating back to the 16th century. They found Torah scrolls, prayer books, and tens of thousands of documents. The Baath party, headed by Saddam Hussein, [had] looted and confiscated public and personal items from dozens of synagogues, schools, and community properties. After the discovery, with the approval of the then-provisional Iraqi government, these remains of the once thriving, millennia-old Jewish community in Iraq were brought to the United States. . . [T]he U.S. government has restored and preserved these artifacts. . . .

By November 1947, anti-Semitism and discrimination by [Iraqi] government officials was regularized and implemented in earnest. Then, following the United Nations vote to partition the British mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, the oppression increased drastically. . . .

After graduating from al-Adadiah High School in Baghdad, I was accepted at three universities in the U.S. Because I was Jewish, I was denied an exit visa to leave Iraq. To be considered for an exit visa, I needed to deposit 3,000 dinars. Let me offer a comparison to demonstrate the enormity of the amount; at the time, an Iraqi working-class family [normally earned] four or five dinars a month. Fearing for my life after some of my friends were arrested, I was fortunate to be smuggled out in December 1949. My father, an importer of cloth, had to leave behind our family villa, his office, and a warehouse full of merchandise.

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.