On May 15, someone broke into and set aflame a shrine in the Iranian city of Hamadan that—according to local Jewish tradition—encloses the tomb of the biblical Esther and Mordecai. The Iranian government bears responsibility for this act of arson, write Alireza Nader and Benjamin Weinthal:

If some elements in the regime, or its Western apologists, eventually get around to shedding crocodile tears: don’t buy it. The shrine has been neglected and vulnerable to attack since the 1979 revolution that brought the Islamic Republic to power. . . . In 2011, anti-Jewish mobs rioted at the shrine, which had been restored by a Persian-Jewish architect under the shah, because the structure contains a Star of David. . . . As recently as February, the regime’s Basij paramilitary forces threatened to storm the site.

The threat to the shrine is of a piece with a wider pattern of attacks on minority religious sites in Iran over the last few days. Arsonists, most likely groups associated with the regime, also targeted a Hindu temple in Bandar Abbas and a Christian cemetery in Eslamshahr.

Such vandalism and hatred are in the regime’s DNA. The Islamist revolutionaries who took over Iran in 1979 began their reign of terror by targeting the Jewish community. Habib Elghanian, a successful businessman, was one of the first Iranians to be executed in May 1979. The triumphant revolutionaries picked him simply because he was the symbolic head of the Iranian Jewish community. Thus began a terror that would eventually encompass not only Jews, but also Baha’is, Christians, Sunnis, Sufis, Zoroastrians, secular Iranians, and anyone deemed an enemy of the republic.

The regime seems to be renewing its assault on religious minorities to send a warning to the population at large at a restive moment. . . . Iranian Jews are especially vulnerable. There are fewer than 10,000 Jews left in Iran, and the regime can use them as hostages in response to Western pressure.

Below, today’s newsletter will return to some other reflections on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the current war, but first something must be said of its recent progress. Israel has kept up its aerial and ground assault on Hizballah, and may have already killed the successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader it eliminated less than two weeks ago. Matthew Levitt assesses the current state of the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which, in his view, is now “a shadow of its former self.” Indeed, he adds,

it is no exaggeration to say that the Hizballah of two weeks ago no longer exists. And since Hizballah was the backbone of Iran’s network of militant proxies, its so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s strategy of arming and deploying proxy groups throughout the region is suddenly at risk as well.

Hizballah’s attacks put increasing pressure on Israel, as intended, only that pressure did not lead Israelis to stop targeting Hamas so much as it chipped away at Israel’s fears about the cost of military action to address the military threats posed by Hizballah.

At the same time, Levitt explains, Hizballah still poses a serious threat, as it demonstrated last night when its missiles struck Haifa and Tiberias, injuring at least two people:

Hizballah still maintains an arsenal of rockets and a cadre of several thousand fighters. It will continue to pose potent military threats for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region.

How will the group seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death amid these military setbacks? Hizballah is likely to resort to acts of international terrorism, which are overseen by one of the few elements of the group that has not yet lost key leaders.

But the true measure of whether the group will be able to reconstitute itself, even over many years, is whether Iran can restock Hizballah’s sophisticated arsenal. Tehran’s network of proxy groups—from Hizballah to Hamas to the Houthis—is only as dangerous as it is today because of Iran’s provision of weapons and money. Whatever Hizballah does next, Western governments must prioritize cutting off Tehran’s ability to arm and fund its proxies.