In 1555, Pope Paul IV ordered Jews to be confined to separate, closed-off neighborhoods. Soon ghettos appeared in cities throughout Italy, including Rome, where Jews were forced to live within the walls until the French Revolution. Italian archivist Giancarlo Spizzichino recently discovered the existence of a second ghetto, known as Ghettarello, in Rome. The Holy See closed it down in 1735—in an outburst not of tolerance but of intolerance, as Micol Debash writes:

The Papal State had a number of reasons to close the Ghettarello. For one, it was under financial stress, which could be partially alleviated by selling the ghetto buildings. Also, the Pope needed to fight against the tendencies of the Enlightenment, where an appeal to reason was favored over faith. Anti-Jewish regulation and legislation were starting to be repealed: the Pope . . . felt threatened by these changes and for his part became even more severe. . . . “Closing the Ghettarello was one of the many acts of the Papal State to put pressure on the Jews in order to force them to give up on their religion and identity,” explained Spizzichino.

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.