The country’s roughly 8,000 Jews back the Islamic Republic’s leadership, Dr. Homayoun Sameyah Najafabadi, the sole Jewish representative in Iran’s governing body, the Islamic Consultative Assembly, reiterated on Tuesday in two state-aligned interviews published within the past day.
“We stand ready to defend the homeland under the supreme leader’s command” should the fragile Israel-Iran ceasefire collapse, Najafabadi said, echoing hard-line talking points.
Speaking to the military-linked Defapress, Najafabadi praised what he called Iran’s “decisive response” during the 12 days of missile and cyber attack exchanges between Israel and Iran.
He also said that “any Zionist provocation supported by America will be met firmly.”
In a separate conversation with the Azad News Agency (ANA), Najafabadi accused Israel of “seeking to breach the truce to regain lost deterrence.”
The Jerusalem Post was unable to verify the full text of the remarks independently.
“There is no trust that the Zionist regime will keep the ceasefire. The chance of violation is high,” he said in one interview.
“We support Iran’s legitimate defense against the fabricated regime’s assault and demand a crushing response at the right moment,” Najafabadi reportedly said.
“Iranian Jews have always stood shoulder to shoulder with their compatriots,” Najafabadi went on to say. “If Israel strikes again, our response this time will be heavier and more precise.”
Iran’s constitution reserves one parliamentary seat for Jews alongside seats for Zoroastrians and three Christian denominations.
Najafabadi, 61, a Tehran-born pharmacist first elected in 2020, has long condemned Israel publicly, stressing Jewish loyalty to the Islamic Republic.
Demographers estimate that Iran’s Jewish population has shrunk from more than 80,000 before the 1979 Iranian Revolution to fewer than 10,000 today, concentrated mainly in Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz.
Community leaders rarely speak to foreign media and typically issue statements through the parliament or the Tehran Jewish Committee, whose website carried no new comment as of Tuesday.
Ceasefire still on a knife-edge
The US-brokered truce, reached late on Monday, halted nearly two weeks of unprecedented direct fire between Israel and Iran that analysts said have reset regional deterrence norms.
Israeli officials have cautioned that renewed attacks cannot be ruled out, while Iranian media describe the armistice as proof of Tehran’s strength.
Should violence flare up again, Najafabadi’s pledge suggests that Iran will once more invoke its Jewish minority as evidence of broad public support, placing the tiny community back in the spotlight of a conflict over which it has little control.