In the modern antisemitic dictatorship playbook, there is no older trick than pretending to treat your Jews well outwardly while subjugating them at home.
From Moscow to Tehran, regimes have long understood that the most effective and internationally acceptable way to undermine Jewish self-determination is not to eliminate Jews physically, but to sever them from their peoplehood. Then, to parade them as proof that Zionism is not only unnecessary but also dangerous.
This strategy was perfected in the Soviet Union and lives on in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The USSR
institutionalized anti-Zionism as state policy. Jews were stripped of Hebrew education and pushed to abandon both religious and ethnic expression. Those who refused were rebranded as “Zionist agents,” and those who sought to emigrate to Israel were labeled “refuseniks,” their crime being nothing more than wanting to live a free and Jewish life in Israel.
Soviet antisemitism was not only exclusionary. It sought to reshape the Jews into model Soviet citizens loyal to the state and severed from their people. Jewish identity was tolerated only when depoliticized, de-ethnicized, and stripped of any connection to Zionism. Yet even this submission did not protect Jews from persecution.
The regime appointed anti-Zionist Jews to speak for the community, turning them into state propagandists. The most infamous example was the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, whose members were ultimately executed on Stalin’s orders.
The status of Iran's Jews
TODAY, IRANIAN Jews live in a state of curated visibility. Like Soviet Jews, their presence is used to signal inclusion, but their rights are conditional. Recently, Iran’s Jewish member of parliament, Dr. Homayoun Sameh, warned his community to avoid all public and private celebrations, weddings, bar mitzvahs, and even gatherings in kindergartens, due to escalating tensions.
This is not about caution. It is about control. While Jews are advised to stop celebrating, Muslims are still encouraged to gather and pray. As in the USSR, Iranian Jews are expected to suppress their communal identity in silence.
There are also reports of Iranian Jews being detained for the alleged crime of espionage. In reality, many are arrested simply for maintaining contact with relatives in Israel. This, too, mirrors the refusenik era: Jews who seek connection with their homeland are treated as a national threat.
Even some of the highest-profile Jewish politicians in Iran, such as former MP Siamak Morsadegh, have acknowledged the limits: “A Jew in Iran cannot be president, minister, deputy minister, or have an official role in the army. In order to hold these positions, you must be Muslim.” Iran may claim its Jews are part of the national fabric, but in practice, their identity is conditional.
The Islamic Republic frequently proclaims that it is the homeland of all Iranians, including Jews, as a strategy to deny Israel’s role as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
Yet, what Iran is doing today, censoring its Jewish community, limiting religious expression, and coercing anti-Zionist statements, is not new. It is the Soviet playbook, adapted to a theocratic regime.
Both systems claim that Israel is unnecessary because “our Jews” are safe. But that supposed safety is conditional, heavily monitored, and predicated on rejecting the core of Jewish identity: peoplehood. In trying to prove Israel’s irrelevance, these regimes only prove its necessity.
The false divide between being Jewish and being Zionist is one of the central weapons of antisemitic regimes. Their goal is to sever identity from peoplehood, and peoplehood from sovereignty. When Iranian Jews are pressured to denounce Israel to remain safe – and when Soviet Jews were punished for seeking aliyah – what we are witnessing is the criminalization of Jewish self-determination.
While the West rightly fears chants to “Globalize the intifada,” we must not ignore those already forced to live within it. Iranian Jews today are walking a tightrope similar to the one Soviet refuseniks walked decades ago. Then, the Jewish world united to support their freedom. Now, it must do so again.
In every regime that denies Jewish sovereignty lies the clearest evidence we have that the existence of the State of Israel is not only justified, it is indispensable.
The writer has an M.A. in diplomacy from Reichmann University and is the academic coordinator at Hillel Rio.