With every conflict between Israel and Iran, the same question arises: Why do Jews remain in Iran?
Why don’t they leave for Israel, the United States or Europe? Why do they endure the humiliation? Why do they choose to live in fear?
The Iranian government is turning against its own people, arresting and harassing civilians, including members of the Jewish minority. Hundreds have been arrested; a few have been executed without due process of law.
Many wealthy and educated Iranian Jews had anticipated a possible fall of the Shah before the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and had created a foothold in the United States and elsewhere. Many more left during and shortly after the Revolution.
My parents and siblings left on the last El Al flights from Mehrabad Airport to Ben Gurion amid the chaos of the Revolution.
They had feared a massacre of Iran’s ancient Jewish population, whose existence dates back to the destruction of the first Temple and the Babylonian exile. Cyrus the Great conquered the area that is today’s Iraq in 539 BCE and freed the Jews; many of them, my ancestors included, followed him to Persia, to Iran.
King Cyrus encouraged Ezra and Nehemiah to leave for the land of Israel and rebuild the Second Temple, the very same Temple whose existence is denied by the current Iranian government.
From the flourishing community of roughly 100,000 during the rule of the Pahlavis, only around 9,000 Jews remain in Iran, mostly in Tehran and Shiraz.
They stay rooted in Iran knowing that their family and friends in Israel have faced attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah, which they view as proxies of the Iranian government.
Even for Iranian Jews who are pro-Israel, the thought of sacrificing their children to the Israeli military is more terrifying than any harassment from agents of the Islamic regime.
In Israel, they would have to send their sons and daughters to the army. They would be caught in what many view as the never-ending wars and terrorist attacks on civilians. My sister’s children were lucky to have been spared the terrorist attack on a bus stop in Hadera, a city in Northern Israel. Their father drove them to school that day. Their friends and classmates were not so lucky.
Shohreh, an Iranian Jewish woman who did not want to include her last name, fearing reprisal from the Iranian government, and who has lived in the United States since the Revolution of 1979, recently told me that she called her lone brother in Iran, begging him to leave and join the rest of the family. Her brother refused and said that “everything is great.” His wife’s parents were elderly. He would not abandon them. He refused to send his teenage children.
Above everything else, family matters even more now in Iran. It is not lost on many Iranian Jews that families in America can often be scattered in the vastness of the country, rarely seeing each other.
Shiraz, where I grew up, is called the city of poets and roses. A good life for the Jews of Shiraz, for example, could be leaving the heat of the city during summer for the many gardens on the outskirts. I remember all too well the summer days when we piled on the back of my father’s truck with our cousins, aunts and uncles to have a family day. The men lingered in their pajama bottoms on Persian carpets by a creek to play backgammon. Women smoked from a waterpipe and gossiped. Children ran around fruit trees. And there was always poetry and great food made on hot charcoal in a makeshift barbecue.
This love for and enjoyment of family is one reason the Jews are not leaving Iran.
They also know the stories of hardship due to living in a different country, having to learn a new language, find a job, and adapt to a new culture.
In the United States, Iranian Jews know that many immigrants have to start from the bottom. Their rials would lose much value when exchanged for dollars. Almost all of Iran’s wealthy Jews have already immigrated. Many of those remaining in Iran would rather live a simple life with a modest income and keep to themselves.
With little access to unfiltered world news and reliable internet, many hear of disturbing events in other parts of the world, including violence against Jews. They hear about synagogues and Jewish institutions in the United States that must have armed guards. Even with high security, the residence of Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, was attacked last April with Molotov cocktails while he and his family were asleep. Two Israeli embassy employees were shot outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, as they left an event last May. A Jewish group was firebombed in Boulder, Colorado, last June, and the list goes on.
Other Iranian Jews, who are more conservative, are troubled by what they have heard about lifestyles in Western countries: Children don’t respect their parents, premarital sex is accepted, and drugs are readily available.
In comparison, a quiet, simple life in Iran is preferable, even if they have to remain invisible, even if they have to denounce Israel.
One Iranian Jew, who lives in Los Angeles, told me Iranian Jews suffer from the “boiling frog” syndrome. After 46 years of living under the Islamic government, the Jews of Iran have become numb to repressive regimes and learned to survive by avoiding controversial political issues.
Homayoun Nejafabadi, the Jewish representative in Iran’s Parliament, has repeatedly condemned Israel and emphasized “Jewish loyalty to the Islamic Republic,” the Jerusalem Post reported last year.
During the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June 2025, Iranians in the country and abroad had expressed their views about the conflict on various social platforms. Many believed the Islamic government brought this disaster upon the Iranian people by constantly calling for the destruction of the State of Israel. They asked for an uprising to topple the current regime. Others felt they must not abandon the regime during a war. Whether they liked it or hated it, this group insisted, Iranians had to unite behind their government to defend the country.
In the aftermath of the 12-day war between Iran and Israel, at least two rabbis and Jewish leaders of Tehran and Shiraz were summoned by the Islamic government on charges of spying and collaborating with Israel, IranWire reported. The feminist oppositional group Femme Azadi, citing the article, claimed at least 20 Jews were arrested.
Fearing reprisal by their government, the Jewish community of Tehran gathered in June 2025 to show its loyalty to the Islamic government. Rabbi Yehuda Germani spoke on behalf of the Jewish community, affirming the community’s loyalty to the Islamic government, according to the Yeshiva World News.
In Shiraz, the Jewish community gathered at Shokr synagogue during that time to denounce Israel. In a video shared by Let’s Be Together, members stood up to show their disgust at Israel and reiterated their loyalty and love for Iran and its Islamic government.
Parvi, another Jewish expatriate from Iran, told me that fewer Jews have emigrated from Shiraz, which still has a relatively large Jewish population of roughly 3,000. A few people I spoke to called these Shirazi Jews lazy and non-confrontational. Others called them smart. They are trying to survive.
In recounting Iranian history, my teachers in Iran told us that when Genghis Khan reached Shiraz in the 13th century, people opened the gates to the city for him and welcomed his troops with flowers. The city thrived and avoided the devastation the Mongols set upon the rest of Persia. The lesson is clear. Submit and humble yourself to those in power in order to survive. This is basically what the Jews are doing in Iran today.
I was fortunate to have had access to a free American-style education because of the reforms of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. But I left Iran in 1975 after witnessing the brutality of the Shah’s army during a protest on the Arts and Letters campus of Pahlavi University in Shiraz. My friends and classmates, defenseless and with no weapons but their words, were brutally beaten on the head with batons.
The student protesters believed that an Islamic-based government would bring equality and use the country’s wealth to better people’s lives. They were angry that the Shah had invested so much of Iran’s resources to boost the military, becoming a watchdog of the Persian Gulf for his American suppliers.
Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the deposed Shah, has repeatedly promised tranquility and safety for all, including the Jewish minority, if the Islamic government was overthrown, and, one might assume, if he were crowned king. During his father’s reign, Iran and Israel collaborated in numerous projects. Israel helped Iranian farmers with drip irrigation.
In videos posted on social media earlier this year, Reza Pahlavi said he would establish a working framework for a stable government that would prevent chaos and provide security during the first 100 days of his rule in Iran if the Islamic regime is destroyed by the current war with the US and Israeli armed forces.
Why would they stay? The answer is always the same: because Iran is their ancient ancestral home, because Iranian Jews love their Iranian culture and Iran.
