Eps 8. Kohmeni's Jews

The Iranian regime teters, Israel's attorney general clamps down on yeshivas and American anti-semitism goes through the roof. In our world of headlines, breaking stories, and 24-hour coverage, it seems that more than ever, we know what's going on. But amid the deluge of news, do we know the story? Beneath the clashes of geopolitics and controversies of Israel and the Jewish world lie deep roots, the crucial element of context. Join me, Gdalia Gutag, as I go behind the times to explore the forgotten history, remarkable personalities, and transformative moments that shape current events and explain how we got here. Behind the times with Gdalia Gutenag. It was late 1978 when a meeting was convened at the Manhattan headquarters of a good Israel of America to decide a question of life and death. What to do about Iran's Jews? Millions of Ayatal Kmeni Islamist supporters were demonstrating against the secular regime defying the sha's fearsome security services. And although many western observers dismissed the possibility, the fall of the sha himself seemed possible and an ancient Jewish community was threatened. Amid few resources, the question was one of triage. Should the Agura focus primarily on bringing over boys and girls to Torah institutions as they had for a few years or expand its operation to hats broad-based rescue work? If the former work and student visas would be confined to Torah institutions if the latter at Guris Israel would have to enlist non-Tora institutions as well. The issue was presented to the Mads Galatar of America as to whether Persian Jews should be encouraged to escape. What was the question? Well, on the one hand, observance in Iran was likely to remain traditional and intermarriage was virtually non-existent. Whereas, if they left, intermarriage rates would sore. On the other hand, no one could know what to expect under a radical Muslim regime. The issue had obvious Holocaust overtones, the same spiritual versus physical conundrums that has swirled in the years leading up to the war. Adding to the resonance of the meeting was the fact that some of those around the Agura's table like Rab Mosh Sherah, head of Agura himself, had first cut their teeth on Holocaust rescue work. Sitting around the long table in Agura's room, as the moed says, consider the issue. The Baluja Reba began to tremble. I see 1939 before me again. He told the other participants. I had one daughter and one granddaughter. We asked a Shila and were told to stay and I lost my only daughter. The Bluja refused to Pascan. Raviaku Kamineski gave the final ruling. Those coming to Yeshiva should be encouraged to leave. For the others, no advice should be given. That dramatic scene taken from Jonathan Rosenlu's magisterial biography of Rab Mosha Sher resonates today almost 50 years later because amid a bloody crackdown ordered by Kmeni's successors, Jews are once again cut off behind an Iranian digital iron curtain. As the world waits to see whether Donald Trump will order his bombers once more into action and whether the revolutionary guards will retaliate by rocketing Israel, history tells us that the face off between Israel and Iran has far more to it than meets the eye. Because for years, these two mortal enemies traded and even sometimes allied behind the scenes. And as Jews and Shiite Muslims fought, they sometimes collaborated in the murky world of international politics. There's a story of the rescue of Iran's Jews who are now spread out all over the world. Many who went on from backgrounds with very little Jewish knowledge to become Rabonim and beyond the news, perhaps the greatest current affairs story of today is what's next? When the dust settles, will Iran's 50-year experiment with fundamentalist Islam crash and burn? And if so, what comes next? The lessons of history provide a glimpse into one of the major issues behind our times. For those who like royal pomp and circumstance, it's hard to beat the old British pate footage of the crowning of the sha. It's October the 26th, 1967, and in Tehran's Golthan Palace, the historic seat of Persian monarchy, the Sha Muhammad Resa Palavi is being crowned. In reality, Muhammad Resa had actually ruled since 1941, but he delayed his coronation for more than 25 years, presenting the event as a symbolic moment. Iran, in his telling, had finally achieved stability, independence, and modernity worthy of a crowned monarchy. Well, that was 1967. Less than 13 years later, that would all be turned to ashes, and Desai himself would have to flee. But that was all in the future when in the glittering ceremony and you can see this footage and you see the palace halls which are transformed into a glittering imperial stage with chandeliers blazing walls heavy with mirrors and gold filigree. At the heart of the ceremony was the Palavi crown created in 1967 for the sha's father Resasha. It was extremely ostentatious and designed to outshine as it were anything that Europe could produce. It was encrusted with diamonds, emeralds, pearls, and rubies and topped with another massive emerald. And I suppose the emerald would have symbolized the Iranian monarchy itself, the Palavi dynasty, with a peacock throne, as Iran's traditional monarchy was called. All this pomp and ceremony was a visual claim that Persia was not merely just a country with a monarch, but an ancient empire stretching back thousands of years. Walking down the red carpet on that day in a tiny little cute military uniform was the sweet 7-year-old crown prince of Iran who now known to the world as the Washington DC resident crown prince Reza Palabi who as we speak is trying to influence the anti-regime protests from thousands of miles away. And that footage, that pate footage, an incredible archive, shows this level of imperial splendor with the crown prince and his parents sitting on gold thrones. There's another element there if you look, which is there's a very striking presence of red double-decker London buses going round in Tehran there. And they are an obvious part of the sha's attempt to project a modern western face. But what's significant about that footage is that very modernity would get the sha in trouble because Iranian society was actually very traditional. Outside the big cities, the sha's modernization and secularism was resented and it would lead to his downfall. But meanwhile, life was very good for Iran's Jews. Mishbah's archives from 2018 have a very good interview by Barbara Ben Susan with two Los Angeles-based rabbis, Rabbi David Shaet and Rabbi David Zargari from Beverly Hills and Pico respectively. Just to give you a little bit of background to these are because they're going to be these two rabbis are going to be commentating a bit throughout and a presence throughout this episode. Rabbi Schaet was a son of the former chief rabbi of Tehran and a sign of a long line of Rabonomy. He fled to Los Angeles in 1980. Rabbi Zargari came to Los Angeles 30 years. He's a different younger generation. He left Iran as a young man just after the six day war to study the Hebrew University. And he thought he'd continue on to North America. Instead, he ended up under the wing of the legendary Persian Jewish activist and Naris president, Rabbi Napolei Nubber. Instead of becoming a businessman, Rabbi Zargari became a town of Kum. Let's go back to Rabbi Shaet because he's he describes his father, Rabbi Yadida Shaet was originally from a small city of Kashan in Ehan in Iran, which was once a scent of trade in silks and rugs and tapestries. Obviously, these are some products which are uniquely associated with Iran. And he says that the Jews didn't make the the fabrics themselves. They were merchants and connoisseurs who created the market. It's according to to the chauffet family tradition. The family came from to Persia from Spain. They were rabbis in Dionim for over 13 generations. His father knew the names of all his predecessors and wrote books and memoirs in Farsy. His father was close to Ishkai obviously in neighboring Iraq. So a bit about Iranian Jewish history because this is important over here. Jewish history in Iran dates back to biblical times. Obviously, when some of the exiled tribes settled in Syria and northern Iran after the destruction of the Kurbanis, the remaining Jews were exiled as we know as the first Kurban were exiled to Babylon, to Babel and to Iraq, which was soon taken over by the Persian Empire. Since the end of that short-lived empire, the region has seen one saw one dynasty after another rise and fall. But then if you fast forward a number of centuries to the actually the end of the seventh century, the Islamic conquest of Persia when this great expansion under Muhammad and his successors led Islam to spread all over the world. So Islam has been one of the region's official religions. And for centuries, most of the population was Sunni. But the bloody Shiite conquest of Iran in the 15th century meant that many Jews were either forced to convert or live like Anusim. in the same way has happened in in Spain. Rabbi Shaet related that he had a friend called Dr. Amnon Netzer, taught the Hebrew University, who went to villages in the Isvahan province, found many graves of Jews who'd been forced to convert. Obviously, this this on andoff conversion tells you something about the nature of life in Iran and that Jews were treated as secondclass citizens. And we know later on that there were a unique group called the An-Nus Mashad, the force converts or the cryptojews of Mashad that took place in 1839 under the the dynasty called the Kajars who were very anti-Semitic and devout Muslims and and the community Jewish community of Mashad was forced to choose between death and conversion. And in fact, what the entire community did was publicly embraced Islam and became known as Jadid al-Islam, new Muslims, which has obviously got overtones of of the new Christians, the conversers of what was happening what happened in Ferdinand and Isabella, Spain. But what was unique about the Mashadi community was that unlike other cryptojews who kind of eventually intermarried or or just became cut off from the main body of the Jewish people, the Mashadi Anusim didn't. And and what happened was that they were able to live secretly as Jews. They kept shabas kashkita. They conducted Jewish marriages in secret, preserved the Hebrew names at home. And and then from the late 19th century, early 20th century, they started to migrate to places where they could once again keep Yiddish kite, return to open observance of Judaism. And they went to places like Bkharas, Samarand, uh later Tehran, but also to Urusim. And it's in Urusim that they encounter the Anus Mashad. They moved as communities. They encounter a lot of suspicion from the Ushami Rabonim who can't understand who are these Muslims moving in and pretending to be Jews until that is that the Roshami Rabonim discovered that the Mashadi Jews had managed to avoid intermarriage. They'd managed to preserve their autonomy. And apparently the way they did that was because they lived in these compounds surrounded by high walls. I suppose uh one way for those who know the bungarin built in a similar way in which you have a high outside walls and the community life was happening inside the walls which enabled them to practice and enable them to have their own and in fact they were able to avoid intermarriage because of the Muslim practice of you know marrying young. So the Jews were able to say every time some Muslims said, "Hey, what about your daughter to my son?" They said, "Well, actually, she's long married because they would get the kids off married, very very young, even as babies if I'm not mistaken." And that was the way they got around them. So they arrived in Jerusalem and they were gradually accepted as Jews because they'd managed to preserve their Jewish autonomy. So that was the Iranian Jewish history in which ancient tolerance had given way to persecution and even force conversion. And that leads us to what is happening in the 20th century when the sha's rise because what has happened sha is just Persian for king and the king of kings which is what the palavis took the thing was shahansa the king of kings the palavis came to power in 1921 in a coup staged against the khajar dynasty or as we said with anti-semmites and they emerged as the leaders of Iran. Rezasha it's important to remember because these names come over and over again. Resasha first comes to power in a coup in 1921 becomes he's a strong man later becomes prime minister in 1923 assumes the throne in 1925 when whatever passes for their kind of their governing council deposes the Kajar dynasty proclaims his sha and he weighs crown in 1926. Now actually what happens is Rezasha first in the dynasty is forced to resign or to abdicate in 1941 in favor of his son because he got caught up in the great power struggle of the second world war and he had a policy of strict neutrality I suppose a bit like the Swiss or others as well but because he had Britain was then the power in the Middle East and next door in Iraq and on the other side there was the the Soviet Union they both invaded Iran around 1941 because they feared Resa Palavis or Resa Shaz ties to Germany and remember these are the vital Persian oil fields and and supply route which threatened the allied war effort. So Raza Palavi didn't have a strong army. The army was to come later by his son and that's what we're about to get to. But he didn't have an military to speak of and he was viewed by the allies as unreliable. So he was basically toppled and the British and the Soviet Union said okay out with the old in with the new the new being Resa Sha's son Muhammad Resasha and he was pro- allies as opposed to pro- Axis. So it's actually in that period where basically the British and the Soviets are now governing as it were effectively Iran through Resa Muhammad Resa Palavi that one of these episodes comes up that is very well known and is controversial called Yald Tehran as opposed to that's not the Yald Tan the Yemenite children is the Yald Tehran the Tehran children. There were several hundred Jewish children, mostly from Poland, who escaped eastward from Soviet labor camps during World War II, reached Thran in 1942-43 after Reszasha has abdicated as I said in 1941 and Iran is now under allied occupation and Tehran becomes a key refugee hub along the Persian corridor and from there the children are directed by Jewish and various flavors of Zionist groups transferred to mandate era Palestine 1943. So obviously that's a byproduct of Resasha's fall and the rise of Muhammad Resa which has led to part of the Allied control of Iran and Iran's role as a wartime transit zone. The reason that it was a controversy was because who were the Zionist groups who took them? It was kind of Jewish agency. They were taking these f children from Poland and they ended up in the talons of the Jewish agency with unfortunate effects for their religiosity because it was a battle to try and get them into religious institutions which is for another time. But that is exactly what's happening as Resasha is forced to abdicate Muhammad Resasha takes over. And there's another thing, a twist of history, because did you know that the in my best Scottish accent, did you know that one of the other people to come along through this route through Iran out of Russia and into Palestine was none other than the future Israeli Prime Minister Manakim. He comes in I think General Ander's army which forms inside the Soviet Union in the war but then decamps to Palestine the Soviet orbit and then once they're in Palestine slips off his army uniform and joins the underground and is alive in Palestine. So that was on the corridor over there that was happening then precisely because of the fall of Resa Palavi. Anyway, what happens is, and it's good to backpedal a bit to when Reza becomes in the coup when he takes over that initiates and inaugurates a big change in Iran because Raza Palavi unlike the Khajara dynasty is a modernizer, a reformer and he vastly improves life for those who want modernity and reform, including the country's Jews. Rabbi Schaet says that the Jews came out of the ghetto. They could study in universities and become industrialists. And as everywhere, as he says, Jews took advantage of the new opportunities more than anyone. And in fact, I think that's an accurate reflection of what the Jews more than anyone did extremely well in Iran. And for them, it was a disaster. You know, the fall obviously, it's the age-old sad story of Jewish success in you know, the ghetto wars falling. You come into modernity and then the spiritual struggles start because many Iranian Jewish children leave the ghetto as it were. There wasn't really a ghetto but anyway leave go to Alian schools the French secularist schools aliance universel is universel known as kak is kavirim which operate right across the Arab and Muslim world and you know of forces of major secularism and young people went abroad often to the US to train for professions and returned all the more westernized and Rabbi Schaet says it reached a point where in Thran there were maybe 10 showabas families out of 80,000 people. Those are pretty significant numbers and show you where things have got to. But Jews and this is again a classic big city, small village and small town divide because the Jews in the smaller cities always remain more religious and obviously this reflects the divide between a metropolis and outlying areas that is going to be at the heart of the revolt against the sha himself. Rabbi Shaet says we didn't have like in Europe. The small cities had bought medash with rabbis teaching in them. Yeshivas trained people to be teachers of Torah. This is so classic across many many areas. Turkey as well. The salaries were low. So many people left. In other words, level of Yiddish was very low. That was going to be this part of the story over here. So what was it like then under the sha? So the sha although he was good to the Jews, he never normalized relations. He didn't recognize the state of Israel. He is after all a Muslim country and this is 1948. When the state of Israel was established, Iran quietly cooperated with Israel on joint military and agricultural projects. And we're going to see this increase as the Palavi regime government and system comes under threat. But so Jews weren't forced to flee as they were in neighboring Iraq where you had the Farhood which is this terrible pogram in which led to basically the entire Jewish community just terrorized to leaving. Many did come to live in Erit Israel, but at the time Iranian Jews were happy to stay put. And in the 1960s, writes Barbara Ben Susan, only about 50 Iranian families were living in Los Angeles. Jimmy Delshad, a Persian Jew who in 2007 became the first Iranian American mayor of Beverly Hills, said that he told an interviewer that he knew barely a dozen families when he arrived from Shiraz in Iran in 1959. The Iranian exodus didn't happen obviously until the rise of Radk Islam in the late 1970s. For me, three AP Associated Press pictures capture the drama of what happened next. One of them shows the Ayatollah at Kmeni sternfaced being greeted as he descends from an Air France plane. For me, that shows how the modern world, essentially the French state and much of liberal world opinion, ushered in and took part in the ascent of these medieval radicals. That's one element. There's another picture. The other picture is a fragile and regal looking Sha and his wife at the airport on the way out into exile from which he never came back. Now, the Sha people didn't know at the time he hid this even from his closest advisor, the Sha had cancer. He was weakened and he's an imperial-looking figure. But in this picture, a soldier is bending down to kiss his shoe and the sha's wife is smiling. And that for me indicates the way to which this regime had certain level of support. But genuinely the sha and his supporters could not believe what had befallen them. The way that their entire power had been wiped out overnight by these radicals from overseas. The third picture shows Kmeni surrounded by a few clerics in these tan type of robes, but around him is a sea of saluting and cheering men. And many of them, most of them are dressed in a western fashion. And that for me is a remarkable portrayal and depiction of the way that comminism and the revolution transcended. It wasn't just the religious conservatives. The appeal went far broader than that. K's appeal what happens he comes from Iran and at a certain stage in the 60s starts speaking out and writing in increasingly radical ways challenging the legitimacy of the sha and saying that he's a usurper he's western he's secular and he starts building a follower and eventually he's exiled internally within Iran and then overseas to Paris and from Paris organizes a massive massive movement that eventually overthrows Hasha and brings him back in triumph as a leader. What was his appeal? His appeal was very broad. He didn't speak of his true radicalism, but he spoke to the urban religious poor and to rural traditionalists, those like we said before, those who are outside the main cities and they did not like the modernization and secularization. He spoke to the bazaris, the merchant class in which he promised order and protection of small property and relief from corrupt state capitalism. And it's very important to know that the signs that this revolution is different. The the scenes that we're seeing start in the bazaar. These grand these merchants in central tan who who were a base for the kmenist revolution and they're turning on the regime for economic reasons is a big sign of the erosion of the regime's legitimacy. But back to 1979 in the rise of Kmeni. He was speaking to them. He got them on board and he said when revolutionaries bring the business people on board that is when they demonstrate depth of their support and he obviously brought online clerics as well who did not like the secularization but he spoke to students leftists and intellectuals and tapped into this whole vein of anti-colonialism anti-imperialism in which he was able to portray and paint the sha's regime as being something imposed from the outside by being suddenly western being suddenly a colonial project and so That last thing had a lot of resonance and it resonates deep till today to the point where we see it's a very interesting thing. We talked today about the way in which mainstream media, liberal media have failed really to speak up about this. They speak about the Palestinians all day. We know what damage they've done over that. But they are keeping very the left-wing media whether it's the BBC which is following it but in a kind of non-urgent way. Nothing like the urgency of Gaza. If you read the world's biggest left-leaning outlets, you will see that if they're covering this, they're not covering it with any great enthusiasm. And this goes back to the fact that in the 60s and the 70s when Kmeni was broadcasting his tremendously vitriolic anti-regime propaganda, he was given a platform on BBC's Persian service, which is a part of BBC. The BBC was content to tap into this and to broadcast this. And the reason is this was of a piece because we know that one of the great effects that hastened the downfall of the sha was the rise of Jimmy Carter because Jimmy Carter he was a naive liberal and he said well if they just give more freedom the Iranian people then they will avoid nasty problems he was naive but he forced the sha's hands and for that reason the sha and his fearsome secret police was called savak was not able to stop a few things the propaganda of Kmeni coming in famously he spread his propaganda through cassette tapes and people who don't remember the cassette tapes from Yasf again ladul which came massive numbers across Israel in the 80s and '90s people like that are going to be unaware what it is to have the ability of this recording technology which seems primitive now in the digital and internet era but it achieved great penetration in Iran and then at one point there was something like episodes were going around and being distributed in 600,000 cassettes. Listen to an estimated 6 million of Iran's 36 million people. Those are enormous, enormous numbers. And that was how Kmeni was able to reach from exile in Paris deep into Iran and start building his legitimacy and grassroots power. And just because of Western naivity, they were not able to stop that. There was frowned on that the Ishad's forces shouldn't stop that type of thing. But that hastened the regime's downfall. And for me, one of the big questions when we're talking about today behind the times is one of the big questions is are we being similarly western wishful thinking in assuming that the population is ready to overthrow and so much detest these Islamists. I'm not so sure about that. I'm not so sure because we know that the West has consistently underestimated the appeal of Islam and the appeal of conservatism over debt. It may be that people want to move on from it, but I doubt that they're ready for a full-fledged western orientated regime. So that's my own personal takeaway from this aspect of history. But the key fact is looking back in the late '7s, right up to the brink. The west missed everything. Famously, Washington believed that the sha's Iran was fundamentally stable. December 1977, Jimmy Carter famously called Iran an island of stability and he was echoing the dominant view in inside the White House and the CIA that the unrest was containable, the security services were all powerful, the opposition was marginal and that was happening even in the summer of 1978 as strikes crippled Iran's oil industry and millions were pouring into the street in support of Komania and calling for the sha to leave. The CIA insisted that nothing was going to happen and the sha in fact would rule for years to come. What a miss. What a blunder. And that illusion collapsed spectacularly in November 1979 where the US embassy was taken over. And there's a great anecdote out there which actually illustrates the way in which real world consequences can happen in these cases. The Iranian revolution gave us the office micro shredder that you have today in which papers are shredded. A lot of them kind of cut into very very very small pieces. The true story behind it is as follows. As the US embassies and it's going to be taken over as the sha falls in November 1979, American diplomats are scrambling to get these huge amounts of classified cables or basically the CIA's archives into these oldfashioned shredders which only cut things into strips. and they left behind bags of long paper ribbons. What actually happens? Those revolutionary students, some of whom, you know, they flood into the US embassy, take US diplomats hostage, and that triggers the hostage crisis, which in fact lasted for more than a year, weakened and eventually brought down Jimmy Carter. And some of those students go and they find these bags of communications. Well, the CIA thinks that they're shredded, but they didn't bargain with Persian carpet weavers because, as the anecdote says, what happens is that the new regime drafts in these women who are skilled in weaving, which obviously calls for very precise handiwork, and they painstakingly reassemble documents by laying things side by side, little strips, the margins and the fonts and the phrasing. And over the course of months and a long time, hundreds of them are working on this. and they reconstruct the cables which turn out to be very very good propaganda for the regime. very embarrassing for the CIA, for Israel, and for America because it shows the deep penetration and the way in which basically the Sha's regime was riddled, was basically propped up by the CIA and by Israel. And the consequences are deadly because many agents are exposed and they're able to go on a purge and find thousands of former agents who if they hadn't been exposed perhaps would have stayed around and be able to act for the West as agents within them, but they were captured and executed. And for me the takeaway from there is the west is really never good at understanding what's going on in the Middle East. It often mistakes a few modernizers and even many modernizers for public opinion. Second takeaway is as Ronin Bergman who is a historian of Israel's you know security services in Mossad he writes that the micro shredder was born from that for Israel. The collapse of the Sha's regime was a disaster, but also something of a miracle. Let's start with a disaster. Well, that's obvious because in the last years of the sha, he'd come to depend all the more on Israel. As Jimmy Carter starts to pressurize him to ease up on the protesters, he's scared of getting his flur of weapons cut off. And so Iran under the sha's security chiefs and Israeli's top security echelon start working secretly on advanced projects and they were obviously were deep but largely hidden strategic partnership which involved intelligence sharing and about energy that means oil and also regional security and so that was based on a close cooperation between Savak which is the uh secret police and Israel's Mossad. Israel in fact helped train Iran's security services and they shared intelligence on the common enemies like uh you know Arab enemies pal Palestinian militants and also about the Soviets because remember that Israel is very very scared of the Soviet Union and so is Iran which is which is which shares a border with them and what happens over there is actually one of the most tangible signs of the ties between them was a pipeline which went from to Ashcolon and it was a secret 5050 50 partnership between Israel and Iran which enabled Iran to sell its oil to Europe while bypassing the S canal. Remember that the S canal is the gateway to Europe but is under the control of the enemies of the Iranians who were the Egyptians and there were many many different other other programs as well. So although Iran officially had no ties, the relationship was very very close at the top. That's how the sha saw Israel as an ally. And this is where that's a disaster because some of these major major ties lost overnight and from the column of allies, Iran is flipped into the column of Israel's enemies and foes and in fact becomes one of the most perhaps the most radical enemy. But where does the miracle come in? Where is the near miracle? Well, Mossad historian Ronin Bergman says that the collapse of the sha was so quick that the major military programs Israel had already undertaken, including nuclear capable ballistic missiles they were working on to supply Iran, advanced fighter jets, and even a nuclear weapon. They were all cut off before they'd reached maturity. And if the force of Ron and Bergman had been slower a couple years down the line, Israel may have confronted a nuclear capable foe. So when the Sha escapes in early 1979, many Jews didn't take it seriously. They'd heard things like before that the Sha's in trouble, but then the Islamists took over for real and they do something which shocks everyone. They arrest the billionaire head of the Jewish community, Habib Elan. And after a show trial, they execute him and they hang him. And that lit the fire under the the Iranian Jewish community. They obviously understood that it's a terrible thing. Rabbi Schoffetta of Los Angeles remembers this Elan and he said he did many good things for the people, Jews and non-Jews. He used to build a home for each of his workers, was generous to everyone, but they accused him of being a Zionist and shot him. And obviously that was a message, a strong message to the Jewish community to back off and indeed to become what it eventually has become today, which is a community that keeps a very low profile and would never dare of any collaboration with Israel because it's too dangerous. And Rabbi Shaet remembers overnight what happened the change. He says that the attitude of the non-Jews changed. Jews were once again officially untouchable. Meaning Muslims believed they contaminated whatever they touched. That had been the case in the Kajari anti-semitic dynasty before the Palavis before the revolution. Rabbi Shaet said he would go to the market, choose his own fruits and vegetables. Now when he reached to feel a fruit, he felt the hand of the vendor close over his own. Don't touch Jew, the seller snalled. And the Jews obviously began leaving in droves and they went all wherever they could. Went to Los Angeles. They already had small presence there. They went to other cities and the Jewish Federation of North America and other agencies helped them and Kabad played a role rescued thousands of children. But there's also a major very dramatic story. Ner's Drain Nuba was involved in a network that helped tens of thousands of Jews escaped Iran. And in Baltimore, Nerish Shiva accepted many Telmme as well from there. If you go into medish in America and Israel today, you'll find them and often older with Persian accents. Their emergence is a dramatic story of rescue and return to Torah observance. And it's also the story of a partnership between two great Torah leaders Rabbi Mosha Shara of that Guruda and Rabbi Natali Nuba of Ner Israel and Jonathan Rosenloom in his book Rabbi Shahara has a fantastic chapter on the Iranian rescue. He begins by saying the Kazal say in McGill says that Kesh is places brings into existence a cure before he brings the disease. rarely writes Jonathan Rosen Bloom has this been so clear as in the case of Iranian jury there's a fascinating story over here because Rabbi Nubber was in place in the last years of the Shaza regime already developing connections that enabled them to rescue these large numbers of Iranian Jews and the story begins with Rabbi Nuber who in 1975 receives a call from his wife's nephew Rabbi Yseph Le Shakatovitz who was then heading from the Otatra school in Iran. Otterra being actually the Karedi religious answer to the aliance. It was a network of schools, Morocco, different places, Tunisia, anywhere across the Arab and Muslim world. Uh basically trying to provide Torah education there. And as I say, it's a response to the French secularist Jewish aliance network of schools. And so he's there, Rabbi Shakovitz is there in Iran, head of institutions. He described to Rabbi Nuba the decline of religious life under the sha and why because the sha told by his security services the savak that it's the religious seminaries and religious institutions which are responsible for the fundamentalism arising among young people and his security services tell them that the best thing to do is to close them no religious schools no religious fundamentalist problem he's told so what does he do he tries to close all religious schools Jewish schools Now this is so typical in which Jews become collateral damage of a secularist attempt to stem the advance of fundamentalist Islam. We can see it happening in Europe today. By the way, we have Belgium was banned not because of the Jews but because of the Muslims and as an attempt to crack down on the Muslims. And the same reason that Jews have run into problems with the Yamokas because European countries trying to ban the hijab. And the same reason why now that MA is under threat including an emerging threat in Britain because of the attempt to obviously to check the Islamization of Britain. This is a classic case of Jews with collateral damage and that brings in the mid 1970s Rabbi Nubaga to Iran. He accepts an invitation from Rabbi Salon Sassoon. He was a patron of Satara and Rabbi Sassoon famously was great tamador of desla and a very very wealthy man. And so he says let's travel to Iran to negotiate with the sha to reverse the ban on religious schooling and rabbard goes together delegation of senators and it's the senators who are going to be listened to. Obviously we see that this is an American dependency basically and senators have clout with a sha. So whilst he's there, Rabbi Nuba sees that there is the low eb to which Iranian jewelry is now at. He sees that there's total lack of vitality in the religious life. And he has a great idea. He says, well, let's bring over some young men who are going to become raonim. They're going to learn in their Israel and then they go back to spread marit to spread ydishkite. And in fact, it takes place in 1977 which is just year and a half before the fall of the sha. First group of Iranians arrived in Israel and a second group arrived a year later. It was actually Rabbi Nuba's sons with the rashi of N is in an interview another Mishbah interview with Israel Bessa who says that Rab Napali Nuba sense the tremendous respect for you know he saw that America was a brand name you can offer to these Besser mentioned these upwardly mobile Iranian Jews. What can you offer them? They're doing well locally. Well, how you going to get them to America? America itself was an attraction. That was one thing they were willing to say. If you they can go and study in America, that's a good thing. And so, says Rabbi Nuba's sons, a longtime member of the Yeshiva, Ner recalls a meeting where Rabbi Nubaga shared his vision with other rashes. The sons said, "Everyone disagreed with him. It was unanimous. We felt that a few isolated Iranian students would never open up to what we were teaching. It was doomed to fail." So apparently though Rabbi Nubaga agreed with himself because an exam there weren't two Iranian talid there were 12 and Rabuga was was proven right because these Talmid came and they soaked up everything that yes had to offer and in fact they went into some of the initial cohort very quickly within a few months started going into Kiraov amongst the other Persians and Iranians Jews who were in different places and from that original group of Iranian boys Tamil were produced and what happens years later this is Rabbi David Zargari who was mentioned earlier alongside Rabbi Shaet he's a rabbi in Pico in Los Angeles he was part of this first group and he mentored some of the second wave it reached a point where this classic yeshiva was so flooded with Iranian boys there were 130 of them after the revolution that people took the initials of the yeshiva the nircistra rebbitical college and changed it to Newbergers Iranian Ian refugee camp. When the sha fell, the refugee and rescue work of Rabbi Nuba and the Agura expanded dramatically. They hired a whole staff and Rabbi Sharer in Manhattan worked with senior officials to reshape America's immigration policy around them. In order to allow the 8 to 10,000 Iranian Jews already in the United States whose visas were expiring, they had meetings the highest levels of the State Department. So, they were able to change the policy without any uproar. so as not to uh risk retaliation against the these people's relatives in Iran. Now what happens is that things dramatically worsen in 1980 with their outbreak of the Iran Iraq war because we have to remember that Iraq is a massively powerful well-armed state under Saddam Hussein and it invades Iran and Iran is in very very very desperate situation. The armed forces were reduced to sending children and young people to the front lines basically unarmed as cannon father against the Iraqis. And so they start relying on smuggling routes through Turkey and Pakistan. And Rabbi Sher Shara had to intervene with the Turkish to stop them uh repatriating Jews. and he was able to uh Roasher had his relationship with congressman Steven Solat who was close to the Turkish ambassador and he was able with that intervention to save Jews and ultimately the setup between Rabbi Nuba and Agura the Agura's work expanded to something called the Iranian rescue committee which worked for a few years it was under the opaces of Isra raising millions of dollars and smuggling out thousands of Jews through Iran and eventually onto Vienna where there was yeshivas going on there And by the late 1980s, dozens of Iranian rabbis and hundreds of Benetra had emerged in America. And this was the incredible irony that Jonathan Rosenboom points out that the revolution and the disaster of Iranian jewelry led to the revival of that community because uh more than 20 communities, institutions were established and Persian jewelry once in decline emerged stronger and more vibrant when it was exiled from Persia than it had been in Iran. Now for me there's a takeaway also from over here because if you remember at the beginning of this episode we have the great scene of the bluja verba um saying I cannot pasan about whether to save them because the memory of loser of having this very same question for his daughter weighed so heavily on him. It was only three and a half decades after the end of the Holocaust, but it highlighted the great gulf between the Holocaust rescue efforts when Jews, especially from Jews, had so little access and power uh and influence in the highest levels where it counted in the State Department and in the White House. And decades later, the Jews, the maturing of the American FUR community was able to weigh in and in general, the maturing of the Jewish community was able. And for me this raises a question when we look at the experience of the Iranian Jewish community once now trapped behind let's call it in Iran curtain basically in a regime that is you know is capable of closing off all communications and in which Jews have to shelter and hide from the terrible things happening outside raises for me a question worth thinking about just how many other Jewish communities are living on the edge in places that could easily slam the doors once again. Incredibly, and I say this, this is literally incredible. Alongside the secret efforts to help Iranian Jews escape was one of the ultimate ironies, forgotten bits of history often, that right through the 1980s, Israel was arming and training the Ayatollah's regime. His goals were to retain influence and keep a door open that perhaps salvage a relationship. Also to actually help the regime turning somewhat of a blind eye to the Jews fleeing. Another motivation was to counter Iraq, right? Because we forget in hindsight that Saddam was a major preoccupation. He was a major threat to Israel. So in hindsight, he's this helpless, bearded fugitive found in a drain pipe by Allied forces in Baghdad and then hanged. In real time, he was a global threat and a mortal threat to Israel. As we saw, he was building a nuclear reactor in Iraq, which had to be bombed. He was developing poison gas and nerve agents and eventually he actually in the 1991 Gulf War fired 39 Scuds, these enormously destructive missiles at Israel. So there was every reason to act on the principle of my enemy's enemy is my friend and so they interacted with the devil itself which was ayatala kmeni and there was obviously a motivation also to get what money could be got out of the Iranian if the Iranians needed something then it would provide cash for Israel's own armaments program. So what actually happened that after Iraq invades Iran in 1980, Israel emerges totally paradoxically as one of Thran's most important lifelines. Obviously the Iranians needed all the help they can get. Although they denied anything, but behind the scenes, it sent a massive flood of arms, much of it Americanmade. From 1981 onwards, it was transferred to the Iranians and largely paid for in oil. And estimates of what the arm sales were were hundreds of millions of dollars a year at least, possibly more. Analysts say that it was Israeli help and intervention that kept the Iranians in the game. And there were actually some familiar names there. one of the big international Saudi arms dealer Adnan Kashogi whose people might remember whose nephew Ad Kashogi was you know an anti-Israel and anti- Saudi figure was chopped up in the Saudi embassy in Turkey in a scandal a few years ago and that was his uncle Adnan Kashogi was a well-known arms dealer and in fact captured PLO weapons from Israel's 1982 Lebanon war also ended up in Terance it's actually going the other away from now we have uh the Palestinians being armed by the Iranians. Then it was the Iranians being armed effectively by the Palestinians although they didn't know it. And crazy it's crazy to think of but there were sometimes hundreds of Israeli advisers and technicians quietly working away inside Iran maintaining jets training crews and even as Iranian crowds were chanting death to Israel. You know the big Satan, the little Satan, that was the public. But in private it was different. And famously, there was the Iran Contra affair in which Israel was acting as a go-between for US arms shipments to Iran. And the logic was again from the American point of view to prevent Iraq from winning, preserve leverage inside Thran, keep open channels to potential pragmatists. And America had an interest in that because they needed to spare cash to keep away from Congress this illegal cash to funnel into I think CIA operations. Klanderstein illegal operations in South America. And when it blew up, it was it was a very uh dirty business, the Iran Contra affair. But that was Israel was the middleman in the 1980s. And apparently it was Iranian intelligence that provided the location and details on Isadam's nuclear program in Ora which was taken out in a strike ordered by Bean in 1982. And there was another aspect of that whole relationship because there was oil. oil which we know had flowed through the Alat Ashcolon pipeline before the revolution was marketed on the world market by Israel and so there were others who were caught up Mark Rich from Switzerland was caught up in that and was sanctioned by the US Treasury but I think it's possible for me over here we have the strangest truth of the Iran Iraq war was that Israel was publicly being denounced as this little Satan by Thran is quietly helping keep Iran in the war and only to see that the same Iranian regime turns everything that Israel has given it into a permanent strategic war against it. Takeaways over here into the modern world over here. It's hard not to think of the Hamas with Israel's murky relationship with a foe Qatar which supports Hamas and yet Israel was busy had a financial relationship with it trade etc. It's the old story of getting your hands dirty in the pursuit of legitimate objectives tied up the Iranian Ayatollas and Israel's leaders even as they were locked in a fight. So that's an incredible unknown story that was going on throughout the 1980s. The archives Bim Natanyao's opponents like to say don't lie. In 2013 in the Israeli paper, there was an article, one of many similar, which mocked BB's long obsession with Iran and its nuclear program. In the article, it wrote a retrospective all the way to the paper, the same paper, 20 years before in 1993. Back in 1993, Binyamo said the following thing in the newspaper. The most dangerous threat to Israel's existence today does not lie in their Arab states, but in Iran. He wrote, "The prevailing assessment is that by 1999, Iran will produce its first nuclear bomb." Iran's rulers repeatedly declare that this will be an Islamic bomb and that its first target will be Israel. Thus, Iran's president, Akbar Hashemi Rasanjani said in 1991, "Muslims must cooperate in the production of atomic bombs." His deputy Mahajirani adds, "The purpose of Iran's nuclear armament is to build together with his Muslim sisters an atomic bomb in order to place it opposite the Israeli atom." Bby writing in 1993 said, "It is our duty to ensure in advance that the Iranian regime does not acquire the tools required to realize this aspiration. We must not rely on the assumption that rational considerations regarding a possible Israeli response will deter this fanatical mentality. Deterrence alone is not an adequate Israeli response to the danger of an Islamic bomb. Israel must act vigorously to thwart this danger to its very existence. I mean the words speak for themselves. This is Bby in writing in 1993. And this is in fact echoing a speech given the year before 1992 as a simple Kabra Kesset member of the Knesset in which he said exactly the same thing. Bby warned for decades. He was the prophet, as it were, the secular prophet of the rise of the Iranian threat. And in so, so many ways, we're actually living in BB's world, a world in which we think of Iran as the foremost threat. But if you've listened to what we've said before, this came as something noteworthy to Biby's contemporaries. And for years they would accuse him of fear-mongering and talking up the threat from Iran as a way to distract from the Palestinian problem as a way in fact to gain in the political sense. And this was as we've seen was the line for decades of BB's opponents on the left that you are just fearongering in fact and this is why where in 2015 Yon Drman writing in the same paper Yacht said talks about the revenge of the archives. He says, "For more than 20 years, Benjamin Netanyao has been warning about Iran. According to his forecast, Iran was supposed to possess nuclear bomb ready by the end of the 1990s." And the correspondent goes on to write that Odin of Jerusalem responded to Netanyahu in letters to the editor back in 93, writing that Netanyahu was frightening us with all stories of Iran's nuclear bomb and the Iranian threat to the entire world. Enon argued that this threat described was at worst early potential. While then IDF chief of staff Aul Barak stated that there was no real Iranian threat at the time. Enon questioned why Iran should be harnessed for Natanyao's electoral needs instead of focusing on domestic problems such as unemployment, the economy and society. That's a classic take, one that held for decades. And the column went on to quote someone who actually turned out to be right. a certain Arnold Bikman, a researcher and columnist of the Washington Post, who wrote that Natao would not hesitate to launch a preemptive strike against Iran. How precient that was, how true that was only decades later. And then the report by this self-same Arnold Beckman, this expert for the Washington Post, you get a glimpse of the narrative of moderates versus fundamentalists, this great tourism. You get a sight of this moderates versus fundamentalists idea which is one of the great ideas that underpinned analysis of Iran for decades. And so Armed Bachmann writes, "The report of Iran's weapons of mass destruction program comes at a time when the Müller's regime has been pedalling a quote unquote moderate propaganda line adopted since the election of Muhammad Katami as Iran's president 20 months ago." since he quoted Alexitis Toukville in an interview for the Western Press. It was immediately assumed that Katami's election foretold a new shining day in Iran's relations with the West. Far from it, writes his Bikeman. Because immediately on his election, Katami is said to have created a group of science and technology advisers to supervise the regime's chemical, biological, nuclear weapons programs with headquarters in Tehran. And this dynamic was a staple of Iranian analysis for years. This idea, but he quotes the Tokavville, he must be moderate or they wear suits. He he talks normal English. They don't want war. These are moderates. This was the line that was pedled by everyone by the Western press and in certain parts of the Israeli left that swooned every time the so-called moderates in Tehran made some noises of being less fundamentalist than the real fundamentalists. But the takeaway is this is the same behavior that we're seeing all over the world. Ironically, the liberals who will believe any casualty figures that are released by Hamas about Israel in Gaza, but they will disbelieve anything that the Iranian opposition are saying about the tens of thousands potentially mowed down over there. The liberals have a different policy on Iran. And what they want to see and what they bent on seeing and desperate to see is that this mirage of reformists versus hardliners. And the reason that this is such a mirage is simply because even the reformists were only acting within the framework of the regime and all of that. They did not want to bring down the regime. They wanted to loosen it slightly. Does Israel really want the Ayatollah's regime to fall? Well, what type of question is that you might ask? Of course they do. The answer is that yes, but it will cost the country north in fact of $1.2 billion because for decades the Ayatollah's accountants have been pursuing Israel through the international arbitration courts for hundreds of millions owed that were advanced by the sha to the Israelis for oil supply and for all sorts of weapons projects we discussed above that has been going through arbitration front of a Swiss court. Israel's response, there's no way that we're doing business with th those committed to wipe us out. Change regime and then we'll talk. Iran's response has been, what do you mean you don't do business with us? You did, in fact, right through the 1980s. And the record, as we've seen, shows that they're right. Now, that legal battle away from the eyes of the media illustrates just how strange has been the relationship between Israel and Iran since the Sha's fall in 1979. That bit of history and fun fact about the past and possibly the future brings us to a question. Where does all this end? And here I have a few thoughts. Number one, we don't know. But what comes next? Obviously, surely better than the current regime. And if and when this regime falls, as all regimes, such regimes eventually do, this will be a great historic vindication for BBI, the man who put the threat of Iran on the international table, persisted, refused to back down even when he was shamed and mocked and called an obsessive for his pains. He's played a historic role, and he will go down history for this. But and here are a few qualifications. Number one is I think the kmenism will actually die hard. Westerners as we've seen have long engaged with this regime and with the ideas of Ayatar Kmeni with a large helping of wishful thinking. They were so desperate to see modernity that they couldn't see that the country that Iran in fact was not a thoroughly modern country. And now if you look at the large crowds who actually come out in support of the regime, you think back to before the revolution and you have to ask yourself, is there a wave of secularism sweeping the country? Maybe. But what we've seen is the latest protests are seem now to have died down and been stamped out more like by the regime which turned off the internet. We're frustrated with poverty and that ultimately could be the regime's downfall. So perhaps we'll see a leader eased aside and the regime might even cling on in some form. So even if it falls, will it be a great victory? I think the bottom line is this is a country genuinely torn between Islamists, those who want a more conservative past, and those who want a more open future. Communism, I think it's fair to say, has certain roots and won't go easily. There's a second qualification I think and it regards the Abraham Accords. Right through the 1970s, Iran stood with Israel against the Arab world. And now Israel stands with the Arabs against a radical Iran. But think ahead. If one day Iran comes closer to Israel, could we see the glue behind the Abram Accords dissolve? Well, when I asked Israel's former ambassador to the United States, Ron Durma, who was actually one of the architects of the Abram Accords years ago, I asked him about this, and he said, "Well, the glue goes far deeper and obviously more encompassing than simply a common enemy. There's more to the links between the Arab world and Israel today than just my enemies. Enemy is my friend." But I don't know. I don't have his level of expertise, but I think we could see that as Iran drifts back towards Israel, the old patterns reassert themselves and the Abraham calls begin to be questioned. That's my own private view and suspicion. But there's one last thought. We don't know Hashem's plans. We see something strange. As Iran clearly sinks, there's a rise of a new axis, Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Seemingly until Mashiach comes, we'll be surrounded by enemies and needing those to fill us for the future of Israel. But I think Hashem, who ensured that, as we've seen in this episode, that the sha fell too quickly fori to get a nuclear weapon, who sent Rabbi Nubagar to pave the way for rescue of the Iranian jury years before it was needed, and who returned an ancient community to Tyran knowledge. He'll protect us through whatever comes next. Thank you for joining me in Behind the Times. Until next time.