The lesson Iranian Jews could have taught Israeli officials

For years we have known that Iran, a state moonlighting as a terrorist group, has been supporting Hamas, a terrorist group vying to be a state. The relationship between the Islamic regime and Hamas has evolved to be so highly synchronized, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) indoctrinating, funding and training Islamic militants, that Israeli military officials consider Iran a bordering enemy state and not an ideological adversary over a thousand miles away. 

On Oct. 7, Hamas made the ideological, operational. Dismissing early warning signs of the militants’ training as “an imaginary scenario” senior Israeli intelligence officials were caught underprepared for Hamas’s capabilities and overconfident that they knew their enemies’ intentions. In fact, Oct. 7 should have been foreseeable as the culmination of decades of collusion between Tehran and its proxy. So why was Israel surprised? 

As a Jew growing up in the Shah’s Iran and witnessing the Islamic revolution up close, I remember the slow and steady rise of Islamism in Tehran’s neighborhoods. From merchants and bazaaris, to artists and intellectuals, to the upwardly mobile and the lowly peasant, the calls of “Allah-o-Akbar” were enough to send chills down one’s spine. It did not matter if the chants were made from steel high-rises or mud rooftops, Iranians were gripped in an Islamic fever and fueled by Ayatollah Khomeini’s powerful propaganda. The leader of the Islamic revolution did not mince words about his enmity towards Israel and the West, and the Iranian Jewish community took him both literally and seriously and emigrated in droves. 

Just as it did to Iranian Jews, Oct. 7 should serve as reminder that when our adversaries tell us their intention we need to listen and take action. In the 1920s, Adolph Hitler published “Mein Kampf ” laying out his plans to establish a Thousand-Year Reich and eradicate the Jews. In 1996, Osama bin Laden published a fatwa declaring war on the West. In 2021, Vladimir Putin published a 7,000-word manifesto stating his intention to reunify Ukraine with Russia. Yet in each case, we did not believe our enemies as they openly told us their plans — and were then surprised when they did exactly what they said. 

Iran and Hamas made their objectives just as clear as Hitler, Bin Laden and Putin before them. All the warning signs were there in the articles of the 1988 Hamas Charter and the anti-American, anti-Israel, and antisemitic sermons of the Ayatollah Khomeini — the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Compiled in 22-volumes of Khomeini’s writings and speeches, and his treatise Islamic Government, the founder of the Islamic Republic declared that “the vicious Zionist regime and Amrika [America] intend to destroy our Islamic virtues, corrupt our lands and rob our youths’ minds.” “The Islamic nation is the follower of the school of the oppressors vs the oppressed,” and “Islam is the religion of the militant individual,” whose “greatest sin is running away from war, [and who must] strive to wipe Israel off the map.”   

The unmistakable parallels between Khomeini’s perverted version of Islam and Hamas’ charter are hard to ignore. Just as Khomeini railed against “colonial establishments” of America and Israel, and accused them of having robbed Muslims for centuries, Hamas’s charter blames the “vicious colonial invasion of Zionism” for its aim of “undermining societies, destroying values… and annihilating Islam.” And just as Khomeini mandated war against “infidels,” article 15 of the original Hamas charter states that Jihad is “the individual duty of every Moslem” to fight back against Israel’s “usurpation” of Muslim lands.   

More recently, Khomeini’s successor, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Israel a “cancerous tumor” that “will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed” and posted a graphic on his website calling for a “final solution” for Israel. 

The only thing that unites Shia Tehran and Sunni Hamas is their shared goal of destroying their common enemies: Israel and the United States. For Iran, that has meant keeping Iranians devoted to Khomeini’s worldview by hyping real or perceived grievances against the United States and Israel internally, while pushing back against American-led forces and influence in the Middle East externally. It has also meant brutal crackdown on Iranian protesters who the regime considers agents of foreign powers, massive human and capital investments in disinformation campaigns both at home and abroad, brazen denials of historical truths, rejecting the liberal world order and creating havoc in neighboring countries.  

Tehran’s calculus of employing provocative language and initiating prolonged proxy wars may have been a cynical attempt to place the regime at the vanguard of Muslim leadership and the de facto speaker for the world’s “oppressed.” But success has a cost and the inhumane attacks of Oct. 7 — inspired, supplied and funded by Tehran — may sooner or later backfire. 

It is significant that Saudi Arabia has not repudiated that peace initiative with Israel in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. Indeed, for the Saudis, the Abraham Accord countries and other Gulf states, already nervous about Tehran’s fangs, the Iranian-Hamas attack underscores the importance of Israel as a check on Iran’s ambitions for the region. If Israel destroys Hamas and once the fighting subsides, these nations may seek accommodation or further strengthening of military and economic ties with Israel. And Israel and the United States may sharply step up their overt and covert operations against the Islamic regime and its long regional reach.  

The Oct. 7 attacks should serve as a wake-up call to the world of the murderous obsession of Hamas and the Islamic regime with wiping a whole land of its Jewish citizens. Their violence is not merely a slogan shouted at rallies; it is a strategic objective and an operational commitment. If there is any doubt, Hamas leaders have told us in no uncertain terms that they intend to repeat the carnage of Oct. 7 “again and again” because “Israel is a country that has no place on our land.” 

The destruction of the state of Israel was the first step in Khomeini’s vision of a global Islamic government. What country is next on the Islamic regime’s target and what militant group would be funded and trained to do its bidding? As Tehran has become the ideological and financial reservoir for Islamist militants, perhaps it is time to take the regime’s words both literally and seriously, and act accordingly.  

Nazee Moinian holds a PhD in Iranian Studies from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. She is an adjunct fellow in the Middle East Institute and is currently working on her book on narratives of grievance in Iranian foreign policy.