October 7 & today · Iran · 2023–present
State religious ideology, Holocaust denial and sponsorship of both Islamist and secular armed groups gave October 7 an established apparatus.
Explore IranPublished by WTJPublication updated
2023–present
October 7 & today · October 7 & today
State religious ideology, Holocaust denial and sponsorship of both Islamist and secular armed groups gave October 7 an established apparatus.
A government’s enemy becomes a neighbour’s burden
Iranian Jews have a history far older than the Islamic Republic. Yet official rhetoric has repeatedly portrayed Jews through conspiracy and Holocaust denial, while the state supported armed groups fighting Israel.
After October 7, that conflict brought new pressure on a minority already living under religious and political restrictions. Being an Iranian citizen did not protect a Jewish person from being treated as connected to Israel. A government’s foreign enemy could become a burden assigned to people whose home was Iran.
Religious suspicion becomes state power
Earlier religious restrictions had made Iranian Jewish belonging conditional. The Islamic Republic gave hostility new reach through official media, Holocaust denial and security institutions. Claims that Zionists secretly control Western states reproduce an older Jewish-power conspiracy while presenting it as geopolitics.
Iran also sponsored Islamist Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad alongside the secular PFLP-General Command. The connection across ideologies was an actual state sponsor and armed network. After October 7, collective blame reached Iranian Jews themselves: religious-freedom monitors describe coerced leaders and arrests in 2025. Jewish identity became presumed allegiance to Israel. Here the mixture is driven principally from the state and its regional alliances, with anti-Zionism making coercion of a domestic religious minority appear to be a security measure.
The conflict reaches a kitchen and a synagogue
In August 2025, Australia’s government said its intelligence service had assessed that Iran directed two attacks carried out the previous year: one on a Jewish business in Sydney and another on a Melbourne synagogue. This was an intelligence attribution, rather than a court verdict.
The places targeted were outside both Iran and Israel. They belonged to Jewish life in Australia. The allegation showed how a conflict between states could reach people in a third country, through institutions chosen because they were Jewish.