At a moment when the Islamic Republic of Iran is at the center of a regional war, it is important to remember that the Iranian regime's decades-long promotion of antisemitism is not merely ideological, it is operational. Since 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, antisemitism and Holocaust denial. The regime has embedded anti-Jewish hatred into its core identity and translated it into policy, propaganda and violence.
Persecution at Home
The regime's antisemitic campaign began immediately after the 1979 revolution. On May 9, 1979, prominent Jewish community leader and philanthropist Habib Elghanian was executed by firing squad after a 20-minute show-trial on charges of "Zionist spying" and being a "corrupter on Earth." His killing sent shockwaves through Iran's Jewish community, triggering a mass exodus that reduced the population from roughly 80,000 to less than 10,000. Since 1979, at least 17 Iranian Jews have been executed by the regime.
Iranian state textbooks systematically teach antisemitic content, depicting Jews as scheming enemies of Islam, and deploying tropes about Jewish greed, disloyalty and conspiracies of world domination. In 2025, the regime coerced remaining Iranian Jews into attending pro-regime rallies to denounce Israel and Zionists while state outlets simultaneously promoted Holocaust denial and quoted Adolf Hitler's writings on Jews.
Holocaust Denial and Cartoon Contests
Holocaust denial is official Iranian policy. In December 2005, then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust "a myth." In 2006, the Iranian Foreign Ministry hosted an international Holocaust denial conference attended by 67 participants from 30 countries. The regime has sponsored three major international Holocaust cartoon contests in 2006, 2016 and 2020, organized through state-funded cultural institutions.
International Propaganda Operations
The regime operates multilingual media outlets to spread antisemitism globally. Press TV, founded in 2007, targets English-speaking audiences with antisemitic conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial and interviews with figures such as Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. A 2023 report by ADL and the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that Press TV's website receives around one million visits per month, with over half from Western countries, and that its "Palestine Declassified" project functions as a "foreign state hate operation."
In February 2026, ADL reported that HispanTV, the Islamic Republic of Iran's Spanish-language propaganda outlet reaching nearly 600 million potential viewers, dramatically escalated antisemitic content after October 7, 2023, systematically recycled tropes about Jewish global power, promoted conspiracy theories about "Zionist" control of governments and media, advanced blood libels, equated Zionism with Nazism and glorified Hamas and Hezbollah.
Annual Quds Day rallies, established by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, serve as a global platform for antisemitic incitement. Demonstrations in Tehran and cities worldwide feature chants of "Death to Israel" and "Death to America”, glorification of Tehran’s terrorist proxies and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Iran’s “Jewish Studies Center” established in 2016, as reported by IranWire, has published over 1,000 antisemitic articles, reports, comment pieces, books and videos, as part of an attempt to concoct legitimacy for the regime’s antisemitism and Holocaust denial.
Terror Proxies Targeting Jews in Israel
Through the IRGC and its Quds Force, Iran has cultivated a network of proxy groups whose founding ideologies include antisemitism: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen. In the run up to the October 7 attacks on Israel and the resulting war in which Hezbollah rocket attacks displaced tens of thousands of Israeli civilians, the Islamic Republic of Iran was funding Hezbollah alone to the tune of $700 million a year. Antisemitism and the destruction of Israel serve as fundamental principles for these proxies, as the October 7 attacks and their aftermath demonstrated all too clearly.
Terrorist Attacks Against Jewish Targets Around the World
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s antisemitism is not reserved only for Jews in Israel. On March 17, 1992, the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad Organization bombed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people. Two years later, on July 18, 1994, a Hezbollah suicide bomber acting on Iranian orders destroyed the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and injuring over 300, in what remains the deadliest antisemitic attack outside Israel since the Holocaust. In 2024, Argentina's highest criminal court ruled that the Islamic Republic of Iran directed the attack and declared it a crime against humanity.
In 2024, the IRGC orchestrated antisemitic arson attacks against the Lewis' Continental Kitchen kosher restaurant in Sydney (October 2024) and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne (December 2024), a synagogue built by Holocaust survivors. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) linked both attacks to IRGC commanders operating through criminal intermediaries. In August 2025, Australia expelled the Islamic Republic's ambassador and designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization.
In Sweden, the IRGC used the Foxtrot criminal network to orchestrate attacks on the Israeli embassy in Stockholm in January 2024. Swedish and Israeli intelligence revealed a comprehensive Iranian regime "target catalogue" encompassing Israeli embassies, Jewish community facilities and synagogues across Europe. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Foxtrot and its leader in 2025 for carrying out attacks on Jews in Europe on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Iranian regime even recruited Swedish minors through these criminal networks to target Jewish and Israeli interests. In the UK, MI5 revealed that the Iranian regime plotted at least 20 operations targeting UK citizens and residents between 2022 and 2024, with the UK Minister of State for Security confirming Iran was hiring criminal gangs to spy on Jews in preparation for potential assassinations.
The Islamic Republic of Iran's violent antisemitism is not incidental but structural, woven into its founding ideology, educational system, media apparatus and foreign policy. From Holocaust denial cartoon contests to the bombing of Jewish community centers and the firebombing of synagogues, the evidence demonstrates a regime that has made the promotion of antisemitism and violence against Jewish people a central pillar of state policy for almost five decades.