BRET STEPHENS: The wages of the ayatollahs’ antisemitism |
Notable among the slogans being chanted by the protesters flooding Iran's streets is this: "Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, my life for Iran." That's more than a repudiation of the regime's foreign policy. It's a reminder that a policy of antisemitism has a way of eventually destroying the antisemite.
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the regime has had a singular obsession with Jews. The suppurating hatred of Israel is downstream from that.
The foundational political text of the regime, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's "Governance of the Jurist," is shot through with antisemitism. As in: "From the very beginning, the historical movement of Islam has had to contend with the Jews, for it was they who first established anti-Islamic propaganda." Iran's current leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is an avowed Holocaust denier. Though Iran officially tolerates its dwindling Jewish community, the vast majority of Iranian Jews have fled the country, often under perilous circumstances.
Iranian foreign policy freely mixes anti-Israel furies with anti-Jewish ones. It has supported Hezbollah, sworn to Israel's destruction, to the tune of billions of dollars over four decades. It has ordered antisemitic terrorist attacks at long range, including the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. It has supplied weapons and training for Hamas, along with ballistic missiles for........