JTA
24 Iranian Jews remain in prison as government launches internal crackdown
Larry Cohler-Esses
June 30, 2025

Twenty-four members of the Jewish community in Tehran and Shiraz remain in prison as of Sunday after being arrested along with hundreds of others in a sweeping government crackdown in Iran that began as fighting ended with Israel. The arrests took in 35 Jews originally, according to a report put out Saturday by HRANA, the Human Rights Activist News Agency, an affiliate of the Human Rights in Iran NGO. Mass arrests began early in the morning of June 23, according to the report. Eleven Jews have been released since the original arrests, according to a former senior Iranian communal leader, who would speak only on condition of anonymity due to concerns for his contacts in Iran. READ MORE

ARUTZ SHEVA Top Iranian cleric issues Fatwa against Trump & Netanyahu In a significant escalation of rhetoric following the recent 12-day conflict between Israel, Iran, and the United States, Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, one of Iran’s most senior Shia clerics, has issued a fatwa declaring U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “enemies of God” and “mohareb”—those who wage war against Allah. Shirazi called for Trump and Netanyahu to be subject to “execution or crucifixion” and that any Muslim who helps either of them to face a similar fate or “amputation of the right hand and left foot or exile.”