Iranian Jews who immigrated to Great Neck, New York expressed frustration with the world’s naivete in agreeing to a nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic, The Times of Israel reported today. The Times conducted a series of interviews with members of the community in the run-up to the Congressional vote on the deal next month.
In conversations, The Times of Israel heard that [Tehran native Dr. Naheed Neman] and other suburban Long Island Iranian-Jewish expatriates largely condemned the nuclear deal, which the United States and five other world powers (Britain, China, France, Russia, and Germany) signed with Iran in Vienna after months of negotiations. …
Like other Jewish organizations, organized Persian Jewry is not taking this deal lying down. In a statement seemingly directed against President Barack Obama, Sam Kermanian, senior adviser to the Iranian American Jewish Federation, said, “The nuclear agreement with Iran represents the triumph of ‘Hope and Change’ over reality and logic.
“It is an extremely bad deal which will legitimize a brutal and tyrannical regime which suppresses its own people at home and carries a dangerous and adventurous foreign policy abroad,” Kermanian continued. He warned it will “embolden the regime” and further destabilize the region, while allowing Iran to step-up support for global terrorism “from Lebanon to South and Central America and from Yemen to Southeast Asia.”
It is estimated that some 17,000 to 19,000 Iranian Jews live in Great Neck, making it the second-largest community in the United States, behind only Los Angeles.
Pedram Bral, the mayor of Great Neck, told the Times, “I don’t think there are any guarantees in the deal,” in part because the of the long lead time before inspections of suspicious facilities could be conducted. Neman said that it was “naive to believe they’re going to keep their promises,” observing that “[e]ven if they sign the contract, they can break it.”
Although the Iranian regime has often said that their issue is with Israel and Zionism rather than with Jews and Judaism, Iran’s Jews have greatly suffered since the Islamic revolution of 1979. It is estimated that the Jewish population of Iran is roughly one tenth of the size it was in 1979. Jews have often been targeted by the regime, as Shahrzad Elghanayan, a Jewish woman whose family emigrated from Iran, wrote in an op-ed that was published in The Washington Post this past April. Elghanayan was refuting boasts by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif about Iran’s “tolerance” for Jews, and mentioned that her own grandfather was executed by the regime in 1979 after a 20-minute trial. The Mossad concluded this year that a number of Jews seeking to escape Iran in the 1990’s were capture and murdered.
[Photo: VOA Farsi / YouTube ]