April 7, 2026
Stephen Prager
The Iranian newspaper Shargh reported on Tuesday that the Rafi-Nia Synagogue, which it described as “one of the most important places for Khorasan Jews to gather and celebrate,” was “completely destroyed” as the US and Israel launched attacks across the city.
Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency reported that the temple was hit when the residential building next door was attacked. Attacks across Iran overnight reportedly killed more than a dozen people.
A video shows Rabbi Younes Hammami Lalezar, a leader of the country’s Jewish community, walking amongst the still-smoking wreckage with emergency response teams. Other photos show Hebrew-language prayer books scattered among the rubble.
Rafi-Nia is one of about 100 synagogues in Iran, including 30 in Tehran, that serve as houses of worship for Iran’s Jewish community, the largest in the Middle East outside Israel. The attack came on the sixth day of the Passover holiday.
“The Zionist regime showed no mercy towards this community during the Jewish holidays and attacked one of our ancient and holy synagogues,” said Homayoun Sameyah Najafabadi, the Jewish community’s representative in the Iranian Parliament. “Unfortunately, during this attack, the synagogue building was completely destroyed, and Torah scrolls remain under the rubble.”
While it’s the first report of a synagogue being destroyed since the war was launched on February 28, dozens of other religious and historical sites have been damaged and destroyed by US-Israeli bombings.
Israel has denied responsibility for the attack, with an unnamed official telling The Times of Israel that “Israel doesn’t target synagogues.”
A separate statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Iran is firing missiles at civilians, Israel is striking terror infrastructure. Missiles on civilians versus precision strikes on terror targets. That’s the difference.”
The comments echoed earlier denials from the US and Israel after a school in Minab, Iran, was one of the first targets of the bombing campaign, killing 168 people, including more than 100 children. The US couldn’t have been behind the attack, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, because “the only side that targets civilians is Iran.”
US investigators later found evidence that the US was behind the attack.
According to the Human Rights Activist Network, a US-based human rights monitor for Iran, at least 1,665 civilians, including 248 children, have been killed in US and Israeli strikes since the war began more than a month ago.
Similar to the destruction of Israel’s US-backed war on Gaza, tens of thousands of civilian buildings, including homes, hospitals, schools, and religious sites, have been damaged or destroyed, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
The synagogue attack also comes after US President Donald Trump threatened on Easter Sunday to target civilian infrastructure in Iran, including bridges and power plants, and said he was “considering blowing everything up” in Iran if it did not negotiate to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
On Tuesday, Trump issued his most explicitly genocidal threat yet, saying that if Iran did not negotiate, a “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
Iran’s minister of culture and Islamic guidance, Abbas Salehi, said that “damage and destruction of the Jewish synagogue building in central Tehran is bitter and distressing.”
“The American-Zionist warmongers have targeted religious sites and Iran’s civilizational heritage. For them, it makes no difference whether one is Muslim, Christian, or Jewish,” he said. “They have targeted the Iranian people, but Iran will remain, and they will be gone.”
Najafabadi accused Israel of using “Judaism as a pretext to legitimize their actions,” and accused them of targeting the synagogue “in light of the [Iranian Jewish] community’s firm stance in condemning the regime’s actions and its anti-Zionist positions.”
Brett Wilkins
Trump’s rhetoric has grown increasing genocidal as his Tuesday night deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz draws nearer, writing on his Truth Social network that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” if no deal is reached on the resumption of all shipping in the vital waterway, through which about 20% of the world’s oil passes.
In response, Brig. Gen. Seyyed Majid Mousavi, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, declared the start of a “new phase” of operations aimed at deterring further US-Israeli escalation by preparing in-kind attacks.
Iran “has not been and will never be the one to initiate attacks on civilian targets,” Mousavi said, warning that Tehran “will not hesitate to retaliate against despicable aggression on civilian facilities.”
Mousavi added that should Trump follow through on his threat, the IRGC “will inflict such damage on the infrastructure of the US and its partners that they will be deprived of the region’s oil and gas for years to come.”
Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Amir-Saeid Iravani said Tuesday: “Iran will not stand idle in the face of such egregious war crimes. It will exercise, without hesitation, its inherent right of self-defense and will take immediate and proportionate reciprocal measures.”
Even as US and Israeli bombing has killed around 2,000 Iranians since February 28—including hundreds of women and children—Tehran has insisted that it does not want to retaliate against American civilians, who Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi recently said “overwhelmingly voted to end involvement in costly foreign wars.”
While Iran has responded to US and Israeli bombing of civilian sites with measured missile and drone strikes on energy and economic targets in Israel and Gulf nations allied with the United States, Tehran has notably abstained from carrying out retaliatory attacks on US civilians.
Iranian officials have also shown a surreal penchant for pairing ominous brinkmanship with defiantly deadpan trolling.
Following Trump’s Sunday ultimatum for Tehran to “open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards,” Iran’s Embassy in Zimbabwe quipped, “We’ve lost the keys.”
To which the Iranian Embassy in South Africa replied, “Shh… the key’s under the flowerpot.”
Highlighting Tehran’s policy of allowing ships from friendly nations to pass through the Strait of Hormuz—and throwing in a barb referring to the late child sex criminal and former Trump friend Jeffrey Epstein—Iran’s Embassy in Bulgaria posted: “Door’s open for friends. Epstein’s friends need keys.”
Echoing calls from across the US political spectrum, Iran’s Embassy in South Africa on Sunday urged congressional leaders to “seriously think about the 25th Amendment,” which allows for the dismissal of a president who is incapacitated, unable, or unwilling to perform their duties.
Iran’s UK Embassy chimed in with a quote from the iconic American author—and ardent anti-imperialist—Mark Twain: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
Ordinary Iranians, meanwhile, shrugged off Trump’s threat while trying to go about their lives the best they could under the circumstances.
“The first thing that came to my mind is that I think Trump is under a lot of pressure, and that he has lost his mind,” a Tehran resident who gave only her first name, Lili, told The New York Times on Tuesday, adding that the US-Israeli war has got Iranians rallying behind a government despised by millions of her compatriots.
“So now, we are supporting Iran and whatever government is running it,” she said.
Iranian businessman Pedram Soltani said in a social media message to Americans, “Your president has now placed not only Iran, but also America and the entire world at a tremendous risk.”
“If he pushes the war with Iran toward the destruction of bridges and power plants, more than 90 million people in Iran will be severely affected, and a humanitarian catastrophe will unfold,” Soltani continued, referring to Trump’s threat to attack such sites, which would be a war crime.
“Consequently, the war spreads further across the Middle East, and critical energy infrastructure in the region will be damaged,” he said. “This will trigger a surge in the prices of oil, petrochemicals, metals, and other essential commodities. The consequences will hit you and billions of others, through skyrocketing fuel prices and widespread food inflation.”
“At the same time, the United States will become one of the most hated countries in the world,” Soltani added.
According to numerous surveys, it already is.
Stephen Prager
The representative for Iran’s
Jewish community in Parliament said Israel “showed no mercy... during the
Jewish holidays and attacked one of our ancient and holy synagogues.”
US-Israeli airstrikes early
Tuesday morning reduced a synagogue in Tehran to rubble, according to local
reports and footage posted to social media.The Iranian newspaper Shargh reported on Tuesday that the Rafi-Nia Synagogue, which it described as “one of the most important places for Khorasan Jews to gather and celebrate,” was “completely destroyed” as the US and Israel launched attacks across the city.
Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency reported that the temple was hit when the residential building next door was attacked. Attacks across Iran overnight reportedly killed more than a dozen people.
A video shows Rabbi Younes Hammami Lalezar, a leader of the country’s Jewish community, walking amongst the still-smoking wreckage with emergency response teams. Other photos show Hebrew-language prayer books scattered among the rubble.
Rafi-Nia is one of about 100 synagogues in Iran, including 30 in Tehran, that serve as houses of worship for Iran’s Jewish community, the largest in the Middle East outside Israel. The attack came on the sixth day of the Passover holiday.
“The Zionist regime showed no mercy towards this community during the Jewish holidays and attacked one of our ancient and holy synagogues,” said Homayoun Sameyah Najafabadi, the Jewish community’s representative in the Iranian Parliament. “Unfortunately, during this attack, the synagogue building was completely destroyed, and Torah scrolls remain under the rubble.”
While it’s the first report of a synagogue being destroyed since the war was launched on February 28, dozens of other religious and historical sites have been damaged and destroyed by US-Israeli bombings.
Israel has denied responsibility for the attack, with an unnamed official telling The Times of Israel that “Israel doesn’t target synagogues.”
A separate statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “Iran is firing missiles at civilians, Israel is striking terror infrastructure. Missiles on civilians versus precision strikes on terror targets. That’s the difference.”
The comments echoed earlier denials from the US and Israel after a school in Minab, Iran, was one of the first targets of the bombing campaign, killing 168 people, including more than 100 children. The US couldn’t have been behind the attack, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, because “the only side that targets civilians is Iran.”
US investigators later found evidence that the US was behind the attack.
According to the Human Rights Activist Network, a US-based human rights monitor for Iran, at least 1,665 civilians, including 248 children, have been killed in US and Israeli strikes since the war began more than a month ago.
Similar to the destruction of Israel’s US-backed war on Gaza, tens of thousands of civilian buildings, including homes, hospitals, schools, and religious sites, have been damaged or destroyed, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
The synagogue attack also comes after US President Donald Trump threatened on Easter Sunday to target civilian infrastructure in Iran, including bridges and power plants, and said he was “considering blowing everything up” in Iran if it did not negotiate to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
On Tuesday, Trump issued his most explicitly genocidal threat yet, saying that if Iran did not negotiate, a “whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
Iran’s minister of culture and Islamic guidance, Abbas Salehi, said that “damage and destruction of the Jewish synagogue building in central Tehran is bitter and distressing.”
“The American-Zionist warmongers have targeted religious sites and Iran’s civilizational heritage. For them, it makes no difference whether one is Muslim, Christian, or Jewish,” he said. “They have targeted the Iranian people, but Iran will remain, and they will be gone.”
Najafabadi accused Israel of using “Judaism as a pretext to legitimize their actions,” and accused them of targeting the synagogue “in light of the [Iranian Jewish] community’s firm stance in condemning the regime’s actions and its anti-Zionist positions.”
Brett Wilkins
Iran “has not been and will never
be the one to initiate attacks on civilian targets,” said one Iranian military
commander, but Tehran “will not hesitate to retaliate against despicable
aggression on civilian facilities.”
Iran on Tuesday responded to US
President Donald Trump’s threat to destroy its civilization by warning that
further attacks on its civilian infrastructure would trigger a crushing
response that “will exceed the region’s boundaries.”Trump’s rhetoric has grown increasing genocidal as his Tuesday night deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz draws nearer, writing on his Truth Social network that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” if no deal is reached on the resumption of all shipping in the vital waterway, through which about 20% of the world’s oil passes.
In response, Brig. Gen. Seyyed Majid Mousavi, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, declared the start of a “new phase” of operations aimed at deterring further US-Israeli escalation by preparing in-kind attacks.
Iran “has not been and will never be the one to initiate attacks on civilian targets,” Mousavi said, warning that Tehran “will not hesitate to retaliate against despicable aggression on civilian facilities.”
Mousavi added that should Trump follow through on his threat, the IRGC “will inflict such damage on the infrastructure of the US and its partners that they will be deprived of the region’s oil and gas for years to come.”
Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Amir-Saeid Iravani said Tuesday: “Iran will not stand idle in the face of such egregious war crimes. It will exercise, without hesitation, its inherent right of self-defense and will take immediate and proportionate reciprocal measures.”
Even as US and Israeli bombing has killed around 2,000 Iranians since February 28—including hundreds of women and children—Tehran has insisted that it does not want to retaliate against American civilians, who Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi recently said “overwhelmingly voted to end involvement in costly foreign wars.”
While Iran has responded to US and Israeli bombing of civilian sites with measured missile and drone strikes on energy and economic targets in Israel and Gulf nations allied with the United States, Tehran has notably abstained from carrying out retaliatory attacks on US civilians.
Iranian officials have also shown a surreal penchant for pairing ominous brinkmanship with defiantly deadpan trolling.
Following Trump’s Sunday ultimatum for Tehran to “open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards,” Iran’s Embassy in Zimbabwe quipped, “We’ve lost the keys.”
To which the Iranian Embassy in South Africa replied, “Shh… the key’s under the flowerpot.”
Highlighting Tehran’s policy of allowing ships from friendly nations to pass through the Strait of Hormuz—and throwing in a barb referring to the late child sex criminal and former Trump friend Jeffrey Epstein—Iran’s Embassy in Bulgaria posted: “Door’s open for friends. Epstein’s friends need keys.”
Echoing calls from across the US political spectrum, Iran’s Embassy in South Africa on Sunday urged congressional leaders to “seriously think about the 25th Amendment,” which allows for the dismissal of a president who is incapacitated, unable, or unwilling to perform their duties.
Iran’s UK Embassy chimed in with a quote from the iconic American author—and ardent anti-imperialist—Mark Twain: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
Ordinary Iranians, meanwhile, shrugged off Trump’s threat while trying to go about their lives the best they could under the circumstances.
“The first thing that came to my mind is that I think Trump is under a lot of pressure, and that he has lost his mind,” a Tehran resident who gave only her first name, Lili, told The New York Times on Tuesday, adding that the US-Israeli war has got Iranians rallying behind a government despised by millions of her compatriots.
“So now, we are supporting Iran and whatever government is running it,” she said.
Iranian businessman Pedram Soltani said in a social media message to Americans, “Your president has now placed not only Iran, but also America and the entire world at a tremendous risk.”
“If he pushes the war with Iran toward the destruction of bridges and power plants, more than 90 million people in Iran will be severely affected, and a humanitarian catastrophe will unfold,” Soltani continued, referring to Trump’s threat to attack such sites, which would be a war crime.
“Consequently, the war spreads further across the Middle East, and critical energy infrastructure in the region will be damaged,” he said. “This will trigger a surge in the prices of oil, petrochemicals, metals, and other essential commodities. The consequences will hit you and billions of others, through skyrocketing fuel prices and widespread food inflation.”
“At the same time, the United States will become one of the most hated countries in the world,” Soltani added.
According to numerous surveys, it already is.
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