Iran and the Jewish people: An alliance before war

22:22This is Caron DeMars calling from San Antonio, Texas. I listen to NPR ThruLine. In fact, it is the only podcast that I have a paid subscription to because it's that valuable. I love the research behind it, and it's opened my mind to a whole new world about the underpinnings of what could be a normal story that we know nothing about. Bravo to all the producers and editors and commentators. Thank you.

23:04Roya Hakakian:Hey, it's Ramtin. If you like what you're hearing so far, we would love it if you would make sure to follow ThruLine on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and leave us a review while you're there. It does really help people find out about our show. And the more people that find out about our show, the better it is for us and the better it is for you as the listeners. We really appreciate your support. It means so much to us. And this is just something else you can do to help out. Okay, I'll stop now. Thank you. Love you. Bye. This message comes from LinkedIn, who knows small businesses need a hiring partner to help.

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24:49Part 2. Alliance of the Periphery We admit that many technical fields we are behind. This is the voice of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran's king, or Shah, talking about the need to develop Iran in the 1950s and 60s. We can accept the know-how and the help of other advanced countries, and we also encourage their investment. The Shah of Iran used things like government subsidies and land reform to boost the economy. He was particularly interested in industrializing the country, which was still mostly agrarian. And Habib al-Ghanian, along with his brothers, were among the Iranian merchants who rode this wave of industrialization.

25:44They had a brother who was in the United States studying, and he went to a factory where they were making plastics goods. This is Shahzad al-Ghanian again. She wrote a biography of her grandfather, Habib al-Ghanian, called Titan of Tehran. He fell in love with these machines and he told his brothers, we should import one of these machines and make combs. Plastic combs. At this time, most combs in Iran were made of wood and were easily broken. So plastic would be a game changer. Habib al-Ghanian and his brothers put their money together and took a big risk to open Edan's first plastics factory.

26:27So it started out with combs, and then they had buttons, and the factory grew. It was very exciting. They were making all sorts of things like toys and plastic bags, plastic shoes, small consumer goods. They also had aluminum factories building door frames and window frames. And they also had another factory where they had refrigerators and stoves, so bigger, durable goods. Any Iranian who was living at the time had Flasko product. Habib became very popular in the business community. He was elected to be the first Jewish Iranian to join the prestigious Chamber of Commerce. And in 1962, he built Iran's first high-rise building.

27:17He named it after his company, Plasco. It was 17 stories. It had office buildings, and the first floors had a mall. And it was Iran's first mall, so everybody hung out there. And there was a restaurant on the top floor. Ramtin's dad actually took his mom and nine of his soon-to-be in-laws there to go shopping for their engagement party. Everything was cheap over there. Cheap, I mean, you know, moderate price.

27:49Roya Hakakian:Oh, interesting. Yes, everything was there. So we went to do the shopping, and after shopping, we went to the restaurant in 17th floor. So you picked it because not only was it going to impress them, but then it was also affordable for you? Affordable? Yes, sir. Affordable. It was 10 people, remember? That's a lot of people. Yes, sir. Oh, my God. To this day, any Persian person I speak with first says, oh, Elganya, are you related to Habib? And I say, sure, I'm his granddaughter. And everyone has a story about Plasco, about spending time in that building. It was almost in downtown, middle of the town.

28:36Roya Hakakian:It was like showing like modern Iran is coming. Did that make you guys proud? So proud. Yes, it was proud because that building not only clothing hop for whole country, it was also entertainment for people. They go over there. I went a couple of times to a pool, American pool, because you couldn't find many places there. He also introduced a great deal of philanthropy. This is Roya Hakakian. She's the author of Journey from the Land of No, a girlhood caught in revolutionary Iran. He was one among this new generation that believed that you have to leave the world a little bit better than the one that you came into.

29:30And therefore, you need to contribute to the society in which you live and from which you profit. Habib al-Ghanian became well-known for supporting both Jewish and non-Jewish causes in Iran. He gave money to build hospitals. He helped start a huge scholarship fund for poor students. He even donated thousands of dollars to help build the Grand Hossein-e Irshad Mosque in Tehran. Many of his employees and business partners refer to him as Hajji Habib, an honorific title usually given to Muslims who've made a religious pilgrimage to Mecca. Habib Al-Ghanayan was the realization of our dreams to be recognized as Iranians and as an ethnic minority who wants to develop Iran.

30:21It was absolutely like the thing that he had the most pride in, as did a lot of other Jews who were doing this, because they had been repressed for such a long time. And now here they are in their golden era. And it's the pride of having helped build Iran. Habib was also a vocal supporter of Israel. He visited the country many times and even helped build a high-rise building in Tel Aviv. He became the secular leader of Iran's Jews. The secular leader is the head of a group called the Anjoman, Anjoman al-Kalimian. And what they do is they're in charge of the internal affairs of Jews and also their relationship with Israel.

31:07He loved Israel as a country. He traveled there. He visited. Just like many Jews around the world do this. While Habib al-Ghanian and many other Iranian Jews were experiencing a golden age in the 1950s and 60s, this was not the case in other Middle Eastern countries. After the UN voted to partition Palestine, the governments of nearly all the Arab countries made life difficult for their sizable Jewish populations. They passed discriminatory laws, confiscated land, and often sponsored anti-Jewish violence. Under the Pahlavi dynasty, Iran never instituted these kinds of policies and actually accepted Iranian Jews holding citizenship in both countries.

31:58This was in part because Iran had become a member of a loose partnership with Israel and Turkey called the Alliance of the Periphery, referring to the fact that these countries were non-Arab and living on the edges of the Arab world. The Shah's good relations with Israel actually encouraged him to see Iranian Jews as a bridge between Iran and Israel, whom he can use to develop Iran. — The Shah invited Israeli businesspeople to work in Iran. And the Shah brought members of Israel's main intelligence organization, the Mossad, to help train his secret police, the Savak, an organization that suppressed dissent in Iran, jailing, torturing, and sometimes killing dissidents.

32:46— I don't want to paint a rosy picture to say everybody in Iran liked Israel. No, that's not true. The Shah of Iran did many good things for Iran, but at the end of the day, he was a dictator. And when you're a dictator and you force people to do things, they turn against you. So whoever the Shah was friends with, the people of Iran viewed as an enemy. The Iranian left, the seculars who had always been anti-imperialist and were seeing Israel as an imperialistic project, as an American project, began to really embrace Ayatollah Khomeini. We are against Israel, and we will never help Israel. We will cut off our diplomatic relation.

33:34Ayatollah Rahola Khomeini, whose voice you just heard, was a Shia-Iranian cleric. Beginning in the 1960s, he became an outspoken opponent of the Shah of Iran. He opposed Iran's modernization and viewed the Shah as a puppet of Western imperialist countries. He used to call the United States the Great Satan, and Israel was the Great Satan's bastard child. If the Shah were overthrown and the kind of government you want came to power in Iran, how would Iran's relations with Israel change? We will cut relations with Israel and we will have no relationship with them. They're an occupying government and they are our enemy.

34:31He saw Iran as a member of the Islamic Ummah, the Islamic World Community, and he saw it as Iran's duty to side with the Palestinians against the Israelis. We are on the side of the innocent.

34:51The Palestinians are innocent. The Israelis have done an injustice to them. From this perspective, we are on the side of the Palestinians. He recognized that speaking against the United States and Israel did in fact endear him to certain classes who wanted to bring down the monarchy. However, they couldn't see themselves banding with the likes of Ayatollah Khomeini. To them, you know, a cleric signaled backward movement toward a past that they were trying to leave behind. You can see that Ayatollah Khomeini begins to adapt his rhetoric in order to appeal to the secular Iranians, to the leftists, to the ultra-radical communists.

35:47And that's through his anti-imperialist, anti-American and anti-Israeli speeches. Khomeini was exiled from Iran in 1964 by the Shah. In exile, his popularity grew even more. His speeches were smuggled into Iran via cassette tape. And in one of those speeches, made before his exile, he made a direct reference to Habib al-Ghanian's family. The entire country's economy now lies in Israel's hands. That is to say, it has been seized by Israeli agents. This is Shahrazad al-Ghanian reading a translated portion of that speech. Hence, most of the major factories and enterprises are run by them. And one of the people mentioned, one of these so-called agents are the Elganian families, who says we're among the mediators of world Zionism who resided in Iran.

36:47Khomeini also said, The Shah takes so many of his cues from Israel that we wonder if he is not himself a Jew.

37:10By the late 1970s, there was a growing protest movement against the Shah's autocratic rule over Iran. People chanted things like, death to the Shah. And while this was happening, Iran was experiencing significant inflation as a result of mismanaged economic growth. Many Iranians blamed the Shah for this, so he was under a lot of pressure. And he needed to show the public he was doing something about it. Instead of having an economic solution to it, he basically decided to blame businessmen for it. The Shah publicly accused Iran's biggest businessmen, including Habib Al-Ghanian, of price gouging.

37:52And one night, the Savak came to my grandfather's house while he was sleeping, and they took him away. And the next day, there were headlines in the paper about how Habib Al-Ghanian was arrested on charges of profiteering. Habib Al-Ghanian, at this point, was in his 60s. He was internally exiled to another city and then spent time in prison. It was six months before he was released. I think the Shah was, he just believed that everybody was out to get him and that he had no responsibility for what was going on in Iran, which is pure fantasy. He was looking for an escape goat. The fact that they made such an example of him, to me, definitely says that the Shah was not his friend.

38:50All these things later came back to become even more problematic when Khomeini came.

39:05Coming up, revolution comes to Iran, and al-Ghaniyan enters its crosshairs.

39:20This is Jacob in Irvine, California, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. Really love the show, y 'all. So thanks for all your hard work and really appreciate the way you tell stories. Bye-bye. This message comes from LinkedIn, who knows small businesses need a hiring partner to help. LinkedIn Hiring Pro helps you focus on meaningful conversations with the right talent by streamlining the hiring process. From shortlisting candidates to offering AI-powered interview screenings, Hiring Pro saves hirers up to six hours a week. Hire right the first time. Get started by posting your job for free at linkedin.com slash NPR.

40:04Terms and conditions apply. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Rivian, makers of the all-electric three-row R1S SUV and the always capable R1T pickup. With impressive range, storage for any expedition, and technology that feels like second nature, Rivian vehicles are designed for those who seek to explore the planet and preserve it for generations to come. Learn more or schedule a demo drive at rivian.com. This message comes from Warby Parker. Prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Glasses designed in-house from premium materials starting at just$95, including prescription lenses.

40:43Stop by a Warby Parker store near you.

40:49Part 3. A Bitter Divorce Chaotic celebrations erupted in Tehran when the news broke the Shah had gone. It was like Liberation Day. In early 1979, after months of massive street protests and violence, the Shah of Iran left Iran for a vacation everyone knew he would not return from. And roving crowds chatted, the Shah is defeated. Khomeini has won. As he walked the tarmac to board the jet that would take him away from his homeland, he carried a box of Iranian soil. It was over. But it was not clear who would fill the power vacuum he left behind. There were a lot of different groups who were vying for power.

41:35This is Shahzad al-Ghanian, author of the book Titan of Tehran. Khomeini was, you know, was one of them. Habib al-Ghanian was visiting family in the United States when all of this was happening. He planned on returning to Iran. Any time anyone said to him, oh, this could be dangerous for you, he was so convinced that because of what had happened to him during the Shah's power when he was taken away, that he couldn't be taken again. They couldn't say, oh, he's so, you know, the Shah, he's friends with the Shah or he's a Shahi. He was convinced. So what he thought was, okay, a new government comes in and I'm going to continue what I'm doing.

42:21He very proudly said, I have been a great citizen. I've contributed a great deal to the society.

42:29Roya Hakakian:This is Roya Hakakian again. She's an Iranian-American Jewish writer and analyst. I see no reason why I should leave. He's like, this is my country. What am I going to do? I'm going to just leave everything and go? There are all these people working in my factories, and they're Jewish communities here. I have to protect them too.

42:55Roya Hakakian:Habib al-Ghanayan did return to Iran, and so did Ayatollah Khomeini. Within weeks of his return, the Israeli diplomatic offices in Tehran were closed, and the keys handed over to the Palestine Liberation Organization. And Khomeini's forces started to round up former members of the Shah's government and brought them in front of the newly created revolutionary tribunals. Khomeini arrives on February 1st, and on March 15, they come after my grandfather.

43:28Roya Hakakian:Armed men arrived at Habib al-Ghanayan's office. They walked him out to a car and drove him to the notorious Qasr prison in Tehran. All that time, anyone who's executed is a member of the Shah's government, military, police. So while he's in jail, there's still some hope that, you know, he can get out. Because no civilian's been executed. For several months, Habib Al-Ghanayan was kept in prison and tortured. Different business leaders tried to intervene on his behalf to get him released. But it didn't work. On May 8, he was taken to the revolutionary tribunals. His trial was broadcast on television.

44:18Roya Hakakian:It was in this tiny room. And this is how it was described by an American woman living in Iran at the time. Facial bruises and swelling showed through heavy makeup. Bearded mullahs dressed in dark cloaks spat questions at him. Before he could answer, Amula answered the question for him and twisted it into an accusation. Elganian had no defense counsel and seemed disoriented and unsteady in his chair. At this point, does he even know why he's there? Like, what were they even charging him with? He's not aware of his charges at all. They're being read to him in the court. And what were the charges?

45:03I'll read you open quote.

45:32Three, gathering contributions for Israel for the sake of bombarding Palestine and Muslim Arab people. Four, investing money made from exploiting and destroying resources of Iran to help Israel, who incessantly combats, steals, and affronts Islam and God. 5. Corruption on earth by means of destroying resources and helping in the destruction of an entire generation of Iranians. 6. War on God and the prophet of God. 7. Obstructing God's way and obstructing the well-being of weak nations against the value of humanity and Islam. 8. Corrupter on earth. nine, helping the daily and cruel massacre of our Palestinian brothers.

46:29Those were the nine charges against him. No credible evidence was produced to support these charges. He starts to try to defend himself without a lawyer. The trial lasted just 20 minutes. The verdict is that he's guilty.

46:47Roya Hakakian:And what does that mean for him? What's going to happen? That means that he has to go and write his will, and then he's going to face a firing squad. The next day, he was taken outside to a courtyard in prison, blindfolded, and forced to stand with his back against the wall. His execution was at dawn. In the early morning on May 9, 1979, Habib al-Ghanian was executed. the first civilian to receive the punishment by the revolutionary tribunals. And then there's a question of my grandfather's body is in a morgue somewhere, and how do we bury him? Where is he? There is a man who was the caretaker of the cemetery, Lormant, who was a great friend of my grandfather's, who goes to the morgue, finds the body.

47:47There's a sign on it that says, Habib Elganian, Zionist spy. They wouldn't immediately give up his body, and this is something that still happens. Then they make you pay for the bullets. The bullets used by the firing squad. And they tell you, you know, you shouldn't have a funeral. He takes the body in his car and actually does something very sweet. He drives him around the building where my grandfather's office was, the aluminum building, and then takes him to the cemetery. But of course his body is riddled with bullets, and they have a funeral for him at night in the dark because they're scared that they're going to be caught.

48:33Iranian newspapers and newspapers around the world announced Habib al-Ghanian's execution. It scared Iranian Jews. they're thinking if this can happen to him it could happen to any of us I remember my father was holding up the daily paper and on the cover it was dead body, dead body, dead body and the fact that someone like him with his track record of business influence, power and charity could get arrested summarily tried and subsequently executed really through shockwaves within the Iranian Jewish community, which is why tens of thousands of Iranian Jews fled Iran within the first couple of years of the revolution, that the execution of Habib al-Ghaniyan was really the culprit behind that mass exodus initially.

49:34Within days of his execution, soldiers had evicted his family, showed up at Habib Al-Ghanian's home in Tehran and confiscated all of his assets. You know, so everything that he had built his entire lifetime building was gone.

50:19The day after Habib's execution, a small group of Iranian Jews visited Ayatollah Khomeini in his home in the city of Qom. And they asked him, you know, are we safe? You know, can we stay? And he gave this big, big, long, winding sermon that had initially nothing to do with what they had asked, which really puzzled them at first. But at the end, he gave them a single statement that became sort of the unofficial policy of the Iranian regime towards the Jewish community to this day. And the sentence was, we separate the affairs of our own indigenous Jewish community from those blood-sucking Zionists in Israel.

51:11And this line was painted on the walls of every synagogue and every Jewish school in Iran. It was sort of the blessing that he had given over to the Iranian Jewish community to say, you are not them. You are Jews. They are Zionists. We are against them and not you. And you can say, and they can't. We will fight them to the death. And that's why this single line was painted on all the walls, because it was what everybody wanted within the Jewish community to remind the outsiders of what the big leader had said and that we were welcome and that we were not the enemy.

52:05Roya Hakakian:Still, the threat of being called a Zionist hung over the heads of Iranian Jews, and slowly over the course of the 1980s and 90s, their population in Iran decreased significantly, breaking a connection that had been there for millennia. And as Ayatollah Khomeini strengthened his grip over the country, the United States and Israel became official enemies of Iran. Children across the country, regardless of their religious background, were forced to stand up in the morning at school and chant, death to America and death to Israel. Most Iranians who lived through 1979 and saw the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini to power and were not for him, and there were many who were not for him, could not believe that a regime like that could go on.

52:55Which is the reason why my family stayed in Iran until the middle 80s. because we thought it can't be.

53:04Roya Hakakian:With the loss of this ancient connection and the rise of a radical Islamic government, Iran and Israel have been locked into a bitter conflict that has caused the deaths of thousands of Iranians, Israelis, Palestinians, and others. The Islamic Republic of Iran claims to support the Palestinians in their quest for a state, but its actions have mostly focused on providing military and financial support to Palestinian Islamic radical organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And today, the nearly 50-year war between Iran and Israel has reached what might be a zenith. A joint Israeli-U.S. operation has killed many of the Islamic Republic's most important leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

53:54Iran has retaliated by firing a barrage of missiles into Israel and other countries in the region. No one knows what will come of this war, but it is clear that it's another violent turning point in the relationship between Iran and Israel.

54:23That's it for this week's show. I'm Randa Abdel-Fattah.

54:27Roya Hakakian:I'm Ramtin Arablui. And you've been listening to ThruLine from NPR. This episode was produced by me. And me and... Julie Kane. Anya Steinberg. Casey Miner. Christina Kim. Devin Karayama. Irene Noguchi. Kiana Moghadam. Thomas Coltrane. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vogel. Also, thank you to my dad, Nader Arablui.

55:02This episode was mixed by Robert Rodriguez. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes...

55:16Roya Hakakian:And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us at throughlineatmpr.org. Thanks for listening.

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