Almost unnoticed, in the flurry of news and commentary over the US elections, was the barbaric execution on Monday of a 20-year-old Iranian Jewish man, Arvin Nathaniel Ghahremani, who has been sitting in prison in Kermanshah, Iran, for two years.
When he was 18 he was ambushed by seven men outside his gym, and one of the attackers, Amir Shokri, ended up dead. Ghahremani was charged with his murder.
His execution by the Iranian regime is a small but horrible illustration of what may lie in wait for Jews and Israel, as the Iranians struggle to process the unexpected victory of Donald Trump as the US president.
Even before the US elections, the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was making threats — in Hebrew — on Twitter/X. On Saturday night he posted: “The USA and the Zionist regime will receive a crushing response to what they are doing against #Iran and against the #Resistance.”
Though outgoing US President Joe Biden has repeatedly urged caution on Israel, for fear of a Middle East conflict that would escalate until it was uncontainable, there is every indication that Donald Trump would have no such compunction. He does not care for being threatened, and he is quite capable of instigating US military action against Iran, if the ayatollahs and their Revolutionary Guards do more than issue threats and bluster.
For the wellbeing of all concerned, we hope that some brake on the tit-for-tat can be applied before Trump takes office.
